'Vom Winde verweht', Margret Hofheinz-Döring

What has philosophy done for us?

This essay is a consideration of philosophy as a remarkable workshop of conceptual innovation that has contributed immeasurably to human knowledge, including practical knowledge. It is about the real impact of philosophy.

One area in particular where philosophy has offered powerful beneficial insights concerns the status, and rights of women. By questioning the historic denigration of women, philosophers, via their powerful arguments, have done a lot for both men and women.

Freeing Women from Male Subjugation

In their analysis of the ontological and social status of women, philosophers Simon de Beauvoir and Plato frame the issues around what philosophers have come to call the fact/value distinction. It is the fallacy of deriving the “ought” (values) from the “is” (facts) known as the Naturalistic Fallacy. This philosophical point is especially helpful in refuting male prejudices towards women.

Considering historical views of women as filtered through the male consciousness, de Beauvoir notes the traditional tendency of men to conflate the existence of women’s body (facts) with opinions about women’s abilities and identities (meanings). “Her body”, de Beauvoir writes, “is not enough to define her.” The facts of biology do not carry meaning. “Physiology cannot,” de Beauvoir further asserts, “ground values.”  

Instead, values are conferred on the biological data—by, of course, men, who have used physical differences between men and women to dominate women (e.g. the physical facts of menstruation has been used as an excuse by men for shunting women away from the public world, conferring on this biological fact the pejorative value of ‘weakness’). However, women are, in truth, not prisoners of their bodies. Her body does not define her because “[w]omen is not a fixed reality, but a becoming”. In sum women like men can confer value on their own existence; they are not merely closed systems, physical/biological entities, but have the freedom to transcend their immediate situation qua body, and find a future identity not grounded in their physicality—an argument contrary to the historical biological determinism of sexist men who have drawn fallacious inferences about the ontological meaning of women from the latter’s physiology.

Plato also questions the use of women’s bodies qua bodies as an ontological criterion for validating their rights and roles in society.  The woman’s body as endowed with a ‘female’ gender does not make the fundamental difference, but rather the excellence of the soul. If women are exclusively defined by their bodies, the distribution of social roles between men and women becomes – as it was in Plato’s Greece – sharply demarcated between public and private, relegating women to inferior and subordinate roles, as mothers and child bearers.

In his essay on Plato and women, French scholar Luc Brisson writes:

‘For Plato, the fact of being of the male or female sex has no more relevance for the attribution of such-and-such a task than does the fact of having lots of hair or of being bald.’

Plato, applying his own version of the fact/value distinction, distinguishes between the woman’s body and the woman’s soul/mind just as he applies the same distinction to the bodies and souls of males. Plato’s Dualism, a metaphysical doctrine based on sexual equality and anti-reductionism, is also politically radical. Plato’s vision of women was, as Brisson writes, a “merciless criticism of Athenian citizenship, which took only men, that is, males, into consideration.”

Instead, in an ideal state women and men would be equal. A woman who demonstrates the values of courage – an attribute of the soul – is equally qualified to be a “guardian” (warrior) in Plato’s hypothetical state on par with a man who demonstrates the same values. The biological facts about a woman’s body are separate from her attributes of courage and valor, and indeed have no relevance to her ability to assume a warrior’s duties. As for de Beauvoir, so for Plato: biology is not destiny.

In the Republic, Plato asserts:

‘But if it’s apparent that they differ only in this respect, that the females bear children while the males beget them, we’ll say that there has been no kind of proof that women are different from men with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll continue to believe that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life.’ (Rep. V, 454d-e, transl. Grube rev. by Reeve).

Women are likewise intellectually equal to men. Because philosopher-leaders are chosen amongst the guardians as a function of the ability of their soul to devote itself to higher studies, it follows that women will have access to the same course of studies described in Book VI of the Republic, inclusive of  mathematics and dialectic, taught to male philosopher-leaders. Nor was this mere theory on the part of Plato. Diogenes cites the fact that Plato admitted women to his own school for philosophers, the Academy.

How these Arguments Showcase Philosophy’s Strengths

Rigorous objectivity, logical precision, commitment to knowledge (contra public opinion), rejection of partisanship, and a willingness to ‘follow the argument’ (both logical and empirical) are fundamental skills used in the philosopher’s workshop.  And they are all showcased in Simone de Beauvoir’s and Plato’s arguments. Both vigorously follow their arguments by using reason to question conventional opinions of their day about the putative inferiority of women in order to find real knowledge that refutes received prejudices. Further, they refuse to show partisanship toward other (bad) arguments simply because they were offered by earlier prestigious philosophers. De Beauvoir strongly criticized the male prejudices that crept into Aristotle’s discussion of women as mere passive ‘matter’, while Plato’s defense of the equality of women directly opposed philosopher Pythagoras’ sexist metaphysical claims that a “bad principle …created chaos, darkness, and women” in comparison to man created by a “good principle.”(Nor was Plato a partisan supporter of the sarcastic, sexist Athenian ‘good old boy’ political network of his day).

Philosophy’s historic contribution to changing the conversation about the rights and status of women is directly linked to its ability to find knowledge by framing objective arguments based on logic and facts unbiased by irrational opinion. Where philosophy has failed women it is not the fault of its basic core strengths, but of regrettable sexist prejudices which have historically infiltrated philosophy as they have other modes of inquiries such as science and literature.

Thomas White is a Wiley-Blackwell journal author, and previous contributor to Undercurrent Philosophy, Aeon, The Philosopher’s Eye, and other journals. He is also  a poet and speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in print and online in Australia, Canada, United States, and Great Britain. 

How about you, do you think philosophy has made a positive contribution to the rights of women and men?

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