The Concept of Woman: A Synthesis in One Volume

By Prudence Allen and John C. Cavadini

A comprehensive account of the concept of woman in Western thought, from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, to today 

 
In her sweeping, three-volume study, Sister Prudence Allen examined how women and men have been defined in relation to one another scientifically, philosophically, and theologically. Now synthesized for students, The Concept of Woman is the ideal textbook for classes on gender in Catholic thought. 
 
Allen surveys Greek philosophers, medieval saints, and modern thinkers to trace the development of integral gender complementarity. This doctrine—a living idea according to the criteria of John Henry Newman—affirms the equal dignity of men and women and the synergetic relationship between them. Allen pays special attention to John Paul II’s contributions to this holistic idea of gender. Readers will gain valuable context for current debates over womanhood and come to a greater appreciation of human personhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781467467780

Prudence Allen

Sister Prudence Allen, RSM, is a retired professor of philosophy at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado, and professor emerita at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of The Concept of Woman, published in three volumes: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.–A.D. 1250; The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250–1500; The Search for Communion of Persons, 1500–2015.   

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Approach and Basic Terms

This one-volume synthesis of The Concept of Woman will offer a concise summary of the conclusions reached in the previously published three volumes.¹ Its structure will remain chronological and systematic. That is, I will begin with the pre-Socratics and work through the history of Western philosophy up to the beginning of the twenty-first century. I will also predominantly use a philosophical methodology that appeals to observation of the senses and reason to justify its claims. In addition, I will draw upon John Henry Newman’s seven criteria for the true development of a living idea to argue that the theory of integral gender complementarity is a true development of the respective identities and relation of woman and man first identified in ancient Greek and medieval philosophy.

At times I will also refer to selected spiritual sources for claims that appeal to revelation in the New and Old Testaments and also to selected passages from writings of the saints. Evidence for such claims is further worked out over the centuries, again by appealing to the observation of the senses and reason. Some of these claims have taken over two thousand years to be definitively supported by solid philosophical or scientific evidence, or both.

To begin, I provide a description of the four principles of integral gender complementarity as first revealed in the book of Genesis.² These principles are spiritual and theological, that is, revealed through faith.

First, the principle of equal dignity of all human beings is found in Genesis 1:26: Let us make man [the human being] in our image, after our likeness.³

Second, the principle of the significant difference between a man and a woman is found in Genesis 1:27: … in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Third, the principle of the synergetic relation of a woman and a man is found in Genesis 1:28 and 2:24: And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply … ,’ and they [became] one flesh.

Fourth, the principle of intergenerational fruition is found in Genesis 5:1–32 (NRSV): This is the book of the generations listing those who generated one generation after another from Adam to Noah.

These four revealed principles of equal dignity, significant difference, synergetic relation, and intergenerational fruition have framed the concept of woman in relation to man for over two thousand years. The burning question I try to answer is how these principles can also be demonstrated through the exercise of the observation of the senses, reason, and argumentation.

Further, I clarify my use of terminology, specifically the use of the words gender and sex. The book of Genesis has been dated variously between 1400 and 900 BC. The root gen as used in generation is found in the chronology of generations in Jewish history all the way from Adam, through Seth, Enosh, and Kenan, to Noah and his sons. This intergenerational history implicitly incorporates acts of sexual intercourse, each an act of a man and a woman, who became a father and a mother through their synergetic union. These historical claims show how sex is hidden within the concept of generation and its root, gen.

I would also like to repeat some important philosophical claims of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC). In his Generation of Animals (c. 350 BC), he describes the male as having the power to generate in another, and the female as that which can ‘generate in itself,’ [that is], it is that out of which the generated offspring, which is present in the generator, comes into being.⁴ Aristotle’s claim that a female human being generates in itself and a male human being generates in another is still correct today. Furthermore, Aristotle recognized that nature always has some exceptions, so he wisely stated in Metaphysics: "for all science is of that which is always or for the most part."⁵ This qualification allows us to state that while there are some exceptions, that is, anomalies, in nature (deficiency or excess in number of x or y chromosomes),⁶ human beings can be classified for the most part as either of the male sex or of the female sex.

Aristotle also clarified the meaning of gender related to the classification of words. In the Rhetoric, he discussed the application by Protagoras (c. 485–c. 410 BC) of the genders masculine, feminine, and neuter to the study of nouns.⁷ The Greek text uses a word for neuter that means inanimate, it. It does not mean a human being who is neither male nor female.⁸

Some remarks are also in order concerning the double meaning of the word sex in sex identity and sex activity and the double meaning of the word gender in gender identity and gender activity. To summarize: I apply gender identity to an integral whole person, qua woman or qua man, and I include within it a respective sex identity for the most part as female or male. This use will be defended against contrary positions later in this book.

