Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Marguerite Deslauriers - Aristotle On Sexual Difference - Metaphysics, Biology, Politics
Marguerite Deslauriers - Aristotle On Sexual Difference - Metaphysics, Biology, Politics
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Translations
Notes
References
Index Locorum
General Index
Acknowledgments
English titles are followed by Latin titles (when in common use) in square
brackets.
Works of Aristotle
A.Po. Posterior Analytics [Analytica posteriora]
Cat. Categories [Categoriae]
Const. Ath. Constitution of Athens [Atheniensium respublica]
DA On the Soul [De anima]
DC On the Heavens [De caelo]
Div. On Divination in Sleep [De divinatione per somnum]
EE Eudemian Ethics [Ethica Eudemia]
EN Nicomachean Ethics [Ethica Nicomachea]
GC Generation and Corruption [De generatione et corruptione]
GA Generation of Animals [De generatione animalium]
HA History of Animals [Historia animalium]
IA Progression of Animals [De incessu animalium]
Juv. On Youth and Old Age, Life and Death [De juventute et senectute, De vita et morte]
MA Movement of Animals [De motu animalium]
Mem. On Memory and Recollection [De memoria et reminiscentia]
Met. Metaphysics [Metaphysica]
Meteor. Meteorology [Meteorologica]
PA On the Parts of Animals [De partibus animalium]
Phys. Physics [Physica]
Physiog. Physiognomics [Physiognomica]
Pol. Politics [Politica]
Prob. Problems [Problemata]
Rhet. Rhetoric [Rhetorica]
Sens. On Sense and Sensibilia [De sensu et sensibilibus]
Somn. On Sleep and Waking [De somno et vigilia]
Top. Topics [Topica]
Vir. Virtues and Vices [De virtutibus et vitiis libellus]
Works of Plato
Criti. Critias
Polit. Statesman [Politicus]
Rep. Republic [Respublica]
Smp. Symposium
Tht. Theaetetus
Ti. Timaeus
Hippocratic works
Aph. Aphorisms [Aphorismata]
Epid. Epidemics [Epidemiae]
Genit. Generation [De semine/De genitura]
Gland. Glands [De glandulis]
Mul. Diseases of Women [De morbis mulierum]
Nat. Mul. Nature of Women [De natura muliebri]
Nat. Puer. Nature of the Child [De natura pueri]
Prorrh. Prorrhetic [Prorrhetica]
Steril. Sterility/Barrenness [De sterilibus]
Superf. Superfetation [De superfetatione]
Vict. Regimen [De diaeta/De victu]
Other works
Ag. Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Ch. Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers [Choephoroi]
De die nat. Censorinus, The Natal Day [De die natali]
De E Plutarch, On the E at Delphi [De E apud Delphos]
DK Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
D. L. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Ekkl. Aristophanes, Assemblywomen [Ecclesiazousae]
Eq. Aristophanes, The Knights [Hippeis]
Hippocr. Epid. Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates’ ‘Epidemics’ [In Hippocratis Epidemiarum]
II. Homer, Iliad
Is. et Os. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris [De Iside et Osiride]
Lys. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Od. Homer, Odyssey
Oec. Xenophon, Economics [Oeconomicus]
Pyth. Pindar, Pythian
Ref. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies [Refutatio omnium haeresium]
Symp. Xenophon, Symposium
Thesm. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae
Translations
Unless otherwise noted, quotations in English from Plato’s works are drawn
from The Complete Works of Plato, edited by John M. Cooper
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997), sometimes modified.
Aristotle on Sexual Difference
Introduction
The Philosophical Problem of Sexual Difference
Aristotle makes two remarks about the differences between the sexes that
have become infamous. The first occurs in the Generation of Animals,
where he says that “we must accept that the female nature (τὴν θηλύτητα
φυσικήν) is, as it were, a deformity (ἀναπηρίαν)” (GA 6.4 775a15–16). In
this context he is speaking of ways in which offspring may be produced
perfectly or imperfectly, claiming that females in utero develop more slowly
because they are colder and treating that coldness as a kind of defect. The
second is a remark in the Politics about women in their relation to men in
the household. In discussing the difference between natural rulers and
natural subjects, he treats women as one kind of natural subject and justifies
their subjection to the rule of men by saying that “the woman has [a
deliberative faculty], but it is without authority (ἄκυρον)” (Pol. 1.13
1260a14).
Each of these remarks requires analysis and interpretation. What is
striking at the outset, however, is that they bear no obvious relation to each
other. Aristotle does not suggest in the Generation of Animals that the
defect in the female caused by the colder temperature of her body has
cognitive or moral manifestations; it seems to be evident only in a slower
pace toward achieving physical maturity. The discussion of women as
natural subjects in the Politics makes no mention of the coldness of the
female or any other bodily feature distinctive of women. It treats the lack of
authority of the deliberative faculty of women as a natural fact, without
specifying any physical cause. Although it is common to suppose that the
defect Aristotle attributes to women as political beings must somehow
emerge from the biological defect he identifies in females, no clear picture
has emerged of a causal connection between these defects, or of the
conception Aristotle has of the differences between men and women. The
project of this book is to construct such a picture.
This book approaches that project through a number of questions:
(1) What were the contexts in which Aristotle came to explain the role and the origin of female
animals in his biology, and the role of women in political life in the Politics? How did he see
the philosophical significance of these discussions?
(2) How did he understand sexual difference in biological terms as a difference in the matter of
males and females? Which questions did the biological account help him to resolve? Which
resources, from his predecessors and from his own prior philosophical commitments, did he
draw on in formulating that account?
(3) How did Aristotle understand sexual difference in political terms? If women are females, they
are also, on his account, persons. How does sexual difference express itself in human beings
and in particular in the social structures—household and polis—that Aristotle thinks are
natural to people? How does Aristotle argue that a distinction in the roles of the sexes in the
political realm is both required by nature and justified by pragmatic considerations of the
collective good?
(4) If the rule of men over women is based on psychological differences, in particular differences
in the deliberative capacities of the sexes, are those derived from physiological differences or
independent of them? Are the political roles of men and women ultimately based on their
material differences? Can we trace a causal connection between those features that Aristotle
identifies in his biological works as characterizing the bodies of male and female and the
features that he takes to distinguish men and women? That is, did Aristotle believe that
women’s bodies somehow caused them to have intellectual or moral deficiencies that rendered
them less fit than men for the activities of political life?
(5) Finally, how are we to interpret the ambivalence Aristotle expresses about the worth of the
female and of women? Can we reconcile his claims that they are inferior with his arguments
for their value ?
In addressing these questions, this book has several aims. The first is to
provide a comprehensive analysis of Aristotle’s conception of sexual
difference in animal bodies and in political life. The second is to
demonstrate that Aristotle takes sexual difference to be valuable to an
animal species, and to the city-state; this is true even though he maintains
both that females are physiologically deficient relative to males and that
women should naturally be ruled by men. The third is to establish the link
between the explanation Aristotle offers for the deficiencies of the female
body and his justification of distinct roles for the sexes in the household and
the city.
I maintain two theses. The first is that Aristotle, in his discussions of
sexual difference, is primarily concerned to defend the idea that sexual
difference is valuable, and as a corollary that females and women are
valuable (even as he claims that they are inferior to males and men).
Although female bodies are defective relative to male bodies, and the
deliberative capacities of women are limited relative to those of men,
Aristotle makes the case that, viewed from a larger perspective, these
defects and limitations are good in two senses. First, and primarily, they are
good for the structures in which sexual difference occurs: the reproductive
couple, the household, and ultimately the genus of animals and the polis;
and second, they are good for females and women, in allowing them to
carry out the tasks nature assigns to them. The second thesis is that Aristotle
did believe the bodies of women were responsible for their status as natural
subjects under the rule of men, but that the defect that bestowed that status
on them was not so much an intellectual as a moral incapacity. This account
of sexual difference in Aristotle makes two points that may be
controversial. First, it challenges the idea that Aristotle’s assessment of
females and women was wholly negative, without disputing that he
maintained a hierarchy of sex in which the female is inferior to the male.
Second, it reconceives the inferiority that Aristotle believes distinguishes
women from men as a limited failure of moral authority rather than a case
of akrasia or a comprehensive intellectual failing.
I argue that for Aristotle the philosophical problem of sexual difference
emerges from the tension between his view that the female is imperfect
relative to the male and that men by nature should rule over women, and his
commitment to two other claims: (1) that sex is a division in the matter and
not in the form of the genus animal—so there is no difference in essential
form between the male and female members of a sexually differentiated
species, and (2) that sexual difference, and by implication the existence of
sexed individuals, is good, both for generation and for the political life
characteristic of human beings; and as a corollary, that females and women
are valuable. I begin by identifying just how Aristotle would describe both
the physiological and the psychological defects of women; I then ask how
those defects might also in his view be benefits, and how they might be
causally connected.
Aristotle does not argue for the inferiority of women, either in the
biology or in the political writings. He did believe in their inferiority, but he
largely represents that view as self-evident. What he took to be less obvious
was their value and usefulness, or, more precisely, the value and usefulness
of sexual difference, both in the generation of offspring and in political life,
and so his discussions of females, women, and sexual difference focus on
their contributions to different aspects of the lives of animals, both non-
human and human. In this he is opposing his viewpoint to that of his
predecessors, many of whom associated sexual difference with affliction
and represented women as an evil, if a necessary one. Prior to Aristotle,
most discussions of the sexes suggest that it would be better if there were
no sexual generation, no females, and no women. Against that background,
Aristotle is arguing for the value of sexual difference and of females and
women.
One way in which Aristotle articulates the value of sexual difference and
of females is by offering teleological explanations for the generation of
females, for the concoction of the female’s fertile residue, for the social role
played by women, and for sexual difference both as a biological and as a
political phenomenon. The framework for those explanations is Aristotle’s
account of natural teleology, that is, of the operation of final causes in the
generation and the existence of natural phenomena.1 A final cause is
defined by Aristotle at Physics 2.3 194b33 as “that for the sake of which”
(το οὗ ἕνεκα), and is often described as a goal (telos). In natural philosophy
“that for the sake of which” usually falls into one of three categories: (1) a
natural substance as the goal of a process of generation in which a potential
for form is realized, (2) a function performed by a natural being, or (3) an
object of desire for an animal or a person.2 So a teleological explanation is
generally one that appeals to a natural substance as a goal, to the function of
an entity, or to a desire in order to account, respectively, for (1) the process
of formation of the substance, (2) the parts or features of the natural being
and their constitutive materials insofar as these support the functions, and
(3) the actions of a person or animal. In discussions of sexual difference it is
final causes as natural substances and as functions that concern us. To claim
that the female is a final cause of animal generation is to say that the nature
of an animal kind has the female animal as a goal in the generation of the
kind. And to claim that sexual difference is valuable is to say that there is
some function for the sake of which that difference exists. These are not
self-evident claims, but I argue that they are justified by Aristotle’s
discussions of sexual difference.
Three features of that discussion deserve highlighting insofar as they
bear on teleological explanation. The first is that while Aristotle generally
opposes final causation with material necessity (that things “are thus in
respect of their character and nature,” as he says at PA 1.1.642a35), so that
something produced by final causation is not produced by material
necessity, he claims that the female fertile residue, the menses, is produced
both by conditional necessity and by material necessity—that is, both as a
condition necessary for the realization of a telos and as a result of the
coldness of the female body. In chapter 2, section 2.9, I discuss this claim
and argue that the female animal similarly is a result not only of material
necessity operating in the course of the generation of an animal, but also as
a result of the final causes that govern generation.
The second feature of the discussion of sexual difference as teleological
that should be emphasized is that the notion of “function” is not restricted to
the functions that an individual animal or person might perform. The
functions of an animal are generally those that are carried out by the
individual animal; sensation, digestion, and the concoction of a fertile
residue are all functions that any well-formed animal performs as an
individual. But there are other functions that are equally natural to the
animal but require collaboration: for example, the generation of another
animal like itself, or, in the case of political animals, collaborative activities
such as dam building among beavers. This means that some of the functions
that are final causes for an animal kind are not achievable by the individual.
In sexually differentiated species these collaborative functions include not
only the generation of another animal like themselves, but also the
separation of efficient and material causes of generation, and the
management of households and political communities. My discussion of the
value of female animals and women, and of sexual difference as a
biological phenomenon, emphasizes the importance of these collaborative
functions (see chaps. 2 and 3, sections 2.9 and 3.2).
A third point about teleology in discussions of sexual difference is that
Aristotle extends the notion of the natural to political functions and
institutions, describing, for example, the polis as a telos or goal that is
natural to human associations (Pol. 1.2 1252b30–32). This makes clear that
natural teleology is not restricted to biological phenomena, but it raises a
question about how to understand the notion of a natural telos in the case of
social entities like households and city-states, which do not themselves have
natures. I address that question in chapter 3 (section 3.2.4) and argue that
there are social functions that Aristotle treats as final causes, and that are
the teloi that help to explain his view that it is good that there should be
women in the household and in the polis.
A word about Aristotle’s motivations, and mine, in exploring the
conception of sexual difference. Some commentators have attributed
vicious motives to Aristotle in his discussion of females and women.3
Others have defended Aristotle by minimizing the evidence of misogyny in
his works as a mere reflection of his time, or attempting to show that he
adopted a pro-woman stance.4 But most assume that Aristotle was
motivated, at least in part, by an unexamined prejudice rather than an active
animus against women.5 The evidence seems to me to suggest a somewhat
different attitude: Aristotle asserts without argument that females and
women are inferior—a prejudice, although hardly an unthinking one, as I
will argue. He acknowledges and rejects the idea that women might be
suited for political authority, and he rejects contemporary theories of
generation according to which the contributions of male and female are
equally formative. But in all these cases his primary motivation is to explain
and justify the phenomenon of sexual difference as a benefit, either to an
animal species or to political community. His views on sexual difference are
neither to be explained nor excused, then, simply by dismissing them as
those of a man of his time; there were other men at the same time who did
not hold them.6 Rather, while provoked undoubtedly by a prejudice against
the female, they emerged from certain philosophical positions to which he
was committed—for example, that the better should rule the worse, that
form should, when possible, be kept separate from matter, and that
composite wholes should be made up of parts that differ in value. All these
commitments have a normative aspect, and the discussions of sexual
difference are as a result thoroughly imbued with questions of value.
This book examines the ambivalence Aristotle expresses about females,
his sense that they are inferior and yet valuable. The point is not to
exculpate him from charges of misogyny, but to treat his views about sexual
difference, females, and women as serious philosophical discussions—to
investigate the structure of the problem of sexual difference as Aristotle
understood it, to examine his conceptualization of sexual difference in both
physiological and political terms, and to consider how he might have traced
the political inferiority of women to causes in the constitution of their
bodies.7
Achieving clarity on Aristotle’s claims about females and women, their
context, and the contentious history of their interpretation is important on
its own terms. It is also important because the question of the relation
between sexed bodies and social and political roles is of abiding interest,
and in many respects Aristotle’s discussion of sexual difference has set the
terms of a historical debate that is ongoing. This is evident in the sorts of
arguments produced to explain sexual difference: those who continue to
think that women are peculiarly emotional or irrational are appealing to a
tradition that began with Aristotle of suggesting that women’s deliberative
capacities are somehow compromised (although, on my interpretation,
Aristotle did not think women were less rationally competent than men).
But it is also evident in the structure of such debates: when we assume that
something about the sexed body might be responsible for the psychological
differences that are supposed to track gender, we are drawing on a tradition
according to which limitations on women’s political participation might be
justified by pointing to defective features of their bodies. Almost all
arguments that aim to exclude women from citizenship, political
participation, or governance have asserted that women have imperfect
reasoning capacities, and they trace that imperfection to women’s bodies. In
understanding Aristotle on sexual difference, we understand the structure,
and the sources, of these arguments.
This book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 begins with accounts
of the origins of the sexes, as the background to Aristotle’s interest in the
purpose and value of sexual difference. These origin stories typically imply
that sexual difference is a misfortune, and that women in particular are bad,
and the chapter analyzes the metaphysical, physiological, and moral failings
that were supposed to characterize women. I consider early accounts of the
biology of sexual difference, from which Aristotle drew certain elements
for his own more systematic account. The chapter concludes with a section
on proposals in works by Aristophanes and Plato to grant women a role in
political governance, which provide the context for Aristotle’s account of
political sexual difference. He rejects the idea that sexual difference is a
misfortune and disputes the notion that the female is unqualifiedly bad, but
he also objects to the suggestion that there might be no difference in the
roles of men and women in political governance. In subsequent chapters
Aristotle’s positive views on the nature of sex as a distinction that manifests
itself both in the bodies and in the souls of men and women are explored.
Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of sex as a distinction in the matter of
the genus animal, as Aristotle formulates it in the Metaphysics, and then
explores sex as a phenomenon that is manifested in the bodies of individual
animals—in their matter. The rest of the chapter pursues two themes. The
first is the character of the sexes, and so it examines Aristotle’s definitions
of the sexes, the organs that differentiate them, and their generative
capacities. The second is the origin of the sexes—both how sex is
determined in the embryo, and whether the female as well as the male in a
species should be understood to be a natural telos. The conclusion of the
chapter is that Aristotle has the resources to argue both that females are
inferior to males and that they serve a natural purpose.
Chapter 3 turns to sexual difference in the political life of human beings.
Aristotle treats the rule of men over women as natural, and in the first two
sections I analyze this notion of natural rule and its implications for our
understanding of the differences that distinguish men and women, arguing
that the defect Aristotle attributes to women that determines them as natural
subjects does not make them incapable of virtue. The core of the chapter is
an examination of that defect; I argue that Aristotle’s claim that women’s
deliberative faculty is without authority should be interpreted as a limited
incapacity that allows women to participate in deliberation but makes them
unsuited to decision-making and hence to political rule. The chapter
concludes with a discussion of Aristotle’s arguments for the benefit of
sexual difference and the inclusion of women in the household and the
polis, despite their inferiority relative to men.
Chapter 4 considers the relation between sexual difference, as manifest
in male and female bodies, and sexual difference in the political context, as
manifest in the differing deliberative capacities of men and women. I
explore two paths one might pursue to establish a causal connection
between the physiology of the sexes and the different political roles that
should, on Aristotle’s account, be assigned to men and women. The first
moves from the colder temperature of the female body to compromised
sensory capacities to a defective deliberative capacity. The second moves
from the colder temperature of the female to a lower degree of spiritedness
to an incapacity for rule. I argue that the second is how Aristotle is likely to
have understood the link between the physiology of sex and its psychology.
It has greater explanatory power, for two reasons: first, it better explains the
particular defect that Aristotle attributes to women, and second, it allows us
to distinguish the imperfection of women from the imperfection of natural
slaves, a point on which Aristotle insists.
The conclusion addresses the coherence of Aristotle’s account of sexual
difference. It is an account that captures his sense that it is worse to be
female than male—because the condition of the female prevents her from
engaging fully in the best possible activity either of the nutritive or of the
rational soul—but also his insistence that it would be worse if there were no
females, and worse because the existence of sexually differentiated
individuals makes better not only the generation of animals but also the
political life characteristic of human beings.
1
Precursors to Aristotle’s Account of Sexual
Difference
1.2.2.1 Hesiod
Some early accounts of the origins of the sexes represent the creation of
women as a response to the actions of men. The most influential of these
accounts is that of Hesiod in Works and Days and the Theogony. In the
Theogony men are supposed to have preceded women in creation, although
Hesiod does not provide an explanation of their origins; men seem always
to have been there. In Works and Days men are created (in five
progressively degraded stages) by “the immortals” but are said to have
come from the same origin as the gods (107–76). Women are created only
after Prometheus steals fire from Zeus, who then directs Hephaestus to
fashion a being from earth and water, and to “put the voice and strength of a
human into it, and to make a beautiful, lovely form of a maiden similar in
her face to the immortal goddesses” (Works and Days 61–63).4 Athena
teaches this being needlework and weaving, Aphrodite bestows charm on
her, and Hermes provides her with “a dog’s mind and a thievish character”
(Works and Days 67). The being is Pandora, who was offered to men as a
gift but proved to be a source of anxiety and evil: “It was only after he
accepted her, when he already had the evil, that he understood” (Works and
Days 89)—recognized, that is, that woman in the person of Pandora was an
evil, despite her charming appearance.
This story is repeated in the Theogony, with many of the same elements
(535–84).5 Hesiod adds that from Pandora all other women are descended.
Women are described as a “deadly race” or “tribe” (τῆς γὰρ ὀλοίιόν ἐστι
γένος καὶ φῦλα γυναικῶν) (Theogony 591). There is no corresponding
“race” of men, although Hesiod does refer to people as a whole as a kind
(ἀνθρώπων τε γένος) (Theogony 50).6 In Hesiodic myths, then, there is no
claim to a coordinate status for the sexes: men are contemporaneous with
the gods, and women are created at a later moment as a distinct kind, and as
a form of punishment for men.
There are indications in Hesiod’s works of some ambivalence with
respect to women and an unwillingness to depict them as unqualifiedly bad.
First, Pandora herself is described as “a beautiful evil” or a “good evil”
(καλὸν κακὸν) (Theogony 585). Certainly καλὸν in this phrase might have
strictly aesthetic or sexual import and thus might not impute any moral
value to Pandora. But even if Pandora herself should be supposed to be
entirely evil, with the implication that all women, insofar as they are
descended from Pandora, are morally worthless, Hesiod makes it clear that
there is a second and greater evil that awaits any man who manages to
evade the evil that is woman: childlessness (Theogony 603–7). In this very
early account of the origins of women as a kind separate from men, women
are already represented as bad. They are not, however, the worst evil, and
they are necessary in some sense—necessary in order to allow men to avoid
the one fate worse than an association with women, which is the prospect of
having no descendants. Moreover, Hesiod holds out the possibility that a
man might acquire a competent wife (although everyone will find such a
good to be mixed with misfortune) (Theogony 607–10). So perhaps some
women will evade the inheritance of evil from Pandora to some extent. This
is faint praise, to be sure, but it may be that “Hesiod is more accurately
condemned as a misanthropist, rather than only as a misogynist.”7
However faint the praise, it is significant if we compare Hesiod to the
poet Semonides of Amorgos (7th century bce). In the fragment of an untitled
iambic poem on women, Semonides sets out a kind of typology of women,
classing them as comparable to animals or elements and making general
remarks that are unfavorable to women. Two of those remarks are
suggestive in their associations with Hesiod’s depictions of the origins of
women: “In the beginning the god made the female mind separately (χωρὶς
γυναικὸς θεὸς ἐποίησεν νόον τὰ πρῶτα)” (Semonides, 1–2), and “Zeus has
contrived that all these tribes (φῦλα) of women are with men and remain
with them. Yes, this is the worst plague (μέγιστον κακόν) Zeus has made—
women; if they seem to be of some use to him who has them, it is to him
especially that they prove a plague (κακόν)” (Semonides, 94–98).8
1.2.2.2 Empedocles
Hesiod, as I have said, offers an account of the origins of women, but seems
to take for granted the existence in the world of men, who precede women
and are different in origin and in kind. By contrast, Empedocles, in his
poem On Nature, posits contemporaneous origins for men and women
while still treating them as different kinds. The poem raises many
contentious issues of interpretation, not least because it must be
reconstructed from fragments collected from diverse ancient sources, the
ordering of which is difficult to establish. I am assuming the commonly
accepted reading of the poem according to which it offers two zoogonies,
one under the rule of Love and the other under the rule of Strife.9
Empedocles is trying to reconcile two ways of understanding the
universe: in one, the cosmos is in fact as it appears to us, changing and
variable, and in the other, the cosmos is not as it appears but rather as
reason suggests it should be, unchanging and undifferentiated. On Nature
suggests that the cosmos might be both—not simultaneously, but in
alternating phases that recur over time. Empedocles names two principles,
Love and Strife, that govern the universe in these alternating phases. The
two phases are described by Aetius (V 19.5) as occurring in four stages (or
four “comings-to-be [γενέσεις]”).10 Under Love, the four elements or “roots
[ῥιζώματα]” (earth, fire, water, and air) are blended progressively until they
become a single, undifferentiated entity; under Strife, these same elements
are progressively separated out from one another. When the rule of Love is
passing into Strife, or that of Strife is passing into Love, there are periods of
conflict during which living beings are created. For my purposes here, the
question is when, and how, sexual difference and sexual reproduction are
introduced during the creation of living beings.
