Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  That’s absolutely certain.

  However, mustn’t we first agree about whether our proposals are possible or not? And mustn’t we give to anyone who wishes the opportunity to question us—whether in jest or in earnest—about whether female human [453] nature can share all the tasks of that of the male, or none of them, or some but not others, and to ask in which class the waging of war belongs? Wouldn’t this, as the best beginning, also be likely to result in the best conclusion?

  Of course.

  Shall we give the argument against ourselves, then, on behalf of those who share these reservations, so that their side of the question doesn’t fall by default?

  [b] There’s no reason not to.

  Then let’s say this on their behalf: “Socrates and Glaucon, there’s no need for others to argue with you, for you yourselves, when you began to found your city, agreed that each must do his own work in accordance with his nature.”

  And I think we certainly did agree to that.

  “Can you deny that a woman is by nature very different from a man?”

  Of course not.

  “And isn’t it appropriate to assign different work to each in accordance with its nature?”

  Certainly. [c]

  “How is it, then, that you aren’t mistaken and contradicting yourselves when you say that men and women must do the same things, when their natures are so completely separate and distinct?”

  Do you have any defense against that attack?

  It isn’t easy to think of one on the spur of the moment, so I’ll ask you to explain the argument on our side as well, whatever it is.

  This and many other such things, Glaucon, which I foresaw earlier, were what I was afraid of, so that I hesitated to tackle the law concerning the possession and upbringing of women and children. [d]

  By god, it doesn’t seem to be an easy topic.

  It isn’t. But the fact is that whether someone falls into a small diving pool or into the middle of the biggest ocean, he must swim all the same.

  He certainly must.

  Then we must swim too, and try to save ourselves from the sea of argument, hoping that a dolphin will pick us up or that we’ll be rescued by some other desperate means.5

  It seems so. [e]

  Come, then. Let’s see if we can find a way out. We’ve agreed that different natures must follow different ways of life and that the natures of men and women are different. But now we say that those different natures must follow the same way of life. Isn’t that the accusation brought against us?

  That’s it exactly.

  Ah! Glaucon, great is the power of the craft of disputation. [454]

  Why is that?

  Because many fall into it against their wills. They think they are having not a quarrel but a conversation, because they are unable to examine what has been said by dividing it up according to forms. Hence, they pursue mere verbal contradictions of what has been said and have a quarrel rather than a conversation.

  That does happen to lots of people, but it isn’t happening to us at the moment, is it?

  It most certainly is, for it looks to me, at any rate, as though we are [b] falling into disputation against our will.

  How?

  We’re bravely, but in a quarrelsome and merely verbal fashion, pursuing the principle that natures that aren’t the same must follow different ways of life. But when we assigned different ways of life to different natures and the same ones to the same, we didn’t at all examine the form of natural difference and sameness we had in mind or in what regard we were distinguishing them.

  No, we didn’t look into that.

  [c] Therefore, we might just as well, it seems, ask ourselves whether the natures of bald and long-haired men are the same or opposite. And, when we agree that they are opposite, then, if the bald ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid the long-haired ones to be cobblers, and if the long-haired ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid this to the bald ones.

  That would indeed be ridiculous.

  And aren’t we in this ridiculous position because at that time we did not introduce every form of difference and sameness in nature, but focused on the one form of sameness and difference that was relevant to the particular ways of life themselves? We meant, for example, that a male [d] and female doctor have souls of the same nature. Or don’t you think so?

  I do.

  But a doctor and a carpenter have different ones?

  Completely different, surely.

  Therefore, if the male sex is seen to be different from the female with regard to a particular craft or way of life, we’ll say that the relevant one must be assigned to it. But if it’s apparent that they differ only in this respect, that the females bear children while the males beget them, we’ll say that there has been no kind of proof that women are different from [e] men with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll continue to believe that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life.

  And rightly so.

  Next, we’ll tell anyone who holds the opposite view to instruct us in this: With regard to what craft or way of life involved in the constitution [455] of the city are the natures of men and women not the same but different?

  That’s a fair question, at any rate.

  And perhaps he’d say, just as you did a moment ago, that it isn’t easy to give an immediate answer, but with enough consideration it should not be difficult.

  Yes, he might say that.

  Shall we ask the one who raises this objection to follow us and see whether we can show him that no way of life concerned with the management [b] of the city is peculiar to women?

  Of course.

