ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Plato's views about grief and related forms of suffering command our attention for a number of reasons. Although Plato's views about grief are not reducible to his views about gender traits and gender relations, neither are they fully understandable without them. And no examination of Plato's views about women is complete without an exploration of his views about grief. Mimetic poets know how to appeal to an audience's capacity to tune in to the grief of a character. But however skilled they are at presenting scenes of human suffering, and at involving the audience in the grief of the characters, they don't understand the relationship between such wretchedness and justice. Worries about women are central to Plato's views about grief: Women are presented as the paradigmatic grievers, and battles among men over the ownership of women are implicated in the grave tragic situations that the mimetic poets present in such dangerously powerful ways.
