The Concept of Woman, Vol 1: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C. - A.D. 1250

by Prudence Allen

This pioneering study by Sister Prudence Allen traces the concept of woman in relation to man in more than seventy philosophers from ancient and medieval traditions. The fruit of ten years' work, this study uncovers four general categories of questions asked by philosophers for two thousand years. These are the categories of opposites, of generation, of wisdom, and of virtue. Sister Prudence Allen traces several recurring strands of sexual and gender identity within this period. Ultimately, she shows the paradoxical influence of Aristotle on the question of woman and on a philosophical understanding of sexual coomplemenarity. Supplemented throughout with helpful charts, diagrams, and illustrations, this volume will be an important resource for scholars and students in the fields of women's studies, philosophy, history, theology, literary studies, and political science.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Theology, Feminism, Gender, Gender Studies, Christian

607 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

Reviews

[Amy Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that I would highly recommend. It’s more of a history of philosophy than a hardcore philosophical tome, which makes it much more accessible. She identifies four major categories in which the concept of woman was considered over the time period she covers and five major theories that developed. She calls the basic framework she sets up a “crude” beginning that she hopes others will build on, but I found the framework very helpful. Interesting and worthwhile read about a topic that is so relevant today. Very much looking forward to the next two works.

[Roger Burk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aristotle had some loony ideas about women. There's no gentler way to put it. He thought that women were incomplete or imperfect men, formed when the male seed failed in its struggle to overcome the passive female matter from the mother. One doesn't need modern science to see that this doesn't make sense. If the female principle is totally passive, how can it "struggle" against the male? Does the clay struggle against the potter? If female matter struggles, it must have some active principle in it. And how does it turn out that the struggle is so finely balanced that equal numbers of boys and girls are born? Aristotle also thought that women had an inferior intellect, capable of reasoning but without "authority," whatever that was. (As far as I can see it just means that nobody believes them, like Cassandra.) Aristotle thought that men were active, and therefore "hot," and women naturally "cold." Apparently he never ran into a red hot woman. Perhaps he is mostly to be pitied.

Anyway, this book traces the various ideas about women from the pre-Socratics to the "Aristotelian Revolution," when Aristotle's works were rediscovered in the Middle Ages and came to dominate Western thought. It is slow going; it seems to be a PhD dissertation, and never sacrifices thoroughness to readability. Every philosopher who contributed no significant new idea about women is identified, and his (or her!) nugatory ideas carefully examined. Allen makes a convincing case that Aristotle's ideas were by no means universal. The Platonists favored reincarnation, which led to what Allen calls a "sex unity" attitude, that sex is a superficial characteristic, and underneath we are all the same. (Interestingly, Plato's Academy occasionally admitted women, but Aristotle's Lyceum apparently never did.) Many ancient authorities believed that mothers contributed a "female seed" to conception; this explained why children sometimes resembled their mothers. Christianity preached spiritual gender equality and a bodily resurrection, which led to what Allen classified as "sex complementarity," meaning that the sexes are meaningfully different but of equal worth. I suppose that this is the view of most people today. Aristotle and his fellow misogynists maintained "sex polarity." Allen doesn't just discuss philosophical writings; she also discusses the implications of Juvenal's satires, female personifications, cross-dressing goddesses like Athena, and so forth.

In the Middle Ages, "sex complementarity" received a boost from the Benedictine practice of having male and female monasteries side by side, leading to joint study and an appreciation of each other's contributions. The famous abbess Hildegard von Bingen and the doomed lovers Abelard and Heloise make their appearance. But things take a disastrous turn in the thirteenth century when the center of scholarship moves from the monasteries to the new universities. The universities are first conceived of as training for clerics, so they do not admit women, thus excluding them from the discussion. Only Aristotle's works on logic had been known in the West until then, and they said nothing about women (oddly called "sex neutrality" by Allen, as if it were a positive point of view). The recovery from the Arabs of his works on generation, politics, and so forth sparked a revolution in thought. The floodgates were opened by St. Albertus Magnus, a Dominican scholar who completely swallowed Aristotle's nutty ideas on gender: males are warmer, they develop more quickly, they come from oblong rather than round eggs, etc., etc. He says weak women live longer because they have coition less, though it seems to me that on average women and men must have coition exactly the same number of times. Maybe Albertus was thinking of some way men could have extra coition without women. And he has to explain why nuns live longer than monks. Anyway, he balanced his misogynistic rants by attributing every virtue, including all arts and wisdom and knowledge, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who supposedly learned all science not by study but by grace. It is easy to see psychological compensation going on here.

Not all the Aristotelian ideas were without reason behind them. Averroes equated the production of seed with orgasm, and since women could conceive without orgasm, he concluded that their seed must be infertile and unnecessary for conception. Wrong, but logical given the premise.

Albertus Magnus's student, St. Thomas Aquinas, tried to reconcile Aristotelian misogyny with Christian spiritual egalitanarianism by saying that "in nature" women were inferior but "in grace" they were equal to men. A noble attempt. But when Scholasticism took over the universities and the universities took over the lead in intellectual life, a dead hand gripped ideas on gender identity.

Allen's story ends just as Scholasticism takes over the universities around 1250. She doesn't entirely explain it. Was the reputation of Aristotle enough to push through such nonsensical ideas, or was there something else in the zeitgeist? Also, she does not convince me that the Aristotelian Revolution was as complete as she seems to think. Scholasticism had its critics. In the fourteenth century, Dante was led by Beatrice into heaven and Boccaccio's storytellers were mostly women. Certainly in Shakespeare the women are every bit the intellectual equals of the men. Maybe ideas became current in the universities that people in everyday life knew were nonsense. It could happen.

[Nate Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent study. Sister Prudence is clear, pointed, and concise in her analysis. Framework for understanding ideas discussed was well-built and consistent throughout. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants insight on the relationship between the sexes and its philosophical foundations.

[Sarah (Gutierrez) Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth reading for Prudence Allen's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of ancient and medieval sources on the concept of woman. Her commentary on the sources Allen quotes from is not always extremely helpful, often limited to pointing out fairly obvious meanings/ideas in the ancient and medieval texts. However, one can not expect everything in a book that is breaking fairly new ground; so far as I know, there are no other intellectual histories of the development of thought about woman with the depth and historical breadth of Allen's work.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magisterial in its scope, and successful in its execution. This is not a light read, but it is exceedingly useful for surveying the history of philosophical reflection about the nature of man and woman. It doesn't attempt to provide a coherent philosophy, but rather asks what kinds of questions philosophers have asked about this topic through the centuries.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a philosophical read, the author was clear and accessible. It explains the foundation of where culture, and the church, went awry in their thinking in regard to women. Aristotle, not a fan.