Under the rule of Love, living things are brought into being by “the
coming-together and the unfolding of birth [ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε
γενέθλης]” (Empedocles 294; trans. Sedley, Creationism, 36).11 Love first
mixes the elements to create the materials from which living things are
constituted: flesh, feathers, leaves (DK B96, B98, B92). She then produces
“single-limbed [μουνομελῆ]” creatures (B57–58; trans. Sedley,
Creationism, 42). These might be either detached body parts or simple
organisms. Finally, these body parts or simple organisms are thrown
together haphazardly (B59) and combine into more complex organisms. Of
these, some are incapable of sustaining life, while others survive. This
zoogony suggests two points about sexual difference. First, human beings
seem to be sexually differentiated from the beginning, as soon as they
emerge as viable beings; Empedocles refers to what is created as “trees and
men and women and beasts and birds and water-nourished fish [δένδρεά τ’
ἐβλάστησε καὶ ἀνέρες ἠδὲ γυναῖκες, θῆρές τ’οἰωνοί τε καὶ ὑδατοθρέμμονες
ἰχθῦς], and long-lived gods first in their prerogatives” (B21). Second, the
sex of the beings produced under the rule of Love (along with all other
combinations of features of these beings) can only be a chance occurrence;
there is no purposiveness in the actions of Love.
Empedocles describes a second zoogony under the principle of Strife.12
It is a variant of a common myth according to which people are generated
spontaneously from the earth, concocted by heat.13 Initially, the beings
generated in this way are not sexually differentiated. They have a mix of
sexual features: “There came up androids with ox-heads, mixed in one way
from men and in another way in female form, outfitted with shadowy
limbs” (B61).14 (These must be the “whole-natured beings” (ὁλοφυεῖς) of
Aetius’s third stage.) In a subsequent stage, however, Strife divides these
beings into men and women (in fragment DK B62): “Separating fire
brought up the nocturnal shoots of both men and much-lamenting women
[ἀνδρῶν τε πολυκλαύτων τε γυναικῶν ἐννυχίους ὅρπηκας ἀνήγαγε
κρινόμενον πῦρ]” The adjective πολυκλαύτων (“full of lamentations” or
“much-grieving”) suggests that the human beings created under the rule of
Strife suffer, and perhaps that women suffer more than men.
Four points about sexual difference in the poem need to be emphasized.
First, it is clear that from their origins men and women are different kinds
or tribes both in the zoogony under Love and in the zoogony under Strife.
There is a question concerning the interpretation of the line in the new
fragment (numbered as a(ii)27 = 297 by Martin and Primavesi), which
reads, “This there is in the twin birth of mankind” (τοῦτο δ’ ἀν ἀ[νθρώ]πων
δίδυμον φύμα) (trans. Sedley, Creationism, 36). What does the “twin birth”
(or possibly “twin nature,” “twin offspring,” or “double race”) refer to?
Martin and Primavesi take it as a reference to sexual difference—so that the
line means that men and women are created as distinct kinds of being from
the outset.15 Sedley notes that this is a natural reading, especially because
Plato, in the Timaeus at 42a1–2, in introducing the notion that men might be
reincarnated as women, mentions the double nature of humankind (διπλῆς
δὲ οὔσης τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως)—clearly a reference to the two sexes.16
There is no question but that both men and women appear in both
zoogonies, but if the term “twin-birth” at 297 is a reference to sexual
difference, the notion that the sexes are different kinds of beings, with
different natures, is emphasized even further.
Second, there is a strong association between the more wretched phase
of human life under Strife and the origins of sexual desire and sexual
reproduction. With the emergence of men and women under the rule of
Strife, sexual reproduction is also introduced: “Upon him comes also,
through sight, desire for intercourse [τῷ δ’ ἐπὶ καὶ πόθος εἶσι δι’ ὄψιος
ἀμμιμνῄσκων]” (B64). This desire seems to emerge from the way in which
Strife has torn apart beings that were previously united.17 A testimony of
Aetius also reflects this:
The fourth [stage of coming-to-be of animals and plants] no longer from homogeneous stuffs,
such as earth and water, but by now through copulation, for some because the animals had gone
over to solid nourishment, for some also because the beauty of women produced in them the
stimulation of spermatic motion. (Aetius V 19.5)18
So sexual reproduction, rather than reproduction from the earth and other
elements, becomes the norm. The reasons for this are illuminating; we are
told that it is because animals (as opposed to plants) had started to consume
solid, rather than liquid, nourishment. This explanation is somewhat
mysterious, but perhaps the point is that by consuming solid nourishment
animals become capable of supplying the necessary stuff for the creation of
offspring. In some, who must be human because of the reference to women,
there is a second reason for sexual reproduction: sexual desire is born, the
beauty of women stimulating that desire physiologically as “spermatic
motion.”19 So in the zoogony under Strife, not only are women and men
distinguished as different kinds of beings, but they begin to reproduce
sexually, and men (and possibly also women and other animals) begin to
experience sexual desire.
Third, the origins of men and women under the rule of Strife also have
associations with temperature: men are produced in “the warmer part of the
earth” (B67) while women emerge from colder earth (B65). This
association of men with heat and of women with cold will prove enduring,
and it will be taken up by Aristotle in a more systematic way to explain the
different roles of male and female in the generation of offspring.
Finally, in both zoogonies there is an absence of intention on the part of
the creative forces: neither Love nor Strife seem to act with the intention of
creating sexual difference. They appear only to be responsible for bringing
things together or separating them out from one another. What emerges
from those processes of combination and separation are matters of chance
—the kinds of beings that emerge as viable, including the “kinds” of men
and women, are an accidental outcome of the physical forces at play.
Certainly Aristotle interpreted Empedocles as suggesting that the parts of
beings were organized “spontaneously [ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτομάτου]”—that is, by
chance (Physics 2.8 198b29–33), referring to the phrase “man-faced ox
progeny [βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρῳρα]” at DK B61, beings that emerge under the
rule of Strife.20
1.2.2.3 Plato
In Plato’s dialogues there are several accounts of the origins of sexual
difference and sexual reproduction that reflect the influence of Hesiod and
Empedocles both in their mythological settings, and in some of their details.
The most striking is found in the Symposium, in the speech of Aristophanes,
who describes an original time in which human nature encompassed three
kinds of beings: male, female, and androgynous (189d5–e6). These beings
were spherical, taking their origins from the sun (male), the earth (female),
and the moon (androgynous); and they were double, with two sets of each
characteristically human feature (four hands, two faces, etc.) (Smp. 189e6–
190b6). Those who were androgynous had a set of male genitals as well as
a set of female genitals. To reproduce, “they cast seed and made children,
not in one another, but in the ground, like cicadas” (Smp. 191b8–9). They
were powerful, and when they grew ambitious and attempted an attack on
the gods, Zeus decided to cut them in two as a way of reducing their power
(Smp. 190b6–d8). The halved beings “each longed for its own other half”
(ποθοῦν ἓκαστον τὸ ἣμισυ τὸ αὑτοῦ συνῄει) (Smp. 191a8), which explains
the sexual desire that human beings experience, whether they, or the objects
of their desire, are women or men. They were unable to reproduce in their
halved state until Zeus moved their genitals from the back to the front of
their bodies, “and in so doing invented reproduction in one another, by the
man in the woman [καὶ διὰ τούτων τὴν γένεσιν ἐν ἀλλήλοις ἐποίησε, διὰ
τοῦ ἄρρενος ἐν τῷ θήλει]” (Smp. 191c1–3). On this account, then, male and
female came into being simultaneously, and originally, but were
accompanied by a third, androgynous, sex compounded out of them. This
myth is unusual in its suggestion that men and women are equal in origin
and in status, since men are not prior to women and the sexes are two
halves of a single whole. But in this myth, as in many of the others we are
considering, men and women as we know them only came into being after a
time of crisis, and owing to the displeasure of the gods.
The myth of the Statesman repeats the idea that men and women emerge
after a crisis, and after a rupture in our relationship with the gods. The myth
describes two eras during which, in alternation, (1) the gods direct and rule
the cosmos (in the era of Kronos) and (2) the cosmos is left to direct itself
(in “our time”).21 People exist in both of these eras but reproduce through
different mechanisms in each. When the gods govern, people are made from
the earth as mature beings and regress over time until they eventually return
to the earth as infants (Polit. 271b4–c2, 272a2–3). Plato makes explicit that
reproduction in the era of Kronos is not sexual: “Reproduction from one
another was not part of the nature of things then [τὸ μὲν ἐξ ἀλλήλων οὐκ ἦν
ἐν τῇ τότε φύσει γεννώμενον]” (Polit. 271a5–6). So non-sexual
reproduction was possible when the gods ruled us, presumably because if
people are to be fashioned from the earth it will require a divine craftsman.
In “our time,” by contrast, we are not ruled by gods, but hold
responsibility for our own governance. As with the era of Kronos, “our
time” is initiated by a crisis during which many living creatures die (Polit.
273a1–4). Those who survive the crisis grow older, die and return to the
earth as aged beings (rather than regressing in age and returning to the earth
as infants, as in the time of Kronos). Along with the necessity of governing
ourselves, “there was a change to the mode of conception, birth and rearing,
which necessarily imitated and kept pace with the change to everything; for
it was no longer possible for a living creature to grow within the earth under
the agency of others’ putting it together” (Polit. 274a2–5).22 So the era of
self-governance requires sexual reproduction by human beings; the gods
(the “others” in this passage) no longer assume that responsibility. The
transition from divine to human governance and from divine creation to
sexual reproduction is associated in the myth with a change in human
circumstances from ease and comfort to misery: we become weak and
helpless, begin to be savaged by wild beasts, lack all tools and crafts, no
longer have food supplied spontaneously by the earth, and in general are in
“great difficulties” (Polit. 274b5–c5).23
The origin of sexual reproduction is also addressed in the Critias. The
myth of the Critias concerns two cities rather than two eras: ancient Athens
is contrasted with Atlantis. But this myth draws a distinction between
divine creation and sexual reproduction that resembles the contrast between
the creation of people in the time of Kronos and in “our time” in the
Statesman myth. According to the myth of the Critias, the earth was
divided into portions assigned to be governed by different gods (109b1–6),
who directed everything mortal by persuasion rather than by force (109b6–
c4). In Athens it was Athena and Hephaestus who ruled, and they
“fashioned in it good men sprung from the land itself” (Criti. 109c5–d2).24
These people were not, then, sexually generated, but created by gods. The
citizens of Athens fell into different groups: a class of “god-like men” who
separate out a warrior class from the classes of those engaged in
manufacture and farming (Criti. 110c3–6). The warrior class, described as
beautiful in body and virtuous (Criti. 112e3–4) lived at the top of the
Acropolis (Criti. 112b3–5) and ruled with justice the citizens of Athens as
well as the leaders of the rest of the Greek world, who agreed to their rule
(Criti. 112d4–e2).
Atlantis, by contrast, was ruled by Poseidon, who divided it among the
children he engendered with a mortal woman, Clito, whose parents had
been born from the earth (Criti. 113c1–114b2). The rulers of Atlantis were,
then, less divine from the outset than the rulers of Athens. Each son of
Poseidon became king of one of the districts into which Poseidon’s portion
of the earth was divided, and the decline of harmony among the districts
occurred “when the divine portion in them began to grow faint as it was
often blended with great checkers of mortality [ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ μὲν
μοῖρα ἐξίτηλος ἐγίγνετο ἐν αὐτοῖς πολλῷ τῷ θνητῷ καὶ πολλάκις
ἀνακεραννυμένη]” (Criti. 121a9–b1). This resembles the description of the
decline of the cosmos in “our time” in the myth of the Statesman: when
human beings are generated from and by mortal parents, the decrease in the
proportion of the divine in the cosmos as a whole and in people as a kind is
responsible for the degradation of the cosmos and of people.
The origins both of sexual difference and of sexual reproduction are
described also in a passage in the Timaeus at 90e6–91a5. Socrates has been
“tracing the history of the universe down to the emergence of humankind”
(Ti. 90d9–e2). He says: “According to our likely account, all male-born
humans who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second
generation as women. And this explains why at that time the gods fashioned
the desire for sexual union, by constructing one ensouled living thing in us
as well as another one in women” (Ti. 90e6–91a5).25 The account here is
perplexing, but the “ensouled living thing” in men seems to be the genitals,
and in women to be the uterus.26 What is clear in this account is (1) that
men are created first, and women introduced only in a second generation,
(2) that women were created as a human form for those who have been
unjust and cowardly to inhabit in a subsequent incarnation, where being a
woman is understood to be a kind of punishment for moral wrongs
committed, and (3) that once women were introduced sexual reproduction
was also introduced—or rather, the desire for sexual intercourse was
introduced—as a new, and inferior, mechanism for the generation of people.
These mythical accounts of the origins of sexual difference and sexual
reproduction in Plato’s works have elements that strongly resemble the
accounts we find in both Hesiod and Empedocles. First, in the Timaeus, as
in Hesiod’s Theogony, men exist as a kind before women, who are
introduced in a second moment or generation, and in response to the actions
of men. And while we cannot be certain that in the time of Kronos, as
described in the Statesman myth, men existed before women—it is possible
that the human beings in the era governed by Kronos were asexual, and
even that both men and women existed—the evidence in the descriptions of
the two eras suggests that human beings in the era of Kronos were men, and
that sexual difference along with sexual reproduction was introduced only
in “our time.”27 The myth of the Statesman suggests that the withdrawal of
divine governance that precipitates the crisis introducing “our time”
necessitated sexual reproduction—and that when there is sexual
reproduction, there must also be sexual difference, and if sexual difference,
then women. In the Statesman as in the Timaeus and the Theogony, it seems
that women are introduced into the world only after men (but note, as we
saw earlier, that in the myth told by Aristophanes in the Symposium, the
creation of men and women is contemporaneous).
Second, in Plato’s various accounts of the origins of sexual difference
and sexual reproduction, women are represented as bad or are associated
with the evils that accompany human life. As we have seen, the Timaeus
could not be clearer that a life as a woman is a kind of punishment or
retribution for wrongdoing, and that to be a woman is worse than to be a
man. Women are a sort of degenerate kind introduced to accommodate
souls that are now imperfect. In the Statesman myth of alternating eras, the
Critias myth of alternative cities, and the antecedents for these myths in
Hesiod and Empedocles, the worse of two eras or places always includes
sexual difference or sexual reproduction, as contrasted with a happier time
or place in which sexual reproduction was unnecessary and women and
sexual difference did not exist. The human beings of the era of Kronos in
the Statesman, who, I have suggested, should be understood to be men, are
better than the sexually differentiated persons of “our time,” since they are
happier, untroubled by the worries characteristic of human lives in “our
time.” And in the myth recounted by Aristophanes in the Symposium,
sexual difference is introduced as a form of mutilation and makes
humankind less powerful, and less happy. The association between the
introduction of women and the origins of evils and human misery is
reminiscent of the story of Pandora as Hesiod tells it in both the Theogony
and Works and Days.28 Moreover, there are strong resemblances between
Hesiod’s account of a golden race of people living in the age of Kronos
(Works and Days 109–19) and Plato’s account of the lives of the human
beings during the era of Kronos in the Statesman myth: men without
women, living like the gods or under the governance of gods, without care
and without evils.29
It is not only from Hesiod that Plato might have been familiar with an
account of two eras, one idyllic and one plagued with now-familiar evils, or
with an association between sexual reproduction and degeneration. We have
seen in Empedocles too a description of two eras—alternating eras, unlike
Hesiod, but similar in this way to the eras of the Statesman myth—one
characterized by progressive unity, the other by progressive disunity.
Although Empedocles seems to envision sexual difference in both eras, he
introduces sexual reproduction only in the second era, governed by Strife.
The testimony of Aetius makes clear that the generation of persons under
Strife is brought about through sexual intercourse, associating the misery of
life under the rule of Strife with the origin of sexual desire and the necessity
for sexual reproduction. Moreover, Empedocles counseled against
heterosexual intercourse, marriage, and childbearing on the grounds that
these are all mechanisms through which Strife operates, and all are
obstacles to Love’s creation (Hippolytus Ref. 7.30.3–4),30 so he clearly
viewed sexual reproduction as inherently opposed to Love and its unifying
force.31
Aristotle does not make clear here why “the left side of the body is
generally more watery and colder than the right”; he offers no explanation
for what is represented as a fact, but refers us to columns of contraries,
which he seems to accept as authoritative.57 Nor does he explain here why,
if female offspring are not conceived on the left side of the uterus, the
female should be associated with the left. We must assume that the female
is for him associated with the left because she is associated on his account
with what is more moist and colder.58
What is most interesting in Aristotle’s treatment of the association of the
female with the left is the insight it provides to the normative claims he will
make about the female. He says that “the distinctions [in bodies] are three,
namely, above and below (τὸ ἄνω καὶ τὸ κάτω), front and its opposite (τὸ
πρόσθεν καὶ τὸ ἀντικείμενον), right and left (τὸ δεξιὸν καὶ τὸ ἀριστερόν) –
all these three oppositions we expect to find in the perfect body – and each
may be called a principle” (DC 2.2 284b21–25). That is, we should expect
to find the left, along with the back and what is below, in the perfect body.
This is true not only at the level of the individual, but also with respect to
animal species and genera. Aristotle considers one sign of the deformity of
the testacea as a genus to be that they lack the differentiation between right
and left (IA 19 714b8–16).59 So the distinction between right and left in a
body is not only a difference that tracks certain physical variations (between
moist and dry or hot and cold); it is also a normative distinction, in two
senses. First, it distinguishes between what is better (the right) and what is
worse (the left). But second, the distinction has itself a certain value; it is
better for an animal to have the distinction between what is better and what
is worse than not to have it (as in the case of the testacea)—and a similar
argument is used to show that it is better to be a species with the distinction
between male and female, although that too is a distinction between better
and worse (see GA 2.1 732a5–9).
There is some evidence for the value of these distinctions in Aristotle’s
estimation of people as the best kind of animal. He says that animals that
are more perfect are hotter and more moist (ὑγρότερα) by nature, and
human beings are hotter (GA 2.1 732b32–33). Moreover, the difference
between right and left is most pronounced in the human body (at IA 4
706a21–22 Aristotle says that “the right is most right sided (μάλιστα δεξιά)
in people”) because people are more natural than other animals (IA 4
706a19).60 So although the left is worse than the right, a perfect body will
exhibit the distinction between left and right, and so the left is a part of a
perfect body. This provides us with some insight into how Aristotle will
eventually reconcile the inferiority of the female principle with the natural
occurrence of female animals. If a distinction between right and left is a
good thing in a perfect body, then the existence of the left is at least a
conditional good, and not an unqualifiedly bad feature of an animal body.
In accepting that the left is worse than the right, Aristotle is following a
tradition from earlier Greek literature. There is a history of characterizing
the right side as lucky (Homer II. xxiv 315–21; Od. ii 146–54) and the left
as unlucky (Sophocles, Ajax 1225) and awkward (Aristophanes, Wasps
1265).61 Aristotle himself associates the superiority of the right with that of
the male at Parts of Animals 2.2 648a9–13, where he says that “the upper
parts differ in this way [i.e., are better] compared with the lower parts, and
again the male compared with the female, and the right side of the body
with the left.” But he does more than assert the superiority of the right: he
founds the superiority of right over left on the role of the right side of a
body in movement. This is one aspect of his conception of orientations in
an axiological system of oppositions, in which up is better than down, and
front better than back, and up, right and front are all principles (IA 6
706b25). His view may have been influenced by Plato’s claim that the lucky
direction is from left to right (so, toward the right) at Symposium 223c (see
also Homer, II. i 597 where wine is served from left to right, and II. vii
181ff., where lots are drawn from left to right).62 At any rate, for Aristotle
the right is a principle in the sense of a starting point for locomotion. At PA
4.8 684a27–28 he says that “all animals naturally do more things by means
of the parts on the right side [τοῖς γὰρ δεξιοῖς πάντα πέφυκε τὰ ζῷα δρᾶν
μᾶλλον]” in order to explain why in crayfish and crabs the right claw is
larger and stronger. The right side of the body is nobler than the left, then,
because it is the starting point of action, thus more active, while the
“nature” of the left side is to follow or to be moved (IA 4 705b13).63
1.3.6 Moral failings of women
From this reconstruction of these associations a picture emerges: the male is
hot, dry, right, bounded, and odd—all attributes that are associated with
activity, directly or indirectly; the female is cold, moist, left, unbounded and
even—all of which are associated with passivity.64 The view that the female
is somehow worse than the male clearly pre-dates Aristotle, and some of the
attributes that are supposed in these early accounts of sexual difference to
lead to or to constitute the inferiority of the female are attributes that
Aristotle himself will attribute to her (the cold and the moist in particular).
Allusions to the Pythagorean list of opposites in these early accounts
suggest certain links (however implausible) between the supposed
metaphysical deficiencies of the female and her physical deficiencies (for
example, the claim that the generative incapacity of the female stems from
her association with the even rather than the odd, or that what is unbounded
or indeterminate is what is moist). But it is less apparent how one might try
to explain the intellectual and moral deficiencies often attributed to women
on the basis of these physical and metaphysical deficiencies. There is no
doubt that most of the authors we have considered believed women to be
morally inferior to men, but little evidence to demonstrate a link between
the moral inferiority of females and women in particular and their
associations with the even, the moist, the cold, the unbounded, or the left.
How might these qualities that are attributed to the female be responsible
for her purported moral defects?
Women were most often accused of two moral failings: passivity and
lasciviousness. The first of these we have already seen represented as a
metaphysical and physical fact about women: the even number is associated
with a lack of generative power, the left opposed to the right as the passive
side with respect to the initiation of movement in a body, the moist as acted
upon by the dry, the unbounded as given form by the bounded. As a moral
failing, passivity is associated with timidity, a lack of courage, inconstant
beliefs, and disloyalty; we will see in chapter 4 that Aristotle attributes
timidity to women.
The second moral failing women were commonly accused of,
lasciviousness, is a particular case of a more general phenomenon.
Unlimited appetite, or ungoverned desires, were commonly attributed to
women in Greek literature before Aristotle.65 And physical explanations for
this moral phenomenon are sometimes proffered. In medical texts the
phenomenon of a uterus that is displaced (sometimes called the “wandering
womb”) is taken to be evidence that women are constitutionally lewd, with
difficulty controlling their sexual appetites (see the Hippocratic text Mul. I
and Plato’s Ti. 91c1–8; although Plato seems to think that men as well as
women struggle to control their sexual desires, the Symposium suggests
that women are less likely to have the more divine forms of desire).66 The
moisture attributed to women was often supposed to be a source, more or
less inexhaustible, of desire, although the causal connection is unclear (see
Pseudo-Aristotle, Prob. 4.25 879a32–35, and Hesiod, Works and Days 582–
88). On this view, women’s physical nature causes them to experience
stronger or more numerous appetites than men, especially sexual appetites.
Moreover, women are often represented as less well able to submit their
desires to the control of judgment or reason because they are unbounded or
incapable of determining their own boundaries. “From its first uses in
Homer, sōphrosynē is the activity of checking some natural impulse or
closing the boundaries of the phrenes (‘wits’) by will”;67 and if women are
less fixed or constant in their character, they will also be less able to check
their impulses. So not only do women have more numerous or excessive
desires, but they are less well able to control those desires, and that lack of
control over desire is also a lack of control over their boundaries.
This suggests that it is their moisture and their character as unbounded
that is responsible somehow for the moral inadequacy of women. Moisture
is associated not only with unregulated desire and a consequent absence of
boundaries on the wits (or the self), but more generally with emotion.
Emotion is in turn linked to a lack of control that correlates to the
unbounded, and results in the lack of sōphrosynē.68 But the evidence for
these connections seems slight.69 For example, one piece of evidence that is
sometimes taken to imply a link between moisture and over-emotion in the
female is a passage at History of Animals 9.1 608b1–19.70 Here women are
said to be softer (μαλακώτερα), more impetuous (προπετέστερα), and more
given to tears (ἀρίδακρυ), compassion (ἐλεημονέστερον), jealousy
(φθονερώτερον), despondency (δύσελπι), and lack of spirit (δύσθυμον).
Book 9 does not directly mention the moisture of the female, and some
doubts have been raised about its authorship (but see Balme, who argues
that it should be attributed to Aristotle).71 However, it does attribute to
women a range of unchecked emotions (they are easily moved to tears and
impulsive). And perhaps we can connect the idea that women are subject to
unregulated desires and emotions with the idea that they are unbounded; if
women are susceptible to being buffeted by emotion and desire, and less
able to control those affects, they will be more malleable by outside forces,
less definite in their own judgments and actions. Thus there may be some
connection in Greek literature before Aristotle between the notion of the
female as passive, and the idea that she has more, and more unruly, passions
and desires (although these may be the passions associated with cold natural
characters—e.g., fear and bitterness). One who is passive is easily shaped
by forces other than the self, and when the self is identified with a rational
capacity (the “wits”), these outside forces include her own desires. But this
is speculative.
