Philosophy 152 Philosophy of Human Nature Darwall Fall 1996 DE BEAUVOIR III For next time: read the Introduction to De Beauvoir's Second Sex, distributed Also: I have made revisions to De Beauvoir I (now available on the web: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sdarwall/Phil152a.html) giving a more adequate treatment of De Beauvoir's views about the passionate person and the fully free person. I Last time I mentioned various statistics that are evidence of the widespread subordination of women by men. Throughout the world, women are apparently subject to forms of violence, deprivation, and disadvantage as women. These phenomena are far from unknown in our own country. Quite apart from being subject to forms of violence (rape, domestic violence) and economic disadvantage (mother-led households), it hasn't been that long that women have been entitled even to vote or since the laws governing marriage treated wives as essentially the property of their husbands. Until recently, it was legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife or for wives to hold property. II The view that women are appropriately subordinated to men because of their nature also finds expression in some of the philosophers we have read. Consider, for example, Aristotle: "the male rules over the female" and although both men and women can have all the human excellences (virtues), "the temperance of a man and of a woman, or the courage and justice of a man and of a woman, are not . . . the same." (Politics, Bk. i) III Last time we distinguished sex from gender. But what exactly is gender? Unlike sex, which is a biological category, gender has to do with how we think of and represent ourselves, individually and socially. If a culture has a norm that men are subordinate to men, then it is part of the gender identity of women that they are to be ruled by men. Or again, if a culture has different standards of excellence for men and women, such that a certain trait, which would be a virtue in a man, would not be in a man, or vice versa, then they clearly distinguish between different genders. They would have one conception of masculine virtue and another conception of feminine virtue? IV Question for discussion: Is the idea that there are different virtues/vices for men/women built into the very idea of gender? Is the notion of female subordination built into the very idea of gender? V Loptson provides a nice overview of some of the history of the development of feminism and of some of the issues and distinctions. See, esp., p. 208-222, 229-231. A. Origins in Condorcet, Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill/Harriet Taylor B. Liberal feminism vs. "difference feminism"