GENDER, SEX, BODIES:

THEORIES AND DEBATES

Historical notions and theories of gender
Autumn 2019
Greta Bladh
 DISPOSITION

• Nancy Tuana : Woman and the History of Philosophy

• Reading ”as a woman”
• From Plato to Hegel
• Other feminist readings of canonical traditional philosophy:
Luce Irigaray (and Judith Butler)
• Where do we go from here?

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 NANCY TUANA

• Nancy Tuana 1951-

• Penn State, Department of Women’s, gender, and sexuality
studies
• Feminist philosophy, approaches to intersectionality, science
studies – epistemological and ethical issues, moral literacy
• Woman and the History of Philosophy (1992), The Less Noble
Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of
Woman’s Nature (1993), Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist
Interpretations of Plato (1994), Feminism and Philosophy:
Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation, and
Application (1995), Engendering Rationalities (2001),
Revealing Male Bodies (2002)

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 HISTORICAL NOTIONS AND
THEORIES OF GENDER
• Canonical philosophers, highly influential, repeatedly
anthologized, regularly studied in the Western academy.
• Systemic denigration of woman and the feminine still prevalent
in contemporary Western philosophy (and society)
• Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Locke, and
Hegel – their position on the nature of man
• Discourses of philosophy are not gender neutral. “Man” is not a
universally inclusive term.
• The philosopher is situated in time and space, which affects
their theories
• Body, soul, morality, rationality

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 READING “AS A WOMAN”

• Exclusion of certain gendered bodies, i.e. women, but

recognizes also other issues of exclusions, e.g. race and class,
albeit structured in different ways than gender
• Read “as a woman” – reveal the basis of the feeling of unease
while reading philosophy
• Particular focus of attention – implicit/explicit construction of
woman and the feminine
• Aristotle: the construction of woman’s nature entails that she is
unable to undertake the very thing she is engaged with -
philosophy

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 READING “AS A WOMAN”

• Enabling a reading “as a woman”

• Tuana: Reader’s focus of attention, nothing to do with biology,

but rather a concern for enabling the varieties of women’s
experiences to be included within the paradigm of human
experience

• To read as a woman, without putting oneself in the position of

the Other – to undermine the presuppositions which define
woman not as male, as limited, as Other.

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 PLATO (427-347 B.C.E)

• Timaeus: In a primordial state there were no women. To be

born as a woman was a punishment to a man who had failed to
govern his sensations.
• To live as a woman was a punishment
• Woman’s existence is secondary: temporally and metaphysically
• The soul is the person – grounds differences of character
between men and women, not biology. The soul is separate and
superior to the body
• Hierarchy of traits according to their proximity to the divine
• Differences constructed through a dichotomy: reason/emotion,
soul/body, essence/accident – one is privileged over the other

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 ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.E)

• Biology determines the differential traits of men and women

• “..form cannot exist apart from matter and the soul is the form
of the body. Thus, differences in the soul will be reflected in
the body”
• An embryo becomes female because of lack of heat. Women’s
lack of heat results in her smaller frame and weakness

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 PLATO & ARISTOTLE

• The male is the true form of humanity

• Woman is intellectually deficient

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 RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

• Reason vs. emotion

• Logic of reason mirrors the structure of reality.
• Deductions leads to true objective knowledge – but only if there
is no connection to the bodily sensations.
• The body is an impediment to knowledge, but one can learn to
overcome the body.
• A woman, like man, is capable to learn to be rational
• Leisure necessary for the pursuit of reason, childrearing and
domestic chores are obstructions – woman’s cultural situation
excludes her from a rational life
• The rational man is European and upper class

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 JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1788)
• Each sex is perfect in its own way, no one is superior the other.
Woman is equally perfect, but different.
• Attributes of sex roles originates from the establishment of the
family. Are good for the state.
• Emotion and reason complement each other

• Woman assists man with ensuring that his reason is well

balanced with emotion
• Man’s rationality is independent, while woman’s rationality is
directed at man – what pleases man

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 IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

• Moral principles are known solely through reason, reason is

defined as excluding the emotions
• Categorical imperative: a principle of action, a law, which is
necessary in itself without another end. An action based on the
categorical imperative is inherently good. Unconditional
valuable end – “right of humanity”
• Every rational being exists as an end in himself.
• Practical imperative: always treat the other as an end, never
simply as a means
• Women are incapable of moral agency, not because of
biological differences, but because their social role precludes
this

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 DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

• Humans have an innate moral sense

• The usefulness of a quality or action determines its moral
worth. Only reason discerns this utility, and the means to
achieve it, but cannot cause us to act or choose, only the
sentiment of beauty can serve as a stimulus for action
• Women are naturally inferior to man, both in mind and body,
she is inhibited to properly judge the utility of action, thus she
cannot be moral
• A moral man is good to his wife, even though he is her superior,
otherwise he would be nothing but a barbarian

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 JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

• Liberalism: natural equality of all individuals

• Prevailing belief system of woman’s natural inferiority and
man’s necessary authority over her penetrates Locke’s liberal
theory
• Development of rational capacities requires leisure and
property
• Marriage is a blend of natural and contractual elements

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 GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH
HEGEL (1770-1831)
• Women are incapable of higher consciousness, which is
explained as due to physiology: male genitalia is superior to the
female genitalia….
• Women are thus not made for activities such as advanced
sciences, philosophy, and certain forms of artistic production
• Only the modern man can achieve freedom
• Family life precludes woman from developing full rationality or
full freedom

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 THE CHALLENGE OF FEMINISM

• Embodied readers of philosophy – who can read “as a woman”?

• Luce Irigaray: Unveiling the feminine which has been

concealed by the discourse of men

• Judith Butler: Bodies that matter (1993/2011)

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 LUCE IRIGARAY

• Speculum of the Other Woman – history of Western

philosophy in its relation to woman
• Explores woman’s essential difference from man
• Plato – Allegory of the Cave
• Metaphors as vehicles of meaning
• Tracing process of exclusion of women from the production of
discourse

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 REVISITING READING “AS A
WOMAN”
• The practice of reading “as a woman” runs the risk of reaffirming
those associations which are under scrutiny, and that the gendered
binary of associated traits and characteristics remain intact.

• And can in turn be understood as in itself constructing a specific

notion of what it is to be a woman, what a woman is, what the
woman subject is, emotional and empathetic etc.

• Even though acknowledging the contingency of the relations

between traits and gender, reading “as a woman” has some
essentialist notions still lingering.

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 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

• Butler: resist the theoretical gesture of pathos in which

exclusions are simply affirmed as sad necessities of
signification.
• The preservation of the outside is still important, as a site that
can act as a disruptive site of linguistic impropriety and un-
representability
• Radical and inclusive representability is not the goal
• Subvert linguistic dichotomies and its gendered associations

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