Abstract

In Republic V Socrates offer three successive waves of paradox, the first being that amongst the rulers men and women will be assigned to fulfill the same social functions and the second being that amongst the rulers the traditional private family will be abolished. In her article “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family” (Philosophy and Public Affairs (1977)) Susan Moller Okin argued that Plato’s argument is that the second wave of paradox implies the first. In this note I rebut Okin’s arguments and show, in part based on evidence adduced by Okin herself, that for Plato it is the first wave of paradox that implies the second.