Does Plato’s Argument for the Equality of the Genders in the Guardian Class Liberate Women?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BashawiehIn one of his renowned pieces of writing, the Republic, Plato sets out to construct the ideal city, during this process Plato finds himself faced with the obstacle of what role to assign the females and children of the guardian class.As a consequence of Plato's proposed solution for this class various debates over the possibility of Plato being one of the first feminist has resulted with arguments available to support both ends of the spectrum.Though it was generally agreed at first that Plato is indeed a feminist, close speculation of his works and further critical analysis by female theorists have made possible different interpretations of his decision.While it should be acknowledged that both interesting and viable points have been raised by the different perspectives regarding this topic, this paper will sympathize more with the views of liberal feminists.Prominent liberal feminists such as Susan M. Okin argue-rather convincingly-that Plato, though somewhat a feminist is rather an insufficient one who made the decisions regarding female guardians not for the emancipation of women but instead to make the city of words both possible to construct and durable (Okin, 1977, pp.356-357).Those familiar with the Republic will certainly agree that the guardians are regarded by Plato as an important class in the city of words, as some of its members are to be future philosopher kings.Hence, the degree of success in establishing a stable guardian class is one of the key factors which make the city a possibility as opposed to meagre wishful thinking.That being said, any decision made by Plato regarding the guardian class, be it the question of the role of women or the nature of the soul required by an individuals in order to qualify as a member is no simple decision.The topic of guardian women and children is discussed in book 5 of the Republic after Plato is challenged by Adeimantus and the remaining audience to explain what the specific roles of the females and children of the guardian class is to be (449c7-450a).Plato, though realising his explanation will be controversial as it defies convention is hesitant to share his views but nonetheless continues to do so as he realises he has no alternative.In response to this question Plato asks:
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".