Samples from Canonical Philosophers on
Women
Aristotle Politics I, xii
Of
household management we have seen that there are three parts -- one is the rule
of a master over slaves, which has been discussed already, another of a father,
and the third of a husband. A husband and father, we saw, rules over wife and
children, both free, but the rule differs, the rule over his children being a
royal, over his wife a constitutional rule. For although there may be
exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command
than the female, just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger
and more immature. But in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are
ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures
of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all. Nevertheless, when one
rules and the other is ruled we endeavor to create a difference of outward
forms and names and titles of respect, which may be illustrated by the saying
of Amasis about his foot-pan. The relation of the
male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent. The
rule of a father over his children is royal, for he
rules by virtue both of love and of the respect due to age, exercising a kind
of royal power. And therefore Homer has appropriately called Zeus 'father of
Gods and men,' because he is the king of them all. For a king is the natural
superior of his subjects, but he should be of the same kin or kind with them,
and such is the relation of elder and younger, of father and son.
Aristotle Generation of Animals
On
Gender http://www.ivcc.edu/GEN2002/Aristotle_Generation.htm
Philosophy
of Woman: An Anthology of Classic and Current Concepts,
ed. Mary Mahowald; portions available on Google Books
(do a search to find this on-line)
Aristotle,
pp. 22-25
Augustine,
“The Trinity,” 44-47 John Locke, “Of Paternal Power,
68-70
Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” 113-115
Arthur
Schopenhauer, “On Women,” 135-137
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The
education of women should always be relative to that of men. To please, to be
useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, to take
care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy
and agreeable; these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should
be taught in their infancy."
Immanuel Kant
Of the
Distinction of the Beautiful and Sublime in the Interrelations of the Two
Sexes, section III (from Wikipedia)
In this
section, Kant asserts that women predominantly have feelings for all that is
beautiful. Men, on the contrary, have mostly feelings for the sublime. Any
feelings that are otherwise are only for the enhancement of the main ruling
feeling. Kant admits, though, that the distinction is not absolute. Since
"we are dealing with human beings; we must also remember that they are not
all alike." While discussing the differences between men and women, it
should be emphasized that Kant helps to root notions of inequality in the
Western social structure. For example, Kant argues that "a woman is little
embarrassed that she does not possess high insights; she is beautiful and
captivates, and that is enough. . . . "Laborious
learning or painful pondering, even if a woman should greatly succeed in it,
destroys the merits that are proper to her sex."
Women's
mental ability and understanding, then, refer to the beautiful. Men's deep,
noble understanding is not suitable for women. Women have beautiful virtues
such as kindness and benevolence. Men's virtue is noble and has to do with
principles and duty. Because a woman is concerned with the beautiful, the worst
that can be said against her is that she is disgusting. A man's greatest
defect, however, would be that he is ridiculous, as this is the opposite of the
sublime.
In
sexual selection, a woman demands that the man have noble and sublime
characteristics. A man wants a woman to possess beautiful qualities. In a
marriage, the husband and wife unite their disparate attributes to form, as it
were, a single moral person. The man's understanding combines with the wife's
taste to constitute a union.
Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Women” http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/onwomen.html
One need
only look at a woman’s shape to discover that she is not intended for either
too much mental or too much physical work. She pays the debt of life not by
what she does but by what she suffers—by the pains of child-bearing, care for
the child, and by subjection to man, to whom she should be a patient and
cheerful companion. The greatest sorrows and joys or great exhibition of
strength are not assigned to her; her life should flow more quietly, more
gently, and less obtrusively than man’s, without her being essentially happier
or unhappier.
It is
because women’s reasoning powers are weaker that they show more sympathy for
the unfortunate than men, and consequently take a kindlier interest in them. On
the other hand, women are inferior to men in matters of justice, honesty, and
conscientiousness. Again, because their reasoning faculty is weak, things
clearly visible and real, and belonging to the present, exercise a power over
them which is rarely counteracted by abstract thoughts, fixed maxims, or firm
resolutions, in general, by regard for the past and future or by consideration
for what is absent and remote. Accordingly they have the first and principal
qualities of virtue, but they lack the secondary qualities which are often a
necessary instrument in developing it. Women may be compared in this respect to
an organism that has a liver but no gall-bladder
Women
are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood,
for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and
short-sighted—in a word, are big children all their lives, something
intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of
the word. Consider how a young girl will toy day after day with a child, dance
with it and sing to it; and then consider what a man, with the very best
intentions in the world, could do in her place.
Because
women in truth exist entirely for the propagation of the race, and their
destiny ends here, they live more for the species than for the individual, and
in their hearts take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of
the individual. This gives to their whole being and character a certain frivolousness, and altogether a certain tendency
which is fundamentally different from that of man; and this it is which
develops that discord in married life which is so prevalent and almost the
normal state.
It is
natural for a feeling of mere indifference to exist between men, but between
women it is actual enmity. This is due perhaps to the fact that odium figulinum
in the case of men, is limited to their everyday affairs, but with women
embraces the whole sex; since they have only one kind of business. Even when they
meet in the street, they look at each other like Guelphs
and Ghibellines. And it is quite evident when two
women first make each other’s acquaintance that they exhibit more constraint
and dissimulation than two men placed in similar circumstances. This is why an
exchange of compliments between two women is much more ridiculous than between
two men. Further, while a man will, as a rule, address others, even those
inferior to himself, with a certain feeling of consideration and humanity, it
is unbearable to see how proudly and disdainfully a lady of rank will, for the
most part, behave towards one who is in a lower rank (not employed in her
service) when she speaks to her. This may be because differences of rank are
much more precarious with women than with us, and consequently more quickly
change their line of conduct and elevate them, or because while a hundred
things must be weighed in our case, there is only one to be weighed in theirs,
namely, with which man they have found favour; and
again, because of the one-sided nature of their vocation they stand in closer
relationship to each other than men do; and so it is they try to render
prominent the differences of rank.
It is
only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct that could give that
stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race the name of the fair sex;
for the entire beauty of the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more
justified in calling them the unaesthetic
sex than the beautiful. Neither for music, nor
for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense and
susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their desire to
please, if they affect any such thing.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Some
quotes about Women http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/nietzschewom.html
From
Zarathustra, Old and Young Women http://www.kahlil.org/zarathusra-18.html
Mothers find in their children satisfaction for their
desire to dominate, a possession, an occupation, something that is wholly
intelligible to them and can be chattered with: the sum of all this is what
mother love is; it is to be compared with an artist's love for his work.
Pregnancy has made women kinder, more patient, more
timid, more pleased to submit; and just so does spiritual pregnancy produce the
character of the contemplative type, which is closely related to the feminine
character: it consists of male mothers.
- And finally, woman! One-half of
mankind is weak, chronic- ally sick, changeable, shifty
- woman requires . . . a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love
and modesty as divine: or better still, she makes the strong weak - she
succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with
decadent types - the priests, for instance - against the "mighty,"
against the "strong," against men. Women avail themselves of children
for the cult of piety . . .
Are you a slave? If so, you cannot be a
friend. Are you a tyrant? If so, you cannot have friends. In woman,
a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For that reason, woman
is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love. In a woman's love is
injustice and blindness towards all that she does not love. And in the
enlightened love of a woman, too, there is still the unexpected attack and
lightning and night, along with the light. Woman is not yet capable of
friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or, at best,
cows. Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men,
which of you is yet capable of friendship?
See also
Charlotte Witt, “Feminist History of
Philosophy”. Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-femhist/