Plato: Women in the Ideal State - Part IV
The Analogy

If you are willing to accept that it would be a mistake to discriminate between groups of people on the basis of merely differences of appearance, and not differences of nature, then we are left with the question as to whether we can tell which kinds the differences between people are. Plato provides a clear example that helps to see this distinction;

There are certainly differences between bald men and hairy men. But are those differences at all relevant to the pursuit of cobbling (shoe-making)? It is hard to imagine making the state of one's head hair a qualifying factor in the profession of cobbling. Note that the baldness and hairiness are again instances of appearance, not of the nature of the cobbler. Or at least that is our intuition. Shortly, Plato will explain why it is that baldness and hairiness is not of the nature of the cobbler.

Plato is so resourceful in his use of imagery that he accentuates the opposition aspect of the analogy by placing the differences at one extreme of the human body (top of the head) and the objects related to the relevant pursuit at the other extreme of the human body (the feet). Nothing in Plato is superfluous and the alert reader may gain much by close attention to the textual details.

Thus, we have an example, though a trivial one, of apparent differences that are not of the nature of the pursuit in question. Please note that Plato often turns to trivial examples just because they are so easy for us to reach agreement upon. Once that agreement is gained, he uses analysis to draw out a a general principle that may be applied to non-trivial cases. Indeed, the next step that Plato takes is to posit a principle by which relevant differences may be judged.

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