Oppression Of Women In Plato's The Republic

Works of philosophy eventually succumbs to the passage of time. A way of thinking can be accepted in a period of time; however, that is frivolous. In the grand scheme of things, it needs to be remembered in history; it needs to continue through countless debates without losing merit. Few have managed to overcome this adversity, but those that do left a permanent mark on humanity. One of these survivors is the most influential philosophical doctrine from the ancient Mediterranean, The Republic by Plato. Over the years, Plato has been hailed by some as an advocate of women’s rights because of some views he puts forth in The Republic. In Book V, Plato has Socrates act as his voice, and he engages in a discussion of the perfect state with other philosophers (Polemarchus, Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Thrasymachus). In this conversation, Socrates employs the notion that women should be equal …show more content…
This raises the question of whether or not Plato’s utopian society depends on the realization of equality between the sexes.
In the beginning, Socrates describes his ideal community, a society that promotes specialization of employment and status based on innate ability, not gender. Aside from pointing out the obvious physical differences between the sexes, Socrates distinguishes between valid differences in their nature. At the time, it was common to believe that women and men have different natures and should be responsible for different things. Socrates acknowledges the conflicting qualities of those statements, “different natures ought to have different pursuits, and that men’s and women’s natures are different” and “different natures ought to have the same pursuits” (Plato, 310). Both sexes share identical goals comparatively, but males quantitatively surpass females in accomplishing them from their education and training. If women were given the same type of education and training, they would show results similar to their male