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• W2605343409 abstract "577 The Thomist 77 (2013): 577-616 THE BIOLOGY OF WOMAN IN THOMAS AQUINAS ERIC M. JOHNSTON Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey RUDENCE ALLEN’S The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.–A.D. 12501 tells a story both uncontroversial and deeply problematic. As the title implies, her overall narrative is that Aristotle’s views on women gradually triumphed over all others in Western thought. This “revolution” culminated in Aristotle’s triumph over the university thinkers of the thirteenth century, including St. Thomas Aquinas. She concludes, “St. Thomas nearly perfectly mirrors Aristotle’s arguments for sex polarity”—that is, the view that men are better than women—“on the level of nature. Because of his explicit repetition of the Aristotelian rationale, he became one of the most important sources for defending Aristotelian sex polarity.”2 The greater part of her study examines that Aristotelian view. “The most striking aspect of Aristotle’s analysis,” according to Sr. Allen, is the way he combined metaphysics and biology with gender theories perhaps more proper to philosophical anthropology and political philosophy.3 In biology, Aristotle “claimed that previous philosophers were intuitive in their arguments, while he was offering scientific evidence that woman 1 Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.– A.D. 1250 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1985). 2 Ibid., 386. 3 Ibid., 83. P 578 ERIC M. JOHNSTON did not contribute seed to reproduction. It is ironic that the intuitive insights of his predecessors have turned out to be correct while Aristotle’s ‘scientific’ evidence has turned out to be false.”4 Sr. Allen’s description of Aristotelian “metaphysics” might raise some eyebrows: “The two primary opposites, cold and hot, were the metaphysical bases that Aristotle applied to his theory of generation.” But her conclusion is uncontroversial: “As a consequence, the mother provided only material to generation, while the father provided form. . . . Aristotle described woman as infertile, imperfect, deformed, and containing a basic inability.”5 Finally, in an apparent non sequitur, Aristotle applied his metaphysical and biological theories to woman herself: “the greater coldness in woman meant that she was an inferior kind of human being.”6 “Women have an inferior reasoning capacity. . . . Women could not be philosophers.”7 “As a consequence of woman’s inferior rational capacities, she was not considered capable of virtuous activity. . . . He argued that a woman becomes virtuous by placing herself in obedience to a virtuous man.”8 “Therefore, the foundation for the sex-polarity theory in ethics followed from the sex polarity in epistemology, which in turn followed from the sex polarity in natural philosophy and metaphysics.”9 Sr. Allen’s attempt to save St. Thomas gives a clue to why her uncontroversial account of Thomas’s Aristotelian gender theory is deeply problematic for Thomism more generally. “This giant in Christian philosophy,” she says, “developed a new support for a theory of sex complementarity”—that is, the view that men are not better than women—“when considering male and female identity on the level of grace and in heaven. . . . Thomas achieved a new kind of consistency by arguing that while 4 Ibid., 84. 5 Ibid., 95. 6 Ibid., 97. 7 Ibid., 103. 8 Ibid., 111. 9 Ibid., 111. THE BIOLOGY OF WOMAN IN AQUINAS 579 woman begins life as imperfect in relation to man, she may end in eternal life in a full relation of sex complementarity.”10 Nature and grace exist in happy discontinuity. The “giant of Christian philosophy,” it appears, uses a philosophical account of woman that is metaphysically risible, biologically groundless, and epistemologically not rooted in the senses—and this, indeed, is the philosophy of Thomas’s paradigmatic “philosopher,” Aristotle. Thomas is only saved through a theology fundamentally unhinged from this problematic philosophy. Sr. Allen’s uncontroversial account on an apparently marginal issue ends up being decisive for our understanding of Thomas’s use of philosophy, his metaphysics, his epistemology, and his interest in Aristotle. It is all the more problematic if one appreciates the centrality of biology to Aristotle’s thinking; explicitly biological works fill twenty-nine percent of the pages in a standard edition of his works. R. J. Hankinson..." @default.
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• W2605343409 title "The Biology of Woman in Thomas Aquinas" @default.
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