[PEN-L:8762] Re: Woman as the Other of Philosophy (was (Fwd) Review of *Hegel andMarx....)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Think of how all philosophers in the European tradition ,   including Marx, most regularly use "man" to refer to the human species the human type-being. Think of how there are almost no women philosophers , socalled, in the history of philosophy.(only ending maybe with Simone de Bouvoir and Angela Davis :>)

Charles Brown


>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> 07/01/99 07:25PM >>>
Ken wrote:
<<The "Other" is also women of every race and status. Kant did not think
that women were fit for philosophy for example. Aristotle's views on women
are not very "enlightened" either to say the least. Plato was more
enlightened in many ways but in the Laws as contrasted with The Republic he
is not very progressive in his views. Nietsche views on women are
notorious. Bring a whip he says somewhere. Some woman turned him down for a
butcher I gather.>>

>From Frances Olsen's "Hegel, Sexual Ethics, and the Oppression of Women:
Comments on Krell's 'Lucinde's Shame'":

*****  Hegel might say that to romantics [like Schlegel who wrote
_Lucinde_, whose heroine Lucinde defies social conventions and has an
ecstatic affair with a married man; Olsen says that sexist men can love and
fantasize about "Exceptional Women" like Lucinde all the while remaining
sexist] anything short of insanity may seem dull. Hegel does offer an
alternative to Lucinde--but the alternative is to be a plant. Hegel tells
us: "The difference between men and women is like that between animals and
plants. Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because
their development is more placid."
	Nietzsche suggests that the choice is between Lucinde and the
castrating, moralizing woman. Hegel seems to offer us the choice of Lucinde
or plants; that is objects that may be moved by others but do not move
themselves.  *****

Woman as an embodiment of passivity.... And remember how central to the
Hegelian thought activity or movement is?

Yoshie