Plato on the equality of men and women

It might surprise you to learn that not every ancient thinker believed that women were inferior to men. While Plato’s own student, Aristotle, argued for the inferiority of women in the Politics, he, when doing so, was going against the views of Plato. That’s because Plato, in the Republic, argued that men and women have the same soul and, therefore, are capable of the same activities as each other and should be politically equal.

We know that Plato put this into practice because there were female students in his school, the Academy. Diogenes Laertius, an important ancient biographer, reported the following:

His [i.e., Plato’s] disciples were Speusippus of Athens, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Aristotle of Stagira, Philippus of Opus, Hestiaeus of Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsus, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Euaeon of Lampsacus, Python and Heraclides of Aenus, Hippothales and Callippus of Athens, Demetrius of Amphipolis, Heraclides of Pontus, and many others, among them two women, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius, who is reported by Dicaearchus to have worn men's clothes (III.46).

This report highlights just how unusual Plato’s beliefs were. The implication is that these female students had to wear men’s clothes in order to visit the Academy and study with Plato because (as we know from other sources regarding women in ancient Athens) women were not typically seen outside. When they were, they’d usually be veiled, which means that they’d stick out like a sore thumb. Being disguised as men helped them get around.

We’ll discuss why Plato believed in the equality of men and women shortly, but first we should discuss the particular kind of equality that he had in mind. Specifically, Plato thinks that men and women have the same kind of soul.

Because they have the same kind of soul, they are capable of the same kinds of activities and are distinguished only by their body. Sexual difference is due only to bodily differences.

So, he says this:

Therefore, we might just as well, it seems, ask ourselves whether the natures of bald and long-haired men are the same or opposite. And, when we agree that they are opposite, then, if the bald ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid the long-haired ones to be cobblers, and if the long-haired ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid this to the bald ones (Republic V.454b-c).

Plato means that if we are supposed to dole out jobs and make some tasks forbidden based on bodies, should we be considering whether someone is bald? Of course, that sounds ridiculous. What has baldness got to do with anything?

The point is to show that similarly discriminating against women politically is ridiculous.

Indeed, he says a bit later in his reasoning:

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 (V.454d-e).

This is the difference between women and men: one kind has a body that bears children, and the other does not.

The last sentence of this passage, that guardians and wives have the same way of life, reveals exactly what Plato means. Women can be soldiers who protect the city, and they can also become rulers.

This idea was so controversial in the 4th century BCE that Plato anticipated criticism of these social views and likened the expected torrent of criticism to a “wave” that would wash over him.

But it’s clear that he believed this pretty strongly because he allowed women to be his students.

The basic reasoning makes sense. Someone is qualified to be a ruler in virtue of their knowledge. Just as someone is qualified to drive in virtue of their knowledge of driving and someone is qualified to bake in virtue of their knowledge of baking, you need to have some knowledge in order to rule well. You can’t expect someone to reliably create and preserve just institutions if they don’t know what justice is. So, rulers need to know what justice is. And, therefore, rulers need to be philosophers because it is philosophy that teaches someone what justice is.

And people do philosophy in virtue of their soul. And women and men have the same soul.

So, both are capable of doing philosophy and thus of ruling.

Women and men should be politically equal. Good, reliable political activity and participation depend on the soul, of which men and women have the same kind.

Plato is dismissing those who say that women should be excluded from political activity (including from ruling) as saying something as ridiculous as that the quality of one’s political activity depends on what kind of hair they have. Our bodies have nothing to do with it.

In the background, there is the fact that by forcing women to stay home and not participate in the life of the polis (‘city-state’), we lose half of the city’s greatest resource: personnel.

This is an argument that much later thinkers who defended women’s equality, such as Christine de Pizan, took up, too. A society that forces half of its residents to stay at home is deeply inefficient. We could accomplish so much more if we let women into political life.

I do not, however, want to make Plato sound as if he is totally in favor of women’s equality in literally every respect.

In the Republic, he is quite clear that while men and women are politically equal, men as a whole are better than women at the majority of tasks. He does acknowledge, though, that “many women are better than many men in many things” in turn (V.455d). Even this statement shows the level of nuance here: Plato has managed to isolate a sense of political equality and then show that things are murky outside of this sense.

I also don’t want to present Plato as a fan of women overall. Clearly, he has no problem with teaching women and (startlingly!) with women even ruling over a polis. But when he develops his view of reincarnation in the Timaeus, he identifies rebirth as women as being less than ideal.

He says:

All male-born humans who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second generation as women (Timaeus 90e).

Cowardice or injustice is a small defect. Much larger defects are met with rebirth as an animal. For instance, obscenely unintelligent people become fish. But cowardice and injustice get punished with life as a woman.

That’s not great, but it is far from the worst outcome.

Plato’s belief in reincarnation shines some light on why Plato is so committed to political equality. After all, if you believe in reincarnation, you definitely think that men and women have the same souls. The souls are being exchanged and recycled into different bodies. The bodies are what make the difference.

This leads me back to the point I started with: having the same soul leads to deserving access to the same kind of political activity and participation.

Thus, Plato’s views of women depend on his views of the soul. It would be a mistake to present Plato as a “friend” to women in an unqualified sense because there is a lot of nuance in this part of his social philosophy, but his claims really are radical: women should be able to become rulers if they have the right knowledge.

Douglas R. Campbell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College. He is the author of An Introduction to the Ethics of Social Media. He is also the host of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast.

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