  “Come, now,” we’ll say to him, “give us an answer: Is this what you meant by one person being naturally well suited for something and another being naturally unsuited? That the one learned it easily, the other with difficulty; that the one, after only a brief period of instruction, was able to find out things for himself, while the other, after much instruction, couldn’t even remember what he’d learned; that the body of the one adequately served his thought, while the body of the other opposed his. Are there any other things besides these by which you distinguished those [c] who are naturally well suited for anything from those who are not?”

  No one will claim that there are any others.

  Do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex isn’t superior to the female in all these ways? Or must we make a long story of it by mentioning weaving, baking cakes, and cooking vegetables, in which the female sex is believed to excel and in which it is most ridiculous of all for it to be inferior? [d]

  It’s true that one sex is much superior to the other in pretty well everything, although many women are better than many men in many things. But on the whole it is as you say.

  Then there is no way of life concerned with the management of the city that belongs to a woman because she’s a woman or to a man because he’s a man, but the various natures are distributed in the same way in both creatures. Women share by nature in every way of life just as men do, but in all of them women are weaker than men. [e]

  Certainly.

  Then shall we assign all of them to men and none to women?

  How can we?

  We’ll say, I suppose, that one woman is a doctor, another not, and that one is musical by nature, another not.

  Of course.

  And, therefore, won’t one be athletic or warlike, while another is unwarlike and no lover of physical training? [456]

  I suppose so.

  Further, isn’t one woman philosophical or a lover of wisdom, while another hates wisdom? And isn’t one spirited and another spiritless?

  That too.

  So one woman may have a guardian nature and another not, for wasn’t it qualities of this sort that we looked for in the natures of the men we selected as guardians?

  Certainly.

  Therefore, men and women are by nature the same with respect to guarding the city,
except to the extent that one is weaker and the other stronger.

  Apparently.

  Then women of this sort must be chosen along with men of the same sort to live with them and share their guardianship, seeing that they are [b] adequate for the task and akin to the men in nature.

  Certainly.

  And mustn’t we assign the same way of life to the same natures?

  We must.

  We’ve come round, then, to what we said before and have agreed that it isn’t against nature to assign an education in music, poetry, and physical training to the wives of the guardians.

  Absolutely.

  [c] Then we’re not legislating impossibilities or indulging in mere wishful thinking, since the law we established is in accord with nature. It’s rather the way things are at present that seems to be against nature.

  So it seems.

  Now, weren’t we trying to determine whether our proposals were both possible and optimal?

  Yes, we were.

  And haven’t we now agreed that they’re possible?

  Yes.

  Then mustn’t we next reach agreement about whether or not they’re optimal?

  Clearly.

  Should we have one kind of education to produce women guardians, then, and another to produce men, especially as they have the same natures [d] to begin with?

  No.

  Then, what do you think about this?

  What?

  About one man being better and another worse. Or do you think they’re all alike?

  Certainly not.

  In the city we’re establishing, who do you think will prove to be better men, the guardians, who receive the education we’ve described, or the cobblers, who are educated in cobblery?

  Your question is ridiculous.

  [e] I understand. Indeed, aren’t the guardians the best of the citizens?

  By far.

  And what about the female guardians? Aren’t they the best of the women?

  They’re by far the best.

  Is there anything better for a city than having the best possible men and women as its citizens?

  There isn’t.

  And isn’t it music and poetry and physical training, lending their support [457] in the way we described, that bring this about?

  Of course.

  Then the law we’ve established isn’t only possible; it is also optimal for a city?

  Yes.

  Then the guardian women must strip for physical training, since they’ll wear virtue or excellence instead of clothes. They must share in war and the other guardians’ duties in the city and do nothing else. But the lighter parts must be assigned to them because of the weakness of their sex. And the man who laughs at naked women doing physical training for the sake of what is best is “plucking the unripe fruit”6 of laughter and doesn’t [b] know, it seems, what he’s laughing at or what he’s doing, for it is and always will be the finest saying that the beneficial is beautiful, while the harmful is ugly.

  Absolutely.

  Can we say, then, that we’ve escaped one wave of criticism in our discussion of the law about women, that we haven’t been altogether swept away by laying it down that male and female guardians must share their entire way of life, and that our argument is consistent when it states that [c] this is both possible and beneficial?

  And it’s certainly no small wave that you’ve escaped.

  You won’t think that it’s so big when you get a look at the next one.

  Tell me about it, and I’ll decide.

  I suppose that the following law goes along with the last one and the others that preceded it.

  Which one?

  That all these women are to belong in common to all the men, that none are to live privately with any man, and that the children, too, are to be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or [d] any child his parent.

  This wave is far bigger than the other, for there’s doubt both about its possibility and about whether or not it’s beneficial.

