A single reason-over-nature dualism structures every domain of Plato’s philosophy

Evidence

Platonic philosophy is organised around the hierarchical dualism of the sphere of reason over the sphere of nature, creating a fault-line which runs through virtually every topic discussed: love, beauty, knowledge, art, education, ontology. There are two sorts of being, two sorts of love, two sorts of equality, two sorts of knowledge, two sorts of causation, two sorts of art and even two sorts of music. In each of these cases the lower side is that associated with nature, the body, and the realm of becoming, as well as of the feminine, and the higher with the realm of reason. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 312

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Arguably very dense: the claim that one fault-line ramifies across ontology, ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and politics in parallel duplicated structures is a paradigm-organizing insight for the whole course.
• XREF: This is the book’s own extension of Merchant: the dualism as a totalizing ordering device re-read across all categories. — connects to: Contemporary beauty norms reproduce a Platonic dualism of body as lack to be mastered — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 306; Modernity recodifies Plato’s form-change hierarchy as a hard-soft gendered division — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 446; Platonic self-harmony is achieved through internal colonization of nature by reason — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 348 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes the defining feature of the hierarchical dualism the book studies.

Broader Connections

• Platonic self-harmony is achieved through internal colonization of nature by reason #exemplifies (0.95) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 348
• Plato’s devaluation targeted internal nature for discipline, not external nature for control #exemplifies (0.90) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 411
• The warrior-hero’s choice of honour over life structures Plato’s devaluation of nature #complicates (0.75) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 377
• Plato’s Republic justified class rule by mapping soul parts onto the three classes #corroborates (0.75)
• Liberalism’s model of reason derives from Plato’s myth of the soul’s three parts #corroborates (0.70)