In this monograph concerning Plato's view on woman, women and, broadly speaking, the feminine, B. finds that Plato presents a consistent position from Meno onwards to Republic, Timaeus and Laws. One notes: consistent, perhaps, but not univocal, for clearly, Plato does not make the same statements about woman across his dialogues. This issue and its difficulties comprise the initial focus of the work; a secondary issue concerns placing the sizable secondary literature of Plato's views on woman in historical and critical perspective. With regard to the first topic, the primary task involves the classification and organisation of the conflicting statements Plato makes about woman, given that his references to women as gossips, unskilled, cowardly, weak and in general, abusive and nagging (cf. Lysis 205d, Symp. 215c, Laws 639b, 731d, 934e) appear to outnumber those suggesting that women possess positive political or philosophical capacities. Rather than dismiss the negative comments about women outright or assume they represent Plato's own view, B. suggests a new interpretative device aimed at harmonising the discordant claims. She distinguishes her view from that of scholars like G. Vlastos (‘Was Plato a Feminist?’ Times Literary Supplement [March 17, 1989], 276, 288–9) or S. Levin (‘Women's Nature and Role in the Ideal Polis: Rep. V Revisited’, in J. Ward [ed.], Feminism and Ancient Philosophy [1996], pp. 13–30), according to which Plato's conflicting claims depend on whether women are being viewed under the then-current conditions of deprivation or under ideal conditions for development. Finding the rubric inadequate to comprehend certain references, B. suggests one that contrasts ‘dramatic and rhetorical views of woman’ from a genuinely philosophical conception of woman. She makes a persuasive initial case for viewing Plato's contradictory claims about women in this light, showing that many negative statements reflect the limited character of the literary figures who utter them, rather than Plato's view. Having argued in the prologue and Chapter 1 that such claims can be relegated to someone other than Plato (Part 1), B. turns to examine Plato's philosophical view of woman in depth in Chapters 2–7 (Part 2). She argues that Plato's studied view is cut from a single cloth across the dialogues, being consistent with what she determines as the Socratic egalitarian view of woman in Meno. Developing the thesis in Chapter 2, she cites Socrates' rejection of Meno's claim that virtue is many, that of a man being one thing and that of a woman another (cf. Meno 71e), to which Socrates replies that what they are looking for is the one form by which all virtues are virtue (cf. Meno 72e). This claim, she finds, implies that women have the same virtue as men, and is the position from which Plato's philosophical view develops. The evidence for Socrates' view of women is suggestive but light, and Chapter 2 concludes by discussing Socrates' followers like Antisthenes, who reputedly held the equality of men's and women's virtue (cf. D.L. vi, 12). Chapter 3 takes up Plato's initial critical reaction to the egalitarian proposal as reflected in the Symposium. B. finds Aristophanes' speech with its mythic account of the sexes (Symp. 189d–193d) suggestive, at one level, ‘of gender equality’ (p. 57), and in this regard deserving of consideration for Plato's own view, a suggestion this reviewer finds over-extended in that while Aristophanes' speech places male and female on the same level in terms of their origins, it is far from obvious that we can read the myth as a serious reflection of Plato's views about women.

In contrast, we find substantial evidence for Plato's philosophical views in the texts discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. In Chapter 4, B. examines the heart of the case, Plato's proposal about women guardians and ruling in Republic 5, the so-called ‘first wave’. Given its unexpected appearance in Rep. 5 – Socrates was about to discuss the deviant constitutions and their corresponding states of character – B. makes a persuasive case that the ‘first wave’ proposal must be considered in relation to the analogy of the city to the soul in Rep. 4 which establishes justice in both entities. For, since the individual soul lacks masculine and feminine functions, the city must lack masculine and feminine functions; if not, justice in the soul and the city will not be analogous, as Socrates argued. In Chapter 5, B. provides a close analysis of the ‘first wave’ argument, distinguishing sub-arguments for the various premises involved and, in transit, setting aside competing scholarly interpretations. She finds the first wave establishing that it is possible and optimal for [qualified] women to perform specialised civic functions; these conclusions can be seen to reflect Plato's view that women have ‘the same nature as men with respect to civic duties’ (p. 95).

In the appendix to Chapter 5, she finds another, deeper sense of equality: Plato's view of the soul implies that it is ‘asexual’ since ‘sexual differences belong exclusively to the body’ (p. 129). But, and here lies the interpretative problem for B., it is also true, as she mentions, that the female body as body represents a lower form than the male body. This unhappy view of the female body receives due consideration in Chapter 6, where Plato's account of human generation in Timaeus is discussed. In the dialogue, immaterial soul incarnated in a female body is described as secondary and inferior to that incarnated in a male body (cf. 41e–42a, 42b–c, 76d–e, 90e). Clearly, B.'s claim about the ‘equality of souls’ does not square with such passages: even if it is the case that considered apart from bodies, souls are equal – in some sense – it is not the case that once incarnated, they remain equal. For, as Tim. 42b makes clear, it is the less virtuous soul that becomes reincarnated as a woman. Since any soul incarnated in a female body reflects a lesser level of virtue, men and women are not equal in regard to their embodied souls, even if it may be argued their immaterial souls are, somehow, equal. B.'s task of showing the account of women in Timaeus and in Republic 5 to be consistent is therefore beset by a major difficulty. The notion that inferior souls belong in women's bodies, as Tim. 42b asserts, resists conformity with the idea that philosophical souls are scattered across men and women alike, as Rep. 5 concludes (cf. Rep. 455d). In Chapter 7, B. takes up Plato's analysis of women in the Laws, where a standing problem concerns the difficulty in squaring Plato's bold proposals for guardian women ruling alongside their male peers from Rep. 5 with the decidedly more conservative suggestions for women in his last work, where their roles are circumscribed by traditional functions like childcare. Against the majority view, B. argues that women's roles are not limited if we consider that many laws do not explicitly exclude women from, among other things, carrying arms, being council members and guardians. The view that absence of explicit prohibition amounts to inclusion remains less persuasive to this reviewer than other parts of her thesis. In the closing section (Part 3), B. considers Plato's views about woman and the feminine as a whole, finding it textually consistent, and consequent to his ‘anthropological dualism of body and soul’ (p. 197), a dualism that leads him to posit woman's immaterial soul as equal to man's, yet inferior in its embodied state. While the subject matter warrants further examination, the volume provides a worthwhile, extended study on a compelling topic with substantial critical background; it includes, as well, informative appendices on female Greek names, historical and mythical, feminine Greek nouns, an extensive bibliography, an index of names and a general index.