The connection between the metaphysical or physical deficiencies of
women and their inferior political status in these early Greek accounts is
also a matter for speculation. It is clear that there is some connection
between the association of women with the unbounded and the confinement
of women to the household, and their exclusion from public life and
political participation. We might understand that confinement as an attempt
to control the unboundedness of women, in which case the political
exclusion is a response to a perceived fact about women’s nature.72 But we
might also interpret the unboundedness of women as a product of their
political exclusion, in which case it is not so much a fact of their nature as a
social fact.73 The view that women ought to be restricted to their
households is widespread in early Greek literature: we find it in Herodotus
where, in the bizarre, reversed world of the Egyptians, men stay home and
work at the loom while women go out to the market (Histories 2.35); in
Xenophon, where a man should be ashamed to stay at home (Oec. 7.2,
7.30–31); and in Plato’s Phaedrus at 239c, where the domain of women is
shadow-filled interiors.74 And while we can construct plausible accounts of
how the metaphysical and physical deficiencies attributed to women
(moisture, unboundedness, and passivity in particular) might be connected
to their political exclusion, there is no clear and explicit account of such a
link in the early literature. If Aristotle thought that there was such a link, he
would have to formulate an account of it himself.
1.4 The biology of sexual difference
And at Regimen. 1.27 (vi.500.10–28) the author claims that seed is required
from both male and female parent in order to master the ἐπιρρέον (the
menses), since the seed from each parent singly has too much moisture and
too little fire to concentrate and shape the menses.
It is clear, then, that Hippocratic and some pre-Socratic authors assume
the existence of both male and female seed, and see them as necessary for
the conception and formation of the embryo. Aristotle, as we will see in
chapter 2, thought the female produced only one contribution to generation,
the katamênia or menses, which he does call “seed” (sperma), although he
did not attribute to it the same capacities as the sperma produced by the
male. One question, then, that divided ancient authors was whether to posit
female as well as male seed, and more generally, what counted as the fertile
residue of the female and what role it played in generation.
A second point of disagreement among ancient authors was the process
through which seed was produced. Pangenesis is the view that seed is
drawn from every part of the parent’s body, rather than produced in and
drawn from a single organ or limited set of organs. If seed is informed in its
origin (before emission) by the shape and function of the body of the animal
that generated it, it is assumed that it must be drawn from every part of that
animal’s body in order to carry with it somehow the shape and function of
every part. There were variations in pangenetic theory. The Hippocratic
author of Generation advocated a pangenetic theory emphasizing that seed
was drawn from the entire body of both male and female (Genit. 1.1
[vii.470.1–5], 1.3 [vii.474.6–8], 1.8 [vii.480.7–10).93 On Aristotle’s
testimony, Empedocles believed that the seed was drawn not from every
part of the body in any given individual but from half (since each of the two
parents, on his view, contributes only half the tally of parts).94 Democritus,
by contrast, believed that each parent contributed seed from each part of the
body, and so that seed was drawn from every part of the body in both
parents.95 One of Aristotle’s objections to these theories was that they failed
to provide an explanation for the transmission of a unified soul: if the parts
are separate prior to conception, then they cannot have soul, but nor can
they acquire soul in utero. This, as we will see in chapter 2, motivated him
to provide an account of generation according to which the spermata are
potentially alive.
One manifestation of pangenetic theory was preformationism, the idea
that the parts of the offspring’s body are pre-formed, and present in a
homuncular form, in the seed of the parents. Aristotle seems to believe that
Empedocles and Democritus subscribed to a theory of pangenesis and
preformationism (GA 4.1 764a1–23). But pangenesis did not require
preformationism. As Dean-Jones notes, “The more sophisticated theory of
pangenesis claimed that semen provided the material from each part in an
unshaped state.”96 The link between pangenesis and preformationism is
thus loose; the link between pangenetic theory and a commitment to female
seed is much closer. If seed is drawn from every part of the body, and not
from an organ that belongs only to males, it would be consistent to suppose
that females as well as males produce seed. Certainly, Aristotle thought that
pangenetic theories implied female seed. He says that “it is reasonable to
hold that if it [sperma] is not drawn from the whole of the body it is not
drawn from both the parents either [εὔλογον γάρ, εἰ μὴ ἀπὸ παντός, μηδ᾿
ἀπ᾿ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν γεννώντων]” (GA 1.17 721b10–12). He adds:
“Moreover, if the female does not discharge any semen, then it is consistent
to say that the semen is not drawn from the whole body either; or again, if it
is not drawn from the whole body, there is nothing inconsistent in saying
that it is not drawn from the female either, but that the female is responsible
for generation in some way other than this” (GA 1.18 724a8–12).97 So we
can see that for Aristotle the question of female seed is intimately tied to the
question of pangenesis, and we will see in chapter 2 that he rejects
pangenetic theories and conceives of female seed as importantly different
from male seed.
The next question is what those who posited female seed thought female
seed could explain—what phenomenon were they trying to explain by
positing female seed?98 If we turn our attention to the contexts in which
female seed is invoked—if we consider what it was intended to explain—
we can gain some understanding both of those who accepted, and of those
who rejected, the claim that women contribute seed to reproduction.
In some cases, female seed is posited in order to explain the
phenomenon of sexual pleasure during intercourse as parallel experiences in
the male and the female. The author of the Hippocratic treatise Generation
links the experience of pleasure to the ejaculation of seed in both male and
female:
In the case of women, it is my contention that when during intercourse the vagina is rubbed and
the womb is disturbed, an irritation is set up in the womb which produces pleasure and heat in
the rest of the body. A woman also releases something from her body, sometimes into the uterus,
which then becomes moist, and sometimes externally as well, if the uterus is open wider than
normal. . . . The reason that the man feels more pleasure is that the secretion from the bodily
fluid in his case occurs suddenly, and as the result of a more violent disturbance than in the
woman’s case. (Genit. 1.4 [vii.474.16–476.10])99
In this passage we see that the author connects male pleasure to the
emission of seed in semen, observes that women experience a similar
pleasure associated also with the emission of fluid, and speculates that this
fluid must also contain seed.100 There are provisos: the woman might not
always experience pleasure, her pleasure will be less than the man’s
(although it will last longer: Ἧσσον δὲ πολλῷ ἥδεται ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐν
τῇ μίξει, πλείονα δὲ χρόνον ἢ ὁ ἀνήρ), and the fluid she emits will not
always be ejaculated outside the body. But female seed is invoked here as a
way of explaining what occurs in a female body by analogy with the male
body.
A second, more prevalent, reason to posit female seed was the need to
explain the possibility of the resemblance of offspring to their mothers. In
many accounts, an attempt is made to explain resemblance through the
contribution of seed from both male and female parents. With Empedocles
and Democritus, pangenetic accounts seem to underpin accounts of
resemblance. On Empedocles’ account, for example, if the seed for the
eyebrows was contributed by the father, the offspring will resemble its
father with respect to eyebrows; if the seed for the nose was contributed by
the mother, the offspring will have a nose that resembles its mother. Since
on his view each parent contributes seed that accounts for only half of the
body parts, resemblance is established simply in virtue of which parent
contributed the seed for a particular part. In the case of Democritus,
however, since each parent contributes seed from all parts of the body, some
mechanism is needed to explain which seed determines the formation of a
given part. That mechanism, on his account, is mastery: the notion that the
seed from each parent competes with the seed from the other, and one or the
other prevails, determining resemblance to the parent from which that seed
originated with respect to the part in question. By contrast, several
Hippocratic treatises—Generation 6–8 (vii.478.1–482.3), Nature of the
Child 17 (vii.496.19–21), and Diseases of Women, 1.24 (viii.64.1)—suggest
that both male and female contribute seed, and that resemblance is
determined according to which parent supplied the largest quantity of seed
for that part.101 So to explain resemblance requires not only that one posit a
contribution of seed from both parents, but also that one specify whether
resemblance is determined simply by the presence of seed from a specific
part of the parent’s body (and the absence of seed from that part from the
other parent), or alternatively by some other mechanism: the strength or
quantity of the seed contributed for that part by one parent or the other.
Given the need to explain the fact of female offspring and the
resemblance of offspring (male and female) to their mothers in other
respects, we might ask why anyone rejected the idea that the female
produced seed. The answer, which becomes fully apparent only when
Aristotle takes up the question, is that positing female seed makes it more
difficult to explain why a male parent is necessary, and what role he plays
in generation. If the female provides the material (or the source of
nourishment in the case of preformationist theories) for offspring in the
menses, provides seed that is capable of shaping that material (or is capable
of constituting itself into a whole animal embryo in the case of
preformationist accounts), and provides a space in which the embryo can
grow, then it is difficult to understand why the female cannot generate
viable offspring independently. So despite its explanatory power, there is a
limit to what positing female seed can explain.102
1.5.2 Aristophanes
The legal restrictions on women’s autonomy and their exclusion from all
political participation in classical Athens might suggest that it was
unthinkable to suppose women should hold political power or participate in
public life as citizens. Although commentators sometimes say as much, it
clearly was thinkable, since it was not only thought, but also publicly
proposed on at least two occasions, in the comedy Ekklesiazousae
(Assemblywomen), by Aristophanes, performed in 393 or 392,115 and in
Book 5 of Plato’s Republic (the date of which is contested, but most
probably lies somewhere between 385 and 365).116 Those who assume that
the idea of women with political power was simply preposterous believe
that Plato intended his proposals for equality as a kind of joke, and often
that Aristophanes was writing satirically about the Socratic proposals in the
Assemblywomen, extending the Socratic joke.117
The assumption that the Assemblywomen is a satire on the Republic is
one reason that some have dated the Republic as early as the 390s. Since,
however, the Republic was more probably written after the
Assemblywomen, it is unlikely that the latter was a satire on the former.118
Plato may have had the Assemblywomen in mind when he wrote the
Republic, but Halliwell points out that many of the ideas that characterize
the ideal state of Republic 5 (including holding women in common) were
already available in other works. So it is also possible that both Republic 5
and the Assemblywomen were influenced by contemporary debates, rather
than responding directly to one another.119
In the Assemblywomen, a woman, Praxagora, disguised as a man,
addresses the Assembly and convinces them to turn over the governance of
the city to women. This would be wise, she argues, because men have made
a mess of governing the city:
For while drawing your civic pay from public funds, each of you angles for a personal profit.
Meanwhile the public interest flounders like Aesimus. But listen to my advice and you shall
escape from your muddle. I propose that we turn over governance of the city to the women;
after all, we employ them as stewards and treasurers in our own households [ταῖς γὰρ γυναιξὶ
φημὶ χρῆναι τὴν πόλιν ἡμᾶς παραδοῦναι. καὶ γὰρ ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις ταύταις ἐπιτρόποις καὶ ταμίαισι
χρώμεθα]. (Ekkl. 206–12; italics added)120
The suggestion is that women will have certain moral advantages over men
in political office: most important, women will be more disposed to act for
the common good because, as mothers, they wish to protect the health and
safety of the citizens more than they wish to further their own interests as
individuals (clearly implied is that this is what men have been doing) (Ekkl.
206–40). Moreover, women are generous, which again suggests that they
will govern in the interests of those over whom they rule (Ekkl. 441–59)
(and in the political philosophy of both Plato and Aristotle, that means they
will govern correctly or legitimately). Even their failings prove to be
advantages, and their innocence of the vices of men will be convenient for
the men over whom they rule: they are better able to catch fraud because
they are so adept at it themselves, or, alternatively, they are less likely to
prosecute fraud because they do not have the habits of cheating that men
do. These lines clearly include jokes about women—their sexual
rapaciousness, their cunning ways—but the larger joke is about men, who
govern with such a narrow, venal, and selfish focus on their own interests
that we would be better off collectively if we put women in power, because
they, at least, would take care of us. Although women have certain moral
and intellectual failings, these failings are no worse than those of men—and
generally less destructive of the public good.
Praxagora indicates two concrete ways in which the concern with the
common benefit that she takes to be characteristic of women as a sex will
manifest itself when they have political power. The first concerns the
common ownership of property and wealth. She says that her “first act will
be to communize all the land, money, and other property that’s now
individually owned. We women will manage this common fund with thrift
and good judgment, and take good care of you” (Ekkl. 597–600).121 This
represents a conception of the common good according to which, by
pooling the resources of the political community, we might ensure a good
life for every citizen (slaves and other non-citizens are another question).
Praxagora suggests that women by nature are more likely to pursue the
common good, even at the expense of their private interests, and that the
experience women acquire in managing a household will make them more
adept at managing the city.
The second way in which women’s concern with the common benefit
will manifest itself is in the regulation of sexual contact. Praxagora
proposes that under women’s governance prostitutes will offer sex without
charge to men (and the implication is that they will want to have sex with
men who are citizens). The aim of this measure is also to ensure the
common good in the sense of a minimum of goods for everyone (Ekkl. 611–
18). It is important that the good promoted by this regulation of sexuality is
(at least minimal) sexual satisfaction for everyone, rather than the optimal
reproduction of citizens, which is the practical goal of the Socratic
proposals for sexual regulation, as we will see. Praxagora does, however,
say that all children born to women held in common will view all men as
their fathers (Ekkl. 635–37), which is similar to a claim Socrates makes in
arguing that sexual regulation will promote unity (Rep. 5 464a1–b5).
1.5.3 Socrates
In Republic 5, Socrates returns to two contentious assertions and proposals
that he had made earlier (objections which he refers to as “waves”) in
formulating the plan for an ideal city. The first is that women and men
should perform the same work and therefore have the same education,
because they are the same by nature in all important respects (Rep. 5
454d3–e6). There is a mention in the Critias, in the story of ancient Athens,
of common military training for men and women, which is described as an
“ancient custom”: “All the female and male creatures that live together in a
flock can very well pursue in common, as much as is possible, the special
talents that are suited to each species” (Criti. 110c1–3).122 In the Critias this
is presented as historical fact, rather than as part of a proposal for an ideal
city, and so requires no argument. In the Republic, the principal argument
that Socrates offers in support of the proposal depends again on an analogy
with animals: just as we do not give different tasks to male and female dogs
in our households, so too we should not give different tasks to the male and
female guardians (5 451d4–e5).123
The second proposal is that women, and children, should be held in
common—that is, that they should not live privately with, and under the
control of, an individual man.
[Socrates] I suppose that the following law goes along with the last one and
the others that preceded it.
[Glaucon] Which one?
[Socrates] That all these women are to belong in common to all the men,
that none are to live privately with any man, and that the children, too,
are to be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own
offspring or any child his parent. (Rep. 5 457c8–d4)
This second proposal has as a corollary that there will be no households or
private property among the guardians.124
In the Laws Socrates repeats most of the proposals for equality: that
women should be educated along with men (6 764c5–d3), trained in the
military arts along with men (7 813e4–814c6, 7 804d1–e4) and engage in
the political life of the polis to some extent (for example, by holding office
as directors of the education of children, at 7 794a7–b5) (see also Laws 6
780d5–781d5; 7 805a3–d4). So the proposals of Republic 5 do not
constitute an isolated instance of Socrates’ commitment to something like
sexual equality.125 Although there is disagreement about the extent of the
political participation that Socrates advocates for women in the Laws, there
is no doubt that the fundamental claim for equality is reiterated:
Let me stress that this law of mine will apply just as much to girls as to boys. The girls must be
trained in precisely the same way. . . . I now know for sure that there are pretty well countless
numbers of women, generally called Sarmatians, round the Black Sea, who not only ride horses
but use the bow and other weapons. There, men and women have an equal duty to cultivate
these skills, so cultivate them equally they do. . . . I maintain that if these results can be
achieved, the state of affairs in our corner of Greece, where men and women do not have a
common purpose and do not throw all their energies into the same activities, is absolutely
stupid. Almost every state, under present conditions, is only half a state, and develops only half
its potentialities, whereas with the same cost and effort, it could double its achievement. (Laws 7
804d7–805b1)126
The Athenian Stranger concludes that “there might have been something to
be said against our proposal, if it had not been proved by the facts to be
workable. . . . We are not going to withdraw our recommendation that so far
as possible, in education and everything else, the female sex should be on
the same footing as the male [μάλιστα κοινωνεῖν τὸ θῆλυ γένος ἡμῖν τῷ τῶν
ἀῤῥένων γένει]” (Laws 7 805c2–d1). This is both very clear and makes
evident that Plato thought “the facts,” and not only utopian aspirations,
warranted the proposal of equality.
There is one important difference in the treatment of women in Republic
5 and the Laws: in the latter, private households are to be maintained, but
we should note that this is something the Athenian Stranger proposes with
regret (Laws 7 807b3–c2). Moreover, we ought not to overemphasize the
difference this might make to the equality claim: Aristotle certainly
believed that the political institutions of the Laws and the Republic were
largely identical, and that the treatment of women in the two dialogues did
not differ in any significant way (see Pol. 2.6 1265a1–6).127
1.6 Conclusion
Aristotle, as we will see in chapters 2 and 3, shares with his predecessors an
interest in the question of the origin and purpose of the sexes. Earlier
writers for the most part approach that question by speculating about the
origins of the distinction between men and women; Aristotle, however,
attempts to address it through the framework of his causal theory. Since he
holds the view that one must establish a fact before one can ask about its
cause, he provides an analytical account of the sexes, particularly as
biological phenomena. That is, together with asking about the final causes
governing the generation of sexually differentiated animals, he sets out the
facts of sexual difference as he understands it, thereby giving us the first
systematic account of sexual difference as a natural phenomenon.
As we have seen, Aristotle’s predecessors do not generally treat sex as a
neutral distinction; on the contrary, they understand it to both differentiate
and rank individual animals as more and less valuable. For many of them,
the female is simply inferior to the male and women are unqualifiedly bad,
not only in the sense that being a woman is worse than being a man, but
also in the sense that women are somehow bad for men. Plato seems to be
an exception (although the evidence is mixed) in that he treats women and
men as equals, or different only in philosophically insignificant ways, in
Republic 5. Aristotle rejects both the view that women are without positive
value and the view that sexual difference is without value. That is, he thinks
(1) that although women are inferior to men, they are valuable—valuable to
men and more generally to the species to which they belong, and (2) that
sexual difference is a feature which enhances a species in biological terms
and promotes full human flourishing in the polis.
As we will see in subsequent chapters, Aristotle makes this argument for
the value of females and women while drawing on certain elements of his
predecessors’ views in describing the features of the sexes, the process of
sex determination in the embryo, and the character of men and women, but
also contesting many of their assumptions, claims, and explanations. We
find Aristotle recognizing, accepting, and conceptualizing the ambivalence
that pervaded most accounts of sexual difference and discussions of the role
of women in generation and in political life. But he does so in order to
argue that while females are inferior to males and women to men, they
nonetheless have value and are necessary both for generation and for a
flourishing political community. If the Socratic proposals of Republic 5
imply an attempt to dispute the view of the sexes as separate kinds,
Aristotle tries to make philosophical sense of the idea that there is a single
human kind while maintaining that the distinction between the sexes, both
biologically and politically, is natural, necessary and good. The claim of the
Meno is that virtue is identical in women and men, and that rule in the
household and in the city is the same activity, requiring the same
excellences; but Aristotle disputes both the idea that virtue is identical
across different kinds of people and the identity of all forms of rule. He
wishes to maintain the coherence of a human kind and the distinction of the
sexes, the notion of human excellence and the variety of forms of rule
required by what he sees as important differences in the human virtue of the
sexes.
2
Sex Is a Difference in the Matter
2.1 Introduction
We saw in chapter 1 that Aristotle’s predecessors represented the female,
and women in particular, in largely negative terms, in both biological and
political contexts, and that these negative assessments can be traced back to
accounts of the origin of women as a kind distinct from men. This chapter
argues that Aristotle maintains the value of the role of the female animal in
generation, by seeing the contribution of the female as necessary in the
framework of a teleological process that aims at the good. It will determine
the fundamental biological features of sexual difference, which will allow
us to consider in chapter 4 whether those features can account for social and
political sexual differences as Aristotle describes them.
In the Generation of Animals Aristotle asks what characterizes male and
female both as causal principles of generation and as individual animals,
and how the sex of an individual is determined. His answers to those
questions constitute an account of sexual difference in the biological realm.
The questions are complex, and although Aristotle answers them in
empirical terms, defining male and female, describing how the sexes differ
in a variety of species, and offering an account of the determination of sex
in the embryo, his discussion of sex includes a normative component. He
argues that it is good that there should be sexual difference in animals. The
empirical account of sexual difference must then cohere with the claim that
there is some value in sexual difference.
In this chapter I demonstrate that sexual difference as a biological
phenomenon is a question of a certain capacity or incapacity of the
reproductive faculty, shared by all living things—plants and animals as well
as people. It is the nutritive and reproductive faculty of soul that determines
an individual as male or female in sexually differentiated species, and in the
first instance it is the ends of that faculty that are served by sexual
difference. To achieve the concoction of the fertile residue produced by
either male or female is then a good for an individual animal. At the same
time, Aristotle considered sexual difference as a biological phenomenon to
be good in a larger sense: it is good that there are female as well as male
animals. It follows that it is good that there should be some individuals with
a certain incapacity. That is a point that will require elaboration, since
Aristotle does not as a rule treat an incapacity as an end and a good.
A number of philosophical problems emerge from the account of sexual
difference in the Generation of Animals. Two in particular are the focus of
this chapter. One concerns the emergence of soul in the embryo in the
process of conception, and in particular the roles of the male and the female
parent in the transmission of soul. Since the father produces form in the
matter supplied by the mother through the motions in his semen, it might
seem that soul is transmitted by the father, and that the material cause
provided by the mother is passive. But, as we will see, Aristotle did not
understand the menses in the mother’s uterus as an entirely passive
substratum, nor did he believe that the semen has the capacity to impose
form on any matter; his account of the transmission of soul is more
complex.1 I develop here an account of the interaction of the male and
female principles of generation that emphasizes the nuances of Aristotle’s
account of soul faculties and the difficulties of understanding the forms of
potentiality and actuality in the process of conception.
The second problem concerns Aristotle’s description of the female as a
kind of deformity at Generation of Animals 4.6 775a15–16. Some
commentators have argued that this does not imply that the male is the ideal
embodiment of the species form, or that the production of a male is the telos
of the process of generation.2 The evidence for that view centers on
Aristotle’s insistence that the female is natural, and the claim at
Metaphysics 10.9 1058a37–b3 that sex does not divide the form of the
genus animal, and hence that in any given species male and female must
have the same essential form. But Aristotle does say the female is a kind of
deformity (ὥσπερ ἀναπηρίαν), and many other commentators understand
him to mean that, although the sexes in any species have the same essential
form, the male is the ideal form of a sexually differentiated animal species,
while the female is a defective realization of that form and a product of the
failure of the process to reach its telos.3 If we accept that interpretation, we
have to explain why Aristotle describes the production of a female as
according to nature rather than opposed to nature.
The view I develop here is intended to reconcile the claim that the
female is defective with the claim that the production of the female is
natural, and for the best. Although I agree that Aristotle treats the male as
the ideal realization of the form of any species, that interpretation has to
meet the challenge presented by the identity of species form in male and
female: if the female has the species form, how can she be a defective
example of the kind? I argue that Aristotle addresses this problem by
positing that the generation of an animal involves material necessity as well
as final causation, so that the production of a female can be both an
accidental occurrence caused by defects in the matter and also an
occurrence with a natural telos. The telos in question is the capacity to
generate a fertile residue, and since both the female and the male have such
a capacity, both achieve the telos of the generative faculty in an individual
animal, and the fertile residues of both are necessary for generation (neither
can achieve individually the ultimate telos of the generative faculty of
generating another animal like themselves). Nonetheless, the female’s
generative capacity is inferior, on Aristotle’s account, to the male’s, and that
renders her defective relative to the male. Although most commentators
deny either that the female is a deficiency or deviation from a male ideal
(Henry, Connell), or that the female is natural and good (Nielsen,
implicitly), my account reconciles these seemingly irreconcilable claims.4
I begin, in section 2.2, with an analysis of the discussion of sexual
difference in the Metaphysics as a distinction that does not divide species,
because that account underpins the extended discussion of biological sexual
difference in the Generation of Animals as well as the discussion of the
capacities and status of men and women in the Politics. Turning then to the
account of biological sexual difference, in section 2.3 I consider the
definitions of male and female as principles of generation. Section 2.4
examines sexual difference as manifested in the organs of animal bodies;
sections 2.5 and 2.6 analyze the differences in the fertile residues produced
by male and female animals, particularly with respect to their causal
capacities; section 2.7 describes the interaction of male and female
contributions to the process of conception; and section 2.8 then asks how
sexual difference is determined in the course of embryological
development. These sections together constitute an investigation into male
and female as principles of physical change, and as distinct forms of
embodiment for any given animal species. They address the first of the
problems mentioned earlier. In section 2.9 I turn to a set of questions that
emerge from Aristotle’s empirical account of sexual difference, and address
the second of the problems mentioned earlier: what is the relation between
necessity and teleology in the production of males and females? How can
the female be natural, necessary, and also defective? I demonstrate that
Aristotle can coherently claim both that the individual female is defective
relative to the male of her species, and that it is good for the species that
there should be females. Finally, in section 2.10 I consider whether the
account of the roles of male and female in generation, and of the way in
which animal soul is transmitted to the offspring, is consistent with
Aristotle’s conception of the unity of soul, and I introduce the special case
of rational soul.
