Is Plato’s Republic a Feminist Work?

Plato’s view on women throughout his writings is inconsistent and tends to give one whiplash. On a single page, you might read that women are not significantly different from men, but then a few lines down, you might read about how much worse women are at everything except roasting vegetables. However, in the Republic, it really does seem as though Plato’s ideal city gave both men and women the same education, employment, and opportunities. So, does this mean that Plato thought women were equally valuable as men?

Through the vast majority of Plato’s works, women are talked of and are agreed to be second-rate human beings. Whether the topic of conversation is beauty, intelligence, wisdom, or the ability to exercise while naked, Plato writes Socrates and his interlocutors, stating men’s vast superiority to women as a passing matter of fact. The following passage from the Timaeus is part of Plato’s story of the ontology of the universe and the creation of women:

According to our likely account, all male-born humans who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second generation as women… That is how women and females in general came to be (Timaeus 90e-91d).

As you can see, women are seen as so fundamentally inferior to men that the life of a woman is theorized to be an atonement for not having lived as a virtuous man in the previous life. If Plato’s theory of the universe were to be correct, all the men who abandoned their comrades or murdered their wives would not be suffering eternal damnation—they are serving their time inside the prison cell of a female body. Yikes.

The Conflict Between the Republic and Older Dialogues

Even in those times when Plato is writing of women in an unusually positive light, there is always the caveat that women—even the most ideal ones—are weaker than men. In the Republic, the text to be primarily discussed through this paper, there are countless lines like the following,

Do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex isn’t superior to the female… Or must we make a long story of it by mentioning weaving, baking cakes, and cooking vegetables… Women share by nature in every way of life… but in all of them women are weaker than men (455c-d).

With this in mind, it is thus quite puzzling that Plato insists throughout the Republic that women are not sufficiently different from men and should be given the same education and work as men in the ideal city. The following text is also from the Republic,

But if it’s apparent that they differ only in this respect, that the females bear children while the males beget them, we’ll say that there has been no kind of proof that women are different from men with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll continue to believe that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life (454d-e).

So, just like men, women have natures of varying worth. This would correspond to the appropriate education and work assigned to them within the city. The education and work would all be the exact same as those assigned to the men of the same “value.”

If there is no real difference in the value of the soul and the corresponding role within the city, a process of elimination reveals that it is solely the physical feminine body that gives rise to women’s inferiority.

Even if we were to ignore the differences in the attitude towards women or chalk it up to Plato changing his mind between dialogues, it doesn’t actually erase the conflict. In Book VIII of the Republic, we are given Plato’s account of how the ideal city is eventually corrupted. The fall of the ideal city and the aristocracy all come down to the nature of women:

When he listens, first, to his mother complaining that her husband isn’t one of the rulers and that she’s at a disadvantage among the other women as a result. Then she sees that he’s not very concerned about money and that he doesn’t fight back when he’s insulted, whether in private or in public in the courts, but is indifferent to everything of that sort. She also sees him concentrating his mind on his own thoughts, neither honoring nor dishonoring her overmuch. Angered by all this, she tells her son that his father is unmanly, too easy-going, and all the other things that women repeat over and over again in such cases (549c-e).

Evidently, we do not escape the conflict by narrowing the scope to just the Republic. The initial source of corruption in the ideal city is a woman—not a particularly special woman—-so this corruption could not be avoided by looking for red flags or other indicators.

It is inevitable just because of the way that women are. As long as there are women in the ideal state, corruption looms on the horizon. According to Plato, that is. Thus, it is unlikely that the dilemma can be attributed to Plato having a change of heart.

With this in mind, why would Plato believe that women are entitled to equal education and opportunity while being ultimately responsible for the city’s downfall?

Women’s Education & Opportunity

From the outside, it appears that men and women have equal social status in the ideal city. Whether it is the role of mere moneymaker or philosopher-king, Plato maintains that the city’s work is distributed by nature rather than sex,

Then, there is no way of life concerned with the management of the city that belongs to a woman because she’s a woman or to a man because he’s a man, but the various natures are distributed in the same way in both creatures (455d).

