The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato

MT THE BEGINNING of the fifth book of Plato's Republic Socrates offers his radical proposals for the inclusion of women in the guardian class of his just city. The women are to train and exercise with the men as they prepare to become warriors to protect the city. They are to eat and live communally with the men, and when the philosopher-rulers are introduced women are allowed to enter their exalted rank. Though some have accepted the sincerity of Plato's attempts to rescue the female from her low status and sheltered life during the fourth century B.C. in Athens,I there are enough questions raised within Book V itself and elsewhere in the dialogue to make us doubt the seriousness of these proposals. While Socrates allows women to enter the ruling class, he affirms that they will always be weaker than men (455e; 456a; 457a).2 While he argues that they are not by nature necessarily different from men, he calls the plundering of a corpse the work of a small and womanish mind (469d). As the discussion proceeds, the presence of women in the guardian class is sometimes forgotten (460ab; 465ab; 467)3 or Glaucon, hesitant to include them in the army (471 d), must' be reminded of the participation to which he had agreed earlier (540c). Elsewhere in the dialogue the critical remarks about women are more