Woman and Virtue
P.J. Ivanhoe, University of Michigan
I would like to begin by introducing two basic models of woman’s virtue that can be found in contemporary Feminist Ethics. I want you to regard these models as ideal types. By that I mean you will rarely if ever find pure examples of either of these models among contemporary thinkers; they are drawn by accentuating central aspects of particular positions held by thinkers in this field. The models are primarily heuristic; they are not offered as complete and accurate descriptions.
I will call the first model the Gendered Virtue Model. Basically this is a model that makes essentialist claims about the different natures of women and men: it claims that there are special virtues characteristic of each and arising out of their different basic natures. A clear representative of this position is Rousseau. In his work Emile, he describes the ideal education that a young man should receive, an education that will develop the set of virtues that are the full manifestation of his manly nature. In this same book, though not occupying as important a position, is a description of the proper education Emile’s sister, Sophie, is to receive. It too is described in terms of developing virtues that fully manifest her basic nature. But while Emile’s virtues concern life in the public realm of a citizen, Sophie’s virtues concern life in the private realm of the home. According to Rousseau, women not only have special virtues that are theirs alone, they lack many virtues that are seen as exclusively male. And the virtues that women are thought to lack are those required for public, political life – the realm of a great deal of power.
Mary Wollenstonecraft attacked this view in her Vindication of the Rights of Women. She argued persuasively that this is a false picture and that the claim that women had certain “domestic” or “feminine” virtues by nature was a mistaken and pernicious appeal. She argued emphatically for the idea that virtues are in no way gendered. In her opinion, there are certain human excellencies – traits of character which we call virtues – and a man or a woman might or might not possess these. But in no case or in any sense is this determined by their gender. Neither men nor women have a biological advantage or greater tendency toward virtue.
More recently, some feminist writers have argued for a very strong version of what I am calling Gendered Virtue. They emphatically deny (or more usually simply do not discuss) whether or not men possess any special virtues because of their gender, rather they focus on two related aspects of this general issue: 1) men, because of their gender, possess or are more prone to exhibit certain vices; and 2) women, because of their gender, possess or are more prone to exhibit certain virtues. In some cases, the second point is made more emphatically, taking the form of the claim that women possess exclusively or distinctively female virtues. On such a view, all true virtue is feminine.
Mary Daly holds a fairly strong version of this general position. In some of her works she insists that these female virtues can never be fully expressed in the present social context, which she contends is fatally contaminated with male vice. She urges women to retreat into female communities wherein they can preserve and nurture their true, good natures. If this seems overly radical and strange to you, perhaps you should consider that throughout human history there have been special communities of men and women – monks and nuns- who have sequestered themselves from the rest of us for very similar reasons. In addition, there are many people in industrialized western democracies who today argue for the separation of men and women – particularly in educational institutions. There are also those who believe it is desirable to separate people on the basis of their race, who employ the same vocabulary of “purity” and “contamination.” Some of them live in our own country.
Carol Gilligan, in her book In Another Voice: Psychological Theory and Woman’s Development, seems to hold a moderate version of this position which stresses the central role that the emotions and relationships play in women’s ethical thinking. At times Gilligan sounds as if she is making essentialist claims about women’s nature. The more charitable interpretation is to understand her as being neutral on the issue of whether or not certain styles of ethical reasoning are part of a woman’s nature or simply a function of the way she was psychologically formed, given the nature of our society. (This latter view sees her as relying on the work of scholars like Nancy Chadorow.) Her point then minimally is that there simply are different styles of ethical reasoning that have come to be characteristic of women and men respectively. And her argument is that those characteristics of men arbitrarily have been established as “superior” to those of women.
For example, she presents the case of Jake and Amy, two children who were given an identical moral dilemma (by a researcher by the name of Lawrence Kohlberg). A man named Heinz has a wife who is dying of a curable disease but is unable to afford the drug that would save her. The question is, should he steal the drug for her? Jake claimed that Heinz should steal the drug, arguing that the doctor’s right to the drug must yield to the higher imperative to save an innocent life. On his own description, Jake saw the situation as “kind of like a math problem but with people”. Amy’s answer was very different. She suggested that Heinz should go and talk to the doctor and appeal to his conscience. She also suggested that Heinz should ask his friends and relatives for help in both raising money to buy the drug and persuading the doctor. Gilligan’s interpretation of these different responses is that Jake relies on abstract, a-personal reasoning in making his moral decisions and that this is characteristic of males. Amy saw the situation in terms of relationships and feelings, which is, according to Gilligan, more characteristic of woman’s moral reasoning.
