The Story of Philosophy

by Will Durant

Woman is to man as the slave to the master, the manual to the mental worker, the barbarian to the Greek. Woman is an unfinished man, left standing on a lower step in the scale of development. The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; the one rules and the other is ruled; and this principle extends, of necessity, to all mankind. Woman is weak of will, and therefore incapable of independence of character or position; her best condition is a quiet home life in which, while ruled by the man in her external relations, she may be in domestic affairs supreme. Women should not be made more like men, as in Plato’s republic; rather the dissimilarity should be increased; nothing is so attractive as the different. “The courage of a man and that of a woman are not, as Socrates supposed, the same: the courage of a man is shown in commanding; that of a woman in obeying... As the poet says, ‘Silence is a woman’s glory.’”

1. Aristotle has some really nasty thought about women - btw in Plato's Republic Plato talks of a philosopher-king to rule the state and in that he says there is no differentiation between men and women. If a women is smart enough then she should be a philosopher-king.