Metaphors are a staple of the practice of political theory. Socrates' “individual writ large,” Machiavelli's “Fortuna is a woman,” Hobbes's “leviathan”: These and scores of others speak to the power of metaphorical language in the theorist's arsenal. Lisa Pace Vetter's “women's work” focuses on the metaphor of weaving, a craft associated with the female working at her loom by the hearth. Vetter explores this metaphor in four texts: the Odyssey, Lysistrata, Statesman, and Phaedo. She finds in the metaphor a “dialectical foundationalism” that mediates between subjectivity and objectivity, reason and emotion, action and deliberation (p. 7). Weaving incorporates complexity, creating a new whole without destroying the particularities that comprise it. This form of weaving she values, but it appears only in the Socrates speech in the Phaedo and the construction of Plato's dialogue.

Weaving as dialectical foundationalism faces an impressive challenge, mediating at times between particularity and universality, incorporating at others a multitude of opposites. Vetter describes dialectical foundationalism as having “vast ramifications for women's issues” (pp. 6, 20) and for theories of discursive democracy; articulating this dialectical foundationalism deriving from the metaphor of weaving is the primary goal of the volume. Her more modest agenda is uncovering a democratic Plato who “accommodates complexity and particularity” (p. 3) and “universalist and subjectivist perspectives” (p. 162), and who is devoted to the “inclusion of the heterogeneous” as well as offering “kinds of universal standards” (p. 162). While Vetter may not persuade feminists or deliberation theorists that their difficulties will be resolved by returning to the weaving metaphor, she offers intriguing readings of familiar texts and supports a growing movement eager to salvage Plato from the dustbin of essentialism and dedicated to seeing him as sympathetic to democracy.

The heart of “Women's Work” as Political Art discusses the significance of Penelope's weaving, compares Lysistrata's efforts at political leadership to the activity of weaving, discusses the Eleatic Stranger's recourse to weaving in order to define the statesman, and draws attention to the images of weaving that pervade Socrates' language on the day of his death. Vetter portrays Penelope initially as a woman on whom others project their personalities. Penelope plays this reflective role until she creates homophrosunê (same-mindedness) with her husband, “weaving through speeches” their complementary but distinct natures (p. 58). Somewhat anachronistically, Vetter contrasts Penelope's “democratic alternative [homophrosunê through conversation] to Odysseus's blood-vengeance” (p. 57). Lysistrata “weaves,” this time individual citizens into a “common ground” (p. 76). Yet Aristophanes' heroine blunders by failing to “unweave the unified whole in a way that would protect the integrity of the individual parts” (p. 76) and instead advances a “brutal … tyranny that erases important distinctions among individuals” (p. 77). Though Penelope is spared the accusation of brutality and she “unwove” her web, she is guilty of pursuing too much “like-mindedness” with Odysseus (p. 81). The Eleatic Stranger fails when he employs the weaving metaphor, offering a “paradigm of statesmanship [that is] fundamentally static” where “the result would … be tyranny” (p. 92). Through a subtle analysis, Vetter concludes that the Stranger's weaving leads to the death of philosophy.

The Phaedo's Socrates is Vetter's hero; in a very brief allusion to Penelope's web, Socrates illuminates the “Socratic philosopher” (opposed to the “true” philosopher). The Socratic philosopher constantly moves back and forth between his earthly body and heavenly soul, the particular and the universal, heart and mind. In his weaving and unraveling, Socrates captures the movement of the Platonic dialogues. Plato leaves readers in a perennial tension by the flexibility of his works, drawing them into the constant rereading of the unraveling texts. Readers thereby escape a static world of uniformity and finality.

Vetter delves deeply into her texts, but her language creates difficulties: Does the weaving metaphor have the power she attributes to it in the analyzed texts, or is it Vetter applying the weaving metaphor whenever she finds it a useful mode of expression? She becomes ensnared in her own language and falls into the familiar linguistic trope—as we all do—of saying that an author “weaves” points together. It is one thing when Lysistrata, making many references to the craft of weaving, proposes weaving as the solution to the Greeks' problems. It is another thing for Vetter to say that Plato “weaves” when he “simultaneously ravels and unravels the … tapestry of ideas he … constructed by encouraging readers to relive the trial and death of Socrates” (pp. 129, 156). Here Vetter—not Plato—employs the metaphor. To describe Plato as “the supreme dialectical weaver” is to give life to a metaphor, not to analyze the metaphor. Describing Lysistrata's bringing together Greek ambassadors as “her initial weaving” (p. 67) imposes Vetter's language—not the ancient metaphor—on the comedy. Using the metaphor where Lysistrata does not, Vetter makes the problematic claim that Aristophanes would argue that “[w]omen form an important part of the dialectical process that should be at the heart of Athenian democracy,” thereby implying that “[w]hen any part of the conversation is silenced, everyone in the city suffers” (p. 66).

Vetter's strengths surface when she analyzes Plato's dialogues, remarking on how the dramatic elements and sequencing of the dialogue inform interpretations of characters' speech, and when she developes the inadequacy of efforts to “conclude” a reading of the dialogues. But can we say that this Platonic openness is “unraveling” and “weaving” in anything more than metaphorical language? Has not Vetter now been trained by her texts to employ the metaphor?

The author frequently discusses commentaries that frame the chapters. She justifies this engagement as an effort to “weave,” preserving complexity by addressing others' perspectives. This language illustrates the difficulties of the metaphor, but it also raises the question of what weaving accomplishes. Is weaving the acknowledgment of various perspectives as with Vetter's attention to the secondary literature? Or is weaving the incorporation of opposing forces in the creation of something new? It is not always clear what weaving entails. On page 151, weaving is “balancing,” but balancing is not the same as engaging alternative discourses, nor is it the same as creating something new as does weaving when it creates a fabric. One of the difficulties with the metaphor throughout is that it is not clear what “new” thing is created for what purpose.

Vetter's agenda is noble and her work is a contribution to renewed conversations about diversity drawing on the insights and imagery of classical texts. Fundamental to her weaving is its capacity to unite complexity without losing the particularity of the threads out of which fabric is made. In her book, it is the particular readings that shine. The whole fabric, however, needs to be more taut before the ancient metaphor will have the “vast influence” that she envisions.