Teaching Wisdom to Interest: Book Five of Plato's Republic
Political Science & Politics, 42:197-200 Cambridge University Press
Timothy J. Lukes and Mary F. Scudder
We suggest that Book Five of the Republic, where Plato
discusses the status of women in the guardian class, is a superb source
of Platonic insight. For it is precisely the discussion of women that
is most vulnerable to co-optation by the modern vernacular of interest,
a vernacular to which the Republic is vehemently opposed. If
students come to appreciate an alternative perspective regarding this
most sensitive of modern issues, the full impact of the Socratic
approach is available to them.
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