The
Role of Women in the Ideal Society
The role of women in the ideal society
Plato
began his philosophical career as a student of Socrates,
and late after Socrates' death, he established his
own school of philosophy at the Academy. For students enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the heritage of a Socratic style
of thinking and to guide their progress through mathematical learning to the
achievement of abstract philosophical truth. The written dialogues on which his
enduring reputation rests also serve both of these aims. The Academy endured
for almost a thousand years, which tells us how greatly Plato's
thoughts were valued.
Plato
may be said to have held the world of sense perception as inferior to the world
of ideal entities that exist only in a pure spiritual realm, this view of
reality has long been important to philosophers because it gives a philosophic
basis to ant materialistic thought. It values the spirit first and frees people
from the tyranny of sensory perceptions. Plato
assures us that the body is only a starting point and that it can lead both to spiritual
fulfillment and to the appreciation of true beauty.
The masterpiece among the dialogues it Plato's Republic. It begins with a Socratic conversation
about the nature of justice but proceeds directly to an extended discussion of
the virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation as they appear both in
individual human beings and in society as a whole. In this excerpt from the
Republic, Socrates and Glaucon discuss how women
should fit into the ideal society. They discuss the differences between men and
women and the role women should play in an ideal society.
t may be right after the men have played their part
that the women should come on in their turn especially when you demand it in
this way. For men who are, by nature and education, such as we have described,
there is, in my opinion, no right possession or use of children and women
except along the lines on which we originally started them. We tried in our
argument, if you remember, to make our men like guardians of a flock.
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