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PARTISAN REVIEW
THE
ANALYSIS
OF THE THIRD CONCEPT of liberty in relationship to the
nature of human nature is continuous with the contemporary critique of
the excesses of the utopian imagination in modern history. Again, without
entering into the general question of the limits of human progress, we can
ask whether specific programs of human transformation involve changes
that would go beyond the limits of nature.
A significant illustration is the way in which one of the most promi–
nent issues in the politics of identity-gender equality in military ser–
vice-provides a reformulation of one of the earliest exercises of the
utopian imagination. In Plato's apparently utopian projection of an
ideal political society in the
Republic,
he envisages women as front-line
troops in defense of the city-state. Plato advances this conception in the
context of the possibilities of education in transforming the human
nature of the soldiers or guardians of the city. He assumes that gender
differences are superficial, so that if women were to cut their hair short
and men were to wear their hair long, they would become indistin–
guishable in the cadres of combat infantry. Plato's hyperbolic language
indicates his ironically skeptical attitude toward this transformation, yet
his argument has provided a test case throughout historical speculation
on natural constraints in planning ideal societies .
The current affirmative acceptance of Plato's ironical perspective of
the place of women in combat infantry may rest upon the belief that
contemporary technology has changed the conditions of battlefield war–
fare from those of Plato's era. The recognition that the change in the
combat status of women reflects a change in the conditions of warfare
may actually serve to reinforce the relevance of gender for military ser–
vice. In those contemporaneous battlefield conditions which do not
exhibit a technological revolution but which are continuous with those
of previous eras, as in Chechnya, Sierra Leone, or Kosovo, the con–
straints of gender have not been rendered irrelevant.
Whether in the ancient and commonplace example derived from
Plato's utopian fable or in the sophisticated projections of genetic mod–
ifications of human beings, there remains the enduring possibility of
natural limits. The fact that some or many of the ascriptions of gender
differences as having a basis in nature represented a societal imposition
of discriminatory prejudice does not render
all
such ascriptions illusory.
Free choice must recognize the existence of the constraints of nature,
even if the boundaries of such constraints are not fixed for eternity. The
constraints embodying an understanding of the nature of things and the
permanent characteristics of human nature remain a challenge to the
third concept of liberty.
