ARISTOTLE ON WOMEN

Just as Aristotle gives us our traditional view of the person, so does he give us the traditional view of woman's nature. For Aristotle woman's telos (purpose, goal, nature) is to reproduce. But even here her role is passive. The male is the active cause of the creation of a human being. The woman provides only an empty womb. She provides the physical part; he provides the soul. Man's nature, however, is to reason and to regulate his emotions. Women are unable to do this. For Aristotle, woman is defined by both rational deficiency and biological deficiency.

As in many ancient societies Aristotle believed that separate existence of males and females is preferred. Sexual apartheid (lit. "apartness")--separate development (education, too). This reminds one of the policies of the former South Africa.

With regard to the general meaning of virtue (functioning well), Aristotle believes that the female does not function well. As she is incapable of a complete rational life, she is incapable of virtue. That is why she always requires the guidance and protection of rational men.

KANT ON WOMEN

Kant thought that males and females were equal but different. Different roles but equally valuable. Main value of woman is her beauty; man's value is his nobility. By their natures, women prefer the beautiful to the useful; men are just the opposite. Rational activity is at odds with being beautiful and charming. Women know nothing of duty. They don't know the wrong--just the ugly. That is why woman's place is in the home, where she can create a comfortable and beautiful place for man can live. 

SELECTIONS FROM CAROL GILLIGAN'S IN A DIFFERENT VOICE (Henberg & George)

249: Female self is a relational self--"tenaciously embedded in relationships with others." Feminine moral judgment is "insistently contextual."

Traditional moral theory, especially Kantian, has favored "the separateness of the individual self over its connection to others and leaning more toward an autonomous life of work than toward the interdependence of love and care."

250: Gilligan wishes to construct a theory of moral development that will include the female voice; and it will differ from Laurence Kohlberg's theory, whose data was collected from males only.

Summary of Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development

The preconventional (needs of self); the conventional (needs of society); and the postconventional (beyond society to the universal). Conventional means taking justice as preserving social norms. Stage 1: obedience and punishment; 2: instrumental hedonism; 3: interpersonal concordance; 4: law and order; 5: social contract; 6: universal ethical principles.

At the highest stages moral judgment is freed from both psychological and historical constraints, and autonomous agents can judge independently of individual needs.

Women, because of their strong interpersonal "bias" get stuck at level three, which identifies the good with "what pleases or helps others and is approved by them."

251: the paradox: those virtues that have traditionally defined woman's nature are those that make her incomplete in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. This is yet another version of Aristotle's idea that woman is just a deficient man.

Women's feelings for others prevents them from acting on abstract ideals of justice and leaves them at the level of compassion and care.

In order for women to advance on Kohlberg's scale, they will have to start behaving like men. Very often that is precisely what successful American women have done in the recent past.

251-52: Is nonviolence feminine? Gandhi's comments. Strong sentiment not to hurt anyone, including feelings, in Gilligan's subjects. "The moral person is one who helps others; goodness is service. . . ."

254: Women's moral judgments are tied to feelings of empathy and compassion and concerned with real-life issues rather than hypothetical dilemmas.

256: Gilligan's study of teenage abortion decisions show the transition from selfishness to responsibility. Also a recognition of a need to be independent.

258: Second Level: Goodness as Self-Sacrifice

260: From Goodness to Truth: the example of the Catholic mother who decides on an abortion for the sake of the lives of herself and her husband and son. Realizing the truth of the situation? Rethinking the conventions that women are usually bound to.

262: Third Level: The Morality of Nonviolence. The postconventional now looks different from Kohlberg's. Nonviolence is now made the universal principle with a concomitant recognition of equality.

"Care then becomes a universal obligation, the self-chosen ethic of a postconventional judment that. . . allows the assumption of responsibility for choice."

265: "Responsibility for care then includes both self and other, and the obligations not to hurt, freed from conventional constraints, is reconstructed as a universal guide to moral choice." Earlier instinct not to hurt has not become a principle of nonviolence.

Male focus on individual rights and protection from their enfringment vs. female focus on care and nonviolence. Isolation of the individual in the former and reaching out to others in the latter.

Annette C. Baier's "Hume, the Women's Moral Theorist?"

By staying at Stage Three, women are simply being Humeans rather than Kantians. Hume sees morality not in obedience to universal law, but "cultivating the character traits which give a person 'inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity." One must cultivate sympathy for others.