Plato’s argument for the inclusion of women in the guardian class in the Republic is a celebrated passage in the history of philosophy. All the same, reconstructing the details of the argument – and especially the prima facie tension between his contentions that (1) women have all the same natural capacities as men and (2) they nevertheless are “weaker” in every respect – has proven challenging.

The talk will focus on how recent work in Greek social history can shed new light on this argument. In particular, it has become clear that women played important economic roles as skilled practitioners in various crafts outside the home. I argue that Plato’s observation of women at work in this sphere informs his proposals. In the course of his argument, Plato assumes women could be specialized physicians and musicians because they already were playing these roles, and he extrapolates as a consequence that there’s no reason they could not be guardians, too. But he also fails to recognize that the infrequency of women’s accomplishments in various fields was not a consequence of differential distribution of natural abilities, but rather a function of the fact women were asked to take on many roles, rather that given the opportunity to focus on just one career—a violation of Plato’s own principle of specialization. As a result, his proposal is less radical than it could have been.

NB: Tea starts at 15:15...there will be tim tams....