Abstract
Aristotle’s descriptions of women present a strikingly consistent account of the natural inferiority of women. He approaches the issue from a number of different angles, affirming in each case his basic premise that females—because they are female rather than male—are less well actualized human beings. Nonetheless, there are at least four areas of significant trouble with his account of women: first, there is an internal tension between his descriptions of women and his general account of the way in which nature works; second, critical aspects of his embryology are fundamentally wrong; third, his responses to the challenges of hylomorphism are understandable but nonetheless unnecessary as well as highly problematic; and fourth, despite his own deep awareness in other areas of the significance of communal and social influences, he fails to appreciate fully their role in the differing development of women and men. In this chapter, I would like to address each of these four areas, showing how the claims Aristotle actually made were neither the only, nor the best, positions an Aristotelian could take. That is, were Aristotle more fully Aristotelian, he may not have made the mistakes that he, in fact, did and thus may have drawn a different conclusion regarding women.
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Notes
- 1.
The overall account of women is strikingly consistent; this is not, however, to claim that all of his comments regarding women can be fit together in a consistent way. For example, he claims that soft skin is a mark of intelligence, and yet does not extend this mark to females, who in general have softer skin than males. See Cynthia A. Freeland , “Aristotle on the Sense of Touch” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 227–248 and Mayhew, 66–68. Other arguments appear a bit strained. For example, he claims in Generation of Animals 4.6 that males, although the more appropriate expression of the human form, are nonetheless also more likely to be born defective than females, which Aristotle attributes to their greater heat leading to greater activity in the womb and thus greater likelihood of injury. See also Paul Thom, “Stiff Cheese for Women” in The Philosophical Forum 8, no. 1 (Fall 1976), especially 101–107 for other points of tension.
- 2.
One area of possible modification that I will not discuss, but am highly sympathetic to and think may contribute to a more feminist Aristotelianism, is a slight revision of the place of relationships in one’s understanding of substance. ‘Relation’ is generally considered at the level of accident rather than substance by Aristotle, but there may be types or kinds of relations that ought to be considered at the level of substance and not merely an accident of a substance. That is, perhaps substance ought to be ‘substance in relations’ and not merely ‘substance.’ Articulating precisely what this would and would not mean is difficult, and I will not discuss this issue in this chapter.
- 3.
He says, “The first departure indeed is that the offspring should become female instead of male; this, however, is a natural necessity” (GA 4.3.767b7-9).
- 4.
Cynthia Freeland articulates well the strangeness of these claims. She notes that, on the one hand, in Generation of Animals 4.3, Aristotle describes females as “defective and in every case accidental by-products of a natural process whose normal aim is male offspring” (“Nourishing Speculation: A Feminist Reading of Aristotelian Science,” in Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle, ed. Bat-Ami Bar On (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 174). On the other, he argues “that sexual reproduction and division of the sexes are themselves teleologically ordained” (Ibid., see GA 11.1.731b24-732a12). Freeland concludes: “This is the only case I know of in which Aristotle holds that something is both a good end-result in and of itself (rather than simply a ‘making-do’ with limited material resources) and a mere accident or by-product” (ibid.).
- 5.
Aristotle explicitly argues in Book II the Physics against Empedocles ’ evolutionary-style theory, on these grounds. That is, Aristotle rejects mechanistic and evolutionary explanations because they fail to acknowledge the teleological nature of the physical world.
- 6.
There were ancient theories of female seed, and analogies could have been drawn between the eggs of birds and those of humans; but ancient biological dissection had not yet found empirical evidence of a female ovum.
- 7.
It could further be pointed out that semen is not, as Aristotle thought, concocted out of blood and acting as the principle of efficient causality (there can be human generation without male semen, although not without male sperm). The difference between semen and sperm—and the similarities between sperm and ovum—creates a further point of conflict.
- 8.
See Chap. 2, footnote 9 for discussion of chromosomes and DNA as material.
- 9.
One might object to my placement of genetic data on the side of matter rather than form. But even if genetic data is understood as formal rather than material, the problem for Aristotle remains. Both parents would still contribute equally.
- 10.
First, as noted in the second chapter, there is some debate about whether chromosomes, hormones, or reproductive organs are the most significant features for determining sex. Insofar as the chromosomes are contributed prior to the development of sexually relevant hormones or organs, I am focusing on them; I am not, however, taking a strong stand on the more nuanced debate about what we should emphasize when all three elements are present. Second, in claiming that Aristotle’s is unambiguously wrong about the heat or coldness of the female determining the sex of the child, I am not claiming that the condition of the female has no significance for which sperm is likely to reach and fertilize the ovum, or no influence on the hormone levels relevant to the sexual development of the offspring, etc. Given these factors, the female parent may have some role in the sex of the child; she does not, however, play the role Aristotle thought.
