Feminism and Stoic Sagehood

Abstract

The cosmopolitanism, universalism, and egalitarianism for which they are well known has given rise to claims that both the Greek and Roman Stoics were feminists or at least proto-feminists. In this chapter I focus on a particular aspect of their attitude to women, namely, whether the Stoics saw them as equally capable with men of pursuing and achieving sagehood, a topic that has provoked some scholarly disagreement. That the original Greek Stoics were feministic seems fairly clear; however, the attitudes of the later Roman Stoics is less clear-cut. I argue that, despite the conservatism and sometimes reactionary tone of Roman Stoic attitudes to women, they were nevertheless radical in stipulating that women were equally qualified with men for sagehood. Due to their underlying commitment to the natural siblinghood and equality of all human beings, Roman Stoic philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and especially C. Musonius Rufus—challenged the prevailing chauvinism that denied the equal entitlement of every human being to enter the cosmopolis and rejected the particularism, double-standards and sexism that kept women subordinate in their time.