Sam asked Jo Walton:

How do you reconcile feminism with Plato's following quote: "Completeness seems to require that something should be briefly said about other animals: first of women, who are probably degenerate and cowardly men" from Timaeus? And how do you rate highly someone who thought extreme eugenics is the way to go?

Jo Walton You're taking a very odd and antagonistic position here, as if by writing a trilogy that critiques Plato I'm signing up for agreeing with everything he ever said, as if I am a blindly uncritical Plato-worshipper and you have some kind of gotcha. This is far from being the case.

I don't like the Timaeus very much. Also, Plato isn't ever making statements, even when he is, he's setting up things to be argued with. What Plato wants isn't for you to agree, it's for you to make a good case against. He wants to be provocative -- he's quite often essentially trolling. It can get very weird when people read Plato like it's divine wisdom rather than a starting point for more debate.

Anyway, if you read book V of the Republic you'll see that Plato has Socrates say there that women's souls are the same as men's souls and women should do everything men do, including being philosopher kings. And the Republic is the book my characters are trying to put into practice.

As for eugenics, if you read my books you'll see what I do with that feature of the Republic. (I know you haven't or you wouldn't ask that question, because one of the central issues is how that works out in practice.)

One of the interesting things for me in writing the Thessaly books was considering the problems he was trying to solve with the Republic. Bringing children up in creches is a terrible idea! Why would he suggest that? Because bringing children up in families does all kinds of damage too. You wouldn't have nepotism if you don't know which one is your kid, or inheritance wasted on incompetents. Plato was considering how to get actual meritocracy, and trying to find a place of radical equality for people to start. Pretty much everyone in his time believed in inherited merit, and Plato is doing his thing there were he says something that looks (in ancient Greek terms) very conservative that's actually very radical.

Generally, I think Plato's feminism is interesting and weird, as I think many other things in Plato are interesting and weird. And I had a lot of fun examining this, and what would happen in practice when well meaning people tried to make it work, and considering what a society based on the pursuit of excellence rather than wealth might turn out like after a few generations.

flag