This chapter offers an analysis of Aristotle’s account of sexual difference
in the Generation of Animals. I proceed thematically, in order to make clear
the conceptual framework of that account and the philosophical problems it
is intended to address. At the same time, my analysis draws on an
understanding of the Generation of Animals as a work in which Aristotle
proceeds from the general to the specific, and from standard cases to
anomalies.5 He begins the work by first establishing a general account of
generation in Book 1 and the first chapters of Book 2, connecting that
account to a metaphysical framework (calling, for example, on notions of
causation and on a distinction between potentiality and actuality), before
considering in the later part of Book 2 and in Book 3 how generation occurs
in different kinds of animals (e.g., those that bear their young live, or those
that lay eggs). In all of these discussions Aristotle begins with what is
generally true and moves on to consider more specific aspects of a
phenomenon and the problems or anomalies associated with it. Books 4 and
5 are then devoted to unresolved questions and problems emerging from the
first three books. Since issues of sexual difference are treated in different
ways in Books 1, 2, and 4, much of the evidence in what follows is drawn
from them; the differences among them are to be acknowledged but do not,
in my view, produce an inconsistent account of sexual difference.6
Aristotle insists here on the separation of the material cause from the formal
and efficient cause. Although the passage states that the female provides the
material cause (which we would expect from the definition in Book 1), it
emphasizes that the male does not provide matter. The point of the analogy
between the male and the craftsman is that necessity does not require that
the male should be associated with the matter, just as necessity does not
require that either the craftsman (the male) or his tools (the motions in his
semen) should “reside in” the matter from which the artifact will be
produced.14 In the last line of the passage Aristotle identifies the material
cause with the body of the animal (provided by the female) and the formal
cause with the soul (provided by the male). But this distinction does not
fully represent the nuances of his considered view.15
The sense in which the male contributes soul to the generation of
offspring is clarified and restricted in the second of the passages in Book 2
that has the force of a definition. Aristotle says that “it is impossible for the
female all by itself and from itself to generate an animal; because the
faculty just mentioned [the capacity to produce sensitive soul: τὸ ποιητικὸν
αἰσθητικῆς ψυχῆς] is the essence of what is meant by ‘male’ ” (GA 2.5
741a15–17). In the hierarchy of soul faculties set out in the De anima (at
2.2 413a21–414a4 and 2.3 414b29–415a13), the lowest faculty is the
nutritive or reproductive faculty, which every animate being possesses. The
sensitive soul, the next in the list, is the faculty characteristic of animals,
setting them off from plants: “Something is an animal primarily because of
perception. For even those things which do not move or change place, but
which have perception, we call animals (ζῷα) and not merely alive (ζῆν)”
(DA 2.2 413b2–5).
To produce sensitive soul is thus to produce the form of animal in the
offspring. This is what males do; this is what it means to say (as Aristotle
has at GA 1.2 716a6–7) that the male possesses “the principle of movement
and of generation.” But one implication of this account is that the menses or
katamênia of the female is itself potentially alive, since the male can
produce sensitive soul only in the appropriate katamênia. That is, the fact
that the katamênia can be actualized by male sperma is sufficient evidence
that it is potentially alive, and potentially possesses both nutritive and
sensitive soul. But there seem to be degrees of potentiality, since there is
some evidence that the potentiality for nutritive soul in the katamênia is
more robust than the potentiality for sensitive soul. At Generation of
Animals 2.4 740b29–741a4 Aristotle says that the nutritive soul “at the very
outset . . . causes [the natural object] to be set and constituted” (ἐξ ἀρχῆς
συνίστησι τὸ φύσει γιγνόμενον), indicating that the nutritive soul is active
from the beginning in the generation of the embryo. And it is implied by
Aristotle’s discussion of “wind-eggs” (τὰ ὑπηνέμια, now called
“parthenotes”) at Generation of Animals 2.5 741a17–32.He asks whether a
female can generate all by herself from herself; he answers that the case of
wind-eggs shows that the female is able to generate “up to a point,” because
wind-eggs possess soul “of a sort”—namely, the nutritive soul. Since wind-
eggs are produced without interaction with the male, the source of this
nutritive soul must be the female.16 That shows that the katamênia does not
necessarily require a contribution from the male in order to become a being
that nourishes itself; it only requires some vital heat. But it does require a
contribution from the male in order to become an animal. This suggests that
the potentiality for nutritive soul in the katamênia is of a higher degree than
the potentiality for sensitive soul, since it requires less to be realized.17 The
katamênia cannot, then, be inert matter. But its potentialities for soul are
different from semen’s. Most importantly, it does not have the active
potentiality for sensitive soul.
Another definition of the sexes is found in Book 4 of the Generation of
Animals, at 4.1 765b9–15, where two features are said to differentiate male
and female: (1) the male is able to concoct and emit semen (σπέρμα), while
the female is incapable of doing so, and (2) the male has the “source of the
form (τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἴδους),” and, by implication, the female does not.18
This definition is abbreviated and simplified in ways that might lead one to
suppose that Aristotle conceives of the female simply as an animal that
lacks the powers possessed by the male. It should, however, be understood
in light of the definitions in Books 1 and 2 in which male and female are
defined in ways that highlight the capacity and causal role of the female as
well as the male. The “source of the form” here must be the same as the
principle described as the source “of movement or generation,” in the
passage at Generation of Animals 1.2 716a4–18 (discussed earlier). To have
the source of form is to have a causal power, the capacity to produce form,
which, in a living being, will be a soul, as we have seen emphasized in the
definition in Book 2 (GA 2.4 738b20–27). Aristotle does not say here in
Book 4 what kind of form has its origin with the male, but, as we have seen,
he has already specified that it is the sensitive soul of the animal.
Aristotle makes clear that the capacity and incapacity for concoction that
characterize the sexes are produced by differences in heat (GA 4.1 766a31–
37). In the production of sperma, whether semen or menses, what is
concocted is blood or the counterpart of blood (the “ultimate nutriment”—
τῆς ὑστάτης τροφῆς) up to the point where it becomes a fertile residue. This
process of concoction involves the transmission of natural heat (a process I
will explore in more detail in section 2.5).
Let us assume then that “the male” is a principle and is causal in its nature; that a male is male
in virtue of a particular ability (ᾗ δύναταί τι), and a female in virtue of a particular inability (ᾗ
ἀδυνατεῖ); that the line of determination between the ability and the inability is whether a thing
effects or does not effect concoction of the ultimate nourishment (τῆς ὑστάτης τροφῆς) (in
blooded animals this is known as blood, in the bloodless ones it is the counterpart of blood); that
the reason for this lies in the “principle,” i.e., in the part of the body which possesses the
principle of the natural heat (τὴν τῆς φυσικῆς θερμότητος ἀρχήν). (GA 4.1 766a31–37)
The “part of the body which possesses the principle of the natural heat” is
the heart (see GA 4.1 766a35–37), so the cause of the capacity or incapacity
for concoction lies in the heart. Since natural heat (also called “connate
natural” heat, “vital” heat, or “soul” heat) determines the capacity for
concoction, and the sexes have different capacities for concoction, the
principles of natural heat in male and female will have to be different in
some way.19
The female receives, but is incapable of producing, semen, which is the
origin of animal form. Nonetheless the female does produce a kind of
“seed” (also called sperma)—the katamênia—which Aristotle says is either
the same residue (περίττωμα) as that in the male, although incompletely
processed (GA 4.1 765b36–766a2), or a residue that is analogous to semen
(ἠ γονή) in males, although “greater in amount and less thoroughly
concocted” (GA 1.19 726b31–727a4). Although the products of concoction
are thus different in kind in the sense that they have different capacities, the
processes of concoction are not different in kind, but only in degree: in
males the process is more complete.20 And the incapacity of the female to
concoct as completely as the male constitutes the deficiency of the female:
“Females (τὰ θήλεα) are weaker and colder in their nature; and we should
look upon the female state (τὴν θηλύτητα φυσικήν) as being as it were a
deformity (ὥσπερ ἀναπηρίαν)” (GA 4.6 775a14–16).21 Although, then, both
males and females produce a fertile residue (both of which Aristotle will
call sperma), the sexes concoct it to different degrees, with the result that
the residues have different causal capacities. The fundamental biological
sexual differences in viviparous animals is thus a difference in the degree of
natural heat produced by the body, the correlative differences in the degree
of capacity for concoction, and the differences in the fertile residues that
ensue.22
The definition of male and female in Book 4 (at GA 4.1 765b9–15,
discussed earlier), centering as it does on the female’s incapacity to concoct
and her receptive role, seems to characterize her in negative terms relative
to the male. It should, however, be interpreted in light of the definitions of
male and female that Aristotle has offered earlier in the Generation of
Animals, in Books 1 and 2, where, as we have seen, he highlights the
contributions of each sex to the process of generation, and the capacities
that each must have in order to make these contributions. What it means to
be male or female is to contribute either the principle of movement and
form or the principle of matter to the production of the offspring. Returning
to the two features said to differentiate male and female in the definition at
Generation of Animals 4.1 765b9–15, and bearing in mind the definitions
Aristotle has offered in Books 1 and 2, it is clear that we should understand
these features in more precise terms: (1) when he says that the male is able
to concoct and ejaculate semen (σπέρμα), while the female is incapable of
doing so, he means that the male is able to concoct and emit sperma that is
fully concocted (and constitutes semen), whereas the female is able to
concoct and emit sperma that is imperfectly concocted (and constitutes
katamênia)—he does not mean that she is incapable of producing or
emitting any kind of sperma; and (2) when he says that the male has the
“source of the form (τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἴδους),” and, by implication, the
female does not, he means that the male has the principle of efficient and
formal causation, and the female has instead the principle of material
causation. This makes clear that the female is not characterized by Aristotle
simply as having an incapacity, nor as being causally inactive.
While clarifying Aristotle’s conceptions of male and female, these
definitions also raise two questions. Although Aristotle concludes that the
male does not provide matter, we have seen that he leaves open the question
of whether the female provides form.23 That is, while the katamênia must
have a potentiality both for sensitive soul and for nutritive soul just in virtue
of its capacity to become an animal, the potentiality for nutritive soul
appears to be an active power to some degree, since it can be realized by
vital heat internal to the female body in some cases (when wind-eggs
form).24 This gives rise to the first question: if Aristotle believes that the
nutritive soul does not come from the male in the same way that the
sensitive soul does, then has he not produced for himself the problem that
he identifies in the accounts of Democritus and Empedocles (see chap. 1,
sections 1.4.2–1.4.3)—namely, if male and female sperma each carry some
part of the form (some faculty of the soul), how will they unite in the
embryo? Crucial to Aristotle’s account is the claim that the fertile residues
have soul potentially, not actually (GA 1.18 722b4ff., 4.1 764b4ff.); I will
return to the question of the capacity of male and female to transmit soul
faculties, and the union of those soul faculties, in sections 2.6 and 2.10.
A second question raised by these definitions of male and female
concerns final causation in sexual differentiation: is the production of
females a final cause for animal nature? We know that the male has a
capacity and the female an incapacity for concoction; and we know that the
female provides the material cause and the male the formal and efficient
causes. But is it because the female has the incapacity to concoct that nature
gives her the task of providing the matter? Or does nature give her the
incapacity to concoct in order that she may provide the matter? These
questions emerge from a more basic question about the status of the female:
are females produced by nature for the sake of some end (i.e., so that they
can provide the matter for offspring), or through a failure of nature? In the
former case, the final cause is the concoction of appropriate material for the
generation of offspring, and the production of females is conditionally
necessary for that. In the latter case, the production of a female cannot be
understood as the achievement of an end, but rather as a failure to achieve
that end. The question is whether it is not possible for the female to serve an
end even as a failure (in some respect) of nature. I will consider these issues
in section 2.9.
2.4 The organs that differentiate the sexes
Later in the Generation of Animals Aristotle repeats the point that it is the
capacities rather than the organs that are the principles of male and female:
“Since there is a difference (ἐπεὶ δ’ἔχει διαφορὰν) in the capacity, there is
also a difference (διαφέρον) in the organ” (GA 4.1 766a23–24). That is, first
(not temporally, but causally) an animal is determined to be male or female,
and then its organs are formed so as to allow it to engage in concoction and
emission as it is performed by a male or female animal of its kind.26 And
when those organs are formed, the animal becomes male or female in
actuality:
As far, then, as the principle and the cause of male and female is concerned, this is what it is and
where it is situated; a creature, however, really is male or female only from the time when it has
got the parts by which female differs from male, because it is not in virtue of some random part
(καθ’ ὁτιοῦν μέρος) that it is male or female, any more than it is in virtue of some random part
that it can see or hear. (GA 4.1 766b3–8)
The Generation of Animals confirms that the vital heat, in this passage
referred to as “connate natural heat” (Juv. 4 469b8–9), has its source in the
heart, but also suggests, in a passage at Generation of Animals 4.1 766a31–
37 cited earlier, that the quantity or quality of heat in the heart is different in
male and female.32 Because the fundamental biological sexual difference is
a functional difference in the capacity to concoct and the heart is the first
organ to concoct the blood or blood-analogue into a fertile residue, the
distinction between male and female animals resides not only in the genitals
but also in the hearts of animals, which provide vital heat adequate for the
concoction of blood into semen or into menses. The capacity of the heart to
produce heat is then one manifestation of the sex of the animal.
This might suggest that Aristotle believes that the hearts of males and
females are different in morphology or physiology, but the evidence for that
is slight. He does say, at Generation of Animals 4.1 766a32–37, that the
reason that “the line of determination between the capacity and the
incapacity is whether a thing effects or does not effect concoction of the
ultimate nourishment” lies in “the principle, i.e. in the part of the body
which possesses the principle of the natural heat,” which is the heart. And
later, at Generation of Animals 4.8 776b11–15, he says that “both the
residue in males and the menses in females are of a bloodlike nature; now
the source of the blood and of the blood-vessels is the heart, which is
situated in these [upper] parts; therefore of necessity it is here that the
change which this sort of residue undergoes must be first of all apparent.” If
the change in the residues appears first “here,” that is, in the heart, this
suggests that the transmission of vital heat occurs in the heart; but the
passage certainly does not indicate that the change in the residue that occurs
in the heart will be different in males and females. Moreover, immediately
after the passage at Generation of Animals 4.1 766a32–37 just cited,
Aristotle adds that no animal is male or female until it has “the parts by
which female differs from male,” suggesting that the heart is not such a part
(GA 4.1 766b5–6). And earlier (at GA 4.1 766a4–5) he indicates that the
parts by which female differs from male are the uterus and the perineos,
which must be the male genitals. Finally, in species that ejaculate semen,
the final concoction of the semen occurs in males in the seminal ducts and
in the penis, as a result of friction during intercourse; and the final
concoction of the katamênia probably occurs in the uterus (GA 4.1 764a12–
20). So, while male and female differ in their capacity to concoct the fertile
residue, since that concoction takes place in a number of organs, it may be
that male and female hearts do not differ either structurally or functionally.
There is, however, some evidence that the hearts of male animals
produce more heat. In a passage at Parts of Animals 3.1 661b33–37,
Aristotle explores the notion of “the more and the less” (μᾶλλον and ἧττον),
saying that “since the male is stronger and more spirited, in some cases he
alone has such parts [e.g., sting, spur, horns, tusks, etc.], in other cases he
more than the female. For those parts which it is necessary for females to
have as well, e.g., parts related to nourishment, they have, but they have
less [ἧττον δ᾿ ἔχουσιν]; while those related to none of the necessities, they
do not have.” That the “parts related to nourishment,” such as the digestive
organs, are present “in a lesser degree” in the female probably means just
that they are smaller (in the Problemata, for example, we are told that a
large size “is characteristic of the male, for females are smaller than males”
[Prob. 10.36 894b26]). There is, then, no evidence that Aristotle believes
that the vital heat found in females is different in kind from the vital heat in
males; probably there is simply more of it in males. We should then
attribute the differences in the capacity to concoct in male and female to (1)
the quantity of vital heat transmitted by the heart to the ultimate
nourishment and (2) the differences in the particular sexual organs, since
Aristotle thinks that the final stage of the concoction of male sperma occurs
through friction in intercourse. There is no reason to suppose that the heat
of a female heart is different in kind from the heat of a male heart, and
hence no reason to suppose that the female heart is structurally or
functionally different from that of the male.33 They differ only in size.
In addition to producing blood and transmitting vital heat to the blood,
Aristotle attributes at least two other functions to the heart. Because these
may prove to have a bearing on the relation between biological sexual
differences and the political roles that Aristotle assigns to men and women,
it is worth exploring them here. First, the heart holds the principle of
sensation or perception. In the Parts of Animals Aristotle explains that
sensation has its origin in the heart because it operates through the blood
vessels: “For ‘animal’ is defined by sensation, and the primary sensory
organ is the primary blooded part, and such is the heart; for it is indeed an
origin of the blood and a primary blooded part” (PA 3.4 666a34–37); and
“the movements of pleasures, pains, and all sensation generally evidently
originate there [in the heart] and proceed to it” (PA 3.4 666a10–11). The
heart is the “primary blooded part” because it is connected to the entire
vascular system and thus to all the sensory organs. As Aristotle says:
Moreover, in all sanguineous animals the supreme organ (τό γε κύριον) of the sense-faculties
lies in the heart; for in this part must lie the common sensorium of all the sense-organs (τὸ
πάντων τῶν αἰσθητηρίων κοινὸν αἰσθητήριον). We can clearly see that two, taste and touch,
centre in the heart, so that all the others must do so too; for in this part it is possible for the other
sense organs to effect an impulse, but taste and touch do not extend to the upper region. Apart
from this, if in all creatures life resides in this part, clearly so too must the origin of sensation;
for we say that a creature is alive in so far as it is an animal, and an animal in so far as it is
sensitive. (Juv. 3 469a10–21)34
So the heart is the seat of sensation because it is the primary blooded part—
it lies at the center of the sensory network—and sensation operates through
the blood vessels.
Second, in the hierarchy of ends that an animal’s body aims to
accomplish, the ends of the heart establish the ends for other organs.
Because both sensation and life itself have their origins in the heart,
Aristotle claims that it is the “most authoritative” organ in an animal. In two
passages in On Youth and Old Age Aristotle tells us that the ends of the
heart determine the ends for the organism as a whole, and he connects this
activity with the function of the heart as the origin of sensation:
We have stated already in our treatise On the Parts of Animals that the heart is the source of the
veins; and that, in sanguineous animals, the blood is the ultimate nutriment from which the parts
are developed. Now it is clear that one function in respect of food is served by the mouth and
another by the stomach; but the heart is the most authoritative (κυριωτάτη) [organ], and it
determines the end (τὸ τέλος ἐπιτίθησιν).35 So in sanguineous animals the source of both
sensitive and nutritive soul must lie in the heart; for the functions of the other parts in respect of
food are for the sake of the heart’s function; for the dominant force must be directed towards the
final aim, as is the physician’s relation to health, and not reside in subordinate processes. . . .
Thus in the light of observed facts it is clear from what we have said that the source of the
sensitive and of the growth-producing and nutritive parts of the soul lies here; that is, in the
middle of the three parts of the body [i.e., in the heart]. (Juv. 3–4 468b32–469a27)36
The conception of the heart as the most authoritative organ, the one that sets
the ends for other organs in the animal body, emerges from the account of
its other functions. The heart transmits the vital heat that is both the
mechanism of nutrition (in the concoction of food into blood) and the
mechanism of reproduction (in the concoction of blood into sperma), and so
it is the first of the organs that supports the functions of the reproductive
faculty of soul. Aristotle’s point (in the passage at Juv. 3–4 468b32–469a27)
is that while we might think that the seat of the nutritive soul lies in the
stomach or other organs of digestion (“the other parts in respect of food”),
that is because the process of digestion is accomplished in order to allow
the heart to carry out its function—to change digested food into nutritious
blood, which is the ultimate function of nutrition. The heart is the first
organ to be formed in the embryo precisely because it is the seat of nutrition
(PA 3.4 666a20–22).37 This nutritive or reproductive faculty is common to
all living things; but the heart is also the seat of the sensitive faculty, and it
is sensation that characterizes animals, and distinguishes them from plants.
Moreover, because the soul of an animal includes just these faculties
(nutritive/reproductive and sensitive), the life of an animal is the exercise of
those faculties, and thus the heart has the principle of animal life. That these
are the activities that constitute the life of an animal implies that these are
also the ends of an animal—sensation, nutrition, and reproduction.38 In
saying that the heart sets the ends of the animal, Aristotle is explaining the
authority of the heart in terms of the telos of the animal: authority rests with
the part that is carrying out the tasks that constitute the life of the animal.
All the other parts of the animal (for example, the digestive organs) perform
their respective tasks for the sake of nutrition, reproduction, and sensation.
So the relation between the heart and the other organs is like the relation
between the doctor and those who practice the arts subordinate to medicine
(e.g., nutritionists, pharmacists); in other words, it is like the relation
between what Aristotle will call “architectonic” arts and the arts
subordinate to them.39
In subsequent chapters we will return to two features of this account of
the heart and its role in sexual reproduction and sensation. First, in chapter
3 I will draw on the conception of authority as Aristotle employs it to
clarify the relation between the heart and other organs of the body, in order
to understand the claim that the deliberative faculty of men has authority
over that of women. And in chapter 4 I will ask whether the differences in
the degree of heat that characterize the sexes might also affect sensation and
ultimately explain the particular deficit that Aristotle attributes to women.
To summarize the way in which the causal principles of sex are manifest
in individual animals: the bodies of animals are distinguished as male or
female according to the degree of capacity for concoction that the body
possesses, and the organs that distinguish male from female are those
associated with the different stages of concoction, beginning with the heart.
The product of that concoction, sperma, is also sexually differentiated, and
Aristotle sometimes treats it as a part of the body. Both male and female
blooded animals produce a kind of sperma, as we have seen; in the case of
the male it is semen, and in the case of the female it is katamênia.40 In the
next section I examine the differences Aristotle attributes to male and
female sperma, particularly the different contributions each makes to the
offspring.
“Even the matter is a principle”—that is, even the matter has a dunamis or
capacity for change, but it is a passive dunamis because it is a capacity to be
changed, and not to initiate change. Although Aristotle routinely associates
the male with the hot and the female with the cold, and both are active
qualities, he also says often that the katamênia is wetter and more bulky
(i.e., contains more moisture) than the semen and has less of the hot. That is
some reason to think that he is associating the active power of the hot with
an active power to produce soul, and the passive power of the moist with
the passive power to have soul produced in it. My suggestion is that the
higher degree of vital heat in the semen is identified with the active power
to produce soul and in particular with the sensitive (animal) soul faculty,
and that the lower degree of vital heat in the katamênia, which causes it to
be more moist than the semen, is identified with the passive power to have
soul produced in it and in particular with the nutritive (plant) soul faculty.
Consider first the claim that male sperma has an active potentiality for
soul. Aristotle poses the question: how is an animal formed out of (ἐκ) the
spermata (GA 2.1 733b23–24)? He believes the spermata must have soul,
in a qualified sense, because no other explanation for the transmission of
soul to the embryo is plausible. That the animal is formed out of the female
sperma is clear, he says.
