Volume 49, Issue 3 -

Despite the prominent argument for equal educational opportunity for women in Republic V, commentators frequently question Plato’s sincerity, the quality of the case made, or its significance. Undermining confidence in Plato’s advocacy of female equality are derogatory remarks about women in this and other dialogues. Since we take Plato to be sincere in the argument in Republic V, we reconcile his conclusions there about the equal educational opportunity for women with these seemingly problematic remarks by suggesting that the remarks reflect the interlocutors involved in the dialogue and conventional Athenian prejudices of that time rather than ideas that Plato held to be true. We take seriously the observation of Levin 1996, 14, “in none of those passages in which Plato makes derogatory remarks about women does he use phusis to explain why they behave in the ways of which he is critical.” Hence Plato never suggested that women were by nature limited to the position they occupied socially and politically in 5th or 4th century Athens; he understood the difference between the way they were by convention and the way that they could be, in accordance with their nature, were they to develop their natural capacities through education. We examine carefully Plato’s argument for the equal nature of women in Republic V to defend its viability. The provocation is our not finding in the extensive secondary literature a really detailed treatment of the actual argument and appreciation that it is intended as a sound philosophical argument. We then turn to the devolution schemes in Timaeus 41e–44d and 86b–92c, which again touch on the nature of women and appear to counter the position we attribute to Plato, to show that they are really supportive of our account. Both the Republic and Timaeus limit the natural differences between males and females to body-type. Therefore, even relative physical weakness of women’s bodies does not much problematize for Plato that their natural abilities are equal to those of men, where nature in these contexts means suitability to perform certain functions.

This paper revives a series of discussions held in mid-twentieth century about Plato’s Symposium and, based on this, provides a logical basis for a potential theory on virtue ethics, which holds that naturalism is consistent with evolutionary biology. Specifically, this paper demonstrates how Diotima (who is described as young Socrates’s teacher on love, or eros) could defend her theory of identity vis-à-vis how humans naturally tend to survive in ways characteristic of their species over time.

The “traditional” interpretation of the Receptacle in Plato’s Timaeus maintains that its parts act as substrata to ordinary particulars such as dogs and tables: particulars are form-matter compounds to which Forms supply properties and the Receptacle supplies a substratum, as well as a space in which these compounds come to be. I argue, against this view, that parts of the Receptacle cannot act as substrata for those particulars. I also argue, making use of contemporary discussions of supersubstantivalism, against a substratum interpretation that separates substratum and space in the Timaeus .

The Platonic section of the De Iside (chapters 45–64) offers a complex account of Plutarch’s theory of cosmological principles. In this paper I shall supplement conventional interpretations and set out to demonstrate that: Osiris is the whole of the “positive” and ordering powers operating within the actual (that is, post-creational) world; Typhon is not the pre-cosmic soul, but the negative and destructive powers at work within it; Isis is not mere matter or the world soul, but the world soul as the material “battlefield” for opposite powers in the world; the object of Plutarch’s analysis is not the pre-cosmic world, but the post-creational stage. Finally, I shall explain the logic of Plutarch’s account, which fits with the literary genre he develops in this text.

This paper focuses primarily on an examination of the discussion about planetary motion found in the portion of Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Republic that deals with the myth of Er, commenting on Republic 617a4-b4. The passage is important because it provides evidence indicating that the Platonist Proclus argued for rejecting the hypothesis that planetary motion should be understood as some combination of circular movements. Some discussion of the Hypotyposis and the commentary on the Timaeus provides the background for the analysis of the passage in the Republic commentary. I propose that the portion of the commentary on the Republic that deals with the myth of Er is the latest of these three works and therefore develops more fully the ideas found in the Timaeus commentary and the Hypotyposis . The seriousness of Proclus’ long discussion of this short passage of Plato’s myth provides a new perspective for considering the ancient importance of Platonic myth in providing a role for interpretation and a framework for allowing the development of more complex scientific thought as part of the interpretative project. The paper particularly focuses on several key methodological statements which indicate a productive relationship between philosophy and the exact sciences and show serious attention to the problems of understanding the natural world by means of modeling as well as commitment to the importance of subjecting the fundamental premises of any system for understanding the natural world to continual rational examination. The paper also presents evidence indicating that Proclus made a new proposal for understanding planetary motion. This new proposal included the suggestion that mixed lines such as ellipses would provide a better solution than combinations of circles, and the paper argues that Proclus connects this new proposal to the idea that the heavenly bodies display in their movement some of the same causes of straight movement as earthly bodies. The goal of the paper is to provide a case study indicating how later Platonists understood Platonic theory in a way that included the importance of both textual authority and scientific progress and encouraged continual re-evaluation of leading scientific theories.