Plato and Gender Pt. 2

In the last post we discussed the nature of the debate for Plato’s time and the thesis of his view on gender. Firstly, a person must not be afraid to go against the grain of society when discussing matters that would otherwise seem strange. Secondly, his belief was that men and women should receive the same education as both are equally able to become gaurdians (philosopher rulers) of his ideal state. The thesis he presented was that women, although the weaker sex, are still capabable of performing the same functions as men and that their role is society is only a social construct.

Plato begins by seeking to divide the natural element of women and men by figuring out what they have in common and what makes them different and whether or not these differences makes them unable to receive the education to become gaurdians.

The objection to Plato’s argument was that men and women have different natures and thus are suited best to different tasks. Plato argues that may be true in general, but it is true that men also differ in their skill and it is not due to their physical appearance (like how having and hair and being bald) that determines their skill, but how they developed their nature. Again, it is also true that women may have more talen than men in certain areas of life, but that talen can be overshadowed by men if they were to devote themselves to their talent. The only physical difference between men and women is that women beget children and men provide the seed for the begetting and that men are potentially stronger than women (both a part of their natural biology). However, no proof as to how this physical difference makes women inferior to men with regards to rulership. “Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning music and gymnastic to the wives of gaurdians.”

It should be pointed out how revolutionary this concept of man/woman relationship was for Greece at the time. Women were often seen as a type of property and thus unable to rise above their station as being merely a mother to children and taking care of the home. Plato in these passages raises women up to a new station as “companions and colleagues of men.”

As for the Gender debate raging today, we see how Plato divides up the human person. Their are two natures: the physical and the social. The physical nature is the biological nature of a woman in what we term today as her sex. The next is the social which is how one is trained and chooses the path that is set before them. This seems to suggest that Plato believes that gender roles of men and women are arbitrarily decided much like those who believe that gender is fluid and not fixed by sex. Next post will explore if such an educational program were possible and what it would look like according to Plato.