The problem now before us, however, is not out of what, but, by what are they [the parts of an
animal] formed? Either something external fashions them, or else something present in the
semen (ἐν τῇ γονῇ) and the seminal fluids (σπέρματι); and this is either some part of soul, or
soul, or something which possesses soul. (GA 2.1 733b32–34a2)
The question is about the efficient cause (“by what”), not the material cause
(“out of what”), of generation, and Aristotle goes on to say that the efficient
cause cannot be external because it must be in contact with the materials.65
The efficient cause is in the male semen, which has sensitive soul
potentially; this must then be an active potentiality since it can initiate
change. We saw in section 2.3 that Aristotle defines the male in terms of
this capacity: “The faculty just mentioned [the capacity to transmit sensitive
soul: τὸ ποιητικὸν αἰσθητικῆς ψυχῆς] is the essence of what is meant by
‘male’ ” (GA 2.5 741a15–17). Male semen does not actually have this soul;
if it did, it would be an animal. But it has the capacity to produce or
actualize the sensitive faculty of soul in the appropriate matter (and hence
an active potentiality for sensitive soul), which is the efficient cause of
generation. The katamênia, by contrast, does not have an active potentiality
for sensitive soul (although it must have a passive potentiality).66 The
argument Aristotle offers for this claim is: if the female were to contribute
sperma that contained the principle of movement (i.e., the efficient cause),
then she would be able to generate offspring by herself; but she cannot
generate by herself; so she does not produce a sperma that produces
(ἐμποιεῖ) sensitive soul (τὴν αἰσθητικὴν ψυχήν) in the offspring, as does the
male (GA 2.5 741b2–7).67
When Aristotle says that “up to a point the female is able to generate,”
he indicates that, like the male sperma, the katamênia has some soul faculty
in potentiality. This implication is not limited to those species that produce
wind-eggs; the katamênia produced by the female in any species must have
soul potentially.70 This is because what distinguishes wind-egg-producing
species is not the nature of the katamênia the female produces, but the
proximity of the uterus to the diaphragm in those species, and the excess
katamênia that they produce (GA 3.1 750b17–27). The potentiality for
nutritive soul in the katamênia is one that is usually, and optimally,
actualized by male sperma; but on the evidence of the discussion of wind-
eggs, this potentiality is one that could in principle be actualized by any
form of vital heat, including the heat found within the female body. Should,
however, the nutritive soul in the katamênia be actualized by some degree
of vital heat other than that introduced by the male, it will fail to “bring the
parts to completion and so produce an animal” precisely because, as in this
example, the vital heat transmitted from the diaphragm does not have that
“principle of soul”—the moving cause of the offspring—which here is
identified, as we should expect, with the active potentiality for sensitive
soul of the male sperma. That the katamênia can be set by heat from the
diaphragm indicates that it must already have nutritive soul in it potentially.
That the heat of the diaphragm is not sufficient to complete the
development of an animal shows that the potentiality for nutritive soul is
closer to actuality than the potentiality for sensitive soul that is
characteristic of animals. The potentiality for sensitive soul in the
katamênia can only be actualized by the higher degree of soul heat found in
semen. So the potentialities for nutritive and for sensitive soul in the
katamênia are different, and the former is closer to actualization.
The fetation has soul potentially as soon as it is formed (see also GA 2.3
737a17–19), but it must have soul potentially in a different sense than do
the katamênia and semen. Aristotle describes katamênia, semen, and
fetation as “just as much alive as plants are” (GA 2.3 736a33–35) in the
sense that they all possess nutritive soul potentially. But they possess it in
different degrees.
The katamênia has the passive potentialities for nutritive and sensitive
soul. The semen has the active potentiality identified with a potential for
initiating the production of sensitive soul (which includes a potentiality for
nutritive soul, since higher soul faculties contain lower faculties, on the
model of geometric figures). The potentiality for sensitive soul possessed
by the semen will be a higher degree of potentiality, that is, closer to
actuality, in virtue of being active. The fetation has a potential nutritive soul
in a higher degree of actuality than either katamênia or semen because it is
capable of growth and hence actualized to some extent. There will not be a
fully actual nutritive soul until all the organs of digestion and reproduction
have been completely formed in the fetus (and ultimately, in the case of the
organs of reproduction, in the animal). This ascription of potential nutritive
soul to semen, katamênia, and fetation illustrates the distinctions within
potentiality that Aristotle mentions at GA 2.1 735a9–12, cited earlier, while
reminding us that there are various degrees of potentiality, further from or
nearer to the telos for which they are potentialities: “there are varying
degrees in which it [the fertile residue] may be potentially that which it is
capable of being—it may be nearer to it or further removed from it (just as a
sleeping geometer is at a further remove than one who is awake, and a
waking one than one who is busy at his studies).”71 In this passage there are
three levels of potentiality: sleeping geometer, geometer awake, geometer
engaged in geometry. The katamênia and semen must have nutritive soul
potentially in the first degree (although different degrees of the first,
because one is passive and the other active), analogous to the sleeping
geometer. The fetation and embryo must have the potentiality for nutritive
soul in a manner analogous to the geometer who is awake—or rather,
awakening, since embryonic development is a process over time, in which
the potentiality is gradually realized. It is only when all the organs of
nutrition and reproduction have been formed and the animal exercises its
nutritive and generative capacities fully that it is analogous to the geometer
engaged in geometry.
We have seen that Aristotle says of wind-eggs too that they possess
nutritive soul potentially (GA 2.5 741a23–25). How then does the potential
for nutritive soul of the wind-egg differ from that of the fetation or the
embryo in its early stages? A more precise way to pose the question is to
ask what differentiates the activity of nutritive soul in the growth exhibited
by both the wind-egg and the fetation. In the De anima 2.4 Aristotle
suggests a way to understand the different operations of the nutritive faculty
in the unfertilized wind-egg and the fertilized fetation: by distinguishing
between the activity of nourishing and the activity of growing:
Since nothing which does not partake of life is nourished (τρέφεται), what is nourished would
be the ensouled body, insofar as it is ensouled, with the result that nourishment is relative—and
not coincidentally—to what is ensouled. There is a difference, however, between being
nourishment (τροφῇ) and being able to produce growth (αὐξητικῷ) in something. For insofar as
an ensouled thing is a particular quantity (ποσόν τι), something is capable of producing growth
in it, while insofar as it is some this and a substance (τόδε τι καὶ οὐσία), something is
nourishment for it. For what is ensouled preserves its substance and exists as long as it is
nourished; and it is capable of generating not the very thing which is nourished, but rather
something like what is nourished, since its substance already exists and nothing generates itself,
but rather preserves itself. Consequently, this principle of the soul is a capacity of the sort which
preserves the thing which has it, as the sort of thing it is, while nutrition equips it to be active.
(DA 2.4 416b9–20)
We see here that Aristotle identifies the pneuma in sperma as the vehicle for
the transmission of soul; this is what causes sperma to be fertile, which is to
say, capable of generation. The phrase “the faculty of soul of every kind”
refers to the different kinds of soul faculties, nutritive and sensitive.74 The
“corresponding matter” that is said to differ in worth as do the faculties of
soul must be the katamênia sperma and the semen of the male. And the
claim that the substances that are associated with these soul faculties differ
in value according to the value of the faculties with which they are
associated means that the substances are the katamênia and the semen,
which differ from one another in value because the katamênia carries
(primarily) the less worthy nutritive faculty whereas the semen carries
(primarily) the more worthy sensitive faculty, both in potentiality.75 So
Aristotle is claiming that the nutritive/reproductive faculty of soul is
associated with or shares in (κοινωνέω) some physical substance, as does
the sensitive faculty of soul, but since these capacities of soul differ in
value, so too do the physical substances that convey them, the semen and
katamênia, differ in value.
Both male and female sperma have then a dunamis—a capacity and a
potentiality—that is what it is for them to be fertile residues. But those
capacities differ in value. There is no question but that on Aristotle’s
account the female sperma is inferior in value to the male. At the same
time, it is important to be precise in characterizing that inferiority, which is
not absolute, but relative to the value of semen. The katamênia is a fertile
residue, with nutritive and sensitive soul potentially, that is not only
valuable to the process of generation but necessary to it.
There are two ways in which we might interpret the claim in this passage
that “upon the entry of the semen the young animals are set and assume
their proper shape.” According to the first, “assume their proper shape” is a
gloss on “are set”; that is, an animal is not set until it has acquired its organs
and its shape. According to the second, the phrase refers to two events: in
the first, the animal is “set” when some primitive differentiation occurs in
the katamênia, prior to organ formation; and in a second, subsequent, phase
it acquires its proper shape over time as movements in the semen act on it.76
In some cases Aristotle employs the notion of “setting” to mean nothing
more complex than the differentiation of solids and liquids in the fetation,
or the separation of yolk and white in an egg, which is why the second
interpretation might seem correct.77 But in other cases, particularly in
discussions of viviparous animals, the first of these interpretations,
according to which animals are “set” only when their organs are formed, is
more likely. The reasons for this emerge from the claims Aristotle makes
about the actualization of soul in the fetation and the embryo.
It is clear that setting is associated with the actualization of the nutritive
soul. For example, Aristotle says that the power of the nutritive soul (ἡ τῆς
θρεπτικῆς ψυχῆς δύναμις) sets the natural object from the beginning while
it is being formed (ἐξ ἀρχῆς συνίστησι τὸ φύσει γιγνόμενον), just as, at a
later stage of the animal’s life, the power of the nutritive soul produces
growth out of nourishment (GA 2.4 740b29–741a4). Moreover, as we have
seen, Aristotle says that wind-eggs are set by the heat of the diaphragm in
some species (GA 3.1 750b3–751a13), and being set causes them to grow,
suggesting that their nutritive soul has been actualized to some degree
(although not completely, as Aristotle emphasizes). Setting always, then,
involves the actualization of the nutritive soul, and in some cases—the case
of the wind-egg—involves nothing more than the actualization of nutritive
soul.78
It cannot, however, be the case that in the setting of an animal fetation,
the nutritive soul is actualized without the sensitive soul, for several
reasons. First, since the soul is a unity, and sensation is the higher faculty,
the nutritive faculty is contained in the sensitive faculty (in the analogy of
soul faculties with geometrical figures) and cannot be actualized or
transmitted without the sensitive faculty (DA 2.3 414b28–32; see section
2.6.10). Second, the semen of the male is what sets the fetation, and it is
closely associated with the sensitive soul (GA 2.5 741a15–17; see section
2.3). Third, Aristotle says that no part of the animal body exists unless it has
sensitive soul:
It is impossible for any part of the body whatever (face, hand, flesh, etc.) to exist unless
sensitive soul is present in it, whether in actuality or potentiality, whether in some qualified
sense or without qualification. Otherwise what we have will be on a par with a dead body or a
dead limb. (GA 2.5 741a10–14)
The point of this passage is that an animal organ is such only when it
belongs to an animate body, but the phrasing makes clear that sensitive
soul, in some degree—potential or actual—is necessary for the formation
and operation of the parts of an animal’s body. This reminds us that in the
generation of an animal the actualization of soul must be the actualization
of sensitive soul in particular, if the animal offspring is to develop in a
directed way toward its specific telos. Even though the actualization of
nutritive soul is essential because it makes possible the nourishment of the
embryo, it is the actualization of sensitive soul that enables growth in the
sense that the embryo gains not only in size but also in formal features. So
when setting is brought about by male semen (rather than by the heat of the
female’s diaphragm, as in the case of wind-eggs) sensitive soul must be
produced in the embryo together with nutritive soul, and setting will
involve not the primitive differentiation and undirected growth of the
nutritive soul as in the case of wind-eggs, but the formation of organs. The
functional and teleological development of the embryo thus depends
crucially on the actualization of sensitive soul initiated by the male parent.
The actualization of both nutritive and sensitive soul in the katamênia,
the setting of the fetation, and the formation of the organs are then a single
event, as Aristotle describes it, although, as becomes clear, a single event
that in most animal species takes place over a protracted period of time. In
the generation of an animal “setting” is the prolonged process in which the
male semen (1) actualizes the potentialities for nutritive and sensitive soul
present in the katamênia, initiating directed growth and development, and
(2) forms the organs that are also potentially in the katamênia, and does so
sequentially, beginning with the heart.79 There is reason to think that the
transmission of sensitive soul and the formation of organs are not only
simultaneous, but coincident (see GA 4.3 767b16–21): as we saw earlier in
the discussion of wind-eggs (sections 2.6.4 and 2.6.5), should the katamênia
somehow (and exceptionally) be activated by the heat of the mother’s body
rather than by the movements in the vital heat of the father’s semen, it will
grow as an undifferentiated mass rather than develop as an animal embryo,
with differentiated organs. So vital or soul heat both initiates the production
of soul in the appropriate material, and at the same time separates solids
from fluids and forms the organs; the soul heat concocts the material and
purifies it, which means, as we have seen, that it excludes any “foreign”
matter not constitutive of the final product. Heat transforms matter at the
same time that it actualizes soul.
The association of the female with the passive potentiality for nutritive
soul and the material cause of generation, and of the male with sensitive
soul and the active potentiality to initiate the actualization of both nutritive
and sensitive soul, makes clear that Aristotle views the male principle as
active and superior with respect to the female principle. At the same time, it
is important to stress that he does not treat the female principle as soulless;
on the contrary, it has passive potentialities for soul that are essential for the
production of soul in the animal embryo, although incapable of initiating
the production of soul.
The process of setting and the process of organ formation are not distinct in
time: the separation of solids from the surrounding liquid, the actualization
of soul in the various organs, and the formation of those organs must all
occur at the same time. And the similarity in emphases of the two analogies
used to describe the processes of conception suggests that these processes
are contemporaneous: as the male “sets” the katamênia into the fetation, he
also actualizes soul and shapes the organs.81
The movements in the semen are active potentialities for soul; when the
fetation is formed the active potential for sensitive soul actualizes the
passive potential for nutritive and sensitive soul in the katamênia. “This
soul,” or “this part of soul,” that is, the nutritive soul, generates the embryo
and then causes it to grow; it generates it from the katamênia, and the
katamênia then also serves as “the matter from which” the embryo derives
its growth. The nutritive soul “is the nature of each several object” just
because it is fundamental to any living thing, whether plant, non-human
animal, or human. The dunamis of the nutritive soul in the fetation, which is
to say the potentiality or capacity of the nutritive faculty, is not identical
with the dunamis that is found in the katamênia; it is rather that dunamis
actualized by the movements in the semen to the point that it is now a
capacity for growth directed at a determinate end—that end determined by
the nature of the species (and so a higher-level potentiality because it is
closer to the telos of the process).
The idea that conception and embryonic development unfold through the
use of tools is a recurrent theme in Aristotle’s account, and one that is
prominent in the analogy with craftsmanship. In the passage at GA 1.22
730b7–23, we saw Aristotle say that “nature acting in the male of semen-
emitting animals uses the semen as a tool, as something that has movement
in actuality; just as when objects are being produced by any art the tools are
in movement, because the movement which belongs to the art is, in a way,
situated in them” (GA 1.22 730b19–23). Although in this passage it is the
semen that is described as a tool of nature, it is more properly the
movements in the semen that are the tool, and the movements are then a tool
that uses tools—heat and cold—to produce their effects. In calling heat and
cold the tools of the movements, Aristotle is signaling that they are
subordinate to the determinations of the movements, which aim to shape a
being of a particular form, with certain functions.89
Just as heat and cold act on the iron but do not produce the sword, so too
they act on the katamênia but do not generate the animal. It is the
movements in the sperma of the male, which shape and form the katamênia
into the organs of the body, using heat and cold to soften and harden the
material as necessary, that generate the animal. The crafts analogy confirms,
then, that the movements are the efficient cause of generation, although
they make use of heat and cold to arrive at the telos of generation, the
individual living being. I will return to questions of necessity and final
causation in the determination of sex in the next section.
To summarize the process of conception on Aristotle’s account: Both
parents have a fertile residue in which pneuma is present, and that pneuma
contains “soul heat,” which has dunameis (potentialities or powers). The
male parent is the efficient cause of generation because he contributes the
sperma that has the “principle of soul,” which is the active potentiality for
sensitive soul. This principle is present in the soul heat from which the
movements that actualize the potential for nutritive soul in the katamênia
are drawn, and those movements confer on the fetation and the embryo a
higher potential for sensitive soul. These movements, using heat and cold as
tools, set and shape the embryo, simultaneously actualizing the various
nutritive, reproductive, and sensitive capacities that characterize the animal
species in question and causing it to grow toward its mature form. This
account deflates somewhat the notion of a peculiarly male agency: heat and
cold are tools of the movements, which are in turn tools of the semen,
which is itself a tool of nature. The male animal, as much as the female
animal, is used by nature for its own purposes. In the next section I take up
the question of the determination of sex as an aspect of this process of
embryonic development.
So, while the formation of the heart allows the embryo to nourish itself, the
semen must continue to be present in the uterus, and its movements
operating, so long as the embryonic organs are being formed; the
movements are formative but not nutritive.91 Although the organs of the
body are developed successively, Aristotle allows that the formation of the
homeomerous parts and the anhomeomerous parts occurs simultaneously.
The process is accomplished by the movements, which produce soul, and
produce the logos, which here must refer both to the blend of elementary
bodies, and to the functional capacities, “in direct consequence of which
one thing is flesh and another bone” (GA 2.1 734b31–34).92 The
movements also use heat and cold to produce such features as hardness,
softness, toughness, brittleness, and other physical qualities.
The mechanics of this process are then: each one of the parts is formed
and acquires soul (in the sense that a heart is not a heart unless it has soul in
it, i.e., has the capacity to function as a heart). The heart is formed first on
Aristotle’s account and is responsible for the growth of the animal, because,
as we have seen, it possesses the “principle” or “origin” of growth: it
produces the blood which nourishes the embryo as it develops. This is the
same principle described in the Parts of Animals as the “principle of life,”
since Aristotle associates all forms of life with a capacity for growth. The
heart, while it is responsible for growth, is not responsible for the formation
of the other parts of the animal (because it cannot transmit the form of each
organ), which are set and shaped successively by the movements in the
semen. Animal soul is then actualized progressively through the formation
of the various organs and the activation of the capacities that require those
organs. Aristotle indicates that with the formation of the heart we can say
that an animal has been formed, but not yet that an animal of a particular
species has been formed. The embryo acquires sensitive soul as it develops
and is thus an animal from the inception of its sensitive capacities with the
formation of the heart, but “it is not the fact that when an animal is formed
at that same moment a human being, or a horse, or any other particular sort
of animal is formed” (GA 2.3 736b1–5). The species-specific
characteristics, the organs and capacities that distinguish one kind of animal
from another, are formed at the end of the process of development.93
With the formation of the heart and the actualization of its capacity for
pneumatizing the blood, an animal is determined as male or female in the
sense that the principle of maleness or femaleness is fixed. The animal will
not actually be male or female until the organs necessary to carry out the
work of that principle have been formed. In other words, although the sex
of the offspring is determined when its heart is formed and its capacity to
concoct is established, the individual is not actually male or female—but
only potentially male or female—until the sexual organs have been formed
(GA 4.1 766b3–8). But this potentiality is a higher degree of potentiality
than that of the katamênia, which is potentially male-or-female, whereas the
embryo is potentially male or potentially female once its capacity for
concoction has been determined.
In this case, the “kind” is not a genus or species, but a sex: Socrates has the
characteristics of the male sex, as well as the characteristics that pick him
out as the individual Socrates, distinct from other males of the same
species. The movements that make the offspring a male are distinct, then,
from the movements that make the offspring resemble his father in other
respects. One might be a male person without resembling Socrates beyond a
resemblance of species and sex. This is consistent with Aristotle’s
understanding of maleness and femaleness as attributes that belong properly
speaking to the genus of animal. In other words, the “movements of the
male” derive from the male parent qua male animal of a certain species,
whereas the “movements of the father” are the movements that derive from
the male parent as an individual.97
Although the “movements of the male” determine the offspring as an
animal rather than as an individual, they are grouped with the “movements
of the father,” which determine the offspring as an individual, rather than
with the “movements of the universal,” as we might expect. This is because
the movements of the male, like the movements of the father, are non-
essential, since neither being male nor resembling one’s father as an
individual is an essential feature of any animal. The movements of both
male and father transmit heritable features, but those features are not part of
the species form and so are non-essential features of the offspring.98 If it is
clear that a snout shaped like one’s father’s is not part of the species form, it
is also clear that neither maleness nor femaleness is part of the essential
form. We know this from the discussion of the nature of sexual difference in
Metaphysics 10.9, explored in section 2.2: the difference of sex is a
difference at the level of the genus animal, but it is a difference in the
matter and not in the form of the genus. So the determination of sex is more
like the determination of a particular slant of snout than like the
determination of, for example, functional lungs.
We know, however, that the offspring must be determined as an animal
and as a member of a particular species at the moment when the fetation is
first formed and the movements begin to actualize the nutritive soul that is
potentially in the menses; otherwise, the formation of the organs peculiar to
animals and to species could not be successively formed. So we must
assume that the movements of the universal (i.e., of animal, and of species)
operate first and continue operating as the various organs of the animal are
formed. The movements of the male, the movements that determine sex,
will operate simultaneously with these universal movements (of the genus
and species), and prior to the movements of the individual father (although
eventually these movements may all work in conjunction). Sex is
determined in the first instance, as we have seen, by the capacity to concoct
residual blood into either semen or katamênia. That capacity, as we have
seen, is determined by the individual’s ability to transmit soul heat to the
residual blood. And that capacity is in turn determined by the ability of the
heart (in the first instance) to add pneuma to the blood, a capacity that will
differ in degree between male and female because of the size of the heart
(see section 2.4.3). The heart is the first organ to be formed in the embryo
(because it produces the blood that nourishes the embryo as it grows), prior
to any of the features whereby the offspring might resemble its father as an
individual. The universal movements—of genus and species, but also of
male—will then be followed by the movements of the father, that is, the
movements that govern resemblance to the individual male.99
The “potential” movements that are actualized when the movements of the
male fail to gain mastery are the movements of the female, those that
determine the capacity of the heart (and other organs) to introduce soul heat
to a certain, limited degree into the blood in such a way that it can be
concocted to the point where it is menses, but not beyond that to the point
where it is semen.
The sex of an animal is, then, determined early in the process of
conception, according to whether the movements of the male in the semen
are able to master the katamênia, where the physical consequence of
mastery is the formation of a heart with the capacity to concoct the blood up
to the point where it is semen, and the failure of mastery results in a heart
with the capacity to concoct the blood, but only up to the point that it is
katamênia—although this difference is likely to be simply one of size. As
we saw in section 2.4.3, there is little evidence that the hearts of male and
female are different in morphology or physiology, although the male heart
is able to provide a higher degree of heat, probably because it is larger. At
any rate, the capacity of the heart to concoct residual blood into a fertile
residue distinguishes male from female at the outset—that is, it establishes
for any given individual that it will have either the male principle or the
female principle. This is clear, as Aristotle argues that the sexual organs that
are formed subsequent to the heart have already been determined to be male
or female.
The reasoning in this passage begins with the supposition that the blood
vessels are “prior” to the sexual organs, and that therefore the development
of the sexual organs is contingent on the prior development of certain
vascular structures. Aristotle does not say, but we have to assume, that the
heart is prior to the blood vessels in the same way that the blood vessels are
prior to the sexual organs. If that is right, then the blood vessels develop as
they do in order to support the function of the heart, and so their formation
requires the prior formation of the heart. The primary function of the
vascular system is nourishment: it carries the ultimate nutriment (blood) to
all the parts of the body, both during and after embryogenesis. Nourishment
and generation are both functions of the nutritive soul (DA 2.4 415a23–27).
