‘Citizens but second-class: women in Aristotle’s Politics’ (original) (raw)

Women and Natural Hierarchy in Aristotle

Hypatia, 1994

In this paper, I examine the frame of reference in Aristotle's Politics within which he makes claims about women and their place in his conception of politics.

Family Matters: Aristotle's Appreciation of Women and the Plural Structure of Society

The American Political Science Review, 1996

Aristotle is no misogynist, but the way this charge is answered can skew the understanding of his political theory as a whole. Those who dismiss the charge of misogyny on grounds that Aristotle covertly advocates women's participation in civic affairs tend to obscure the leading thesis of thePolitics, namely, that polis and household differ in kind, not merely in number. I argue that Aristotle condones the exclusion of women from civic affairs because this practice conforms to the natural complementarity of the sexes and because it fortifies the naturally pluralistic structure of society. By securing these underpinnings, Aristotle frames a constitution that best supports women and men in their pursuit of human excellence.

Aristotle on the Deliberative Abilities of Women

In this paper I examine what it is about a woman's nature that, according to Aristotle, makes her suited only for partial authority in the household but not the polis. I situate this question within the context of his rejection of Plato's more enlightened proposals about women in the Republic. My central claim is that, contra Plato, Aristotle thinks women command only partial authority in the household because their deliberative faculties are intrinsically deficient or limited in comparison to those of freeborn males. I motivate this presumption by critically examining the main interpretations of Aristotle's notorious claim that a woman's deliberative faculty is 'without authority' (akuron) and support it with evidence from the text. I also examine what implications this insight has for our interpretation of that elusive 'without authority' qualification.

From Tragedy to Hierarchy and Back Again: Women in Greek Political Thought

The American Political Science Review, 1986

The earliest attempts at a theoretical understanding of politics occur in the city-states of ancient Greece. Women had no place in the politics of those cities. However, the Greek tragedians and philosophers raised questions about the fundamental assumptions underlying political life by introducing women into their writings. Thus, women appear in some Greek tragedies as a counter to the male sense of political efficacy—the sense that men can create through speech and ignore the facts of physical creation entailed in the process of reproduction. A discussion of two tragedies,The Seven Against Thebesand theAntigone, suggests how the failure of male political leaders to acknowledge the demands of the physical and that which is different brings on tragedy. The Socratic response in theRepublicis to overcome tragedy by making the male and the female the same. Aristotle attempts to incorporate sexual difference in the theoretical framework of hierarchy. Finally, there is a brief considerat...

Deliberating Without Authority: Fortenbaugh on the Psychology of Women in Aristotle's Politics

This paper critically examines William Fortenbaugh's infl uential interpretation of Aristotle's claim that women have deliberative faculties that 'lack authority' at Pol. I.13 1260a13. According to Fortenbaugh, Aristotle is essentially stating there that women are unable to control their emotions. After setting out the primary motivation for this proposal, I examine two objections that have been raised against it, ultimately arguing that they are unsuccessful. I then proceed to develop my own objection, according to which Fortenbaugh's interpretation cannot explain why Aristotle ascribes to women partial authority in the household but not the polis. Though this implies that we should reject this common interpretation of the remark at 1260a13, I concede that there is evidence in the biological works which confi rms that Aristotle does think that women are naturally unable to control their emotions. This naturally raises a question about whether the views in the Politics depend upon those in the biology or vice versa. I conclude with some refl ections that must be borne in mind by any attempt to answer this important question. What is soul? What relation does it have to the body? Is the soul identical to the self or is the self some aspect of the soul? To a contemporary philosopher these questions will naturally seem antiquated. It is more fashionable nowadays to inquire about the mind. There are, no doubt, historical reasons for this, which have to do with Descartes' infl uential rejection of the scholastic conception of soul. Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that many questions asked by contemporary philosophers of mind had analogues in antiquity. In addition to pondering what mind is, contemporary philosophers wonder about its relation to the brain and the physical world more generally. Similarly, ancient philosophers debated the nature of the soul, its relation to the body, and its place in nature. For this reason, even though contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind cannot be wholly solved by studying ancient debates about the soul, careful consideration of the latter may at least prove instructive food for thought for contemporary philosophers. One ancient philosopher whose views about the soul are especially intriguing is Aristotle. Contemporary functionalists have even found a version of their view in