Can the theory of the integral gender complementarity of woman and man be proved? I think I have found a way to answer that question in the affirmative. In this synthesis, I share this proof, hoping that it convinces you as well. In volume 3 of The Concept of Woman, after first discovering John Henry Newman’s proof for a true development, I attempt to apply its criteria analogically to the history of the concept of woman in relation to man. As mentioned there, I do not just want a synthetic generalization of historical facts and theories because that kind of argument lacks certitude. Also, I do not want an analytic proof simply deducted from postulated premises because that kind of argument simply hangs in the air of possibilities. Rather, I am searching for a way to demonstrate the solid truth of integral gender complementarity that is both certain and about the real world.

In volume 3, I believe I successfully worked out an argument for integral gender complementarity using Newman’s criteria. It is a cumbersome working out, full of extraneous information. Therefore, in this synthesis I aim to streamline and clarify how Newman’s tests for a true development in ecclesiastical theology can be used to prove that the theory of the integral complementarity of woman and man is a true development through the two-thousand-year history of Western philosophy.

A summary of Newman’s list of seven criteria (which he called notes) for assessing whether or not an idea is a true development is listed below:

1.Preserve identity of original type through all its apparent changes and vicissitudes from first to last.

2.Continuity of principles in the type remains entire from first to last, in spite of process of development. Changes do not destroy the type.

3.Assimilative power for dogmatic truth.

4.Logical sequence in fidelity of development.

5.Anticipation of its future in favor of fidelity of development, ethical or political.

6.Conservative action of its original type on its past with corruption tending to its destruction.

7.Chronic vigor of a true development of an idea distinguished from its corruptions, perversions, and decays.⁹

Newman describes what he means by development in the first chapter of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: This process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of time, by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this process will not be a development, unless its assemblage of aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from which they start.¹⁰

The first challenge to be met for the use of Newman’s criteria is to identify two primary philosophical ideas able to serve as foundations for the developed truth about the integral complementarity of woman and man. The first original idea that is foundational to integral gender complementarity is found in Aristotle’s De anima (On the soul): The soul is the first grade of actuality in a body which is organized. … That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the most proper and fundamental sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of which it is the actuality.¹¹

This first primary philosophical idea to serve as a foundation for integral gender complementarity is the principle of the form/matter composite identity of a woman or a man, traditionally known as hylomorphism.¹²

The second original idea needed to defend the integral complementarity of woman and man is found in The City of God by Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430). In book 22, chapter 17 of this work, Augustine concludes an argument with the important statement: The female sex is not a defect but a natural state.¹³ He argues against the claim that in the resurrection women will not rise, but only men. In his words: Some believe that women will not rise in female sex, but that all will be males.¹⁴

Augustine defends his position that both sexes will rise by distinguishing between sex identity (the natural state of females and males) and sex activity (sexual intercourse leading to childbirth). He wrote: For there will be no lust there, which is the cause of shame. For before they sinned they were naked, and the man and the woman were not ashamed. So all defects will be taken away from those bodies, but their natural state will be preserved. The female state is not a defect, but a natural state, which will then know no intercourse or childbirth.¹⁵ In other words, while sex activity will cease in heaven, sex identity will remain. Thus, the second original idea needed to defend the integral gender complementarity of woman and man is Augustine’s claim that in heaven the sex identities of women and men remain.

Even though Augustine is writing about the theological theme of the resurrection, he is offering a philosophical proof and using philosophical distinctions such as a natural state and a defective state. Those distinctions were common to philosophical arguments at that time. This is why his argument can be considered a philosophical foundation for the original theory of integral gender complementarity.

Augustine himself struggled to distinguish different kinds of theories about the relation between woman and man in the natural world. He settled on the view that a sex polarity view of male superiority characterized marriage and a unisex view of women and men characterized religious life. This is why Augustine’s question whether the bodies of women will be raised and remain in their own sex is so significant. Even though Augustine does not see a pathway to integral gender complementarity, by saying the female is not a defect, but a natural state, he indicates that he sees the horizon and prepares a pathway that develops into a complete integral gender complementarity over the next twenty centuries.

We can restate the two fundamental principles whose development will prove that the theory of the integral gender complementarity of women and men follows from these two original types of living ideas:

Original Type of Living Idea of the human being as a soul/body or form/matter composite being always or for the most part male (which generates in another) or female (which generates in the self);

Original Type of Living Idea of Integral Gender Complementarity as a man and a woman created with equal dignity and significant difference. A theological qualification can be added: before the Fall and recovered in the Resurrection of the body in Heaven when both sexes will rise as male or as female.

To restate, Newman describes the meaning of a true development as the process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of time, by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. In this synthesis, I will trace how the integral complementarity of woman and man is eventually brought into its consistency and form.

This book is structured to correspond with traditional historical periods in the history of philosophy and themes of development of the history of the concept of woman in relation to man. During the course of this history, three original categories of theories emerged. The summaries of those theories are discussed in much greater detail as the history unfolds throughout this synthesis (see table 1).

