ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Plato's Pythagorean credentials in relation to gender. It discusses how Plato appropriated music in the light of Pythagorean numbers and their Table of Opposites into his own discursive one model universe which nevertheless relies on gender configurations for its argument. The chapter discusses how his gendered configurations are taken to be identified with the beautiful, which is also tied in with the idea of the good. It suggests that the Phrygian mode provided Plato with a pseudo female other, in the guise of a mode used in the worship of Dionysus who was considered male and effeminate. The Pythagorean Table of Opposites showed the universe as a duality, with a need for both the male and female in founding and maintaining it. In the Republic Plato contrasts his own approach with what he considered the limitations of the approaches others take.
