Plato's challenge to the meaning of manliness still resonates

[Celerity]

Even in ancient Greece, Plato questioned whether gender norms around masculinity were good for men’s individual freedom

https://psyche.co/ideas/platos-challenge-to-the-meaning-of-manliness-still-resonates


Cast of a satyr and a hermaphrodite, from an original dating from the 1st-2nd century CE in Dresden, Germany. Courtesy Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford



Socrates, on his way to the Lyceum, meets two hyper-competitive teenage boys hanging out in a wrestling gym. Almost immediately, he begins asking the sort of questions that turn everything upside down, questions that may seem silly or pointless but tend to get at the very foundations of people’s views. He asks one of the young men, Lysis (after whom the dialogue is named), a preposterous question: does his mother ever let him play with her wool and her loom while she’s weaving? Lysis simply laughs. Not only would she stop him from doing that, he replies, but she’d strike him if he even tried.

Why does Lysis laugh? Part of the reason is that, in ancient Athens, weaving is a famously feminine activity, to the point of being called, by the classicist Ruby Blondell, ‘the signature activity of women in Greek ideology’. Penelope weaves in Homer’s Odyssey, and Arachne challenges the goddess Athena to a weaving contest, only to be turned into a spider: both human and divine women are regularly depicted weaving in ancient Greek art and literature. So, asking a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood if his mother wants him to play with iconically feminine things like wool and looms could hardly do more than earn a derisive snort in response. But the brief interaction is telling. Can we learn, question and rethink gender norms with the help of Plato? Although this Greek philosopher lived and wrote thousands of years ago in a very different culture with different norms, many of his works invite us to reimagine gender norms in ways that continue to resonate today.

Unlike driving a chariot, weaving is simply something an Athenian man would never do. Of course, Socrates (by which I mean the character in Plato’s writing; the ‘real’ Socrates lies forever out of reach) is famous for saying strange and silly things, so in some ways his question to Lysis shouldn’t really surprise us. What’s remarkable, though, is the off-handed way in which Socrates challenges conventional gender norms. What he really seems to want is to inspire Lysis and his friend to pursue philosophy. His question about weaving, as I have argued elsewhere, reminds them – and us – that the stakes are high, and that a truly philosophical life is one in which traditional norms, including gender norms, get scrambled.



Ultimately, texts like the Lysis challenge us to reimagine what masculinity might ask of those of us who identify as men. Perhaps this reveals Plato as a kind of proto-feminist, as some scholars suggest he may be. And, indeed, in the landscape of ancient Greek thought, there’s no surviving work that comes anywhere near as close to feminism as what we find in Plato. On the other hand, there’s too much misogyny in Plato’s works to be able to easily count him as a feminist. As with all the best questions, the question of Plato’s feminism, therefore, ought to remain open. Regardless, he clearly challenges masculinity because for him philosophy is ultimately about liberation – and liberation is possible only if we are willing to free ourselves from our preconceptions, including our preconceptions about gender.

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[Igel]

1. Consider the line that is vertical ... Some say. Prove it is, or isn't. Here is the vertical line.

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The answer will be provided after the term ends. But only in conference, no cell phones allowed.


On edit: Horrible attention to subject-line grammar.