Plato on Female 'Weakness': From Biology to Politics

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F25%3A10509108" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/25:10509108 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=H9VB5FjQfj" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=H9VB5FjQfj</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.54563/eugesta.1637" target="_blank" >10.54563/eugesta.1637</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Plato on Female 'Weakness': From Biology to Politics

Original language description

In response to ongoing debates about Plato&apos;s view of women, this paper focuses on the source of ambiguities that lead different readers to opposite conclusions. Dealing with the Republic and several passages from the Critias and the Laws, it emphasizes that all the passages that imply some sort of women&apos;s inferiority assume one and only reason, namely that women are weaker than men. I argue that, pace other interpretations, this claim repeatedly points to physical weakness, although some passages, especially in the Laws, moralize this weakness precisely in order to reaffirm male superiority. To disentangle the resulting contradictions in Plato&apos;s position, we must consider Plato&apos;s use of two interconnected kinds of argumentation: the analogy between human procreation and animal breeding; and the craft model of human virtue. At the same time, if these argumentative tools co-determine Plato&apos;s conclusions, a strictly theoretical analysis cannot fully explain those passages that describe the situation of women in both the real and imagined cities from a strikingly male perspective. Besides the narrower interpretation of female &quot;weakness&quot;, the paper also offers a more speculative suggestion that Plato sometimes sees this weakness as a specific reflection of what he describes, more generally, as &quot;weakness of human nature&quot;.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Eugesta

ISSN

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e-ISSN

2265-8777

Volume of the periodical

15

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

FR - FRANCE

Number of pages

32

Pages from-to

1-32

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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