The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 48

The Aristotelian Philosophi
The Effect on Isotta Nog
ward it, it had not been overanalyzed
by scholars—unlike Aristotelianism—
and it closely aligned with Christianity
through the immortality of the soul. 39
Plato believed the soul was asexual and
reincarnated after death, which led him
to take the stance in Timaeus (c. 360
BCE), which was translated into Latin
(c. 45 BCE) and available to early humanists,
that women could contribute
the same as men in serving as Guardians
of the polis and therefore deserved
the same education as men. 40 Allen calls
that “gender unity” and posits that “all
those who read [Timaeus] tended to
conclude that Plato actually supported
the equality and non-differentiation of
men and women in the world itself.” 41
His Republic (360 BCE) and Laws (360
BCE), which also contained arguments
that supported gender unity, 42 was available
to humanists in Latin from 1450.
Despite inconsistencies throughout his
work about women’s equality to men in
the polis and in education, which has led
scholars to debate Plato’s gender unity
theory for hundreds of years, 43 Renaissance
humanists in Florence began an
open dialogue about women and their
role in society. As a result of that dialogue,
a new concept of woman based
on Plato’s gender unity theory emerged.
Evidence of that dialogue and the
new concept of women in Renaissance
Italy could be found in fourteenth-century
stories of women from Dante
(1265–1321), Petrarch (1304–1374),
and Boccaccio, in which “women were
presented as full of self-discipline and
engaging in the development of virtue,
and also willing and able to lead men to
greater heights of wisdom and virtues
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