Since the body usually produces a residue of blood, and that blood is to be
concocted further to produce fertile residues that allow for generation, the
body requires organs that can concoct and house the fertile residues. The
sexual organs cannot be formed before they can be supplied with nourishing
blood. This is true of many organs, but the sexual organs are unusual in that
they not only are nourished with blood, but also contain the product of
concocted residual blood—the fertile residues. So while the uterus, like the
vascular system, is a vessel for blood, its formation requires the prior
formation of the blood vessels. The sexual organs are not a cause or
principle in that they are contingent on the vascular system, and so they are
not formed early in the process of embryogenesis. The reason, then, that the
sexual organs in an individual animal conform to the principle of sex—
conform, that is, to the capacity for concocting the residual blood that the
animal possesses—is that the sexual organs and the blood vessels develop
in order to support the function of concoction, nourishment, and generation,
and only once those functions have been determined. This is a
manifestation of the general principle that organs are for the sake of
functions and so develop in order to serve those functions. If the capacity
for concoction in the heart is limited, then the vascular system and the
sexual organs will develop in conformity with that (in)capacity, and the
sexual organs of the female will be the result.103
Aristotle’s account of the determination of sex relies on the notions of
success and failure in mastery, and resemblance and deviation from
resemblance: if the movements in the semen master the katamênia, they
ensure a resemblance to the male parent with respect to sex; if they fail to
master the katamênia in that respect, they actualize a potential in the
katamênia for a resemblance to the female parent. In using these notions
Aristotle makes clear that he understands the determination of sex to be a
part of the mechanism of inherited resemblance, through which, in ideal
circumstances, an animal takes after its male parent, both at the level of the
universal (in genus, species, and sex) and at the level of the individual.104
So, for example, hedgehog infants should resemble male hedgehog adults
more than any other animal with respect to genus, species, and sex; and any
given offspring should resemble its father more closely than it resembles
other adults of the same species. To be male, then, is to inherit maleness
from the male parent, and to conform to the ideal instantiation of the genus
in this respect; to be female is to inherit femaleness from the female parent,
and hence to depart from the ideal instantiation of the kind (παρεκβέβηκε
γὰρ ἠ φύσις ἐν τούτοις ἐκ τοῦ γένους τρόπον τίνα) and to be imperfect, at
least in that respect (GA 4.3 767b7–8).
Although Aristotle states clearly that a female is, as such, a monstrosity,
he adds that the formation of female animals is itself natural and necessary
(ἀλλ’ αὕτη μὲν ἀναγκαία τῇ φύσει) (GA 4.3 767b8–9). To understand how
the female can be both a monstrosity (which is to say, a departure or
deviation from a norm) and at the same time necessary by nature, we need
to consider a number of questions that concern the relationship of final
cause to necessity in the phenomena of sexual difference. In the next
section I take up these questions, including (in section 2.9.4) one that
concerns the nature of the norm that the female departs from—is it that of
the essential form of the species, or of maleness, or some other norm?
2.9.1 Introduction
We have seen that Aristotle portrays embryological development as a
teleological process, which is to say that he understands embryogenesis as a
process driven by certain formal aims or ends, and not simply as one
determined by the qualities of matter. This is perhaps clearest in his account
of the difference between the growth of a wind-egg and that of an embryo
(see sections 2.6.3 and 2.6.4): the wind-egg does not become an animal,
although it grows, because its growth is not directed toward the telos of a
species-form. The growth of an embryo, by contrast, is directed by the
movement derived from the male (i.e., the movement in the semen) to shape
the embryo in its likeness (GA 4.3 767b3–18); nature uses the movements
in semen to shape the embryo and to actualize its form (i.e., the soul of the
animal) (GA 1.22 730b7–23). The final cause of the generation of an animal
is the form of that animal, which is to say the set of capacities that the soul
of such an animal has, and the organs it acquires as it develops to serve
those capacities. So the generation of an animal is a telos, the actualization
of the species form of that animal kind in the appropriate matter, where that
telos guides the development of the embryo. Because animal generation in a
sexually differentiated species is a collaborative activity, requiring both
male and female, this is a telos that cannot be achieved by an individual
animal. The ultimate telos of animal generation thus has subordinate teloi—
the generation of katamênia and of semen—only one of which can be
achieved by an individual animal in a sexually differentiated species.
The teleological account of embryogenesis introduces a question: is sex
included in the telos of the animal? Another way to put this would be: is the
telos at which embryogenesis aims, the species form, that of a male animal?
Does Aristotle describe the female as a deformity because he believes that
she is a departure from the species form? In this section I address these
questions and others concerned with the possibility that sexual difference,
and the generation of females, might be subject to teleological explanation.
I do so first by analyzing a number of distinctions Aristotle introduces to
the notion of necessity. I argue that the generation of females is necessary in
two distinct ways: as a conditional necessity and as a material necessity.
Aristotle recognizes that the generation of females is not necessary
conditionally for the telos that is the generation of animals (since in theory a
species might reproduce without being sexually differentiated), but he
postulates a distinct telos: the separation of efficient and material causation,
the achievement of which does make the generation of females
conditionally necessary. This informs the way in which Aristotle construes
the female as a deformity; I argue that he does not mean to say that the
female fails to achieve the species form, because while he believes that
form includes a capacity to produce a fertile residue (the subordinate telos
to the telos of generation), he does not think it includes the peculiarly male
capacity to produce semen.
Of these, it is (2) conditional necessity in both its forms and (3a) material
necessity (“that which cannot be otherwise”) that figure in the discussion of
sexual difference and determination.
In the Physics material necessity is again associated with the natures of
materials, and distinguished both from conditional necessity (which is
linked to material causation), and from final causation.106 So Aristotle
distinguishes conditional necessity and material necessity as two forms of
necessity; conditional necessity must be understood relative to a final cause,
whereas material necessity is “direct” or unmediated. What has come to be
called material necessity is exemplified when “what is heavy is naturally
carried downwards and what is light to the top” (Phys. 2.9 200a2–3).
Materials (e.g., stones) have a “necessary nature” which causes them to act
and to be affected necessarily in certain ways. What Aristotle calls
conditional necessity, by contrast, is exemplified in the case of the saw, the
purpose of which “cannot be realized unless the saw is made of iron. It is,
therefore necessary for it to be of iron, if we are to have a saw and perform
the operation of sawing” (Phys. 2.9 200a11–13). So conditional necessity
obtains only when a certain end is specified, and what is necessary is some
prior condition necessary for the attainment of that end. By contrast,
material necessity obtains when the material nature of something (e.g.,
stone or water) necessitates some effect. In other words, conditional
necessity operates relative to an established telos, whereas material
necessity operates independently of a telos.
In the Parts of Animals Aristotle draws on both material and conditional
necessity to explain biological phenomena. To explain conditional
necessity, he contrasts it with final causation, emphasizing that conditional
necessity as a cause aligns with material causation, using an example
reminiscent of the saw of the Physics:
Therefore there are these two causes, the cause for the sake of which (το θ’ οὗ ἕνεκα) and the
cause from necessity (τὸ ἐξ ἀνάγκης); for many things come to be because it is a necessity. One
might perhaps be puzzled about what sort of necessity those who say “from necessity” mean; for
it cannot be either of the two sorts defined in our philosophical discussions. But it is especially
in things that partake of generation that the third sort is present; for we say nourishment is
something necessary according to neither of those two sorts of necessity, but because it is not
possible to be without it. And this is, as it were, conditionally necessary (ἐξ ὑποθέσεως); for just
as, since the axe must split, it is a necessity that it be hard, and if hard, then made of bronze or
iron, so too since the body is an instrument (for each of the parts is for the sake of something,
and likewise also the whole), it is therefore a necessity that it be of such a character and
constituted from such things, if that is to be. (PA 1.1 642a2–14)
The “two sorts defined in our philosophical discussions” are the two senses
of necessity we saw distinguished in the Posterior Analytics: material
necessity (a form of simple necessity) and compulsion, which are contrasted
with conditional necessity (and so with material causation).107 The example
of the material of a hatchet is offered to illustrate the concept of conditional
necessity, and the body of an animal compared to that material in the sense
that both serve a purpose. Aristotle is particularly interested here in things
that “pass through a process of formation” and draws an analogy between
the process of formation of an artifact, and the process of formation of a
body. The relationship between material cause and conditional necessity is
here made plain: the material cause subserves the final cause, and so the
materials of the body serve the purposes of the body, which are prior
(causally but not temporally) to the matter. Given how Aristotle employs
teleological explanation in some cases in the biological works—in
particular in Generation of Animals 2.1—conditional necessity should be
construed broadly to obtain not only in cases where certain materials are
necessary for certain ends, but also in cases where certain material
structures (for example, organs in an individual or sexed bodies in a
species) are necessary for the realization of certain ends.108 Because the
matter, or the material structure, is determined by the purpose, the material
cause is necessary relative to the final cause, and the material cause comes
to be identified with necessity in the sense of conditional necessity. So
material necessity is again contrasted with conditional necessity, and
material causation is closely allied with conditional necessity.
In drawing the contrast between conditional necessity and material
necessity in the Parts of Animals, Aristotle emphasizes that material
necessity obtains “owing to the very nature of the things,” where the things
in question, judging by the example provided, are the materials involved in
the process. The example is respiration:
Here is an example of the method of exposition. We point out that although respiration takes
place for such and such a purpose, any one stage of the process follows upon the other by
necessity. Necessity means sometimes (a) that if this or that is to be the final cause and purpose
then such and such things must be so; but sometimes it means (b) that things are as they are
owing to their very nature, as the following shows: It is necessary that the hot substance should
go out and come in again as it offers resistance, and that the air should flow in—that is
obviously necessary. And the hot substance within, as the cooling is produced, offers resistance,
and this brings about the entrance of the air from without and also its exit. This example shows
how the method works and also illustrates the sort of things whose causes we have to discover.
(PA 1.1 642a33–642b4)
Aristotle here distinguishes the two senses in which the female is necessary.
In one sense the necessity is conditional (“this indeed is a necessity required
by nature, since the genus of those divided into male and female has got to
be kept in being”). In a second sense the production of females is necessary
because the male movements in the semen do not always master the matter
in the uterus. Aristotle calls this necessity “accidental” (κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς
ἀναγκαῖον), to distinguish it from conditional necessity, which is linked to a
purpose. It is the necessity that stems from the material nature of the semen
(its weakness, caused by youth or old age) or of the katamênia (when it is
too cold or too moist). This is material necessity.121 As we have seen,
certain features of the matter of the katamênia or of the semen—the degree
of cold or heat, their bulkiness or moistness—necessitate that a female
should be produced in a given instance. The reason Aristotle calls this
necessity “accidental” is that the necessity belongs to the nature of the
matter, and not to the formal nature.122
Another passage in the Parts of Animals that describes material necessity
also contrasts it with conditional necessity, without using either term. In a
discussion of different bodily residues, Aristotle acknowledges that
although some residues are for a purpose (for example, nature uses the male
sperma and the female katamênia for a purpose), others (such as bile) are
present for no particular purpose—although it is necessary that they should
occur:
Now sometimes nature even makes use of residues for some benefit, yet it is not on this account
necessary to seek what something is for (ἕνεκα τίνος) in every case; on the contrary, when
certain things are such as they are, many other such things happen from necessity. . . . So it is
apparent that bile is not for the sake of anything, but is a by-product. (PA 4.2 677a17–31)
This passage is interesting both because it allows that some parts of the
body (residues) are necessary although they have no purpose (they are then
materially necessary), and because it indicates that nature is able to put
some of the residues produced by material necessity to use for some benefit
—that is, although they are produced by material necessity, there is some
natural purpose for them.
This suggests that material necessity and conditional necessity might co-
determine a phenomenon. Aristotle says as much in a passage at Generation
of Animals 2.4 738a34–b4:
Thus the production of this residue by females is, on the one hand, the result of necessity (ἐξ
ἀνάγκης), and the reasons have been given: the female system cannot effect concoction, and
therefore of necessity residue must be formed not only from the useless nourishment, but also in
the blood-vessels, and when there is a full complement of it in those very fine blood-vessels, it
must overflow. On the other hand, in order to serve the better purpose, the end (ἕνεκα δὲ τοῦ
βελτίονος καὶ τοῦ τέλους), nature diverts it to this place and employs it there for the sake of
generation, in order that it may become another creature of the same kind as it would have
become, since even as it is, it is potentially the same in character as the body whose secretion it
is.
Extrapolating from this, we can say that in the fetation and the embryo, not
only is there no entity “soul” that contains both sensitive and nutritive soul
(since just as “a figure is nothing beyond a triangle and the others following
in a series,” so too “a soul is nothing beyond the things mentioned [i.e., the
faculties of the soul]” [DA 2.3 414b21–22]), but the sensitive soul is not
separate from the nutritive soul; rather, the sensitive soul is animal soul and
contains, potentially, the nutritive soul. If we ask what “potentially” means
here, the analogy with geometrical figures again suggests that it describes
the relation of nutritive soul to sensitive soul as one in which the nutritive
faculty does not maintain an existence independent of the sensitive faculty,
although they are distinguishable in definition. Moreover, it suggests that
the sensitive soul is partly constituted by the nutritive soul (if only because
the operation of the nutritive soul is a necessary condition for its own
operation).
The second point is that the characterization of the female katamênia as
containing in potentiality the nutritive and sensitive faculties as well as the
parts of the animal to be formed allows Aristotle to depict the animal that is
generated as a unity not only of body and soul, but also as possessed of a
soul that is a unity. This notion of unity is set out in the Metaphysics in a
discussion of the unity of essence.144 Aristotle addresses a problem
concerned with the unity of generated substances as well as the unity of
definitions and numbers.145 In Metaphysics 7.17 he phrases the question in
terms of parts and the whole formed by those parts: why do these parts form
this whole? He offers as an example: “Why are these materials a house?”
(Met. 7.17 1041b5–6). Aristotle’s claim is that substance is “a principle and
a cause” (Met. 7.17 1041a10). The substance is present in the whole
constituted of its parts, but it is not an element in that whole: “The syllable
is not its elements . . . nor is flesh fire and earth” (Met. 7.17 1041b10–14); it
is, rather, a principle (Met. 7.17 1041b28–31):
But if, as we say, one element is matter and another is form (τὸ μὲν ὕλη τὸ δὲ μορφή), and one is
potentially and the other actually (τὸ μὲν δυνάμει τὸ δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ), the question will no longer be
thought a difficulty. . . . The difficulty disappears, because the one is matter, the other form.
What then is the cause of this—the reason why that which was potentially is actually,—what
except, in the case of things which are generated, the agent? For there is no other reason why the
potential sphere becomes actually a sphere, but this was the essence (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of either.
(Met. 8.6 1045a23–34)146
“From outside” must mean “from outside of the fetation.” Peck is right, I
think, to see that Aristotle here is claiming that the rational soul is provided
by means of the male semen, but that it is neither introduced into the semen
nor actualized by the semen in the katamênia in the same way as the
sensitive soul.148 Aristotle has outlined various possibilities for how soul
might enter into the semen and the fetation. Some faculties of soul are
“there [in the katamênia] and some are not” (GA 2.3 736b17) and “some of
them [i.e., some of the soul faculties that are not originally in the katamênia
but are supplied by the male semen] come to be formed within the male
from some outside source” (GA 2.3 736b20–21). As we have seen, it is the
nutritive and sensitive soul faculties that are potentially present in the
katamênia, as well as in the male semen. Aristotle suggests that these
potential soul faculties are acquired as the spermata move through the
parent’s body, but the rational soul cannot be present in the semen through
its movement through the male body—because that body does not contain
particular organs that perform the activities of the rational faculty. So
although rational soul is bestowed on the human embryo by way of its
father’s semen, the presence of rational soul in the father’s semen is due to
some “external source” the nature of which is left somewhat mysterious by
Aristotle. He says as much:
Consider now the physical part of the semen (τὸ δὲ τῆς γονῆς σῶμα). (This it is which, when it
is emitted by the male, is accompanied by the portion of soul-principle (τὸ τῆς ψυχικῆς ἀρχῆς)
and acts as its vehicle. Partly this soul-principle is separable from physical matter—this applies
to those animals where some divine element is included, and what we call reason (νοῦς) is of
this character—partly it is inseparable.) (GA 2.3 737a9–12)
The soul principle that is inseparable from the physical matter of the semen
must be that of the sensitive soul, actualized in the katamênia by way of
physical movements in the semen; the soul principle that is separable is
explicitly identified as the rational faculty. Again, the mechanism by which
semen, which is the vehicle of rational soul and yet is separable from it,
transmits rational soul to the embryo is left mysterious.149 What is clear is
that the male is only indirectly a source of rational soul, which enters into
the human male’s semen “from outside.” This means that although the
faculty of reason does not have its source in either parent (unlike the
faculties of nutrition and sensation), reason is nonetheless conveyed to the
offspring by the father.150 How exactly reason enters in from outside is not
a question Aristotle addresses, but it is quite clear that he does not, in the
Generation of Animals, conceive of the faculty of reason as drawn directly
from the body of either the male or the female parent. One implication of
this is that in Aristotle’s embryology the faculty of reason is sexless. This
does not mean that there will be no differences between men and women in
rational faculties (we know that Aristotle attributes an important difference
to the “authority” of the deliberative faculties in the two sexes), but those
differences will have to emerge from physiological differences, as ways in
which the bodies of men and women affect the exercise of rational
capacities. In chapter 4 I will explore the link between embodiment and
differences in rational capacity.
To summarize the claims about the roles of male and female in the
process of generation and the transmission of soul, it is inaccurate to say
baldly that the male provides form, the female matter. The female certainly
does provide matter, and the male provides no matter, but the matter
provided by the female is already informed. It is only potentially informed,
but that is true also of male semen, of the fetation, and even of the embryo;
the soul (or faculty of soul) that is transmitted in the long process of
conception is soul in potentiality until the animal is fully formed. But the
faculties of soul are transmitted in such a way that higher faculties
actualize, and thereby contain, lower faculties, rather than being added to
them. This is crucial to Aristotle’s account, because otherwise the soul of a
living animal will not be a unity, and the account will suffer from the same
problem that he identified in the accounts of his predecessors: explaining
how different parts of form might become one. When Aristotle implies that
the female does not contribute soul, he means only that she does not
contribute the active potentiality for the sensitive faculty. What she does
contribute, as we have seen, is potentialities for the nutritive and sensitive
faculties, and in the case of human beings, a potentiality for the rational
faculty.
2.11 Conclusion
Aristotle’s account of sexual difference in the biological works emerges
from the context of his claim in the Metaphysics that sex is a difference that
belongs to the genus animal as such, but in the matter of the genus, not in
its essence. He construes male and female as contraries in a way that harks
back to the notion of sex as opposition in Pythagorean and other
predecessors, but for Aristotle contraries are those things that are most
different in the same underlying substrate: in this case, the genus animal. So
his account of sexual difference as opposition affirms the unity of male and
female in species and ultimately in genus, as well as the differences
between them. It insists that those differences are in the matter, and not the
form, of the animal.
Aristotle’s biological theory of sexual difference is developed in the
Generation of Animals as part of his account of natural generation, and on
my interpretation it again identifies sex as a difference in the matter of
individual animals. To have a sex is to have a capacity to concoct a fertile
residue; that capacity will be part of the formal nature of an animal, and so
it belongs to both sexes. Insofar as that capacity differs in male and female
animals, it is a difference in material rather than formal nature, a difference
in morphê and not in eidos. Although the sex of an individual is determined
by material necessity in the interaction of the fertile residues from male and
female and of the movements present in them, the generation of a female
animal is as much the achievement of the telos of generation as is the
generation of a male animal, because both instantiate the species form.
This is not to say that Aristotle does not express some of the
ambivalence toward the female that we have seen in his predecessors. In his
efforts to define the sexes we find Aristotle describing the female as having
both a capacity (to concoct surplus blood into a fertile residue that acts as
the material cause of the generation of an animal) and an incapacity (to
concoct the surplus blood into a residue that acts as the efficient cause). He
gives an account of the female’s fertile residue as potent, but inferior in its
passivity relative to the male’s active potency. He characterizes the
production of a female animal as a successful case of generation but one
that falls short (in its material organization or morphê) of the male. In each
of these cases, Aristotle allows that the female, or the female’s contribution
to generation, is inferior in some way, but he also argues that the female is
necessary for the achievement of the aims of nature, and valuable for that
reason.
Although Aristotle’s theory of sexual difference clearly depicts the
female as an inferior embodiment relative to the male, it also asserts that
she is good for a purpose—indeed, for more than one purpose. Male and
female must both exist, and collaborate, to achieve two distinct aims of
nature. The first is to generate another animal like themselves. As
individuals, female and male each have a subordinate telos, the generation
of a fertile residue from which the offspring will be generated, and they
share the ultimate telos of generation. The way in which the female is
inferior is connected to her capacity to collaborate in achieving the telos of
generation: the female is inferior because her role in generation is for the
sake of the role played by the male, but both roles contribute to the ultimate
telos of generation. The second natural aim that is achieved by means of
sexual difference is the separation of the efficient causal principle of
generation from the material causal principle. Again, the female is inferior
because she provides the material principle, but the existence of female
animals is good precisely because it makes possible the separation of that
inferior principle from the more divine, efficient, principle.
The way in which Aristotle navigates in the Generation of Animals
between the inferiority of the female and her status as something that has a
natural purpose is replicated in his account of sexual difference in the
political realm, to be considered in the next chapter. We have seen that
Aristotle’s account of conception and embryogenesis locates sexual
differences in the generative faculty of the soul and in the organs of the
body that serve that faculty. But his account of embryonic development in
human beings has the rational faculty entering into the semen “from the
outside.” Although it is not entirely clear what that means, it is clear that
Aristotle treats the rational faculty separately from other faculties of soul
because he does not associate it with particular organs of the body, and so
he cannot explain its appearance as a function of the development of any
particular organ or organs. If sexual difference is a difference in matter, and
the rational faculty is not a difference in matter, then we would not expect
to find sexual differences in the capacities or operations of reason. And yet,
in the Politics, Aristotle suggests just that. After examining the account of
political sexual differences in the next chapter, and in particular their
association with the rational faculty, in chapter 4 I will take up the problem
this tension presents: how can we connect the biological account of sexual
difference as located in the body with the account of political sexual
differences as differences in the rational faculty?
3
Sexual Difference in Social and Political Life
3.1 Introduction
We have seen that one way in which Aristotle understands sexual difference
in the biological context is based on a distinction between a capacity to
provide the efficient cause of generation and a capacity to provide the
material cause. Although the distinction between males and females can
thus be characterized in positive terms, it is also true that Aristotle often
describes the female as having an incapacity relative to the male—either to
concoct, or to produce sensitive soul. In this chapter I will argue that in the
context of his political philosophy Aristotle in a similar way understands
the sexes to be distinguished by a capacity and incapacity—in this case a
capacity for decision, which he believes free men have and free women do
not. The incapacity for decision that Aristotle attributes to women justifies,
on his view, the rule that men exercise (and should exercise) over women.
But it is also, as we will see, a capacity to be ruled that Aristotle sees as
beneficial to the household and the polis.
In this chapter I focus on the rule of men over women in the household
and the polis and consider three related questions. First, what does Aristotle
mean when he says that men rule “by nature” over women? Second, what
exactly is the incapacity of the deliberative faculty that distinguishes
women from men and determines that men should rule? And third, if
women have this incapacity, why is it good that they be included in the
political community? The answers to these questions will give us a picture
of Aristotle’s account of sexual difference as a political phenomenon, and
allow us then in chapter 4 to consider whether women are subject to rule by
men for a reason that can be traced back to the biology of sexual difference.
This chapter has three parts, which take up these questions in sequence.
In the first (section 3.2) I establish the distinguishing features of rule that is
natural, and hence what Aristotle means to say when he claims that men
rule over women by nature. The discussion of natural rule in the Politics
emerges from a number of familiar claims Aristotle makes about nature in
the political realm: that people are by nature political, that the polis is
natural, and that the polis is prior by nature to households and to
individuals. Natural rule, I argue, is rule that is structured teleologically and
aims at the good of the social whole in which it occurs. The rule of men
over women thus aims at the good of the whole in the context of which that
rule is exercised, namely the household; and, because the household is part
of the polis, the rule of men over women in the household contributes
ultimately to the good of the polis. If natural rule is teleological in this way
it is because the social entities (households in particular) in which it is
exercised are organic wholes, the parts of which must be distinct in kind
from one another. Rule is natural when it is exercised in the context of an
organic whole, with the aim of achieving the good of that whole. The
importance of the claim that men rule over women by nature is twofold:
first, it means that Aristotle believes it is the form of rule that should be
adopted in every household because it is best (and not a conventional or
optional social arrangement); second, it means that the relation between the
sexes is to be determined by the telos of the social whole of which that
relation is a part, that is, the telos of the household. This is not to say that
the household has a phusis, or nature, although it is, on Aristotle’s account
natural; in section 3.2.4 I explore the sense in which the household and the
polis are natural. I will argue that it is the good of the household as a whole,
and not, as is often assumed, something like the distinct natures of male and
female, that determines the rule of men over women.
