Elizabeth V.

Spelman, Women as Body: Ancient and Contemporary Views Outline

What does the author want to accomplish? What is the article doing?

To show why it is important to see the connections between what Plato says about women and other
aspects of his philosophical positions. In particular, to suggest why it is important for feminist, not only
to question what these philosophers have said about women, but also what philosophers have had to
say about the mind/body distinction.

1. Plato: Lessons about the Soul and Body

 The soul allows us to have true knowledge. Only the soul can truly know the world of the
Forms or Ideas. The body keeps us from real knowledge, tempts us away from the virtuous
life. Only the soul can know true beauty.
2. Plato on Love
 Spiritual love between men is preferable to physical love between men and women.
Spiritual relationships among men are based on repression of sexual desire and are valued
as a higher kind of love.
3. Plato’s View of the Soul and Body
 The soul is more important than the body. The lives of women, children, slaves and brutes
exemplify the proper soul/body relationship gone haywire. Men are the soul, women are
the body.
4. Plato’s Attitude Toward Women
 Plato is repulsed by women. Women let their emotions overpower their reason and cant
control themselves. They’re the worst model for young men, and have more concern for
their body than their soul.
 Women don’t know the difference between the material, changing world of appearance,
and the invisible, eternal world of reality. Women’s lives serve as negative examples.
Women have weaker bodies than men.
 Men drawn by vulgar love turn to women as their object of love, whereas men drawn by
more “heavenly” kind of love turn to other men.
5. Contradictions of Plato
 In the Republic, Plato affirms the equality of women and men. The Dialogues are filled with
misogynistic remarks.
6. Spelman’s Argument
 Plato’s works are contradictory. He says our souls are the most important part, when we
die only our souls remain. If we are our souls, it shouldn’t not make a difference whether
we have a man or woman’s body.
 Plato’s misogyny is part of his somatophobia- hatred of the body. Ridicules a class of
people with a certain kind of body (women) because he regards them as embodying the
traits that he wishes no one have. Therefore he sees women as a deviant class, which is not
acceptable in his philosophy.
 Plato has Psychophilic Somatophobia. Plato was a dualist and a misogynist. His negative
views about women were connected to his negative views about the body. He uses his
distinction between the soul and the body for the contempt and ridicule for the lives of
women.