Philosophy
Women and Metaphors of Sexual Reproduction in Plato
According to Thucydides’ rendition of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, women were not to be spoken of (Thucy. 2.45.2). Yet, in Plato’s dialogues from the same period, we hear about philosopher queens and flute girls playing to women inside the house, along with a series of particular women: Diotima, Aspasia, Xanitheppe, Phaenarete, Sappho, and a Thracian servant girl. While some of these women are only mentioned briefly, a number of them are referred to as educators. In the Menexenus, when Plato gives his own rendition of the Funeral Oration, Socrates insists that his teacher, Aspasia, composed it (236b). Socrates praises her as he does another female teacher, Diotima, in Plato’s Symposium. The surprisingly prominent presence of female educators in the dialogues mirrors the way that Socrates frequently deploys metaphors of sexual reproduction that compare speaking to bearing children. Most obviously, in Plato’s Theaetetus, when the question is “what is knowledge?,” Socrates asserts that he practices midwifery, the same art as his mother (149a). In that extended metaphor, pregnancy is transferred from the domain of women to young men.
A similar extension of pregnancy is employed in Plato’s Symposium, when Socrates, through the voice of Diotima, claims that “All human beings are pregnant.” (206c) In that claim, Socrates suggests that we are not only all of woman born, but, in some important way, all women. Why? The simple reason is that every human being does not just desire the good at one time or another, rather they desire the good to be theirs “always.” (206a) Human beings desire to transcend the limits of our mortality, and childbirth seems to accomplish this goal. Although many authors end their analysis of the pregnancy metaphor with the previous claim, my dissertation begins with this reading in order to illuminate how Plato repeatedly associates successful participation in something beyond oneself with women.