  I don’t think that its being beneficial would be disputed or that it would be denied that the common possession of women and children would be the greatest good, if indeed it is possible. But I think that there would be a lot of disagreement about whether or not it is possible.

  There could very well be dispute about both. [e]

  You mean that I’ll have to face a coalition of arguments. I thought I’d escape one of them, if you believed that the proposal was beneficial, and that I’d have only the one about whether or not it’s possible left to deal with.

  But you didn’t escape unobserved, so you have to give an argument for both.

  Well, then, I’ll have to accept my punishment. But do me this favor. Let me, as if on a holiday, do what lazy people do who feast on their own thoughts when out for a solitary walk. Instead of finding out how something [458] they desire might actually come about, these people pass that over, so as to avoid tiring deliberations about what’s possible and what isn’t. They assume that what they desire is available and proceed to arrange the rest, taking pleasure in thinking through everything they’ll do when they have what they want, thereby making their lazy souls even lazier. I’m getting soft myself at the moment, so I want to delay consideration [b] of the feasibility of our proposal until later. With your permission, I’ll assume that it’s feasible and examine how the rulers will arrange these matters when they come to pass. And I’ll try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to the city and its guardians than those arrangements. These are the things I’ll examine with you first, and I’ll deal with the other question later, but only if you’ll permit me to do it this way.

  You have my permission, so carry on with your examination.

  I suppose that our rulers and auxiliaries—if indeed they’re worthy of [c] the names—will be willing to command and to obey respectively. In some cases, the rulers will themselves be obeying our laws, and in others, namely, the ones we leave to their discretion, they’ll give directions that are in the spirit of our laws.

  Probably so.

  Then you, as their lawgiver, will select women just as you did men, with natures as similar to theirs as possible, and hand them over to the men. And since they have common dwellings and meals, rather than [d] private ones, and live together and mix together both in physical training and in the rest of their upbringing, they will, I suppose, be driven by innate necessity to have sex with one another. Or don’t you think we’re talking about necessities here?

  The necessities aren’t geometrical but erotic, and they’re probably better than the others at persuading and compelling the majority of people.

  That’s right. But the next point, Glaucon, is that promiscuity is impious [e] in a city of happy people, and the rulers won’t allow it.

  No, for it isn’t right.

  Then it’s clear that our next task must be to make marriage as sacred as possible. And the sacred marriages will be those that are most beneficial.

  Absolutely.

  How, then, will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon: I see [459] that you have hunting dogs and quite a flock of noble fighting birds at home. Have you noticed anything about their mating and breeding?

  Like what?

  In the first place, although they’re all noble, aren’t there some that are the best and prove themselves to be so?

  There are.

  Do you breed them all alike, or do you try to breed from the best as much as possible?

  I try to breed from the best.

  And do you breed from the youngest or the oldest or from those in [b] their prime.

  And do you think that if they weren’t bred in this way, your stock of birds and dogs would get much worse?

  I do.

  What about horses and other animals? Are things any different with them?

  It would be strange if they were.

  Dear me! If this also holds true of human beings, our need for excellent rulers is indeed extreme.
>
  It does hold of them. But what of it? [c]

  Because our rulers will then have to use a lot of drugs. And while an inferior doctor is adequate for people who are willing to follow a regimen and don’t need drugs, when drugs are needed, we know that a bolder doctor is required.

  That’s true. But what exactly do you have in mind?

  I mean that it looks as though our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule. And we said that all such falsehoods are useful as a form of drug.7 [d]

  And we were right.

  Well, it seems we were right, especially where marriages and the producing of children are concerned.

  How so?

  It follows from our previous agreements, first, that the best men must have sex with the best women as frequently as possible, while the opposite is true of the most inferior men and women, and, second, that if our herd is to be of the highest possible quality, the former’s offspring must be reared but not the latter’s. And this must all be brought about without [e] being noticed by anyone except the rulers, so that our herd of guardians remains as free from dissension as possible.

  That’s absolutely right.

  Therefore certain festivals and sacrifices will be established by law at which we’ll bring the brides and grooms together, and we’ll direct our poets to compose appropriate hymns for the marriages that take place. We’ll leave the number of marriages for the rulers to decide, but their aim [460] will be to keep the number of males as stable as they can, taking into account war, disease, and similar factors, so that the city will, as far as possible, become neither too big nor too small.

  That’s right.

  Then there’ll have to be some sophisticated lotteries introduced, so that at each marriage the inferior people we mentioned will blame luck rather than the rulers when they aren’t chosen.