Visions of Women CONTEMPORARY ISSOES IN BIOMEDICINE, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY Visions of Women, edited by Unda A. Bell. 1983 Ethics and Animals, edited by Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams. 1983 Profits and Professions, edited by Wade L. Robison. Michael S. Pritchard. and Joseph Ellin. 1983 Medical Genetics Casebook, by Colleen Clements. 1982 Who Decides? edited by Nora K. Bell. 1982 The Custom-Made Child?~ edited by Helen B. Holmes. Betty B. Hoskins. and Michael Gross. 1981 Birth Control and Controlling Birth, edited by Helen B. Holmes. Betty B. Hoskins. and Michael Gross. 1980 Medical Responsibility, edited by Wade L. Robison and Michael S. Pritchard. 1979 Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics, edited by John W. Davis. Barry Hoffmaster. and Sarah Shorten. 1979 Visions of Women Edited and with an Introduction by Linda A. Bell Being a Fascinating Anthology with Analysis of Philosophers' Views of Women from Ancient to Modern Times Humana Press . Clifton, New Jersey Dedication To my sister Mary Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Visions of women. (Contemporary issues in biomedicine, ethics, and society) Includes index. I. Women-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Philo sophical anthropology-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Bell, Linda A. II. Series. HQ1206.V58 1983 305.4 82-48866 ISBN-13:978-0-89603-054-1 e-TSBN-13:978-1-4612-5304-4 001.10.1007/978-1-4612-5304-4 ©1983 The HUMANA Press Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1983 Crescent Manor PO Box 2148 Clifton, NJ 07015 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo copying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher. Contents Introduction 1 Plato Meno 48 The Republic 50 Timaeus 56 Laws 58 Xenophon Economics 59 Aristotle Generation of Animals 63 History of Animals 65 Nichomachean Ethics 66 Politics 66 On Poetics 68 C. Musonius Rufus "That Women Too Should Study Philosophy" 69 "Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?" 71 "On Sexual Indulgence" 73 "What Is the Chief End of Marriage?" 75 "Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?" 75 Quintus Septimus Florens TertuIlian The Apparel of Women 78 Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus) Letters 82 Against lovinianus 83 Aurelius Augustine The City of God 87 "Adultrous Marriages" 90 Peter Abelard "Touching the Origin of Nuns" 91 v vi CONTENTS Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) The Book of Women 94 Thomas Aquinas The Summa Theologica 102 Thomas More Utopia 116 Letters 119 Desiderius Erasmus In Praise of Folly 125 "The Abbot and the Learned Woman" 126 Luis Vives Instruction of a Christian Woman 131 The Learning of Women 135 Michel de Montaigne "Of Friendship" 137 "Of the Affection of Fathers for Their Children" 138 "Of Three Kinds of Association" 139 "On Some Verses of Virgil" 139 Thomas Hobbes Philosophical Elements of a True Citizen 145 The Elements of Law 145 Baruch Spinoza Tractatus Politicus 148 John Locke Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government 150 David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature 153 "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" 155 "Of Essay Writing" 156 "Of Love and Marriage" 157 "Of The Study of History" 159 Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montisquieu Persian Letters 160 The Spirit of Laws 164 Fran~ois-Marie Arouet Voltaire "Women" 171 CONTENTS vii Denis Diderot "On Women" 177 "Woman" 181 Letter to his Daughter 191 Jean-Jacques Rousseau "On Women" 194 A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality 195 A Discourse on Political Economy 196 Emile 196 Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship 209 Letters from a Dweller in New Heaven to a Citizen of Virginia 214 Mary Wollstonecraft Vindication of the Rights of Woman 218 Immanuel Kant The Philosophy of Law 239 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime 241 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 247 J. G. Fichte The Science of Rights 253 G. W. F. Hegel The Phenomenology of Mind 265 Philosophy of Right 268 Arthur Schopenhauer "On Women" 270 "Position, or a Man's Place in the Estimation of Others" 277 "Ideas Concerning the Intellect" 278 "On Jurisprudence and Politics" 278 "Psychological Remarks" 279 The World as Will and Idea 279 Auguste Comte The Positive Philosophy 281 System of Positive Philosophy 282 John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women 288 Frederick Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 299 viii CONTENTS SJJren Kierkegaard Stages of Life's Way 302 Works of Love 312 Journals and Papers 313 Margaret Fuller Ossoli Woman in the Nineteenth Century 317 Lucretia Mott "Discourse on Woman" 323 Friedrich Nietzsche "The Greek Woman" 328 Beyond Good and Evil 330 Human, all-too-Human 334 The Joyful Wisdom 339 Thus Spake Zarathustra 341 The Twilight of the Idols 342 The Antichrist 343 Ecce Homo 343 The Will to Power 344 V. I. Lenin "The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic" 347 Josiah Royce Letter 352 On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America 353 William James The Principles of Psychology 354 Review: Bushnell's Women's Suffrage and Mill's Subjection of Women 355 Emily James Putnam The Lady 365 Emma Goldman "Victims of Morality" 370 "The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation" 372 "The Traffic in Women" 376 "Marriage and Love" 377 Anna Garlin Spencer Woman's Share in Social Culture 381 CONTENTS ix Charlotte Perkins Gilman Women in Economics 391 The Home 394 The Man-Made World 396 His Religion and Hers 404 George Santayana The Life of Reason 405 Otto Weininger Sex and Character 407 Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals 417 Max Scheler "Toward an Idea of Man" 424 "On the Meaning of the Women's Movement" 425 C. S. Lewis Letter to Eddison 437 Mere Christianity 437 Simone de Beauvoir The Ethics of Ambiguity 439 The Second Sex 440 Jose Ortega y Gasset Man and People 449 On Love 454 Julian Marias Metaphysical Anthropology 460 Appendix Maryellen MacGuigan: "Is Woman a Question?" 468 Index 481 Preface People of Socrates' time were frequently aghast at the questions he would ask. Their responses were of the sort elicited by very dumb or ex tremely obvious questions: "Don't you know? Everyone else does." Socrates was hardly alone in his knack for asking such questions. Phi losophers have always asked peculiar questions most other people would never dream of asking, convinced as the latter are that the answers were settled long ago in the collective "wisdom" of society, including ques tions about woman: should women be educated? should they rule socie ties? should they be subordinate in marriage? do women and men have the same virtues, or are there separate virtues for each? which of the dif ferences between women and men are conventional, and which are natu ral? is there a woman's work? do women and men have different types or degrees of rationality? Philosophers of the most diverse periods have raised these questions and their answers were often quite creative, not merely reflecting the conventions and mores of their societies. With the publication of this anthology, their writings will be brought together in a single volume for the first time. This anthology differs from others not just in its inclusiveness. It also contains several translations of material previously unavailable in English. Moreover, it recovers for to day's readers some pieces that, though previously published in English, were virtually lost because they were long out of print and relatively few copies seem to have endured. In addition, this anthology uncovers discussions of woman unfamiliar to many because they have essentially been buried in philosophical works on other subjects. Although many philosophers have written about woman, relatively lit tle is known about this aspect of the history of philosophy. Even less is known about the more feminist treatments of the various questions, and a remarkable number of philosophers were, at least by the standards of their own times, raging feminists. Questions about woman appear to have been generally regarded as not serious philosophical questions, and feminist answers to such questions have received the worst treatment. For example, Plato proposed that women be educated in the same way as men, those capable becoming rulers. Plato was not always so favorably disposed toward women, and he hastens to add his conviction that no matter what the capabilities of a woman, there will always be some man who can best her. What is revealing is not Plato's apparent ambivalence xi