Lloyd Response

Sammy Karon

25 January 2014

           

Genevieve Lloyd’s paper deals with the issue of “separate but equal,” which can be seen as a binary opposition of the male and female intellect. She starts off by noting that since the beginning of philosophy, women have been differentiated by men based on their assumed mental capacity. Lloyd notes that historically, women have been considered to be emotionally burdened while men have been considered intellectually gifted. While women have been associated with confusion, men have been associated with clarity. This first dichotomy between male and female mental capacity was clearly separate and unequal: men were more capable than women. However, a later philosopher, Gilligan, argued that it was possible for women to different but not less than men. Descartes contributed to the issue of separate but equal by arguing that the mind and body were separate entities. This concept made it possible for women to have different physical bodies and yet still have equal mental capacity. Because Descartes believed the mind was separate from the body, that meant that reason was separate from emotion, so it would no longer be logical to argue that because women have more emotions they have less mental capacity. Lloyd takes issue with this still, because she believes that differentiating between male and female intellect can lead to “complementary” arguments. Some people believe that because women are more emotional and men are more intellectual, together they form a perfect union. However, Lloyd believes that the “complementary” emotional attributes of women result from suppression. Women do not need to complement men to be significant in their own existence. Thus, Lloyd believes that the idea of separate but equal should not be used to understand the differences between the male and female mind. Although women have historically been perceived to be more emotional, that does not make them less intellectually competent. Female intellect does not exist to fill in the failings of men, and the idea that women and men exist to complement each other—with one side doing more work than the other—is not logically sound.

Lily Foy- Denying Access Based on Reason

In “Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy,” Genevieve Lloyd refers to binary oppositions such as reason/emotion, masculine/feminine, and active/passive very explicitly. These contrasts, in fact, are at the heart of her article.Beginning with Plato and the Greeks, Lloyd describes that reason has always been thought of as an escape from passion and pleasures. Through reason and order, men were able to access the public domain, including political activities, moral debates, etc. Women were denied access to these parts of society because they lacked the capacity for reason, acting instead upon emotion and less logically based reasoning systems. Femininity was associated with everything opposite of reason (passive, formless, unbound, vague, etc.), and Philo and Plato even went so far as to say that the feminine was actually a hindrance to reaching a virtuous life. That is not to say necessarily that the female is bad, but that in order to achieve a virtuous life, even females must put aside the feminine in favor of “masculine traits that mark the noble affections” (Lloyd 495). For men, however, it is only a matter of focusing on their already natural and present traits. This juxtaposition has continued into almost every gender comparison and debate since then; however, Lloyd argues that Descartes’ description of reason as a method or practice of thinking as opposed to a natural masculine trait created the opportunity for a different narrative of male and female. Because women were mostly educated in the home, they were never exposed to the public teachings that most boys learned. Women became the protectors of “the soft and sensuous” so that men could attain reason; instead of the female being seen as lesser, it was now complementary, even though the typical gender characteristics (male-reasonable, female-emotional) were still in place.

Response to Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy

Hande Lara Sever

                  Response  to Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy

Lloyd’s article is explicitly concerned with the matter of binary oppositions and she concentrates on the construction of gender difference, specifically reason versus emotion. She states that women are either regarded as less rational than men or as in having a distinctive style reasoning method which should be valued equally. She argues that the latter remark, the main objective of difference feminism, is a natural reaction to the development philosophical thought on Reason and is problematic. She elaborates on this by retelling the history of philosophical though on Reason and analyzing how women are positioned through it.

First, she concentrates on Philo, Augustine, Aquinas and states their opinions on binary oppositions. She states that Philo relates binary oppositions to the story of Genesis and associates reason with masculinity. Thus, argues that women can have access to reason if they lose their inferior traits that are ruled by emotions. Augustine opposes to this idea as a result of his belief in Christian spiritual equality. Thus he thinks women and men have equal access to Reason but does not challenge the structure because he thinks that women should follow the path of Reason with her subordination to men. For Aquinas intellectual nature is found both in men and women but women’s meaning is bound up with the reproduction of human nature which reinforces women’s exclusion from the actual manifestations of Reason. By retelling Philo, Augustine and Aquinas’s arguments on Reason she explains how women’s access to the realm of Reason is constructed through early philosophy. Afterwards she states that “male bias” in philosophical though goes deeper than Philo, Agustine and Aquinas’s arguments and she moves on to Descartes’ Method. She states that in seventeenth century Reason started to be considered as a skill rather than a distinctive feature of human nature. She proves this through analyzing Descartes’ Method. She stresses Descartes’ Method’s egalitarian aspects as it being written in vernacular and promising to make knowledge accessible to everyone. She argues that in practice his approach failed as a result of social constructs. She states that women couldn’t gain access to the collective endeavor of new science and were assigned responsibility of the sensuous world which reinforced the construction of feminine.

Lloyd concludes her article by stating that binary oppositions are constructed and is a product of male bias in the history of philosophical thought. Thus she thinks that any affirmation of the strengths of female difference that lacks the knowledge of history is destined to repeat the pitfalls of Western though regarding women.

Analysis of Lloyd's piece

Lloyd, Genevieve. Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy

Ultimate question: whether or how, implicitly or explicitly, the authors are extending or using the matter of binary oppositions such as reason/ emotion, masculine/ feminine, active/ passive, etc.