Gilligan’s position can be understood as making several distinct and not necessarily related claims. One of these may not have anything to do with the question of whether or not “relational reasoning” and appeals to the emotions are more characteristic of women that men (regardless of why this might by so). Without committing oneself one way or the other on the gender issue, one might grant that Gilligan has presented a case against a certain kind of abstract, ethical argumentation. That is to say, we might discover that these types or styles of ethical reasoning are not in any sense more characteristic of men or women and yet still believe that Gilligan has discovered genuine and distinct styles of ethical reasoning.
In her influential work, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Education, Nel Noddings argues that the more abstract analytic approach to ethics because it leaves out many details of specific moral problems, does not provide an adequate account of how moral reasoning takes place. She too however, sees the analytic approach as distinctively male and opposed to a characteristic womanly way of reasoning, one which is focused on the local and specific details of each moral decision and develops intuitions by working through many such cases over the course of a lifetime. She too at times seems to make essentialist claims about differences between the ethical approaches of men and women. For example, at one point in her work, she discusses Kierkegaard’s use of the story of Abraham and Isaac (explain the story and Kierkegaard’s use of it briefly). While she goes on to qualify her remark, she does at one point say “I suspect no woman could have written either Genesis [of the Bible] or [Kierkegaard's] Fear and Trembling [his work about Abrahman and Isaac” (Noddings 43).
I would now like to turn to my second model, the Vocational Virtue model. Historically, this model is related to Marxist analyses of the status of women to which some early Feminist thinkers were attracted. Basically, the Marxist approach is to attempt to explain people’s status and attitudes in terms of their class and they dynamic of class struggle. On such an interpretation, women are seen as an oppressed class. Men are cast in the role of the dominant class and exploit women in order to maintain their privileged status. The less plausible version of this view makes this exploitation of women a conscious choice on the part of all or most men. More plausible versions of it claim that the choice is subconscious or that the exploitation is now systematically reinforced. There are clear strengths as well as obvious and well recognized problems with this kind of analysis, particularly in the case of women, but for our purposes the important thing is the use of the notice of class as an explanation for the status and characteristic viewpoints of women. It is a small step from class to the notion of what I am calling vocation or practices. And, I would argue this small step results in a considerable increase in plausibility and explanatory power.
The basic idea is that a person’s regular work and practices inform and shape their attitudes and dispositions. In the language we are employing, a given vocation gives rise to certain characteristic virtues. Applied to the case of women, the argument runs like this: women historically have been relegate (to some degree for reason originally having to do with biology but now primarily because of tradition or conscious oppression) to certain kinds of work (e.g. child rearing and home work, but also vocations such as primary school teaching and nursing). As a result of engaging in these “nurturing” kinds of activities, women have tended to develop a characteristic set of virtues (e.g. caring and nurturing) and a distinctive set of approaches (e.g. networking, relational reasoning etc.). In other words, rather than being an expression of some innate female nature, these virtues are seen as socially constructed. Such a view makes no essentialist claims regarding the nature of women as a source of their characteristic virtues: the virtues characteristic of women are not held to be in any way essentially female virtues. If men took part in child rearing, nursing and teaching (as some do) they too would develop what are characteristically described as “feminine” virtues.
Where does that leave us? At a minimum I think it leaves us less certain about attempts to ground virtues in traditional views of the essential nature of men and women. Neither men nor women are destined to be a certain way simply because of their biology. On the other hand, we may find it more plausible to think that a good deal of what we believe is “characteristic” about men and women is more a function of what kinds of vocations each has had an opportunity to pursue. Does this then mean that there is no significant difference between men and women? I do not think so, at least I think it would be premature to declare that this is so. Physiologically, men and women are obviously significantly different and some of these differences may make us more sensitive to certain aspects of what it is to be an ethical person. It seems profoundly clear to me that women who have carried and given birth to a child have a unique opportunity to gain a sense of how dependent human beings are on one another. They also have the opportunity to become aware of the frailty of human life and the joy of nurturing another in a direct, physical way. These experiences are simply not open to me as a man. But I think it is wrong and dangerous to think that I cannot come to understand, to a significant degree, what these insights are like and why they are important to us all. I just have to be a good and sympathetic listener and exercise my imagination. In a similar way, someone who has suffered oppression has an opportunity (and in all cases it is only that – an opportunity) to understand in a more profound and nuanced way how it works and why it is reprehensible. But in none of these cases does this preclude others form understanding why some things are virtues and others vices.
