Aristotle on female inferiority

[Also]

Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is the most revered philosopher of Greek antiquity. His thoughts had a great influence on Arabian and Jewish thinkers and on the Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages. He made a significant contribution to all areas of philosophy and natural sciences, tutored Alexander the Creat, and founded the so-called Peripatetic School at the Lyceum Athens.

According to Aristotle the goodness of a thing lies in the realization of its ultimate nature, and with this principle in mind he attempted to divine the nature of the woman.

Aristotle was firmly convinced that woman was, in fact, an incomplete or mutilated man. He saw the male as the ultimate realization of humanity, and the female as necessarily inferior.

In spite of this negative view of womankind, Aristotle treated individual women with kindness and compassion. He was happily married, and following the death of his wife, took her former handmaid as a concubine. He had one legitimate daughter and an illegitimate son whom he adopted and to whom, as was the custom in those days, he left his estate.


Aristotle c. (38 B.C.-32 A.D.)
-- One of the most important philosophers of all time, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great

Woman may be said to be an inferior man.
-- Poetics

The female is, as it were, a mutilated male.
-- Generation of Animals

Females are weaker and colder in nature, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural deficiency.
-- Generation of Animals

What difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.
-- Politics

The female is softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young; the male, on the other hand, is more spirited than the female, more savage, more simple and less cunning. The traces of these differentiated characteristics are more or less visible everywhere, but they are especially visible where character is the more developed, and most of all in man.
-- History of Animals

Woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory. She is also more wakeful , more shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and requires a smaller quantity of nutriment.
-- History of Animals

http://www.newfoundations.com/WOMAN/Aristotle.html

As with the master's rule over the slave, and humanity’s rule over plants and other animals, Aristotle defines these kinds of rule in terms of natural hierarchies: "[T]he male, unless constituted in some respect contrary to nature, is by nature more expert at leading than the female, and the elder and complete than the younger and incomplete" (1259a41). This means that it is natural for the male to rule: "[T]he relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled" (1245b12). And just as with the rule of the master over the slave, the difference here is one of reason: "The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete" (1260a11).

There is a great deal of scholarly debate about what the phrase "lacks authority" means in this context. Aristotle does not elaborate on it. Some have suggested that it means not that women's reason is inferior to that of men but that women lack the ability to make men do what they want, either because of some innate psychological characteristic (they are not aggressive and/or assertive enough) or because of the prevailing culture in Greece at the time. Others suggest that it means that women’s emotions are ultimately more influential in determining their behavior than reason is so that reason lacks authority over what a woman does. This question cannot be settled here. I will simply point out the vicious circle in which women were trapped in ancient Greece (and still are in many cultures). The Greeks believed that women are inferior to men (or at least those Greeks who wrote philosophy, plays, speeches, and so forth did. These people, of course, were all men. What Greek women thought of this belief is impossible to say). This belief means that women are denied access to certain areas of life (such as politics).

[...]

What else does Aristotle have to say about the rule of men over women? He says that the rule of the male over the female and that of the father over children are different in form from the rule of masters over slaves. Aristotle places the rule of male over female in the household in the context of the husband over the wife (female children who had not yet been married would have been ruled by their father. Marriage for girls in Athens typically took place at the age of thirteen or fourteen). Aristotle says at 1259a40 that the wife is to be ruled in political fashion. We have not yet seen what political rule looks like, but here Aristotle notes several of its important features, one of which is that it usually involves "alternation in ruling and being ruled" (1259b2), and another is that it involves rule among those who "tend by their nature to be on an equal footing and to differ in nothing" (1259b5). In this case, however, the husband does not alternate rule with the wife but instead always rules. Apparently the husband is to treat his wife as an equal to the degree that it is possible to do so, but must retain ultimate control over household decisions.


[...]

Women have their own role in the household, preserving what the man acquires. However, women do not participate in politics, since their reason lacks the authority that would allow them to do so, and in order to properly fulfill this role the wife must pursue her own telos. This is not the same as that of a man, but as with a man nature intends her to achieve virtues of the kind that are available to her: "It is thus evident that…the moderation of a woman and a man is not the same, nor their courage or justice…but that there is a ruling and a serving courage, and similarly with the other virtues" (1260a19). Unfortunately Aristotle has very little to say about what women's virtues look like, how they are to be achieved, or how women should be educated. But it is clear that Aristotle believes that as with the master's superiority to the slave, the man's superiority to a woman is dictated by nature and cannot be overcome by human laws, customs, or beliefs.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-pol/

[Also]

you are just asking for a natiacutie wall of text reply.

natiacutie is driven by emotions and blind allegiance to a harmful self-righteous ideology, not by reason and knowledge.

Once we stop pretending that man-woman relationship is symmetrical in parts, that is, that a man is to a woman like a woman is to a man, and that sex is to man like sex is to woman, then we can have a better society more fit for our nature, and for both males and females.

I also hope Brighton a.k.a 'the western Chilean' sees this thread and stop with this infantility of labeling people in a negative way because they believe wives should obey their husbands.

[Heart of Oak]

man:

[Prisoner Of Ice]

Enough already, did you turn into frima/

[Also]

man:

"Silence is a woman's glory."

Amen.

[Heart of Oak]

Enough already, did you turn into frima/

Greece are to receive No more hand outs from Germany/Great Britain, So get used to poverty third worlder, You can't even pay your ww2 debt...

[Linebacker]

Aristotle doesn't seem like the kind of guy that got a lot of game.

I will refrain from reading any of his philosophies in the future in case its contagious.

[StonyArabia]

The matriarchal/semi matriarchal societies in the Arabian Desert, southern Arabia, and the Syrian Desert basically the Bedouins prove him wrong. I love how Queen Mavia was kicking Roman asses, a true Arab warrior. Let's we forget Hind bint Utubh who also lead the Arab forces into the Levant and managing to defeat her opponents.

[Highlands]

Cool story bro

[Basil]

Viewing women as inferior was a common place thought in Ancient Greece. That's why they ended up fucking teen boys. Out of pure philosophical reasons, so to speak.