In the second part (sections 3.3 and 3.4) I consider Aristotle’s conception
of sexual difference as a difference that grounds the different status of men
and women in the polis. The first task is to distinguish the case of women
from that of other natural subjects. Aristotle asserts that the rule of men
over women differs from the rule of masters over slaves and of fathers over
children (although these are all forms of natural rule), because of the
differences in the deliberative faculties of those who are ruled. In every
case, the justification for rule is based on the superiority of the deliberative
faculty in free men, but Aristotle distinguishes a number of ways in which
the deliberative faculty might be defective and thereby distinguishes kinds
among those who should be ruled by nature. My contention is that although
all these forms of rule are exercised in the household, the organic whole that
is the structure in which they occur is not the same in every instance—for
example, the whole in which men are a better part than women is not the
same as the whole in which free men are better than slaves. And although
all these forms of rule are natural in that they are teleological, the telos at
which each aims is somewhat different. So Aristotle understands natural
rule as a general kind marked off by certain features, within which more
specific forms of rule can be differentiated. The specific form of natural
rule that men exercise over women is one that Aristotle characterizes both
as aristocratic and as constitutional. That it should be aristocratic is no
surprise; that it is also constitutional seems to confuse the picture, because
constitutional rule generally presupposes equality between those who rule
and those who are ruled (although constitutional rule is structured so as to
imitate inequalities, as we will see). In what sense can the rule of men over
women be constitutional, given the inequality of men and women? I argue
that Aristotle believes that women (unlike slaves and children) can
participate in deliberation although they cannot rule, and this is why he
urges men to cede to women in certain matters. The political incapacity of
women is precise and limited, and it does not exclude them altogether from
the activities of deliberative reason.
In the third part (section 3.5) I consider Aristotle’s objections to Socratic
proposals to restructure the relations between men and women in order to
reveal what those objections tell us about Aristotle’s commitment to
preserving sexual difference in the spheres of the household and the city.
The teleological account of natural rule suggests that there is some political
good to be achieved through men’s rule over women, and it is in Aristotle’s
criticisms of Socratic proposals for equality that we find his account of that
political good. It is possible to read this debate as one in which Socrates
argues for the worth of women and Aristotle attacks it, but I contend that
we should rather understand it as one in which Socrates argues that there is
no political value in women (and hence no reason to preserve sexual
difference) and Aristotle argues that there is indeed a value to women—that
they are essential to the unity of the household and ultimately of the city. As
in the biology where, as we have seen, Aristotle asserts the conditional
value of females, so too in the Politics he urges us to accept that women are
valuable to the city as well as to the household. In setting out the
deliberative incapacity of women, Aristotle’s intention is not to show that
women are inferior to men—although he thinks that is true, and that it is
obvious. Rather, his intention is to show that the presence of women in
households and poleis is a condition for the full exercise of human virtue,
and hence a political good.
And he has told us that the parts of the polis are households (Pol. 1.2
1253b1), and that the parts of the household are the three relations of
natural rule (Pol. 1.12 1259a37–b4). The first step in examining the simple
elements of the polis is the distinction Aristotle draws between two kinds of
those “who cannot exist without each other,” the male and female, and the
master and slave (Pol. 1.2 1252a26–7). In this context the elements of the
state are not individual citizens. The elements are the pairings of the free
adult male head of household with slave and wife within the household,
each bound by a relation of rule; by considering these we will discover the
varieties of natural rule, and an understanding of those varieties will inform
Aristotle’s discussion of the polis and the forms of rule possible and
desirable within it.6 On this view, then, household governance is a subject
distinct from political governance, but linked to it because political society
is composed of households, as Aristotle says at Politics 1.3 1253b1–2.7
It is worth asking, however, why an account of the elements of a
composite is necessary for an account of the composite. That is, why will
understanding households and the relations of natural rule that constitute
households help us to understand the polis? The answer lies in Aristotle’s
understanding of the relation of the simple elements of the polis (i.e., the
parts of the household) to the polis itself. He takes the whole to be prior, in
an analytical rather than a temporal sense, to the part; insofar as the polis is
like an organism, the polis is prior to its parts in the same way that a body is
prior to its parts. Since the “parts” in this case are ultimately the three
pairings that involve different forms of rule, the polis is prior to these. This
analytical priority also has a teleological dimension, as suggested by the
analogy with an animal body: the polis is prior to the household, and so the
household is for the sake of the polis. In a similar way, the household is
prior to its parts—namely the pairings of master/slave, husband/wife, and
father/child—and so each of these is for the sake of the household, and
ultimately for the sake of the polis. And because the household is for the
sake of the polis, the polis determines what the household is like, or should
be like, just as, for example, the form of an animal determines what the
different parts of the animal will be, because those parts are for the sake of
the animal as a whole. The parts should then reveal to us something of the
whole, precisely insofar as they have been determined by the nature of the
whole. In other words, we inquire into the elements of a political
community not to confirm that the polis is indeed constituted out of
households, or that those households are constituted by certain pairings
involving natural rule (i.e., not to establish these facts, which Aristotle
thinks we already know), but because this investigation will tell us
something about what the polis should be.
This is the passage in which the claim that the male rules by nature, and the
female is ruled by nature, is stated most clearly. Although the passage is
intended as a justification of the form of rule that is appropriate to slavery
(despotism—“the rule characteristic of a master”), it serves more generally
as an argument that rule in different forms (despotical, constitutional, and
kingly) is both necessary and natural.10 The argument begins with the
premise that in any composite whole constituted out of parts there will be a
ruling element and an element that is subject to rule. Aristotle takes that to
be a fact of nature (“this [the distinction between a ruling and a ruled part]
is something that animate things derive from all of nature”).
Aristotle mentions a variety of wholes that require different structures of
rule. He suggests that what makes each of these examples a whole—what
makes a person, a soul, a polis, the pairing of master and slave, or the
pairing of a man and his wife into a whole—is that the parts of each are
engaged in some collective task. Notice that this is also how he
characterizes the notion of the political: an animal species is political if,
most fundamentally, different individuals of that species cooperate to
perform some task (HA 1.1 488a7–10; see also Pol. 1.2 1253a8–10). It
makes sense then that the wholes in question in the passage at Politics 1.5
1254a20–b20 might be models for social and political wholes, constituted
of parts that have some unified agency when engaged in their collective
task.11
Two forms of rule provide the paradigms for natural rule: the rule of soul
over body in the case of a person, and the rule of the intellect over the
appetite in the case of the soul. In the first instance we have the composite
whole constituted from soul and body, in the second the composite whole
constituted by the parts or faculties of the soul. The difference between
these is significant. The former is a model of despotical rule, the latter of
constitutional and royal rule. While Aristotle compares the rule of free man
over slave to that of the soul over the body, thereby identifying it as
despotical, he indicates that we ought to understand the relation of rule
between men and women on the model of the rule that the intellect (νοῦς),
as the part that has reason (λόγος), exercises over the faculty in the soul that
experiences emotion and desire (τῷ παθητικῷ μορίῳ), which can be trained
to obey the intellect. Since intellect rules appetite in a constitutional or
kingly way, the rule of men over women should be constitutional and royal,
rather than despotical (the analogy between forms of household rule and
forms of political rule is discussed further in section 3.4).
The distinction between slaves and women with respect to their
subjection to rule is then established. Natural slaves are subject to free men
by nature because “their business is to use their body”; they are the living
tools of their masters, and so their bodies are the instruments of others.
Women, by contrast, are subject to men without being tools of, or parts of,
the men who rule them. In section 3.4 I will elaborate on the differences
Aristotle takes to be the grounds for the different political status of slaves
and women. It is worth emphasizing here, as a preliminary point, that
Aristotle appeals to bodily differences in slaves to justify their subjection to
free men, but in justifying the subjection of women to the rule of men he
says nothing about the ways in which women’s bodies differ from those of
men. In particular, he says nothing about women’s childbearing capacities.
However Aristotle might justify the political inferiority of women, he does
not do so by pointing to some purported disabling effect of gestation and
childbirth.
Children are ruled so long as they are children: boys as well as girls have
immature—that is, incomplete—deliberative faculties, which makes them
natural subjects, but only (in the case of boys) until such time as their
deliberative faculties should be fully developed. So children (at least free
male children) are natural subjects, but only temporarily. The case of
women and natural slaves is different in that they must expect to be natural
subjects all their lives, because the deficiencies of their deliberative
faculties will not be remedied by maturity.21 Aristotle characterizes those
deficiencies in this passage only cryptically: the deliberative faculty of
women is “without authority,” and in the natural slave it is absent
altogether. These differences in deliberative capacity among free men,
women, and natural slaves are the cause of the different capacities for virtue
each displays. Those differences in virtue then in turn justify the natural
rule of free men in the household. The question is whether those differences
amount to an incapacity for human virtue in women.
In characterizing the deliberative faculty of women as without authority
Aristotle’s language is reminiscent of two other contexts, legal and
biological. We saw in chapter 1, section 1.5.1, that in Athens the man who
held legal control over a woman, most often her father or husband, was
referred to as her kurios, usually translated as “guardian.” This person made
decisions for her, including decisions that involved the disposition of her
person or her property (which was not in fact her property): marriage,
divorce, and dowry. So there is a legal context to the notion of a kurios at
the time Aristotle is writing, and an understanding that it would be usual for
a woman to be subject to the authority of a man, where that authority was
exercised precisely in making decisions that would determine the actions
and the interests of the woman. And in chapter 2, section 2.4.3, we saw that
Aristotle employs the notion of authority in describing the relation of the
heart to the other organs in the body. In the biological context it is clear that
authority is not a question of decision-making in any intentional sense, but
in a related way it is a question of establishing the ends towards which other
organs must function. We will see that in the political context Aristotle
draws on both the legal and the biological connotations of the term kurios.
Hearing and understanding reason are here the necessary preconditions for
being persuaded, which suggests that the capacity for being persuaded
entails capacities for listening to and understanding reasons offered for and
against certain actions. Again, virtue depends crucially on this capacity for
understanding reason, rather than producing reason. Aristotle introduces the
passage by saying, “Now some people think we become good by nature,
while others think it is by habituation, and others again by teaching” (EN
10.9 1179b20–21). The “teaching” in this line becomes “talk [ὁ λόγος] and
teaching,” susceptibility to which, as we have learned, depends on being
able to listen to, understand, and be persuaded by reasons. The point, then,
is that Aristotle’s moral psychology sustains the claim in the Politics that
those with deliberative faculties that are absent or deficient in some way
can have moral virtue—that it is possible for the natural subject to acquire
moral virtue without having phronêsis himself or herself, just so long as he
or she has access to phronêsis in someone else (who will be a natural ruler)
and has the capacity to understand reason.
In the discussion of natural rule we saw that Aristotle understood the
pair of man and woman to be an entity, a whole composed of two people.
That understanding is reflected again in the way in which he understands
virtue to be manifested in the household. The virtue of the natural ruler
must be exercised relative to some natural subject (among whom are
women); without a natural subject over whom he rules, the natural ruler will
not be able to realize fully his virtue. At the same time, the virtue of a
woman will depend on her relation to a free adult man and his virtue as a
man and as a ruler, since she must have access to phronêsis through him.
The dependence of women on men for the realization of their virtue
suggests a way in which women might be inferior to men morally on
Aristotle’s account: they are inferior because they are dependent. That
dependency, we will see, takes the form of a particular deliberative
incapacity that Aristotle ascribes to women.
This sheds some light on Aristotle’s intention in comparing the rule of men
over women to a modified constitutional rule, and on how he thinks that
comparison might support (rather than undermine) the claim that men rule
over women naturally. The legitimacy of the rule of men over women is
founded on the superior worth of men, but Aristotle indicates that men
should rule women only within a restricted sphere, suggesting both that
there is some limit on the superiority of their worth and that women too
have some worth. It is striking that Aristotle compares the rule of a man
who exercises his authority beyond a certain domain to oligarchic rule,
since oligarchy is one of the deviant forms of constitution, characterized by
its mistaken aim: an oligarchic constitution aims at the interests of the ruler
rather than of those ruled. The implication is that a man who fails to give a
woman authority in some respects is no longer ruling the household in the
interests of those over whom he rules, but in his own interests—and is
therefore no longer legitimately ruling.
Women, then, have some worth and ought to exercise authority in some
sphere. A passage in Book 3 of the Politics clarifies the nature of the
particular domain in which women should exercise authority. Aristotle has
been arguing that there are different forms of virtue, including differences
between the virtues appropriate to men and those appropriate to women:
For a man would be held a coward if he were as courageous as a courageous woman, and a
woman talkative if she were as modest as the good man; and household management differs for
a man and a woman as well, for it is the work of man to acquire (κτᾶσθαι) and of the woman to
guard (φυλάττειν). But phronêsis is the only virtue peculiar to the ruler. The others, it would
seem, must necessarily be common to both rulers and ruled, but phronêsis is not a virtue of one
ruled, but rather true opinion (δόξα ἀληθής); for the one ruled is like a flute maker, while the
ruler is like a flute player, the user [of what the other makes]. (Pol. 3.4 1277b21–30)
Considered in light of the passage at EN 8.10, the point is that a man ought
to give to a woman authority in the household in matters concerned with
guarding or preserving, while retaining for himself authority in matters of
acquiring. There is no question but that his role has authority over hers, in
the sense that we should understand her role to be for the sake of his.
Nonetheless, because this arrangement involves sharing or dividing power
and authority, it offers some insight into the claim that in one sense men
rule over women constitutionally. When Aristotle says that men should rule
women constitutionally, he is drawing on the notion of constitutional rule as
shared rule. Typically in constitutional rule the rule is shared in turn by
citizens who are equal in some politically salient way, but Aristotle is
suggesting that there is another way to share rule: women do not share in it
as citizens might, but rather by exercising some authority in a particular
domain appropriate to them. So the sharing occurs across domains of
authority rather than over time. There is more to say about the passage just
cited, in particular about the claim that only the ruler has the virtue of
phronêsis; we will return to this in section 3.4.3.
Taking stock of our conclusions thus far, we know that men are better
than women because their faculty of deliberation has authority whereas the
deliberative faculty of women lacks authority, and that this is the basis of
the natural and aristocratic rule that men exercise over women. At the same
time, this natural rule is also constitutional, and we have identified two
points that make that true. First, the metaphysical point: women and men
belong to the same natural kind and so are fundamentally the same,
although men are superior in non-essential features. So the rule is
constitutional because ruler and ruled belong to the same natural kind,
although men are better than women and so also rule aristocratically.
Second, the political point: the rule is constitutional because it is shared in
some sense. It is shared not in turn, but through the division of domains of
authority. This sense of constitutionality is again consistent with natural rule
and the superiority of men because the domain in which men rule is
superior to the one in which women rule—where that means that the
domain in which women exercise rule is for the sake of the domain in
which men rule.
The analogy drawn in this passage illuminates how the slave might be both
part of the master and yet capable of human virtue. It makes sense to speak
of the excellence of the tool of a craftsman, although the tool is a part of the
craftsman, and although its excellence depends on its use in the hands of the
craftsman. Similarly, the virtue of the slave belongs to him or her, although
it is dependent on the master. Aristotle allies the case of children to that of
slaves. At Nicomachean Ethics 5.6 1134b9–13 he also describes children as
“like” parts of their fathers and compares this whole/part relation to that
which obtains between slaves and masters: “For there is no injustice in an
unqualified sense in relation to what is one’s own, and a chattel (κτῆμα), or
a child until it is of a certain age and becomes independent, is like a part of
oneself.”48
Now women are not, on Aristotle’s account, parts of men in the same
way that slaves are parts of their masters, or children of their fathers, and it
is striking that he does not speak of women as the possessions of men.49
This means that the authority men exercise over women is not to be
justified in the same way as that exercised over slaves (or children): it is not
because women are part of men that they are subject to the rule of men. But
the passage in Politics 1.5 offers a second structure that can underlie the
relation of ruler and ruled in a whole. This is one in which, when X and Y
are both parts of the whole Z, and Y is better than X, then X is naturally
subject to Y. It is the structure modeled by the relation of the faculty of
reason to the faculty of desire in the soul; it is not the case that one is part of
the other, but rather that both are parts of the same whole, and the basis of
the rule is not that the whole rules its parts, but rather that the better part
rules the worse part.50 It is in this sense that Aristotle in the biological
context will speak of the heart as the “most authoritative” organ (Juv. 3
469a5): it is the organ that rules the others, although all of them are organs
of the whole that is the body.
So there is a structural difference between master/slave and paternal
relations on the one hand, and relations between men and women on the
other, and that structural difference recalls the metaphysical point about
ruler and ruled in the case of constitutional rule that we raised earlier: rule
will be constitutional only when there is some claim to sameness on the part
of ruler and ruled. The structure of parts and wholes is such that when the
ruler is one of the parts rather than the whole, ruler and ruled resemble one
another insofar as they are both parts (although one is better than the other),
whereas when the ruler is the whole, there is no claim to parity between
ruler and ruled. Saying that women have a deliberative faculty although it is
without authority means then, in part, that there is a similarity between men
and women: both have a deliberative faculty (unlike natural slaves, who
lack this faculty). But to understand fully what it means for the deliberative
faculty of women to be without authority, we have to consider not only the
structural but also the functional differences between slaves and women
with respect to the faculty of deliberation. What is it to exercise authority
over those who are not parts of oneself, and who do have a deliberative
faculty?
Recall that to rule in a social context is to make decisions that determine
which actions will be undertaken. In the case of the household, then, the
male head of the household rules over his wife, children, and slaves in the
sense that he makes decisions that bind them as well as himself. He chooses
not only which actions he will undertake as an individual, but also which
actions the household as a collective (a κοινωνία) will undertake, and hence
decides on actions the other individual members of the household will take.
The free male head of the household rules, then, because he is the origin of
the actions of everyone in that household. This is a general account of rule
in the household, but there must be some feature of the way in which men
rule over women—make decisions for women—that distinguishes that form
of rule from the rule exercised over children or natural slaves. I contend that
the distinctive feature of the rule of men over women is that women do
participate in deliberation about household matters, although they do not
participate in decision-making, whereas slaves and children do not
participate in deliberation. In practice this would be analogous to having a
voice but not a vote on a committee: one is entitled to express an opinion,
and in principle that opinion should be taken into account by those who do
vote in making their decision. This is the content of the claim that women
have a deliberative faculty, but one that is without authority. It is consistent
with the use of ἄκυρος in legal contexts to mean non-binding or non-
operative, and consistent with its use in biological contexts to mean non-
functional (see section 3.4.1).
There is evidence for this interpretation of “without authority” in the
account of constitutional rule that Aristotle offers in later books of the
Politics. First, we should notice that under constitutional rule, those who are
ruled are free citizens, who participate in deliberation and in judging
because they “are similar in stock and free” (Pol. 3.4 1277b6–9).51 But
deliberating and judging are not, under this constitution, identical with
ruling. So to be among those who are ruled rather than ruling does not
imply that one cannot participate in deliberation and judgment; on the
contrary, it suggests that one will participate in these activities so long as
one is a citizen.
Moreover, as we have seen, under constitutional rule those who are ruled
need not have phronêsis or practical wisdom, so the virtues available to
women are sufficient for the status of those ruled constitutionally, “for the
virtue of ruler and citizen is not the same” (Pol. 3.4 1277a24). Aristotle
elaborates on the difference in the virtues of ruler and ruled when these are
“similar in stock and free,” that is, under constitutional rule: those who are
ruled need not have phronêsis, although they should have all the other
virtues (Pol. 3.4 1277b25–30; see section 3.4.2). So if citizens under
constitutional rule do not have phronêsis but do have the other virtues, we
should expect that women ruled “constitutionally” by men should similarly
have the other virtues. And Aristotle says just this, as we have seen, in
Politics 1.13, when he argues that natural subjects do have virtue, although
it is not the same in kind as the virtue of natural rulers. He reiterates the
point in Book 3:
For it is clear that a virtue—of justice, for example—would not be a single thing for a ruler
(ἀρχομένου) and for a ruled but free person (ἐλευθέρου) who is good, but has different kinds in
accordance with which one will rule or be ruled, just as moderation and courage differ in a man
and a woman. (Pol. 3.4 1277b18–21)
Although they need not have phronêsis, those who are ruled
constitutionally need to have “true opinion.” This “true opinion” is clearly a
virtue, and related to, but not identical with, phronêsis. What is it and what
does it allow one to do well? The best suggestion is that it corresponds here
to the virtue Aristotle calls sunesis:
Comprehension [σύνεσις·sunesis] is concerned with the same things as practical wisdom
[φρονήσις·phronêsis]; but comprehension and practical wisdom are not the same thing. For
[practical] wisdom is prescriptive (ἐπιτακτική ἐστιν): what one should do or not do—this is its
end, whereas comprehension is merely discriminative (κριτικὴ μόνον). (EN 6.10 1143a6–10)
The suggestion is, then, that while phronêsis commands, sunesis judges.
This fits well with the claim that phronêsis is the virtue peculiar to the ruler,
who must command in that he makes decisions not only for himself but also
for those over whom he rules, and it indicates that those who are free but
ruled have a role to play in “discriminating.” Aristotle elaborates on the
activity of which sunesis is the excellence: “one ‘comprehends’ when
exercising judgment (ἐν τῷ χρῆσθαι τῇ δόξῃ) in order to discriminate (ἐπὶ
τὸ κρίνειν) about the things [practical] wisdom deals with, when someone
else is speaking—and exercising it in order to discriminate rightly (κρίνειν
καλῶς)” (EN 6.10 1143a13–16). This account of sunesis seems, then, to be
an account of what those who are ruled constitutionally need to have
instead of phronêsis: a capacity to judge, and judge well, whether a
proposal is sound, without being those who formulate the proposal. In this
way those with sunesis participate in deliberation, although they do not
make the decisions that are the ultimate outcome of deliberation. So judging
the proposals of others seems to be what it means to have “true opinion,”
the virtue both of the citizens who are ruled constitutionally in a polis, and
of women who are ruled constitutionally by men in the household.52 And if
that is right, then women in the household do participate in deliberation,
although they do not “command” or decide.53
We can now discern how women’s capacity for deliberation will differ
both from that of free men and from that of slaves. Unlike free men, women
will not make decisions; they will participate in deliberation only in the
sense that they will help to evaluate the proposals or possibilities put
forward by free men, in the domain of the household; this will include
moral deliberation, and not only technical deliberation. This distinguishes
women from natural slaves, who are excluded from moral deliberations
altogether.54 Both women and slaves are subject to the decisions made by
free men, and hence both are natural subjects, who should cultivate the
virtues of the natural subject, in particular the virtue of obedience. But the
difference in the deliberative faculties of women and slaves requires that the
obedience they practice should be different. The obedience practiced by
women is not slavish; rather, it resembles that of those who are ruled in a
constitutional state. It is an obedience consistent with participation in
deliberation. This makes sense of the two problematic claims that are the
focus of this section: (1) that women do have a faculty of deliberation
(unlike slaves) although it is “without authority,” and (2) that women are
ruled by men “constitutionally” and also “aristocratically”—constitutionally
because women do engage in deliberation, aristocratically because men,
who are better than women in that they have authoritative deliberative
faculties, make the decisions for the household and command its
inhabitants. Women act for the sake of the ends determined by men. At the
same time, on this interpretation women are not akratic (which would make
them by nature incapable of virtue)—it is not that they make decisions but
cannot abide by them, but rather that they do not make the guiding
decisions of the household at all.
The deliberative authority of men, I have argued, is based on their
capacity to make decisions, that is, to establish ends, for those over whom
they rule; this is just what it means to rule. This is consistent with the
constitutional rule of men over women, because in constitutional rule one
can participate in deliberation without engaging in decision-making. One
can deliberate without having phronêsis, and so women can participate in
deliberation, although they do not themselves have phronêsis as men do.
This, then, allows us to see how women and slaves differ: women
participate in deliberation, although they do not make decisions, while
slaves neither make decisions nor deliberate about matters concerned with
living well.55 The deliberative faculty of women is without authority in the
sense that it is subject to the authority of the person who establishes the
telos; thus, it is without authority relative to the male head of the household.
That is, Aristotle claims (1) that Socrates believes that these arrangements
would promote unity; but his arguments do not demonstrate that making the
city as unified as possible is good—not, that is, if the unity Socrates has in
mind were to be realized. In (2) he continues that even if we assume that
unity is a good thing in a city, the common possession of women would not
lead to unity.
