Plato and women

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The Pythagoreans were known to be inclusive of women. Plato studied with a group of Pythagoreans in southern Italy before returning to Athens and establishing the Academy. Did the Academy accept women? What was Plato's position on women and science/psychology?

-- Bill Owen (owenw@unbc.ca), January 09, 2003

Answers

It is not known whether there were any women in the Academy, but it is doubtful given the position of women at that time in Athens generally (Aspasia excepted, of course). Plato's view of women seems to have changed over his career. He favored equal education for them in the Republic. Although he believed that, on avegerage, women were of lesser intellectual talent, he admitted that many women were better than many men and, thus, everyone should be given a chance to prove him- or herself. By the Timaeus, however, he claimed that women are what happens to the the souls of men who have lived bad lives (not as bad as the men whose souls come back as animals, but worse than those whose souls come back as men again). In his last book, the Laws, his attitude toward women had deteriorated even further.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), January 10, 2003.

I think that Plato was fully and completely accepting of women, as were most intellectual men of the period. It is common nature to relize that men and women are made of the same materil, and therefore have the same intellectual potential. Plato knew this, but feared execution because his beleif was so radical for the time period.

-- zach (spacefreak21@yahoo.com), February 07, 2003.

And what *evidence* do you have, Zach, that Plato secretly held this "radical" view rather than the view that he expressed and that was common in his day? We can't just go around assuming that people we admire (on other grounds) held beliefs that we consider "normal" in our own time.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), February 07, 2003.

plato included women in the ruling elite of his proposed ideal state.

-16 yrs old, lexy

-- Lexy Taggart (studdedstar69@aol.com), June 24, 2004.


Diogenes Laertius reports that two women, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius, were among Plato's students.

-- Laura Grams (lgrams@mail.unomaha.edu), September 14, 2004.


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