TABLE 1. Structure of Theories of Gender Identity

1. Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM, The Concept of Woman, vol. 1, The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC–AD 1250; vol. 2, The Early Humanist Reformation, AD 1250–1500; and vol. 3, The Search for Communion of Persons, AD 1500–2015. They were published by Eerdmans in 1997, 2002, and 2016, respectively.

2. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, ed. Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, 2nd Catholic ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), Revised Standard Version.

3. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references in this book come from the Revised Standard Version.

4. Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1939), 1.2.716a19–24.

5. Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1970), 11.8.1065a25 (emphasis added).

6. Rare conditions such as the Turner, Fragile X, Jacobson, and Klinefelter syndromes are such exceptions.

7. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 1047b5.

8. For more discussion of this point, see Sr. Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman, 3:7n14.

9. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 169–206.

10. Newman, An Essay on the Development, 38.

11. Aristotle, De anima, in McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle, 412a28–29 and 412b6–9.

12. The Greek term is derived from hylē, meaning matter, and morphē, meaning form. In English, it is inverted to become known as matter/form metaphysics or hylomorphic metaphysics.

13. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, trans. William M. Green, 7 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1972), 22.17, p. 282.

14. Augustine, The City of God, 280–81n3. See Allen, The Concept of Woman, 3:13n27, for the historical context of this discussion.

15. Augustine, The City of God 22.17, p. 281.

1

GENDER IN ANCIENT GREEK AND MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER 1

Pre-Socratics Discover Four Dimensions of the Concept of Woman

During the two hundred years between the mid-sixth century BC and the late fourth century BC, several philosophers living around ancient Greece and Italy began to raise philosophical questions and to teach about them to interested students. Among these questions were several that considered the respective identities of male and female human beings. The fundamental questions asked by pre-Socratic philosophers (before Socrates, who lived c. 470–399 BC) fall into four categories: opposites, generation, wisdom, and virtue.¹ Each category will be summarized with examples.

OPPOSITES

Are Men and Women Opposite, Contraries, or the Same?

Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC) considered opposites² to be in a similar (harmonious) relation to the bow and lyre, rather than as contradictories. He said: There would be no harmony without sharps and flats, no living beings without male and female, which are contraries.³

What Is the Relation between the Male and Female and Other Pairs of Opposites?

The mathematician Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BC) offered a table of ten opposites: limit and absence of limit, odd and even, one and many, right and left, male and female, rest and motion, straight and curved, light and dark, good and bad, and square and oblong.⁴ Within this listing a polarity has been described in which the first member of the pair is given a superior valuation over the second member. The association of the male with the right and the female with the left came from the Pythagorean tradition. It had practical application to biological theories of generation.

In the Hippocratic tradition (from Hippocrates, c. 460–c. 377 BC), this connection is made explicit. The Hippocratic text Regimen explicitly associates the hot and the dry with the male, and the cold and the moist with the female: The males of all species are warmer and drier, and the females moister and colder.⁵ This particular metaphysical claim also influenced the development of the philosophy of man and woman through the seventeenth century. The association of the male with the right and the female with the left had inaccurate application to biological theories of generation of a male or a female in gynecological texts in the Hippocratic tradition up through the sixteenth century.

Is the Theory That Male and Female Are Opposites Describing Something about Reality Itself, or Is It Only Describing Something about Appearance?

The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides (b. c. 515 BC) argued in his poem On Nature that while the way of truth has no divisions, in the way of opinion sexual differentiation exists simply as an appearance and not as a feature of reality itself. Thus, a lower goddess (daemon) rules over birth and mating, sending the female to mate with the male, and conversely again the male with the female.⁶

Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 BC) suggested that Protagoras (c. 485–c. 410 BC) was the first philosopher to proclaim himself a Sophist: You openly announce yourself to the Greeks by the name of Sophist and set up as a teacher of culture and virtue, the first to claim payment for this service.⁷ Protagoras, according to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, was also the first philosopher to ascribe masculine and feminine gender to nouns: The fourth rule consists in keeping the genders distinct—masculine, feminine, and neuter, as laid down by Protagoras.⁸ This is the first instance where the relation of gender identity to language is raised. However, the word neuter here means inanimate. It does not refer to a third kind of living being whose gender is neuter by combining male and female or masculine and feminine characteristics.⁹

To summarize the pre-Socratic introduction of the category of opposites: several philosophers raised questions about the concept of woman in relation to man. These questions and claims considered gender differentiation as harmonious contraries, as polar opposites, as aspects of appearance and of reality, and as a linguistic characteristic of nouns. These questions were sometimes metaphysical, sometimes anthropological, and sometimes linguistic. In all cases they were central to philosophical inquiry.

