SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS ON GENDER EQUALITY
Keywords:
gender equality, ancient philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, socio-philosophical thought, feminist theory, historicismAbstract
This article examines the socio-philosophical views of ancient philosophers, primarily Plato and Aristotle, on gender equality. Through comparative and hermeneutic analysis, it contrasts Plato's meritocratic stance in The Republic which subordinates sex to individual ability and knowledge with Aristotle's naturalized gender hierarchy grounded in his political philosophy. Both are evaluated against modern gender theories (Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach, Okin's family-inequality thesis, Butler's social-constructivist view of gender), revealing that while neither philosopher's views align fully with contemporary gender equality concepts, Plato's ideas prefigure the equal-opportunity paradigm, whereas Aristotle's reflect the institutional norms of his era. The study also references women's intellectual contributions in antiquity, including Hypatia of Alexandria and female thinkers of the Turan region, to complicate narratives of total exclusion. The findings offer a historical-philosophical foundation for understanding the evolution of gender equality discourse and identify Eastern philosophical traditions as a direction for further research.
References
[1] G. Skirbekk и N. Gilje, A History of Western Thought: From Ancient Greece to the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 2001.
[2] M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: J. Johnson, 1792.
[3] J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
[4] R. Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
[5] J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
[6] E. V. Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.
[7] S. M. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
[8] S. F. Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
[9] V. Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
[10] G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. London: Methuen, 1984.
[11] S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1949.
[12] C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
[13] J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869.
[14] M. C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
[15] S. M. Okin, Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