With theses two models in mind, I would now like to turn to the biographies. I will review what I see as some of the most important features of several of them. To begin with we should note that these biographies were written by a man by the name of Liu Xiang (1st century CE), and so express a set of feminine ideals from a decidedly male perspective. The degree to which they accurately represent the lives of early Chinese women is quite difficult to gauge. At best they represent one dimension of these women’s lives. However, it is equally important to note that these biographies are not unusual. Even in such early sources (and the period covered here is roughly the period we are studying – pre-Han China) women are regularly represented (though in no sense equally). Biographies of exemplary women were included in every official history of China and beyond this, there are other stories about women throughout such works. Not only did women play a crucial role in Chinese history (this is true of every culture) but this role was recognized and regarded as very important by the Chinese. In one sense, I believe that this is a manifestation of a deeper Chinese belief that history is a record of the ebb and flow of human morality, played out largely in the context of the ethical conceptions of history which have tended to focus on state organizations, economic factors, technological advances, and military conquest.
The first biography I asked you to look at is well known throughout East Asian societies: the biography of the mother of the philosopher Mencius (Meng K’o) (39 – 42) (He is the next philosopher we will study). Mencius’ mom is depicted as an eminently wise woman and her biography is revealing in many different ways. Among the first things to note are that she is identified in terms of her role as mother and that her wisdom is only manifested (or at least recorded) when it is exercised in the care of her son. But her wisdom ranges over a much greater set of circumstances and we are given considerable detail about her activities. We are first told that she became a widow early in life (and she is an exemplary single-mother of 4th century BC China) and we have the story of her moving three times in order to insure Mencius had the right influences (living near a graveyard, market, and school). We also hear of her correcting his crude and improper treatment of his wife (entering the room unannounced).
At the end of the biography she is portrayed as an exemplar of the idea that a woman should be obedient to her parents (when young), husband (if married) and son (if widowed). This ending strikes me as bit out of character. Nothing in what has come before supports such a view. It is also worth noting that the idea expressed in this conclusion, that of a woman’s three obediences sangang, is not found in the writings of Confucius. We might assume that she listened to her parents when young, but this would not distinguish her form her male siblings. Since she was a young widow, she is hardly an exemplar of an “obedient wife” and judging from the events in the story, it was more of a case of Mencius obeying her than the other way around. In any event, in this biography we have a woman portrayed as possessing and being the source of the highest forms of wisdom. At the same time, she exercises this wisdom and virtue almost exclusively within the domestic realm.
As in many other cultures, Mencuis’ mom is “praised” for what she does to contribute to the lives of men, particularly her son. Such a view obviously constricts the range of value a woman can have. It can easily and historically often has become a form of oppression. We do not need to go very far to find very similar views in other cultures. I do not know how many of you are aware of the fact that Stanford University has been coeducational from its founding. When I first heard this I took a certain naïve pride in the fact that our institution was so clear-headed and progressive from the start. But Sharon, my wife, (note I identify her partly in terms of her familial relation), has shown me that at the time the rationale for having women equally represented was the perceived need to have educated women to serve as partners for this generation of leaders and to raise the next (those of course would all be men).
In the biography of Chi (Ji) of Wei (50-52) we see a similar linkage between women’s virtues and domestic – as opposed to public – concerns. A woman is to care for the inner (private) world, while a man cares for the outer (public) realm. But notice that the types of judgments made by women and the types of arguments they rely upon are not different in kind from those made by men. While the arena of their moral judgments is limited, women seem to make the same kind of appeals and employ the same kinds of reasoning as men do in public realm.
Moving through some of the other biographies we encounter figures such as Queen, Man of Deng (Deng Mau in Raphal’s Sharing the Light (SUNY Press, 1998) (76-78), whose profound insight into the moral situation of her state and her recognition that this is intimately linked to its military might, foresees the failure and success of future military campaigns. The women in these biographies display remarkable moral understanding and rhetorical skill and in some cases they exercise these abilities in the realm outside the home, in the public social realm. In other words, they cross traditional gender lines. But they do so only for a brief time and because of exceptional circumstances. None of them exercise these powers by virtue of a public position of power. They are advising husbands (or in some cases saving them). Their actions are still linked or at least grounded in their role within the family.