GENERATION

The second category of questions raised by the pre-Socratics directly concerns the relation of respective functions of mothering and fathering in generation to sex identity itself. These questions focus on three areas: cosmic generation, generation of first parents, and continuity of generation. In contemporary philosophy, the third area is part of the philosophy of science.

What Is the Role of Male and Female Identity in Cosmic Myths of Generation about the World?

Theogony, written by Hesiod (fl. c. 800 BC), gave a classical prescientific explanation of the interaction of Father Sky and Mother Earth in a battle of polar opposition for the dominance of one over the other. Pre-Socratic philosophers described this cosmic generation in natural terms rather than using mythological or religious descriptions.

Pythagoras explained generation by a theory of reincarnation of soul that transmigrated from one kind of living body to another. According to Diogenes Laertius, He [Pythagoras] was the first, they say, to declare that the soul, now bound in this creature, now in that, thus goes on around ordained of necessity.¹⁰ This implies that the same soul could be born in either a male or a female body, a human or a different animal body.

How Did the First Men and Women Appear in the World?

Anaximander (610–c. 547 BC), the student of Thales, who thought that the fundamental stuff of the world is water, suggested that fish like creatures burst open, and out came men and women who were able to feed themselves.¹¹ Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) developed an elaborate theory of cycles of love and of hate in which all created beings were generated out of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The elements were combined by love into limbs, then into hermaphrodites, and eventually into men and women. There arose offspring of men with heads of cattle; and (creatures made of elements) mixed in part from men, in part of female sex, furnished with hairy limbs.¹²

Do Both Parents Produce Fertile Seed in Generation, or Only One? And How Is Sex Identity Determined in the Fetus?

These two questions received significant attention by pre-Socratic philosophers. For example, Parmenides, in his way of opinion, suggested that both males and females provide a single fertile seed in generation, but he added the cryptic phrase: On the right, boys, on the left, girls.¹³ This has been interpreted to imply that the placement of the fetus on the right side of the uterus, or a seed from the right testicle from the father, will produce a male child, and vice versa for the female. There is some disagreement about the theory of Anaxagoras (c. 500–c. 428 BC), with Aristotle suggesting that he denied the existence of female seed, and Censorious (third century AD) and Plutarch (c. 46–after 119) suggesting that he accepted it. In any event, all commentators mention that Anaxagoras invoked the opposites right and left to explain the determination of the sex of the fetus, with a boy being associated with the right testicle and right side of the uterus, and the female with the left.

Perhaps the most interesting thinker about the contribution of parents to generation was Empedocles, who was a physician as well as a philosopher. He is the only pre-Socratic who suggested a theory in some respects similar today to genetics, namely, that each sex provides one half of the seed needed for generation. Empedocles said: The substance of (the child’s) limbs is divided (between them), part in the man’s body and part in the woman’s.¹⁴ Thus we find in Empedocles the first suggestion of sex complementarity. Even Aristotle noted this in his Generation of Animals: Empedocles—the two parents do not both supply the same portion, and that is why they need intercourse with each other.¹⁵

However, Empedocles invoked the opposites hot and cold rather than right and left to explain the differentiation of the fetus into male or female. If the uterus is hot, the child will be a male; if cold, a female. If the seed is hot, then it will resemble the father; if cold, the mother. So, we have four possible combinations: a boy who resembles his father, a boy who resembles his mother, a girl who resembles her father, and a girl who resembles her mother.

Even Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 BC) considered the question of the relation of sex identity to the continuity of generation. However, he argued that there was a battle between the mother and father, each of whom provided a single seed, with the sex of the child resulting from which parent won the battle. So, instead of the cooperative model of Empedocles, we have a polarity model of dominance and antagonism in generation.

Finally, the Hippocratic tradition argues for a double-seed theory in which both the mother and the father provided seed to generation. This seed is drawn from heating up humors of the body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Seed comes from the testicles in men and from the uterus in women. The seeds are described as mixing to produce the child. However, a new polarity is introduced in the opposites strong and weak, so a female child is the result of a greater quantity of weak seed, and a male of strong seed. The male fetus develops and moves more quickly than the female fetus."¹⁶

This short summary has shown, then, that the philosophy of science in its primitive form seriously raised questions of sex identity and their relation to biological issues of male and female identity.

WISDOM

Pre-Socratic philosophers considered several different questions in the category of wisdom. These questions concerned both women’s capacity for learning philosophy and whether women are capable of teaching philosophy.

The Pythagoreans encouraged women to study philosophy, that is, to use their reason, particularly mathematical reasoning, and the observation of their senses in the search for truth. We know that Pythagoras was very successful as a teacher of women, and that assemblies were arranged for him to teach women separate from men.

A key to Pythagorean thought is the claim that reason is the superior immortal part of human identity, and all else is mortal.¹⁷ Reason has no sex identity; it is a unisex characteristic of either a male or a female human being.