- 11.
GA 4.1.766a16-29. See also GA 4.3.767b15-768a11.
- 12.
See discussion of the ambiguities in Marguerite Deslauriers’s “Sex and Essence in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Biology” in Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle ed. Cynthia A. Freeland (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), especially page 164, footnote 19. Deslauriers presents some reasons for hesitating about the interpretation I will give; nonetheless, I think that there is textual basis for some version of this account.
- 13.
Metaphysics 10.4.1055a7-8.
- 14.
See Metaphysics 5.22 for an account of the differing types of privation.
- 15.
Physics 1.9.192a16-23. The missing line reads: “But the consequence of their view is that the contrary desires its own extinction. Yet the form cannot desire itself, for it is not defective; nor can the contrary desire it, for contraries are mutually destructive.” I take Aristotle here to be discussing the position of his opponents.
- 16.
See, for example, GA 2.1.73212-10. See also Irigaray’s reading of Aristotle’s Physics in “Place, Interval: A Reading of Aristotle, Physics IV” in Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle ed. Cynthia A. Freeland (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 41–58 and Freeland’s analysis in “On Irigaray on Aristotle,” 59–92.
- 17.
Freeland says: “feminists can with some plausibility point out that there are important gendered concepts in Aristotle. A pair of gendered concepts lie at the heart of his metaphysics , namely, form and matter. Though these concepts seem like abstract components of a neutral reality, they bear strong gender associations. Form is active, superior, and intelligible; in humans it is associated with rationality . Matter is passive, chaotic, inferior, muddied, and unintelligible. Plato directly associates matter with the womb or uterus. And in the Physics Aristotle says that matter yearns for form, as the female for the male and the ugly for the beautiful (I,9,192a20-23)” (“On Irigaray on Aristotle,” 65).
- 18.
Marguerite Deslauriers similarly points out: “while Aristotle is prepared to suggest that male and female as principles and as attributes of the genus animal are radically different, male and female animals, individuals qualified by those principles or attributes, are not radically different” (“Sex and Essence in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Biology,” 143).
- 19.
Witt , “Form, Normativity and Gender in Aristotle,” 122.
- 20.
Ibid., 126.
- 21.
It seems to me possible to have many different types of feminine and masculine symbols and associations. It is not clear, however, how these symbols do or ought to relate to individual women and men. I will leave aside the question of the appropriateness of these because adequate investigation would take us far from the main topic of this study.
- 22.
See fables 405 and 406. I am grateful to Nicole Hess for pointing these out to me.
- 23.
See History of Animals 579b15 and 594a31.
- 24.
See Stephen E. Glickman et. al., “Mammalian sexual differentiation : lessons from the spotted hyena” in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, 17:9 (September 2006): 349–356, available at http://courses.washington.edu/pbio509/Glickman_etal.pdf [accessed August 8, 2012], for a discussion both of why the ancients thought this and how Aristotle came to the right conclusion but with the wrong dissection.
- 25.
I am grateful to Robert Bishop for pointing me to this possibility.
- 26.
Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.
- 27.
There will be differences in the age or condition of the virtuous actor and differences in the situations faced by the differing actors, but the structure of what it means to be courageous per se will not differ in any significant way. In every case, it will involve acting for the right motive, out of a habituated character, in a way that is neither rash nor cowardly, etc.
- 28.
Although an Aristotelian might articulate some range that is appropriate for adult human beings.
- 29.
Aristotle’s example of the eunuch presents a more interesting challenge. In that case, depriving the male of something leads to more feminine features. This example makes a stronger case for understanding the female as a male who has been deprived of something. Aristotle was, however, aware that there can be cases of “women of a masculine and men of a feminine appearance” (GA 2.7.747a1), and contemporary studies of the various relevant hormones and the ways in which both women and men can be made more masculine and feminine in appearance by the manipulation of estrogen and testosterone levels confirm this insight.
- 30.
See the discussion of this distinction in Chap. 2 above.
- 31.
History of Animals 9.1.
- 32.
