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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - Beyond Gender

  • Edited by Katharine R. O'Reilly, Toronto Metropolitan University, Caterina Pellò, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Ancient Women Philosophers
    Published online:
    17 August 2023
    Print publication:
    31 August 2023, pp 21-37

  • Summary

    In Plato’s Symposium, the central insights are gleaned from a wise woman from whom Socrates learnt the single thing to which he laid claim to expertise: ta erotika. Since there is a widespread view that Plato stands at the head of a tradition of philosophical thinking in which women are eclipsed, or marginalised, this fact has been seen as significant. This chapter explores whether Diotima’s gender is significant for the philosophy of the Symposium. Gender categories are an explicit feature of this text, but Plato’s playful and provocative use of them is not just a dialectical ploy to provoke reflection on the social norms around sexuality and gender that held sway in his day; toying with them exposes the contingency of gendered categories and, ultimately, their irrelevance to the philosophical life. The wisdom of Diotima is that philosophy is beyond gender; it is, in that respect at least, inclusive.