Were there wise women philosophers in this early time of Western history? Aspasia (470?–410 BC) is mentioned by Plato¹⁸ as having talent in rhetoric. She was a disciple of Anaxagoras, the astronomer and pluralist, who argued in On Natural Science that the world was composed of an infinite number of seeds.¹⁹ Anaxagoras was imprisoned for claiming that the sun was just a stone and not a god.²⁰ Aspasia was also imprisoned after a trial for impiety toward the gods. She was the hetaera, or mistress, of Pericles (c. 495–c. 429 BC), who intervened and got her acquitted.

There is also some contrary evidence in the form of criticism of women attempting to practice public debate. For example, a fragment from Democritus states: A woman must not practice argument: this is dreadful.²¹ In addition, in the Hippocratic writings it is suggested that boys and men are more brilliant than women because their constitution has a greater amount of heat.²² These examples reinforce the impression that from the very beginnings of Western philosophy, a related series of questions about wisdom and sex identity occurred. This is an early articulation of a traditional polarity theory in relation to wisdom.

VIRTUE

The fourth category of questions raised about woman by the pre-Socratics falls under the broad classification of virtue.

Pythagoras thought that the most important thing in life was to win the soul to good and away from evil. He argued that both men and women ought to have the same harmony of soul that followed the practice of chastity and monogamy. He is also reputed to have directly supported a friendship of all towards all … of a man towards his wife.²³

Pythagoras introduced the claim that a man and a woman are virtuous by practicing different virtues in relation to one another: ruling for the man and obeying for the woman. This separation of the virtues of ruling and obedience according to sex identity was exemplified in the Oeconomicus, by Xenophon (c. 431–c. 352 BC), where Isomachus tells Socrates that just one word from him to his wife was enough to secure her instant obedience.²⁴

Whether men and women have the same or different virtues was also considered in relation to their respective spheres of activity. In the Meno, Plato describes a follower of the Sophist Gorgias: A man practices virtue in the public sphere and a woman in the private sphere of activities. Xenophon describes this theory in greater detail and makes the three-fold argument that the private and public spheres of virtue are divinely ordained, integrated into law, and subject to reinforcement when transgressed.²⁵

At least two pairs of virtues were sexually differentiated by some pre-Socratic philosophers, namely, for the man, ruling and activity in the public sphere; and for the woman, obedience and activity in the private sphere.

CONCLUSION TO CHAPTER 1

When the history of philosophy is studied, it becomes evident that the subject woman was seriously considered from the earliest times that philosophers recorded their thoughts and arguments. Four philosophical categories involving the concept of woman were identified in the fundamental questions raised by pre-Socratic philosophers. These four categories (opposites, generation, wisdom, and virtue) can be called the four dimensions of the concept of woman.

The questions raised in each of the four categories are summarized as follows:

OPPOSITES:

1.Are male and female opposite or the same?

2.If male and female are opposite, is their relation one of creative tension or of hostility?

3.If male and female are opposite, are they like pairs such as right and left, hot and cold, good and bad, moist and dry, or like a bow and string?

4.If male and female are opposite, is one of the pair superior to the other or are they held in equal balance?

5.Is a claim that male and female are opposite really only a theory about how they appear rather than how they are?

GENERATION:

1.What is the role of male and female identity in cosmic myths of generation of the universe?

2.Is there any differentiation according to sex identity in theories of the emergence of the first parents? Is woman or man given a superior status within the account?

3.What is the relation between a mother’s and a father’s contribution to generation and sex identity? Do both parents produce seed, or does only one?

4.How is sex identity determined in the fetus?

WISDOM:

1.Can both women and men become philosophers?

2.Do women and men have the same capacities for reasoning?

3.Do women and men become wise by learning the same things or different things?

4.Is there any relation between the biological constitution of women and men and their capacity to use particular kinds of reasoning?

5.What is the relation between language and sex identity?

VIRTUE:

1.Ought women and men to practice the same virtues or different virtues?

2.Ought virtuous activity of women and men be divided into private and public spheres?

3.Is ruling and obedience necessarily related to sex identity?

4.Are there separate virtues for separate functions in society? And are functions determined by sex identity?

Hints of three original theories of sex identity—unisex, sex polarity, sex complementarity—have also been discovered in one or another category of a pre-Socratic philosopher’s writings (see table 2).

TABLE 2. Three Original (Pre-Socratic) Theories of Sex Identity

However, none of the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers described components covering all four dimensions of the concept of woman in relation to man. This will occur in the next phase of the development of the concept of woman. Socrates/Plato together²⁶ will describe all four dimensions in their combined articulations of the unisex theory. Aristotle will describe all four dimensions of what will become the traditional sex polarity theory of male superiority in his works.

1. Sr. Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman. vol. 1, The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC–AD 1250 (Montreal and London: Eden Press, 1985; 2nd rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).

