Prattle of the Sexes

Despite being a lover of the ancient world, I tend to be suspicious when contemporary commentators make a show of bolstering their convictions with a nod to Plato or some other big name of the distant past. It is one thing to trace a careful line of intellectual descent (and dissent) from then to now. This is something I’m all in favor of. It is quite another to cherry-pick an idea from one of the great books and present it, largely out of context, as evidence for a course of action today.