Sexual Difference in Question: The Justice of the “First Wave” in Plato’s Republic
Cinzia Arruzza
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
In the so-called first wave of Republic 5, Socrates argues that men and women in the guardian class will share everything in common. As I will show, the argument contains two distinct and equally necessary steps. If guardian men and women ought to share every activity in common, this requires that 1. there are no activities that are the purview of women qua women and from which men ought to be excluded and 2. there are no activities that are the purview of men qua men and from which women ought to be excluded. Socrates’ claim at 455c5-d2 demonstrates the first half of the thesis by appealing to experience: in all activities pertaining the polis we have empirical proof thatmen as a sex excel over women, hence there are no activities that are the exclusive purview of women. The interaction between Socrates and Glaucon demonstrates the second half of the claim, once again based on induction: in many fields – which ought to include the management of the city –many individual women are better than many men: this shows that, in principle, women’s nature qua women is not an obstacle to their acquiring the same virtues and taking up the same activities as men, hence there is no activity that is the purview of men qua men. Furthermore, I will argue that the first wave’s argument comprises the following set of claims: i. As far as the administration of the city is concerned, natural vocations are judged first and foremost based on features that pertain to the soul; ii. The soul has no sex, hence at the level of the soul it makes no sense to speak of male or female superiority; iii. The soul, however, is embodied; iv. Bodies are differentiated by sex and women’s bodies are weaker and more prone to disease; v. Bodies are the tools of dianoia and weaker bodies are, therefore, weaker tools and can even become a hindrance; vi. This determines the inferiority of the female sex, insofar as its members are embodied souls. On this reading, female bodies would not be an intractable hindrance, but they would still represent a comparative disadvantage. This comparative disadvantage of the female sex as a whole, however, does not rule out that on an individual level women qualify among the top positions.
Race, Hatred, and the Preservation of Ignorance
Noell Birondo
Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at El Paso
Racial hatred need not be based on ignorance, far from it. But racial hatred is often the product of ignorance—the product of various failures of knowledge or understanding. Indeed, white supremacist hatred seems to depend essentially upon the preservation of ignorance. The targets of white supremacist hatred do not merit the highly aversive attitudes that are plausibly constitutive of intense forms of hatred: a desire for the destruction of the hated object or the perception that the hated object is incapable of positive change. In this paper I draw on recent discussions of ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ in order to highlight the constitutive forms of ignorance that pervade the hatred found in the white supremacist tradition. But my thesis is much more specific: that morally justifiable hatred is highly asymmetric with respect to social power, given the constitutive forms of ignorance possessed by white supremacist haters. The paper provides a perspicuous explanation of the not-uncommon suspicion that while ‘bottom-up’ hatred can be morally justifiable in a wide variety of cases—given our all-too-knowledgeable familiarity with the character and characteristics of the dominant group—’top-down’ hatred reveals only the white supremacist’s glaring defects of character and intellect, and a generally culpable commitment to ignorance.
Virtues for Self-Creation in Chicana Feminism
Lori Gallegos
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Texas State University
For Chicana feminists, self-creation is a liberatory practice that one engages in to affirm oneself in the face of oppressive cultural norms. The central method for self-creation is the practice of taking critical inventory, which involves sorting through the ways one’s lineage, the way one grew up, and the traditions and self-understandings that one has been taught may or may not be valuable for who one is and who one would like to become. I focus on two examples in order to identify which virtues contribute to the practice of self-creation. The first is storytelling. Recognizing the importance of narratives for the ways in which we think about ourselves, Chicana feminists have rewritten founding narratives in order to challenge the oppressive ideologies those narratives support. The second example comes from the practice of parenting. By reflecting critically on the ways in which they were raised, Chicana mothers have reclaimed their role as parents to help end intergenerational cycles of oppression.