It has been normalized to believe that women think differently from men (that women are inferior to men, that women are lesser to men). Much of the assumptions regarding this gender dichotomy are due to the social construction of differences (through education, workforce, household, etc.). Lloyd analyses different philosophical views on the Genesis story, with a focus on the female/male oppositions.  Much of the critique centers on the disassociation between women and Reason (in this case, Reason is only achieved by men).

Lloyd explicitly analyzes the binary oppositions (reason/emotion, masculine/feminine, active/passive, vital functioning/generation, mind/body) by critiquing the works of Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes (all of whom were men).  

Philo’s work acknowledges the idea of “sense perception” which is symbolic of the woman. “Sense perception,” for me, is the capacity of using our “senses” (sight, hearing, touch, taste, etc.) in order to understand and the outside world (the keen awareness of our surroundings). However, it is evident that the “sense perception” of women, according to Philo, was embellished with emotion. It was seemingly impossible for women, as they held no Reason, to properly understand the “public arena” (or the outside world). The men, on the other hand, had Reason. Reason acknowledged a sense of “moral progress”. In order to exhibit “moral progress,” one must deny any existence femaleness characteristics.

While Philo believed that women lacked Reason, Augustine saw that women were capable of Reason (as both men and women were granted Reason by God). There are, however, bodily differences between man and woman. These bodily differences are not solely in association to anatomy, but rather the psychological (emotional) differences. (Descartes separation of the mind and body reiterates this idea).

Aquinas believes that women were created for men. Thus, women serve as “generational” (reproductive) tools to elongate the possible livelihood of the male gender.

Descartes explained that Reason was not a biological trait, but rather a learned trait. Although Descartes acknowledged the presence of women readers (by writing in a shared language), he failed to include women within his methods. This is an example of active/passive inclusion of women. He actively (or perhaps, half-actively) introduced the subject of the woman. However, with his use of the mind and body separation, he further accentuated the male and female differences. (I read Descartes’ Discourse on the Methods a few years back and recall the lack of references towards the female mind or body. Within the whole text, Descartes speaks upon the experiences of the male; while ignoring any existence of the female. Some of the first philosophical texts to introduce the female (thoughts, perceptions, desires, intelligence, etc.) within the discourse were Montaigne and later, Rousseau.) 

Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy

Caleb Parsons

Whether and how, implicitly or explicitly, the authors are extending or using the matter of binary oppositions such as reason/emotion, masculine/feminine, active/passive, etc.

In her article “Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy”, Genevieve Lloyd traces the development of binary oppositions between men and women in Western philosophical history. Lloyd analyzes the binary oppositions perpetuated throughout Western thought to distinguish women’s intellectual relevance. Wary of relying on these gender binaries, Lloyd aims to establish that difference can exist between two groups of people, men and women, and not imply inequality. Lloyd elucidates further stating, “What is intended, of course, is an affirmation of difference without subscribing to any covertly assumed norm…” Since all of the philosophers Lloyd examines are men, they only put forth the male perspective on Reason, thereby excluding the woman’s perspective from the public sphere. Lloyd’s efforts in this article are to understand the strengths of femininity out of the binary oppositions found in Western philosophy without subscribing to the hierarchies that evolve out of the oppositions. Lloyd does not deny that there is a difference between men and women, but what she refutes is that men possess superior agency and ability to exercise reason. Conscious of the interwoven threads of gender norms, Lloyd is sure to explain that, “The ideals of rationality have incorporated a transcending of the feminine, and the 'feminine' itself has been partly constituted by its occurring within that structure.”  Lloyd understands that in order to analyze gender difference she must maneuver around the male norms that created notions of femininity in the first place. Once aware of the structures of male dominance, Lloyds argues that people will be better equipped to affirm the strengths of women's difference without playing into these structures.  

Rational Counterparts

In Lloyd’s article, “Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy,” she highlights the historical precedence of gender binaries particularly instances when women were equated as non-rational beings, symbolically or otherwise, and men were equated as the normalcy for reason. Kant and Rousseau believed in “complimentary” forces between men and women; since, men are rational, women can’t also be. The idea that women “lack the capacity” for reason stems from antiquities, including the allegorical work of Philo who used the fall of man in Genesis to present women as beings of “sense perception” and further presents sensual perception as “the source of disorders of the soul” and sin itself.

Lloyd also presents philosophical standings which didn’t associate a natural division of thought process by gender at birth, but rather societal separation and cultural development. Augustine depicted women as symbolic representations of the emotional, rather than lacking the ability to attain rational thought, but the “physical subordination” of women—which Aquinas extends by explaining woman as “man’s helpmate”—inherent in society forces women to abandon feminine characteristics to achieve “moral progress.”

Perhaps the most progressive of the philosophers which Lloyd discusses is Descartes, who believed that reason is a way of thought, which can be attained by anyone. Ultimately, this ideal that reason is a skill, instead of a character trait was adopted into modern thought, but historical precedence still partially dictates stereotypical ideals of gender differentiation in regards to reason. This becomes evident from the beginning of Lloyd’s argument when she describes math as an “unfeminine activity” in the context of a necessary relief from feminine duties for Virginia Woolf’s character Katherine Hilbery. Modern feminists such as Carol Gilligan, even draw distinctions between masculine and feminine thought processes, explaining that feminine thought forms from “a different mode of social experience and interpretation” than its male counterpart.  

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