A few years ago, while looking into the uses (and abuses?) American intellectuals have made of Plato’s Republic since the first copy arrived in the New World in 1670, I stumbled upon a curious document. Julia Ward Howe– abolitionist, women’s rights activist, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and creator of Mother’s Day– delivered a speech on the equality of women in the Republic. She was asked to give this speech at a women’s rights convention in 1887, and a newspaper printed the text of the speech the next day. What follows is my close reading of Howe’s Read more