2. The term opposite is used here as a broad category that includes both contrary (the terms are different but within the same category) and contradictory (the terms are in logical opposition).

3. Heraclitus of Ephesus: An Edition Combining in One Volume the Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus On Nature (Chicago: Argonaut, 1969), 98.

4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941, 1970), 986a22–25.

5. Hippocrates, ed. and trans. W. H. S. Jones (London: Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1931), vol. 4, Regimen 1, xxxiv, 281.

6. Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), frag. 12, p. 45.

7. Plato, Protagoras, in Collected Dialogues, Second and Third Periods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 349a.

8. Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1947), 173b8–10.

9. See Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM, The Concept of Woman, vol. 3, The Search for Communion of Persons, AD 1500–2015 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 7n14.

10. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. H. D. Hicks, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1941), 8.14; 2:33.

11. Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 110.

12. Freeman, Ancilla, frag. 12, p. 45.

13. Freeman, Ancilla, frag. 17, p. 46.

14. Freeman, Ancilla, frag. 62, p. 59.

15. Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, in McKeon, Basic Works of Aristotle, 722b15.

16. For a more detailed account of the Hippocratic theory and the references for various positions on inheritance from female and male seeds, see Allen, The Concept of Woman, 1:46–52.

17. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 8.30; 2:347.

18. Plato, Menexenus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 235e, p. 188.

19. Freeman, Ancilla, frag. 4, p. 83.

20. Freeman, Ancilla, 270.

21. Freeman, Ancilla, frag. 110.

22. Hippocrates, Regimen in Acute Diseases, trans. W. H. S. Jones, 11 vols. (London: Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923), 4:xxviii.

23. Cornelia J. de Vogel, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism: An Interpretation of Neglected Evidence of the Philosopher Pythagoras (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1966), 100–101.

24. Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus, in The Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 9.18–19, pp. 447–49.

25. Plato, Meno, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie, in Hamilton and Cairns, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, 7.26–27.

26. Socrates never left a written text. Plato wrote several texts in which Socrates was a key figure in a dialogue. The early texts are considered to be accurate accounts of Socrates’s actual positions, while the later texts are thought to be Plato’s own thinking placed in the mouth of Socrates.

CHAPTER 2

Socrates and Plato Defend the Equal Dignity of Woman and Man

While the pre-Socratics left isolated and often unconnected fragments in the philosophy of woman and man, the great philosophers that followed presented a much more complete picture.

THE FIGURE OF SOCRATES IN PLATO’S EARLY DIALOGUES

Socrates and Plato achieved a theory of the concept of woman in relation to man that flowed across all four categories of opposites, generation, wisdom, and virtue. Plato was the first philosopher to offer such a complete theory in all four categories. Even more interesting, Plato was the first philosopher to offer the systematic defense for a single theory of sex identity, which can be called a unisex theory. This theory defends the position that there are no philosophically significant differences between a woman and a man.¹

Socrates never left any written record of his thought. After Socrates was put to death by the Athenian authorities, Plato wrote dialogues and letters both in his early and later writings that describe Socrates’s defenses for unisex positions. While the early dialogues accurately reflect the thought of his teacher Socrates, Plato’s later writings seem to develop his own mature positions on various philosophical themes that he voices at times through a character named Socrates.

Looking at Plato’s early dialogues, in which he is reflecting on the thought of Socrates, at the end of the Apology he asked the jury, who had just reached the decision to put him to death, to do him the favor of correcting his sons when they grow up if they are putting money or anything before goodness. … If you do this, I shall have had justice at your hands, both I myself and my children.² For Socrates, seeking the ultimate good is the goal for any human life.

In another early dialogue, Phaedo, Socrates’s relation with his wife and children is unfavorably compared with the utopian model that will be developed in the Republic and Laws. Some of Socrates’s students, who had visited Socrates every day in prison, are described coming again early on the last day before the poison is administered by the state of Athens to put their beloved teacher to death. In the dialogue, the student Phaedo offers the following description of Socrates’s wife, Xanthippe, as caught in her emotions.

When we went inside we found Socrates just released from his chains, and Xanthippe—you know her!—sitting by him with the little boy on her knee. As soon as Xanthippe saw us she broke out in the sort of remark that you would expect from a woman. Oh, Socrates, this is the last time you and your friends will be able to talk together!

Socrates looked at Crito: Crito, he said, someone had better take her home. Some of Crito’s servants led her away crying hysterically.³

Although I argue in this chapter that Plato is the founder of the unisex argument, the above passage describing Socrates and his wife shows that his work is not unencumbered by previous views of female inferiority. In contrast to Socrates, Plato did not marry. Yet, both philosophers propose a similar theory about how, after death, a sexless soul can be reincarnated into different kinds of human and other animal bodies, or how the human being can actually be freed from cycles of reincarnation. These proposals provide a foundation for a unisex theory of personal identity.