This does not just include the roles that were traditionally considered to be the domain of men, such as soldiers and politicians. Women in the ideal city are no longer considered the primary caregivers for infants and young children. Rather, this becomes another role distributed by the nature of a citizen’s soul.

It is worth discussing what Plato means by “nature of the soul” here. In the Republic, Plato tells of a myth to be told to the citizens, in which each person’s soul is one of three metals (415a-d). Of course, the myth is not real but a “noble lie” used to control the citizens and justify the proposed caste system.

Those with the best nature have souls of gold. The gold-souled are in the highest roles in the city, such as guardians. In the middle, we have the silver-souled. These men and women would be the auxiliaries, those who protect the city from outside threats. At the bottom, we have the bronze-souled. These would be considered the lowest class, in money-making positions but not responsible for any of the major roles in the city-people such as merchants, carpenters, or farmers.

The roles of the city are distributed based on nature or the metal their soul is said to be made of. Women can have gold, silver, and bronze souls in the same way that men can. However, we need to look more closely at what is expected of what Plato considered to be the “best of women” or the gold-souled women.

Gold-Souled in the City

The first of many red flags to be discussed is the characterization of gold-souled women and their children as communal property of the male guardians. None of these women are permitted to live in a monogamous relationship since they are considered the male guardians’ property. Additionally, while both are considered to have the highest of natures, only men are considered when it comes time to award them for their performance in battle,

And among other prizes and rewards the young men who are good in war or other things must be permitted to have sex with the women more often, since this will also be a good pretext for having them father as many of the children as possible (460a-b).

Notice that no consideration is given to the guardian women who are “good in war.” This is solely a benefit of the male guardians since it is the case that the women are their property to use for sex acts and to father children. The children that are conceived are not cared for by their biological mothers and fathers; this is now the responsibility of those in a childcare role. Remember, this is now a role that is not in the domain of women. Women provide newborns, who are then cared for by male and female caregivers.

In a discussion of the conception and rearing of children, Plato has this to say of his gold-souled men and women,

…the best men must have sex with the best women as frequently as possible, while the opposite is true of the most inferior men and women, and, second, that if our herd is to be of the highest possible quality, the former’s offspring must be reared but not the latter’s. And this must all be brought about without being noticed by anyone except the rulers, so that our herd of guardians remains as free from dissension as possible (455d-e).

In other words, only gold-souled women are permitted to have children who will be cared for. Any woman considered silver or bronze-souled can give birth to children, but they would not be permitted to have that child receive any care.

I’m sure that you, like me, find that to be alarming. What is even more alarming is the further elucidation of what is to come for those children who are born from inferior parents or are otherwise imperfect. Here is the fate of such children:

I think they’ll take the children of good parents to the nurses in charge of the rearing pen situated in a separate part of the city, but the children of inferior parents, or any child of the others that is born defective, they’ll hide in a secret and unknown place, as is appropriate (460).

This secret and unknown place is never elaborated on. However, I think it is a safe assumption that these infants do not live to see toddlerhood. It is likely they are to be left out in nature to die or are taken to this “secret and unknown place” to be murdered shortly after birth.

So, is the Ideal City of Plato’s Republic a Feminist Safe Haven?

Given these implications, it is clear that the motivation for giving women the same education and opportunities is not based on equality and liberation. Rather, it has entirely to do with the conception of children. In the ideal city, women of bronze and silver souls are tolerated so long as they work and die without creating children. The gold-souled women are wholly responsible for maintaining the population to keep it as “pure” as possible.

In a nutshell, Plato considers the gold-souled women to be top-of-the-line incubators. Their education and provision of opportunities is a means to an end—the end being children, who are the city’s future gold-souled men and the next generation’s incubators.

Before the ideal city, women were considered better in at least a few things. We heard a little bit about weaving baskets and cooking vegetables. Another thing was caring for children, which the women of Athens solely did. However, Plato discovered that this puts too much value on women and not enough on men in the role of childcare. Thus, it would be a mistake to consider the Republic a feminist work of philosophy.