Why We Go Wrong Politically: Plato on the Nature and Root of Political Vice
Wenjin Liu
Assistant Research Professor of Philosophy, Duke University
Plato, born not long after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, witnesses the decline of Athens from a hegemonic power in the Greek world to a city state that struggles to recover its glory in the midst of constant internal quarrels and external threats. His contemporaries often assume that salvaging Athens from its decline crucially involves attending to particular, salient episodes of the decline, for which politicians who are directly involved should be blamed. In this paper, I argue in the Gorgias and the Republic, Plato provides a different perspective to understand not only the decline of Athens but also political problems elsewhere. In his view, a better understanding and treatment of those problems requires us to go beyond particular episodes and agents, which, albeit palpable, are symptoms or products of an underlying structural flaw, namely, political vice. Political vice is a substantive deviation from a city’s normative order. Because of that deviation, a city performs its function—collective human living—poorly. A corrupt culture is the root of political vice. Sustainable political changes should accordingly be mediated via gradual shifts in cultures.
Demotic Virtues in Plato’s Laws
Mariana Beatriz Noé
Early Career Fellow in the Discipline of Philosophy, Columbia University
In the last book of the Laws, the Athenian introduces a type of virtue that does not seem to come up in earlier books: demotic virtues (δημόσιαι ἀρεταί, 968a2). Nothing else is explicitly said about these virtues, so scholars have, understandably, set the passage aside. However, in this passage the Athenian is summarizing what a good ruler should possess, which is crucial for the project of the dialogue. Hence, demotic virtues deserve to be carefully analyzed in the context of the Laws.
I argue that, in Plato’s Laws, demotic virtues are the virtues that non-divine beings can attain. I consider two related questions: what demotic virtues are and how they relate to divine virtue. According to my interpretation, demotic virtues are an attainable—but unreliable—type of virtue that non-divine beings can improve through knowledge. These virtues are not perfect; only divine beings possess perfect virtue. However, this does not mean that perfect virtue plays no part in the ethical lives of non-divine beings. It serves as a “regulative ideal” for everyone who is not a god.
The structure of the argument goes as follows: I start with an analysis of δημόσιος, δημώδης, and δημοτικός, in order to flesh out a nuance that they all share: they can be used in opposition to the divine (Section 2). Next, I argue that demotic virtues are an attainable—but unreliable—type of virtue that non-divine beings can improve through knowledge (Section 3). Then, I turn to perfect virtue, and show that only divine beings are associated with perfection in the Laws. This does not mean, however, that perfect virtue plays no part in organizing human lives. As an ideal, perfect virtues work in a regulative way (Section 4).
Purity and Cleansing of Filth: Comparing Sor Juana’s Mary and Nahua Tradition
Sofia Ortiz Hinojosa
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Vassar College
Sor Juana, an avid Marian, has many treatments of the Virgin Mary where she extols Mary’s virtues, and in particular her wisdom and humility. In this paper I highlight especially her emphasis of Mary’s exemplary spiritual and intellectual purity and its centrality to her other virtues, important to the Catholic tradition but also to establishing Mary’s importance as a human blessed with miraculous levels of divine favor, perhaps even granting her a divine essence of her own. I reflect on this emphasis in the context of parallel but quite different emphasis on purity in Nahua tradition, using the work of Louise Burkhart on colonial-era conversion efforts by Spanish priests to productively speculate on practices and values still salient in 21st century Mexico. I suggest that colonial forced in Mexico were not unidirectional: aspects of Nahua values and virtues have influenced which values are still widespread today, as well as which virtues were the focus of Catholic proselytizing.
Plato on Women and the Family
Rachel Singpurwalla
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland
Plato’s attitude towards women in his major political works, the Republic and Laws, is complex. On the one hand, Plato argues that in well-run cities, women should hold positions of rule; but on the other, he suggests that women are inferior to men with respect to virtue. To reconcile these conflicting attitudes, some scholars argue that Plato’s progressive proposals are about women as they could be given the right education and environment, while his derogatory comments are about women as they are. Surprisingly, however, commentators who defend this line of thought fail to identify which aspect or aspects of women’s current social position is the problem. I argue that a central problem is women’s role in the private family. More specifically, I argue that Plato thinks the institution of the private family and household is an impediment to virtue; since the private family and household is the primary domain of women, they will be particularly susceptible to its ill effects. In short, individuals’ characters are shaped by the institutions they inhabit; the private family and household is a character-shaping institution that is the primary domain for women, and as a result their characters will be shaped for the worse.
