FORDE, Steven  <br/><br/>
Gender and justice in Plato 

 - New York, NY :  Cambridge University Press,  September 1997 
<br/><br/> No part of Plato's outline of the perfectly just society in the Republic has generated more controversy than its arrangements regarding the role of women and the family. Plato's proposals in Book 5 of that work to confer equality on women and dissolve the family have been examined and debated, attacked and defended, from ancient times to the present. Controversy is fueled partly by the radical character of these arrangements in themselves, partly by the difficulty of interpreting their meaning and deciphering the philosophic intention behind them. The proposals have been seen sometimes as ironic satire, sometimes as fully serious practical recommendations. Within the past generation, intense scrutiny has settled on Plato's proposals for the equality of women in particular. Modern feminism has been especially interested in these; but the dispute among feminist writers as to the meaning and significance of the proposals has been nearly as far-ranging as that among other interpreters. Plato has been portrayed as a bold precursor to modern feminism, as a ruthless suppressor of women and the "female voice," and as a complete ironist.(1) There is no consensus on whether feminism can legitimately claim Plato as part of its heritage and, if so, which of its strains is actually foreshadowed by the radical arguments of the Republic.