Nathan Sawatzky
Abstract
Plato’s “Republic” is generally held to promote equal education for men and women but to fall short of any sort of liberal feminism, since several passages demean women, and the education of women serves not their ends as individuals but the ends of the militaristic city. Based on (i) previously-unnoticed evidence of Socrates’ concern with gender in the transition from the “true,” “healthy” city to the unhealthy, “luxurious” city in Book 2 and (ii) an analysis of the different reasons given for the various roles of women in the first two “waves” of Book 5, I argue that Plato’s Socrates is in fact a visionary liberal feminist. It has not been noticed that in describing the citizens’ way of life in the “healthy” city in Book 2 Socrates suddenly emphasizes women’s (whether by nature or by Greek convention) domestic roles without ever mentioning women; in doing so, he hints that the needs men have for women is the topic he thinks should next be discussed in his and his interlocutors’ search for what justice is, since they have so far ignored it. When Glaucon interrupts to demand luxuries for the “men,” he ignores Socrates’ concern with women as autonomous exchange partners and goes on to endorse only women’s roles that provide men with pleasure and service. Subsequently “purifying” the city of luxury does nothing to remedy this omission. It is not until Book 5 that someone else – Polemarchus – finally notices that women’s roles in the city require further study. In response, Socrates derives proposals concerning women from various principles introduced earlier in the city in speech. By identifying these principles and their different origins (was it Socrates or Glaucon who first introduced them?), I distinguish elements of the treatment of women in Book 5 which Socrates would endorse from those he would not, for which Glaucon (and to some extent Adeimantus) is responsible. In the first wave, Socrates proposes equal education for women based on the principle in the “healthy” city that every individual should do what they are better at relative to others. In the second wave, Socrates proposes abolishing the private family based on Glaucon’s premises that the citizens should be managed like herd animals (see 372d, 451c) and that they should do so looking only to the interests of the city, not of the individuals within it. These premises are not compatible with Socrates’ own principles of autonomous exchange and specialization in the “healthy” city. These conclusions are supported by exhaustive philological analysis, which reveals that throughout the “Republic” Socrates quietly but consistently portrays men as ambitious, foolish, and obliviously unjust as compared to women, while by contrast he always refers to human beings as limited, imperfect beings. In sum, I seek to show that Socrates systematically hints at and wants to discuss how men should consider women to be equal, autonomous partners in exchanges of every kind (domestic, political, and pedagogical), but that such a discussion is repeatedly hindered by the androcentrism and misogyny of Glaucon and others. The Republic is a radical critique of ancient Athenian patriarchy that anticipates second wave feminism in the twentieth century.
Key takeaways
- Since Glaucon gives no thought to women, but wants Socrates to supply the men of the city with whatever pleasures they desire, then what becomes of the invisible women?
- It is quite possible that Glaucon and Socrates understand the men as a class to have some sort of "marital" control over women guards, even if certain women have recognized powers over men as the women carry out functions unrelated to their sexual and procreative roles.
- Socrates is not indifferent to the fact that Glaucon has continued to treat women as a class as inferior to men.
- I propose that they derive from earlier claims by Glaucon and Adeimantus but not by Socrates, and that they conflict with other proposals in the city in speech that Socrates does endorse, especially those of the Healthy City.
- As regards observations of the text, I have offered evidence and arguments (i) that Glaucon and Adeimantus, but not Socrates himself, display a conventional, patriarchal Athenian androcentrism and misogyny; (ii) that Socrates very much wants to inquire about women's proper roles both within and outside the home, especially in Book 2 and Book 5, but that Glaucon and Adeimantus prevent or severely limit this by taking the conversation in androcentric or misogynistic directions; and (iii) that Socrates' arguments for assessing women's natures, like men's, on an individual basis are soon undermined by Glaucon, whose lead Socrates follows in gradually abandoning those conclusions in order to treat women as a class.
