Woman is not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle’s Biology of Reproduction

Abstract

The conservatism of Aristotle has long been a subject of discussion among philosophers. His belief in the superiority of the male sex, however, while it has not entirely escaped their notice,1 has not thus far been carefully examined. In a path-breaking article,2 Christine Garside-Allen brought to our attention the possibility that the work of Aristotle is in fact the study of the male human, rather than the human species, and pointed to the possibility that this may be true of most influential philosophers. This task of hers was an explicit necessity because in most cases philosophers’ ideas about sex difference are not now widely known. In what are known as the “main” theories of various political or moral philosophers, distinctions of sex are not often mentioned, or they are alluded to briefly in a way that makes them appear inessential to the theory. I want to suggest that the reason for this is not that their views of sexual differences are incidental to the theory but that in almost every case they are considered to be a question which is prior to general ethical or political issues. This may be the case regardless of whether or not these views are actually discussed in any detail. For most of these thinkers, however, there will be found a treatise of some sort on the subject. It has been the practice of twentieth-century scholars and educators in the face of the greater equality of women, simply to disregard these works, which they view as minor or peripheral, or perhaps crankish, like Berkeley’s late essays on the value of tar water. Unfortunately, this policy is not soundly based on the actual role of these views in most political and social philosophy.

Aristotle . . . pretends that women are but monsters. Who would not believe it, upon the authority of so renowned a personage? To say, it is an impertinence; would be, to choak his supposition too openly.

If a woman, (how learned soever she might be), had wrote as much of men, she would have lost all her credit; and men would have imagined it sufficient, to have refuted such a foppery; by answering, that it must be a woman, or a fool, that had said so.

From De l’egalité des deux sexes (Paris, 1673) François Poulain de la Barre (1647–1723), anonymously translated into English as The Woman as Goodas the Man (London, 1677).

All references to Aristotle are to The Works of Aristotle, ed. by J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1908–1952).