Apart from these early dialogues, Plato’s middle and later dialogues consider his own thinking about woman and man. In the middle dialogue Symposium, Socrates describes his teacher Diotima as capable of the highest level of philosophical reasoning and the one who taught him through the method of question and answer.⁴ I return to these kinds of examples later in the context of describing woman’s relation to wisdom and virtue.

PLATO’S USE OF THE FOUR PRE-SOCRATIC CATEGORIES

To orient our discussion in this chapter, I use the same four categories identified by the pre-Socratics, namely, opposites, generation, wisdom, and virtue.

Opposites

Plato’s Timaeus and Republic, written in the middle of his life, put forward two different positions about the identities of a woman or a man. In the Republic, Plato has the character Socrates provide arguments for the unisex position in an ideal society: And we must throw open the debate to anyone who wishes whether in jest or in earnest to raise the question whether female human nature is capable of sharing with the male all tasks or none at all, or some but not others.

Socrates sets up his argument by discussing the natures of woman and man: We did agree that different natures should have differing pursuits and that the natures of men and women differ. And yet now we affirm that these differing natures should have the same pursuits … but we did not delay to consider at all what particular kind of diversity and identity of nature we had in mind and with reference to what we were trying to define it when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same.⁵

When Socrates continues, he tries to persuade Glaucon to be specific about how a woman and a man are similar and how they are different. Socrates begins with the example that bald and long-haired men still have the same nature even though the length of their hair is different. Then he asks:

Socrates’s argument implies that the body is irrelevant to the kind of pursuit or work a woman or a man is assigned in an ideal society. Instead a woman’s nature and a man’s nature follow directly from the immaterial nature of their mind or soul.

In the Timaeus, Plato introduces the metaphysical principles of form and matter into the discussion of how to differentiate male and female natures. Metaphysical forms are likened to a Father as their source and spring.⁷ In contrast to Hesiod’s great cosmic mother, who actively generates earth and sky, Plato’s Mother Receptacle is completely passive. Plato argues that if the cosmic female principle had any nature of her own, it would take the impressions badly, because it would intrude its own shape.⁸ Therefore, it becomes the passive metaphysical principle of prime matter.

To summarize the metaphysical dimensions of Plato’s description of male and female identity, two key points are important. First, the material identity of the human body is devalued in contrast to the immaterial soul, which is neither male nor female. Socrates argues that when a man and a woman have the same kind of nature of an immaterial mind, they should follow the same pursuits. Second, on the cosmic level, the female principle is described as a totally passive and empty receptacle, while the male cosmic principles of forms are described as totally active. Finally, Plato’s consistent defense for the unisex theory depends on a theory of reincarnation, which will be described in the following section.

Generation

Plato’s unisex theory is connected to his claim that when a person dies, the soul wanders until it is reincarnated in a new body, male or female. A hierarchy of different kinds of incarnations includes the possibility that a human being, who dies in a perfect state, may escape the cycles of reincarnation to become completely united to the eternal forms. In the three dialogues, Phaedrus, Republic, and Timaeus, Plato introduces myths to exemplify possible scenarios for reincarnation. Before one enters a different cycle of human life, the soul passes through a river of forgetfulness, which precludes a way to offer detailed descriptions of the previous life and its difference from a present life. Yet a philosopher may by systematic reasoning achieve understanding of the principles for reincarnation. For the concept of woman in relation to man, this is an important principle.

According to Plato’s Phaedrus, the soul is originally in union with the world of immortal forms: All soul has the care of all that is inanimate, and transverses the whole universe, though in ever-changing forms. Thus when it is perfect and winged in journeys on high and controls the whole world, but one that has shed its wings sinks down until it can fasten on something solid, and settling there it takes to itself an earthly body.⁹ In this myth, Socrates describes the sex-neutral soul falling into a series of incarnations in descending degrees of wisdom: as a philosopher, king, statesman, athlete, physician, prophet, poet, artisan, farmer, sophist, and finally tyrant.¹⁰

In general, it appears that those who are incarnated as women are inferior to those who are incarnated as men. In the Timaeus, it is suggested that this could be seen as a kind of punishment for a less than perfect previous life. Specifically, souls of men who lived cowardly or immoral lives would fall in the next life into female bodies.¹¹

Plato uses myths in his dialogues in various ways.¹² The myth previously referred to in the Phaedrus and the myth of Er in the Republic exemplify this method. The goal of a human life incarnated either as a female or as a male is the same, namely, to practice dying and death, the practice of separating the soul from the body. In the Phaedo, Plato describes Socrates teaching his disciples that while the soul leads to truth, the body leads to error: [The] body fills us with loves and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense. … We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.¹³ Even though women begin their lives with an inferior incarnation, many of them should have the same goal as men, namely, to become true philosophers. The desire to free the soul is found chiefly or rather only in the true philosopher. In fact the philosopher’s occupation consists precisely in the freeing and separation of soul from body.¹⁴

