Plato located the potential for enmity within the body itself

Evidence

Plato, Lysis, 219a. See also Plato’s Republic, where Socrates asks whether it is not “the mark of a womanish and petty spirit to deem the body of the dead an enemy” (469d). In the Timaeus, food is said to have the potential to make “the whole [human] race an enemy to philosophy and culture” (73a). As we have seen, the potential for enmity appears inherent to the body itself. Thus, were anyone to repeat the work of “the foster mother and nurse of the universe” in order to assemble a body, they would “not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend, so as to create health” (88e). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1015

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows enmity as bodily, not merely political — a key genealogical move in the book’s argument.
• XREF: 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