Abstract
The immanent female is the immediate and obvious counterpart to Plato’s transcendent male. They are identifiable opposites which take their very definition from their relationship to one another. As such, they represent a fundamental duality in Plato’s thought.
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References
Plato, Timaeus, 46.
Lloyd (1984), p. 5.
Okin (1980), p. 15.
Spelman (1982), p. 113.
Ibid., p. 113.
Coole (1988), pp. 1–2.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 3.
Plato, Republic, 458c.
Ibid., 459a-60c.
Coole (1988), p. 41.
Plato, Republic, 401c.
Ibid., 464a.
De Beauvoir (1949), p. 44.
Lefkowitch and Fant, Women’s Life in Ancient Greece and Rom? (Duckworth, London, 1982), p. 85.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 95 (from Hippocrates On Virgins).
Ibid., p. 96 (from Hippocrates, Nature of Women, 8.3).
Ibid., p. 96. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, also comments on the significance of blood to women’s physical and mental state: `If a woman vomits blood, this ceases with the onset of menstruation’, and: `It is a sign of madness when blood congeals about a woman’s nipples.’ (See Aphorisms, 32 and 40, in Hippocratic Writings, Lloyd (1950).
Lefkowitch, Heroines and Hysteric? (Duckworth, 1981), p. 13.
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slave? (Schocken Books, New York, 1975), p. 118. In Sexual Life in Ancient Greec? (1935), Hans Licht quotes Euripides as saying that it was ‘highly wrong’ to join together two young people of the same age because the strength of the man lasts far longer than the beauty of a female which passes away more quickly (Licht, p. 40).
Xenophon, Oeconomicus, VII.10.
Helen King, Bound to Blee? (in Images of Women in Antiquity, Cameron and Kuhrt (eds), Croom Helm, Kent, 1984), p. 111.
Xenophon, Oeconomicus, IX.19.
Lefkowitch (1981), p. 15.
Lefkowitch & Fant (1982), pp. 94–5.
Ibid., pp. 94–5.
Lefkowitch (1981), pp. 16–17.
Plato, Timaeus, 91.
Ibid., 91.
Coole (1988), p. 19.
Ibid., p. 17. The Orestei? is a trilogy which tells the story of the murder of Agamemnon by his wife, Clytemnestra. Their son, Orestes, slays his mother to avenge his father but is in turn pursued by the female Erinyes from the Underworld who punish murders of kin. The god Apollo purifies Orestes on the basis that the crime is a justifiable one,
and conflict erupts between Apollo and the Erinyes. Coole argues that the heart of the conflict is the question as to whether matricide or homicide is the greater crime and therefore whether blood-bond or bed-bond, kinship or legal relations, mother-right or father-right takes precedence. (Coole, p. 18).
Ibid., p. 19.
Plato,Symposium,208c.
Page duBois,Sowing the Bod? (University of Chicago Press, Chicago/London, 1988), pp. 169–83.
Ibid., p. 173.
Ibid., p. 173.
Plato,Phaedrus,251.
Ibid., 254–56.
Plato,Symposium,208c.
Ibid., 208c.
Spelman (1982), p. 119.
Plato, Republic, 455c/d, Meno, 73.
Spelman (1982), p. 115.
Plato,Laws,944e.
Ibid., 945.
Spelman (1982), p. 117
Plato,Laws,917.
Ibid., 781.
Spelman (1982), p. 117.
Ibid., p. 118.
Plato,Phaedrus,251.
Spelman (1982), p. 119.
Plato,Timaeus,42.
Plato,Phaedo,57c-9e.
Ibid., 57c-9e.
Ibid., 62e-4a.
Ibid., 64b-5c.
Ibid., 65c-6e.
Ibid., 65c-6e.
Ibid., 67a-8b.
Ibid., 67a-8b.
Ibid., 115d-17a.
Ibid., 114a-15d.
Ibid., 117a-18.
Plato,Last Days of Socrates(Penguin Classics, 1954), p. 199.
Plato,Phaedo,81d-3a.
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© 1999 Morag Buchan
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Buchan, M. (1999). The Immanent Female. In: Women in Plato’s Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230389267_5
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