Republic

What a grand[*](γενναία: often as here ironical in Plato. Cf. Sophist 231 B, where interpreters misunderstand it. But the new L. and S. is correct.) thing, Glaucon, said I, is the power of the art of contradiction[*](ἀντιλογικῆς: one of several designations for the eristic which Isocrates maliciously confounds with dialectic while Plato is careful to distinguish them. Cf. E. S. Thompson, The Meno of Plato , Excursus V., pp. 272 ff. and the introduction to E.H. Gifford’s Euthydemus, p. 42. Among the marks of eristic are the pusuit of merely verbal oppositions as here and Euthydemus 278 A, 301 B, Theaetetus 164 C; the neglect to distinguish and divide, Philebus 17 A, Phaedrus 265 E, 266 A, B; the failure to distinguish the hypothesis from its consequences, Phaedo 101 E, Parmenides 135-136.)! Why so? Because, said I, many appear to me to fall into it even against their wills, and to suppose that they are not wrangling but arguing, owing to their inability to apply the proper divisions and distinctions to the subject under consideration. They pursue purely verbal oppositions, practising eristic, not dialectic on one another. Yes, this does happen to many, he said; but does this observation apply to us too at present? Absolutely, said I; at any rate I am afraid that we are unawares[*](ἄκοντες is almost unconscious. Cf. Philebus 14 C.) slipping into contentiousness. In what way? The principle that natures not the same ought not to share in the same pursuits we are following up most manfully and eristically[*](Greek style often couples thus two adverbs, the second defining more specifically the first, and, as here and often in Plato and Aristophanes, with humorous or paradoxical effect. Cf. Aristophanes Knights 800 εὖ καὶ μιαρῶς. So Shakespeare well and chirurgeonly.) in the literal and verbal sense but we did not delay to consider at all what particular kind of diversity and identity[*](Cf. Sophist 256 A-B for the relativity of same and other.Politicus 292 C describes in different language the correct method.) of nature we had in mind and with reference to what we were trying to define it when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same. No, we didn’t consider that, he said. Wherefore, by the same token, I said, we might ask ourselves whether the natures of bald[*](For this humorously trivial illustration cf. Mill, Rep. Gov. chap. viii. p. 190: I have taken no account of difference of sex. I consider it to be as entirely irrelevant to political rights as difference in height, or in the color of the hair; and Mill’s disciple Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, i. 291: We may at least grant that the burden of proof should be upon those who would disfranchise all red-haired men.) and long-haired men are the same and not, rather, contrary. And, after agreeing that they were opposed, we might, if the bald cobbled, forbid the long-haired to do so, or vice versa. That would be ridiculous, he said. Would it be so, said I, for any other reason than that we did not then posit likeness and difference of nature in any and every sense, but were paying heed solely to the kind of diversity and homogeneity that was pertinent[*](Cf. Laches 190 D εἰς ὃ τείνειν δοκεῖ, Protagoras 345 B.) to the pursuits themselves? We meant, for example, that a man and a woman who have a physician’s[*](Adam makes difficulties, but Cf. Laws 963 A νοῦν . . . κυβερνητικὸν μὲν καὶ ἰατρικὸν καὶ στρατηγικόν. The translation follows Hermann despite the objection that this reading forestalls the next sentence. Cf. Campbell ad loc. and Apelt, Woch. für klass. Phil ., 1903, p. 344.) mind have the same nature. Don’t you think so? I do. But that a man physician and a man carpenter have different natures? Certainly, I suppose. Similarly, then, said I, if it appears that the male and the female sex have distinct qualifications for any arts or pursuits, we shall affirm that they ought to be assigned respectively to each. But if it appears that they differ only in just this respect that the female bears and the male begets, we shall say that no proof has yet been produced that the woman differs from the man for our purposes, but we shall continue to think that our guardians and their wives ought to follow the same pursuits. And rightly, said he.

Then, is it not the next thing to bid our opponent tell us precisely for what art or pursuit concerned with the conduct of a state the woman’s nature differs from the man’s?That would be at any rate fair.Perhaps, then, someone else, too, might say what you were saying a while ago, that it is not easy to find a satisfactory answer on a sudden,[*](Plato anticipates the objection that the Socratic dialectic surprises assent. Cf. more fully 487 B, and for a comic version Hippias Major 295 A if I could go off for a little by myself in solitude I would tell you the answer more precisely than precision itself.) but that with time for reflection there is no difficulty.He might say that.Shall we, then, beg the raiser of such objections to follow us, if we may perhaps prove able to make it plain to him that there is no pursuit connected with the administration of a state that is peculiar to woman?By all means.Come then, we shall say to him, answer our question. Was this the basis of your distinction between the man naturally gifted for anything and the one not so gifted—that the one learned easily, the other with difficulty; that the one with slight instruction could discover[*](Cf. Politicus 286 E, where this is said to be the object of teaching.) much for himself in the matter studied, but the other, after much instruction and drill, could not even remember what he had learned; and that the bodily faculties of the one adequately served[*](Cf. Protagoras 326 B, Republic 498 B, 410 C, Isocrates xv. 180, Xenophon Memorabilia ii. 1. 28.) his mind, while, for the other, the body was a hindrance? Were there any other points than these by which you distinguish the well endowed man in every subject and the poorly endowed?No one, said he, will be able to name any others. Do you know, then, of anything practised by mankind in which the masculine sex does not surpass the female on all these points?[*](On the alleged superiority of men even in women’s occupations cf. the amusing diatribe of the old bachelor in George Eliot’s Adam Bede, chap. xxi.: I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all but what a man can do better than women, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor makeshift way, and the remarks on women as cooks of the bachelor Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 234. But Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 9. 11 takes the ordinary view. On the character of women generally Cf. Laws 781 and Aristotle in Zeller trans. ii. 215.) Must we make a long story of it by alleging weaving and the watching of pancakes and the boiling pot, whereon the sex plumes itself and wherein its defeat will expose it to most laughter? You are right, he said, that the one sex[*](Cf. Cratylus 392 C ὡς τὸ ὅλον εἰπεῖν γένος.) is far surpassed by the other in everything, one may say. Many women, it is true, are better than many men in many things, but broadly speaking, it is as you say. Then there is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all— yet for all the woman is weaker than the man. Assuredly. Shall we, then, assign them all to men and nothing to women? How could we? We shall rather, I take it, say that one woman has the nature of a physician and another not, and one is by nature musical, and another unmusical? Surely.