Following this line of thought, Plato argues explicitly in the Republic that even though it appears that men in general are more intelligent than women, many women are better than many men in many things.¹⁵ He concludes from this observation that in an ideal society there is no pursuit of the administration of a state that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all—yet for all, the woman is weaker than the man.¹⁶

Sometimes, however, Plato introduces a myth in a dialogue before he develops his systematic argument. An example of this latter precritical category can be found in his myth of Aristophanes in the Symposium. Aristophanes offers a myth about the origin of love that describes three kinds of creatures: man-man, man-woman, and woman-woman: In the beginning we were nothing like we are now. For one thing, the race was divided into three; that is to say, besides the two sexes, male and female, which we have at present, there was a third which partook of the nature of both, and for which we still have a name … ‘hermaphrodite.’¹⁷

After Zeus cut each of the three sexes in half, each one desired union with the other half. The man who is a slice of the hermaphrodite sex, as it was called, will naturally be attracted by women … , but the woman who is a slice of the original female is attracted by women rather than by men … while men who are slices of the male are followers of the male.¹⁸

It is clear from the context of the Symposium that neither Socrates nor Plato intended to suggest that the myth of the hermaphrodite is his own view. Rather, it is a precritical suggestion that he offers before developing his own position about sexual identity and relations.

In the Timaeus, Plato argues, from the perspective of the male anatomy, that sexual acts are dangerous to the ordered mind. He states: The seed having life, and becoming endowed with respiration, produces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway, and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of woman. The animal within them is desirous of procreating children.¹⁹

Plato does not indicate whether he thinks that women, like men, produce seed for generation. Yet, women and men both have to struggle against lower animal instincts trying to gain dominance over the higher functions of reason. The human task is to enable reason to gain dominance over animal instincts.

In book 7 of Plato’s Republic, written at the same time as the Timaeus, generation occurs in three different situations according to the three different classes of people: workers, soldiers, and rulers. Women and men are members of each of the three different groups. Sexual activity occurs in the lowest group of workers without any pattern; in the middle group of male and female soldiers, it occurs as a reward for winning battles; and in the highest group of ruler guardians, it occurs only occasionally when carefully regulated for purposes of birth. The children born from this higher group are not identified with respect to their parents so that a communal life can be led without any personal attachment or possessions.

In book 10 of Plato’s Laws, written shortly before his death, we find a detailed description of how higher society is regulated. Only heterosexual relations were allowed when it was conjoined to the work of procreation.²⁰ Through the voice of the Athenian, Plato suggests that this prohibition be backed up by law. Once suppose this law perpetual and effective … the result will be untold good.²¹

Next, heterosexual expressions of sexual intercourse are to be limited to marriage. Through the voice of a figure nominated simply as the Athenian, Plato proposes that this prohibition be backed up by a law that would force men and women to marry: A man was to marry when he reached the age of thirty and before he comes to that of thirty-five; to neglect to do so to be penalized by fine and loss of status.²² Women were to marry between the ages of sixteen and twenty.²³ Even within marriage, the sexual act was to be regulated so that it occurred only when procreation was desired.

Plato thought there were higher goals for the individual woman and man than sexual pleasure and the generation of children. In the Phaedrus, he describes the reward of people who have been able to order their instincts by higher reason. They will stop the cycles of reincarnation by losing all need for bodily existence: If the victory be won by the higher elements of mind guiding them into the ordered rule of the philosophical life, their days on earth will be blessed with happiness and concord, for the power of evil in the soul has been subjected, and the power of good liberated; they have won self-mastery and inward peace. And when life is over, with the burden shed and wings recovered, they stand victorious.²⁴

This goal of ordering lower instincts by higher reason leads us now to consider how Socrates and Plato describe the path to wisdom for women and for men.

Wisdom

In the Republic, Plato argues through the character of Socrates that the perfect state has the same virtues in a three-leveled structure as the soul itself. The state is considered the soul writ large.²⁵ Women and men then have the same three capacities of soul, the same three possibilities of roles in the ideal state, and the same three correlative virtues. Plato proposes that it is easier to study the virtues first on the larger background of the state, and then observe them in the smaller instance of the individual soul (see table 3). Justice is the virtue of the harmonious relations among all three virtues. Individual virtues of one or another virtue can be listed as below, with the correlative part of their soul and the particular kind of persons in the ideal state.²⁶

TABLE 3. Plato’s Three-Level Structure of the Soul, State, and Virtue

Focusing on the nature of wisdom, we will turn to the text of the Republic itself and describe a portion of Socrates’s argument:

The weakness of women is like a handicap in the race to gain wisdom. This means that it likely takes longer for a woman to reach the same