We can understand these stories and other like them in terms of the two models I described earlier. On the one hand, women are thought to have special virtues such as “nurturing” (or at least enhanced abilities or tendencies in this direction) because of their special nature. But there is also an appeal to one’ role and what is appropriate to that in a given situation. What is interesting is the ways in which these two appeals cut across gender lines in certain situations. For example, Mencius’ mom takes over traditionally male duties (e.g. choosing a place for her family) when thrust into the role of head of the household. This same ability is displayed by the many women who give advice on how to run the state or decide a difficult moral problem. Moreover, virtues that tend to be emphasized as distinctly female are rarely if ever understood as exclusively feminine. Even something like the “obedience” or “deference” a woman is to display toward her husband is not exclusive to women. It is the appropriate attitude a minister is to display toward his lord.
This theoretical ambiguity between the two models I introduced earlier is on the one hand a function of how early Chinese thinkers approached ethical problems, (as we shall see ever more clearly in the weeks ahead) they tended to start by accepting that the good life for human beings must be somehow grounded in how we, in some deep sense, really are. One result of this is that they accepted the family as the main paradigm for their ethical thinking. We are inextricably a part of such units and the relationships and obligations we incur by being part of them define, to a significant extent, what we are. Given this general picture, it seems almost inevitable that they would tend to value the role women play as in some way fundamental to the good life. Moreover, since they saw a caring family as their central paradigm, relationships and emotions played a larger role in their ethical theorizing, a much greater role than they tend to play in many traditional Western thinkers.
In the West, certain human facilities, in particular rationality, were early on identified as not only the most important capacities we possess but, in some cases, as our essential characteristic. Reason and the ability to abstract from the particular in order to reach the universal were often viewed as opposed to the specific relationships one was in. Reason was also largely opposed to feelings, the latter were not seen as playing a significant role in determining what was true, good, or right. Since the specific, relational and emotional came to be seen as manifesting “women’s nature” with abstract reason seen as characteristic of “man’s nature”, the kind of ambiguity which I have argued is part of the Chinese traditional is not as evident in most traditional Western philosophy.
Consider Nel Nodding’s criticism of the analytic approach to ethics. She sounds very Confucian when she argues that the moral sense is not grounded in the application of abstract rules but instead arises out of the process of making individual moral decisions in which a full appreciation of the details of each case are critical to the successful development of the moral sense. As we shall see, she and Gilligan sound downright Mencian when they insist of the critical role of proper feelings. Of course they do not sound Confucian in their claim that this is distinctive of women’s moral reasoning. For the Confucians it is the way moral reasoning is done, regardless of who is doing it.
Despite these similarities there is something special about the Chinese view of these issues. Because the Chinese made and still make appeals to both human nature and traditional practices their ethical foundation straddles the two models with which I began. Perhaps more important, the fact that Confucian thinkers, to varying degrees, see the moral life arising out of basic familial relationships, in terms of the foundation for moral judgments, they cannot draw the philosophical distinction between the public and private realms as sharply as it has been drawn in the west. Nor does their way of thinking lend itself to drawing as sharp a distinction between a rational, individual, abstract approach and an emotional, relational, situational approach. As I noted above, in the West, from a very early point onward, a fundamental philosophical distinction has tended to divide men and women. Moral judgment (required for life in the public realm) was seen as a function of the power of abstract reasoning and in tension with the emotional (read: female) side of oneself.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not claiming that the Chinese view of things has in fact led to a morally enhanced situation for women in China. Historically Confucianism resulted in a different but no less severe oppression for women. My point is not to argue that one of these traditions is superior. There are important insights to be found in each. I have been trying to bring out some of the aspects in the Chinese tradition which I believe show remarkable similarities to some recent Feminist Ethical thinking. (Having these more recent approaches to ethics in mind will help you in the coming weeks to analyze the philosophies we shall be studying). On the other hand, these aspects of Chinese philosophy in turn raise significant questions for certain contemporary Feminists who seem to believe that basing ethics primarily on the emotions and our actual local relations will lead to the elimination of patriarchy. Things are not this simple.