María Luisa Femenías connects this weakness to Aristotle’s account of species-forms as static. She says: “Perhaps because of the static nature that generally characterizes his system, he considers the sociohistorical period in which he lived as if it were universally valid” (“Women and Natural Hierarchy in Aristotle” in Hypatia, 9, no.1 [Winter 1994]: 167). This may be right and would add a further reason to consider a more evolutionary account of form.
- 33.
Aristotle supports some kind of education for women, and thus he thought that women’s capacities—as all human capacities—could be more fully actualized with relevant experience and training. See Politics 1.13.1260b12-20.
- 34.
See Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 105.
- 35.
Quoted Garnsey, 101.
- 36.
Garnsey, 102.
- 37.
See Garnsey’s discussion, 103. This would be difficult to determine, but the fact that the doctors making the recommendations “were practicing doctors, not merely scholars sitting … producing their treatises” gives Garnsey confidence that the advice was not merely academic.
- 38.
For one example, see the discussion of Augustine’s mother, Monica, and her ‘inappropriate’ love of wine in Book IX.8 of the Confessions.
- 39.
See Garnsey, 46–48.
- 40.
Although food per se is part of our biological matter , the particular foods we are able and choose to eat, and the reasons for so choosing, would be tied, at least in part, to our environmental and cultural matter .
- 41.
Aristotle was Greek, although raised in Macedonia with strong ties to the Macedonian leadership.
- 42.
Plato ’s example was, however, significantly complicated by his dualism .
- 43.
Someone might object that, in acknowledging possible differences in development, I have thereby opened the door to claiming an overall inequality. That people may use the position in this way (as Aristotle himself did) is a risk, but (a) such inequality in no way follows from the claim regarding difference and (b) denying differences, if they exist, is itself a damaging proposition. For further discussion of this, see Chap. 1 above.
- 44.
We might also ask whether there are features of our human nature more easily developed by intersex individuals.
- 45.
Given the frequency with which women have traditionally cooked, cleaned, and attended to more domestic duties, the incorporation of the import of manual labor for human flourishing is surely also a feminist concern. Adequate discussion of this incorporation would, however, take us deep into questions of economic relations, the appropriate role of technology, etc.—questions that are surely important, but beyond the scope of this text.
- 46.
He says, for example: “things that are found in the soul are of three kinds—passions, faculties, states—excellence must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to other passions” ( Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1105b19-28). Aristotle then distinguishes the grounds on which we can be praised and blamed and the ways in which our passions are tied to our excellences.
- 47.
See, for example, Nicomachean Ethics 10.1.1172a19-23.
- 48.
In Nicomachean Ethics 9.11, Aristotle contrasts those “of a manly nature,” who do not allow others to grieve with them, and women and “womanly men,” who enjoy co-mourners. Aristotle is surely right that there is a vicious way of seeking attention in one’s grief. But—particularly given the significance of the reiteration of our emotions in order both to know ourselves and to cultivate appropriate responses—there are crucial ways in which a “womanly” sharing of grief is essential. For a more detailed discussion of empathy and reiterated empathy, see Edith Stein’s The Problem of Empathy (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications, 1989).
- 49.
Nicomachean Ethics 8.8.1159a13-14.
- 50.
Nicomachean Ethics 8.8.1159a26-1159b1.
- 51.
We might also look at Aristotle’s rejection of Plato ’s dissolution of the family for evidence of an interest in our interpersonal capacities developed in such familial settings.
- 52.
MacIntyre summarizes his project: “I shall argue that the virtues of independent rational agency need for their adequate exercise to be accompanied by what I shall call the virtues of acknowledged dependence and that a failure to understand this is apt to obscure some features of rational agency” (Dependent Rational Animals, 8). MacIntyre discusses what he calls “virtues of receiving,” which will be my main focus in the following, on pages 126–127.
- 53.
I am interested here in a few of the virtues that women have often exemplified to a particularly significant degree. This is not, however, to claim that attention to women’s lives would be the only route to noticing such virtues. MacIntyre notes, for example, the import of Thomas Aquinas for his own attention to such virtues (Dependent Rational Animals, xi).
- 54.
For more extensive discussions of receptivity and its centrality to human life (as well as all of being), see the work of W. Norris Clarke, especially his lovely Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998).
- 55.
Nicomachean Ethics 4.3.1124b9-10 and 13–14.
- 56.
“Nourishing Speculations,” 150.
- 57.
Aristotle’s discussions of contemplation may offer another example of such proper receptivity .
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Borden Sharkey, S. (2016). How Aristotle Might Have Become a Feminist. In: An Aristotelian Feminism. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29847-4_5
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