As Michael Walzer puts it in Thick and Thin, Men and women who acknowledge each other’s equality, claim the rights of free speech, and practice the virtues of tolerance and mutual respect, don’t leap from the philosopher’s mind like Athena from the head of Zeus. They are creatures of history; they have been worked on, so to speak, for many generations; and they inhabit a society that “fits” their qualities and so supports, reinforces, and reproduces people very much like themselves.21