These objections focus on the Socratic proposal to abolish the household
and to hold women in common, because the question that guides the
discussion of Book 2 is how much should be held in common in a city. But
they bear also on the proposal to train women as men and to assign to them
the same tasks, since, as we have seen, political sexual differences as
Aristotle understands them are bound up with the structure of the
household. Aristotle does not distinguish carefully between the Socratic
proposals, seeing them as part of the same program and mutually necessary:
if women are held in common, then private households will disappear,
women will be trained and employed as men are, and sexual difference will
lose significance; and if women are trained and employed as men are, then
private households will disappear, women will be held in common, and
sexual difference will lose significance. This is clear from a passage in
Politics 2.5 (alluded to earlier):
But if he is going to make women common and property private, who will manage the
household while the men work in the fields? (Or, for that matter, if property and the wives of the
farmers are both common?) Moreover, it is odd that in order to show that women should have
the same pursuits as men he makes a comparison with the animals, among which household
management is nonexistent. (Pol. 2.5 1264b1–6)
In other words, those who are ruled will profit from the community, and
those who rule will be honored in the community. This applies to the
household as well as to the city-state, because the free man who is the head
of a household is able to bestow certain benefits on the women, children,
and slaves who exchange honor for those benefits. At the same time, the
nature of those benefits, and of the honor exchanged for those benefits, will
differ from woman to child to slave. (I will say more about the exchange
between natural ruler and natural subject in section 3.5.5.)
Returning now to Aristotle’s objections to the abolition of private
households and the suppression of sexual difference, we will see that they
focus on the requirements of community, and its need for difference.
Aristotle shows that Socrates emphasizes the wrong kind of affection,
misunderstands how to promote shared moral perceptions, and fails to see
the importance of exchange and hence of difference. The overall objection
is that dismantling the household and treating women and men alike will
not achieve the political aim of noble action. It will fail both because it will
not promote the correct kind and degree of unity (a prerequisite for virtuous
action) and because it will not make room for the full range of human
virtuous action. Maintaining sexual difference as a social fact is on
Aristotle’s view necessary for the achievement of the aims of the polis.
That is, the lesser degree of unity is desirable for a city-state, a higher
degree for the household, and the highest for the individual. The more
unified a social entity, the less self-sufficient it will be. Since complete self-
sufficiency is desirable in a city-state, a lesser degree of unity will also be
desirable; since a lower degree of self-sufficiency is expected in a
household, it will have a higher degree of unity.66 When we consider the
reasons Aristotle offers for the claim that a city is more self-sufficient (and
hence better) when it is less unified, we learn something more about the
nature of the differences among members of the household, and about the
political benefits of sexual difference.
There are two senses of “unity” at work in this discussion. One is that of
Socratic unity, which involves having everything in common, and so being
the same. The primary reason that the city should be less unified on
Aristotle’s account is that we need people with whom we do not share
everything (people who are different from us with respect to what they
have) in order to be able to exercise the full range of human virtues. The
elements of a city-state should have less in common (and be more different
in this sense) than the elements of a household because certain opportunities
to perform virtuous actions are lost if the community is too unified in the
Socratic sense of being constituted by people who have everything in
common (Pol. 2.5 1263b4–14; 1263b29–37). In particular, temperance with
respect to women and liberality with respect to property are virtues that are
lost in cities that are excessively unified. This makes clear that here what
Aristotle means by excessive unity (excessive, that is, for a city-state) is the
circumstance in which everything is held in common: when women and
property are held in common by the members of a community, then
individual members have no opportunity to exercise self-control with
respect to women held by others, and no opportunity to exercise generosity
by offering private property to others.
A second sense of unity, however, is the organic sense that Aristotle
recommends, which involves preserving differences. Holding women in
common and eliminating the sexual division of roles in the household and
the city will increase unity in the Socratic sense of sameness, but not in the
organic sense. So on the one hand, Aristotle says that the city will be “more
unified” or have “too much unity” when women are shared (this is a form
of Socratic unity, which Aristotle elsewhere disparages as appropriate only
for military alliances). On the other, he says that the city will be unified
only when women are held privately (this is the organic unity that he holds
to be appropriate for a community and necessary for its aim of living well).
One of Aristotle’s points is, then, that free male adults in the city, those
citizens who deliberate and decide on the actions of the city, must be
different from one another in order to be able to manifest the full range of
human virtue. The differences between free male adults will be differences
in the possession of women, children, and property, and those differences
will allow them to cultivate and exercise the virtues of self-control and
generosity, opportunities for which will be diminished should they hold
everything in common. That the city will be self-sufficient only when the
full range of human virtue is manifested in it suggests that we should
understand self-sufficiency primarily in a moral sense.
Further evidence that the notion of self-sufficiency in Politics 2 is
primarily moral is found in Aristotle’s criticism of the Socratic Kallipolis
with respect precisely to the notion of self-sufficiency as a sufficient
diversity of “necessary things”:
Hence what is said in the Republic, though sophisticated, is not adequate. For Socrates asserts
that a city is composed of the four most necessary persons, and he says these are a weaver, a
farmer, a shoemaker, and a builder; and then on the grounds that these are not self-sufficient (ὡς
οὐχ αὐτάρκων τούτων), he adds a smith and persons in charge of the necessary herds, and
further both a trader and a person engaged in commerce. All of these make up the complement
of the first city as if every city were constituted for the sake of the necessary things and not
rather for the sake of what is noble. (Pol. 4.4 1291a10–19)
Because the aim of a city is noble action, living well, a city will be self-
sufficient when it has whatever is required for noble action. Although
Aristotle would not deny that noble action will be difficult for citizens
whose material needs are not met, his point is that the city should be
organized not only so that the citizens may live—be self-sufficient in that
limited sense—but so that they may live well, where that will mean that
they flourish morally.
Some commentators have construed the notion of self-sufficiency in
Politics 2 in material rather than, as I propose, in moral terms.67 Two points
might lead one to suppose that by “self-sufficiency” Aristotle intends
material self-sufficiency, and hence that the differences among people
necessary for self-sufficiency will be differences in skills (the differences,
that distinguish, for example, philosophers, farmers, and doctors). The first
is that Aristotle makes reference to a community that is “large enough” to
be self-sufficient. We might suppose that size is a question of a diversity of
skills and is related to a concern for satisfying the physical needs of the
inhabitants; on that view, only a city large enough to include farmers and
cobblers and bakers and a military, among others, will be a self-sufficient
city. But we should not suppose that self-sufficiency is only a matter of size,
since we know that a city-state is not simply a large household (Aristotle
disparages that view at Pol. 1.1 1252a12–13), and that what distinguishes a
city from a household is not merely the number of its members.
The second point is that Aristotle places great emphasis on the
importance of relations of exchange in establishing unity in a community.
Whatever the degree of unity, every community must have unity, that unity
will be established and maintained through relations of exchange, and
exchange will require that each element of the community has some good to
exchange with the others. But Aristotle does not understand the goods that
are exchanged in strictly material terms. In a passage we have already
considered (Pol. 2.2 1261a29–b5), he states the principle of reciprocal
equality and refers us to the Nicomachean Ethics for its first formulation:
In commercial associations (ἐν ταῖς κοινωνίαις ταῖς ἀλλακτικαῖς), however, the parties are
bound together by a form of the just that is like this, i.e. what is reciprocal in proportional terms
(τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς κατ’ ἀναλογίαν), not in terms of numerical equality (κατ’ ἰσότητα). For it is
reciprocal action governed by proportion that keeps the city together. Either people seek to
return evil for evil, and if they don’t, it seems like slavery; or they seek to return good for good,
and if they don’t, there is no giving in exchange, and it is exchange that keeps them together. . . .
For it is not two doctors that become partners to an exchange, but rather a doctor and a farmer,
and in general people who are of different sorts (ὅλως ἑτέρων) and not in a relation of equality
to each other (οὐκ ἴσων); they therefore have to be equalized. (EN 5.5 1132b31–1133a18)
Although the exchanges between doctors and farmers in the city-state are
clearly necessary in order to provide it with “necessary things,” they are not
enough to provide it with self-sufficiency in the moral sense. Exchange is
always based on some differences in the goods possessed by those who
enter into exchange, but those goods are not exclusively material goods or
skills. They are also aesthetic and moral goods, and can be such things as
pleasure or honor (for pleasure, see EN 8.4 1157a3–10, 8.6 1158b1–3; for
honor, see EN 8.11 1161a20–21). Moreover, as many commentators have
pointed out, differences in professional skills cannot exhaust the differences
Aristotle has in mind as necessary for self-sufficiency, since Socrates
proposed a division of labor in the Kallipolis and yet Aristotle is here
critical of Socrates for failing to ensure self-sufficiency in the city. Thus,
while it is true that a self-sufficient city will be one in which the material
needs of the population are met, and hence one in which a wide diversity of
skills will be found, the notion of self-sufficiency in Aristotle extends
beyond living per se—beyond meeting the bodily requirements of people—
to living well. We are self-sufficient as people only when we have a context
in which to exercise fully our capacity for virtue.
This point can be extended to the household, and in particular to the
relation between men and women. That relation manifests itself in a
division of labor and distinct sets of skills, but it also must manifest itself in
distinct kinds of virtue, since the aim of the koinônia that is the couple is
moral as well as pragmatic. Aristotle recognizes the way in which practical
needs and moral needs might both be satisfied within the structure of the
couple and the household:
For man is naturally a coupler (συνδυαστικόν) more than he is naturally a civic being
(πολιτικόν), to the extent that a household is something prior to and more necessary than a city,
and to the extent that producing offspring is something more widely shared among animals.
With the other animals, the sharing only goes this far, whereas human beings cohabit not only
for the sake of producing offspring (τῆς τεκνοποιίας χάριν) but also for the sake of the
necessities of life (τῶν εἰς τὸν βίον); for from the beginning their functions are differentiated, so
that the man’s are different from the woman’s and so they complement (ἐπαρκοῦσιν) each other,
making what belongs to each available to both in common. These points suggest that both the
element of the useful and that of the pleasant are present in this kind of friendship; but it might
also be because of excellence, if husband and wife were to be decent characters, since there is an
excellence that belongs to each, and it could be that each took delight in someone with that
proper excellence. (EN 8.12 1162a17–27)
A man and a woman in the household have distinct tasks from the outset (of
the household), and this benefits each of them insofar as they share with
each other. But in the best case, at least, each will have not only a distinct
set of tasks, but a distinct kind of virtue—and they will enjoy one another’s
virtue as well as benefit from one another’s skills. It is clear that the tasks
are for the sake of the virtue, and hence that the completion of the tasks
does not constitute self-sufficiency, even in the household. The “full range”
of human virtues includes not only all of the virtues that are desirable in a
free male adult, but all of the virtues that are desirable in any person. A city
will only be able to manifest all of the human virtues when (1) the heads of
household are different from one another in the sense that they do not hold
everything in common and (2) the inhabitants are different enough from one
another in the sense that some are natural subjects and some natural rulers.
Since the full range of human virtues includes the virtues of obedience as
well as the virtues of rule, only a structure in which rule is embedded in all
its forms will have the greatest degree of self-sufficiency. The differences in
kind among children, slaves, women, and free male adults are necessary if
the entire range of opportunities for virtuous action is to be possible. In
other words, if sexual difference were eliminated or minimized, the range of
human virtues would be reduced. So sexual differences are a political
benefit insofar as they extend the range of virtues that may be cultivated
and expressed in a city.
Differences among the members of a community are a benefit, then,
because they make possible the full range of expression of human virtue:
they make living well in the complete sense possible. But to ensure a
complete range, there needs to be not only the range of virtues available to
free adult male citizens in the community, but also the range of virtues
available to natural slaves and women, which are virtues of obedience. The
Socratic proposal to hold women in common would undermine the capacity
of free male citizens to manifest all their virtues, and the proposal to
educate and employ women in the same way as men, and thus to make
women and men more alike, would diminish the range of virtues that are
developed and manifested through sexual difference. Sexual difference in
political roles is valuable, then, for the household and the polis, more than it
is good for men. As we saw in chapter 2, Aristotle conceived of the value of
biological sexual difference as a benefit primarily to the reproductive
couple and to the species (while maintaining that it is better to be male than
to be female). Similarly, he conceives of the value of political sexual
difference as a benefit that accrues to the household as a whole and
ultimately to the polis, rather than to individual men or to men as a sex.
The concern here is that those who are to be ruled should understand the
reason that they are ruled—should, in effect, agree that it is good that they
should submit to rule. Such agreement, Aristotle believes, can only be
secured if people believe not only that there are differences between the
ruling element and the ruled, but also that the difference in question is one
that justifies the different status of ruler and ruled. This is what it means for
the members of a community to be of one mind, and to hold shared moral
perceptions. And such a difference can only be a difference in virtue.
We have seen that Aristotle says of those who are ruled as a class that
they must have all the virtues of those who rule with the exception of
phronêsis, but that these virtues will differ in kind, despite having the same
names (Pol. 1.13 1259b31ff.). It is these differences in virtue that justify the
relation of ruler to ruled. This is not to deny that in some communities rule
is established independently of these moral differences, according to
freedom, wealth, or some other measure. But it is to assert that such
communities are susceptible to failure because they will not have the unity
necessary for living well or the self-sufficiency provided by diverse forms
of virtue that is necessary for survival over time. Further evidence that
Aristotle understands the difference between ruler and ruled to be
fundamentally a moral difference can be found in his discussion of the
relation between the good person and the good citizen. He draws an
analogy, famously, between the sailors on a ship and the citizens in a city:
Now just as a sailor is one of number of members of a community (τις τῶν κοινωνῶν), so, we
assert, is the citizen. Although sailors are dissimilar in their capacities (τὴν δύναμιν) (one is a
rower, another is a pilot, another a lookout, and others have similar sorts of titles), it is clear that
the most precise account of their virtue (τῆς ἀρετῆς) will be that peculiar to each sort
individually, but that a common account will in a similar way fit all. For the preservation of the
ship in its voyage is the work of all of them, and each of the sailors strives for this. Similarly,
although citizens are dissimilar (ἀνομοίων), preservation of the community is their task, and the
politeia is [this] community; hence the virtue of the citizen must necessarily be with a view to
the politeia. (Pol. 3.4 1276b20–31)
3.6 Conclusion
I began this chapter by exploring Aristotle’s claim that men rule over
women by nature. We have seen that he conceives of this rule as necessarily
structured by the household, which is itself a natural form of association on
Aristotle’s account. One form of natural rule in the household is that in
which men determine the activities of women, because those activities are
for the sake of the tasks that belong to men (section 3.2). It does not follow
that women are incapable of human virtue; on the contrary, as we have
seen, Aristotle insists that women will have virtue, although it will be
different in kind, not simply in degree, from that of men (section 3.3). But
his vision of sexual difference is not one of complementarity, because these
differences are not value-neutral. He clearly believes that these differences
constitute a hierarchy in which men, who have fully operative deliberative
faculties, are better than women, who lack authority. The superiority of men
is manifest in their decision-making activities. Whereas men are able both
to deliberate and to decide, women are restricted to a deliberative capacity.
This is what it means to say that their deliberative faculty is without
authority (section 3.4), and it amounts to a moral rather than an intellectual
defect, an incapacity for command with an implication of political
incapacity. As in the biological context where Aristotle represents the
female as inferior, then, there can be no doubt that Aristotle conceives of
women as politically inferior. But, again as in the biology, the point of his
argument is not to demonstrate that inferiority, but rather to show that
despite their inferiority, women are good, which is to say that they have a
function and serve a purpose that supports the ultimate telos of the polis
(section 3.5).
Both when he maintains that women are different and inferior and when
he maintains that it is good that there should be women, Aristotle represents
his position as a counter-argument to the Socratic proposals. He construes
those proposals as an attempt to make women more like men, and hence to
rid the polis of sexual difference, or at least to mute the differences between
the sexes. On this reading the Socratic proposals are not about equality—
certainly not about gaining equality as a matter of justice—but about
reducing the womanliness of women, precisely because that womanliness is
a kind of inferiority. Aristotle does not dispute that it is a form of inferiority,
but he does argue that sexual difference benefits the community.
In chapter 1 we saw that both Aristophanes and Socrates introduce the
possibility that women might engage in political activity with the aim of
benefiting the polis as a whole (section 1.5.4). Aristotle’s arguments against
sharing women in common among men and training women to participate
in political life are aimed at showing that such proposals would not promote
the common good, but would, on the contrary, undermine it. He shares with
Socrates the idea that the common good must decide the question of the
value of sexual difference. But whereas Socrates argues that minimizing
sexual difference will promote the common good, Aristotle argues that
treating women like men, and hence making them more like men, will
undermine the common good. Aristotle’s criticisms of the Socratic
proposals demonstrate that he is committed to the view that sexual
difference is good, and that its benefit to the household and the city lies
both in the way that it promotes unity and in the contribution it makes to the
full range of human virtue. So women are worse than men, but the
household and the city are better for the inclusion of women.
In this chapter we have considered how Aristotle conceives of the
political differences between men and women. As we saw in chapter 1, one
effect of the Socratic proposals is to suggest that women and men may not
be significantly different in any way that affects their suitability for political
engagement. Aristotle in the Politics attempts to maintain the idea that the
sexes are indeed different, although he is constrained here, as in his work on
biology, by his own conception of the unity of species. To maintain his
position he must show that however women differ from men, they do not do
so in essential features. That is why he maintains that women have a
capacity for reason, even while claiming that it is limited in some way.
We know from Politics 1.13 that Aristotle thinks that the difference
between men and women cannot simply be one of degree, because that
would not be sufficient to exclude women from political authority. But if
the difference is neither one of degree nor one of essential features, what is
it? Aristotle’s answer to that is that it is a difference in the matter. In the
case of biology, we have seen him elaborate that answer in terms of
physiological function (in chapter 2). It is not obvious, however, how he
would argue that the political sexual difference he identifies—the difference
between the authoritative deliberative faculty of men and the deliberative
faculty lacking in authority in women—is a difference in the matter. In the
next chapter, I take up the question of the possibility of grounding the
deliberative deficiency Aristotle attributes to women in their material
nature.
4
The Relation between Biological and Political
Sexual Differences
4.1 Introduction
The purity of the blood is the most important determinant of perceptual and
intellectual abilities; Aristotle consistently says that the more intelligent
animal species have the purest blood.14 Blood is pure when it is lacking in
foreign elements, that is, lacking in earthy bits or fibers, as we saw in
chapter 2, section 2.5.2.Although Aristotle seems to think that the blood of
certain species is inherently pure (or purer than that of other species), the
purity of blood (and of the fertile residues) can be produced by concoction:
well-concocted or easily concocted blood will be pure (GA 1.20 728a26–27,
PA 3.9 672a2–6); hence, heating is a mechanism of purification, and blood
that is pure may have been rendered such by heat. Aristotle also indicates
that blood that is pure will be thin or fine in texture (HA 3.19 521a2–5, PA
2.7 652b30–33). In these contexts λεπτόν (thin) and καθαρόν (pure) seem to
be synonyms, so that to describe blood as “thin” is to say that it is pure.
These physical features have an impact on the capacity of blood to receive
accurate impressions and retain them.
In this passage Aristotle anticipates the suggestion that colder blood leads to
greater intelligence, but he goes on to reject that idea, insisting that it is the
purity of the blood that is responsible for intelligence. Intelligence in an
animal may be due more precisely to the “finer and purer moisture” of the
animal (which moisture will be found in the blood). And the purity of the
moisture will be a function of the purity of the heat in the heart that is
transmitted to the blood:
In people the brain is more fluid and greater in volume than in any other animal, and the reason
of this, in its turn, is that the heat in the heart is purest in people. The intelligence [of people]
makes clear that they have a good blend [of hot and cold]: of animals people are the most
intelligent. (GA 2.6 744a27–32)15
It is not clear what “pure” heat is. It probably means that the heat of the
heart is unadulterated or unmixed to allow for the full concoction of the
blood, which suggests that the highest degree of heat is the purest. At Parts
of Animals 4.2 677a20–31 Aristotle implies that impurities will be opposed
to whatever is characteristic of the pure substance (e.g., if healthy blood is
sweet, its impurities will be bitter bile), which implies that heat would be
rendered impure by the addition of cold, so that pure heat would be
unmixed with the cold.16 So although the links here are not entirely explicit,
the picture seems to be: the purity of the heat in the heart produces pure
moisture, which produces pure blood, which promotes quicker perception
and then intelligence. (It is not yet clear why pure blood might promote
intelligence, but I will consider the reasons Aristotle offers for that assertion
later.)
Differences in the purity of blood distinguish not only animal species,
but the sexes within a species, as well as certain parts of the individual
body. In each of these cases, purer blood is linked with greater intelligence:
Thicker and hotter blood is more productive of strength, while thinner and cooler blood is more
perceptive and intelligent (αἰσθητικώτερον δὲ καὶ νοερώτερον). And the same difference obtains
among the attributes analogous to blood. . . . But those with hot, thin, and pure blood are best
(ἄριστα δὲ τὰ θερμὸν ἔχοντα καὶ λεπτὸν καὶ καθαρόν); for such animals are at once in a good
state relative to both manliness (πρός τ᾿ ἀνδρείαν) and intelligence (πρὸς φρόνησιν). It is for this
reason too that the upper parts differ in this way compared with the lower parts, and again the
male compared with the female, and the right side of the body with the left. (PA 2.2 648a2–14)17
This seems to mean that hot, thin, pure blood is more often found in the
upper rather than the lower parts of the body, in the right rather than the left
side of the body, and in male rather than female animals.18 The character of
the blood (i.e., its temperature and degree of purity) of an organ or an
animal will make it more or less sensitive to sensation, and more or less
“intelligent” in that sense. It is because the organs in the upper part of the
body and those on the right side of the body are constituted from blood that
is hotter, thinner, and thus more pure that certain animals are said to be “in a
good state” with respect to phronêsis and “manliness” (i.e., courage). Both
practical wisdom and courage are linked to maleness in this passage
through the purity of the blood, suggesting that there is a physiological
basis for the claim that men more than women are disposed to develop the
virtues of both the deliberative faculty and the thumotic faculty. In this
section I focus on the claim that pure blood is conducive to intelligence or
practical wisdom; in the next I consider the suggestion that it is conducive
to courage.
The “upper parts” that Aristotle mentions are the organs of sensation,
including the heart, because, while all bodily organs are made from blood,
the organs of sensation are made from the purest blood, as Aristotle
explains in a discussion of embryological development:
Each of the remaining parts is formed out of the nourishment. The most honourable ones, those
which have a share in the supreme controlling principle (τὰ μὲν τιμιώτατα καὶ μετειληφότα τῆς
κυριωτάτης ἀρχῆς), are formed out of the first of the nourishment, which has been concocted
and is purest; the “necessary” parts (τὰ δ᾿ ἀναγκαῖα μόρια), which exist for the sake of those just
mentioned, are formed out of inferior nourishment, out of the leavings and the residues. (GA 2.6
744b12–16)
Since no animal species has reason, to say that some animal species are
“more intelligent” than others is to refer to intelligence or phronêsis in the
broader sense, according to which it is an aptitude for some kind of
foresight that depends on a recall of past sensations. Memory is necessary
for intelligence because it allows the animal or person to build experience
(ἐμπειρία) (Met. 1.1 980b25ff.)
We can see this in the same chapter of the Metaphysics, where Aristotle
draws a connection between phantasmata, memories, and experience:
The animals other than man live by appearances (ταῖς φαντασίαις) and memories (ταῖς μνήμαις),
and have but little experience (ἐμπειρίας δὲ μετέχει μικρόν) but people live also by art and
reasoning (τέχνῃ καὶ λογισμοῖς). And from memory experience is produced in people, for many
memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. Experience
seems to be very similar to science and art, but really science and art come to people through
experience. . . . And art arises, when from many notions gained by experience one universal
judgment (μία καθόλου ὑπόληψις) about similar objects is produced. (Met. 1.1 980b26–981a7)
This passage suggests that while some animal species have memory, they
have no (or little) experience, which is drawn from many memories of the
same thing. Aristotle does not say how experience is drawn from memories,
but his claim that it is a capacity restricted (or largely restricted) to human
beings suggests that it involves a capacity for judgment. This is confirmed
by the claim that experience allows a person to acquire art by drawing “one
universal judgment about similar objects.” Science and art “come to people
through experience” insofar as they are able to draw universal judgments
about similar objects from experience, which itself involves some kind of
comparison and judgment of individual memories. It is possible that some
animal species have something like experience, which seems to be a kind of
generic memory—but only people will formulate universal judgments from
memories and experience.27 In a passage in Posterior Analytics, Aristotle
sums up the path a human being must follow from sensation to science
(ἐπιστήμη):
So from perception there comes memory, as we call it, and from memory (when it occurs often
in connection with the same thing) experience; for memories that are many in number form a
single experience (ἐμπειρία μία). And from experience, or from the whole universal that has
come to rest in the soul (the one apart from the many, whatever is one and the same in all those
things), there comes a principle of skill and of science (τέχνης ἀρχὴ καὶ ἐπιστήμης)—of skill if
it deals with how things come about, of science if it deals with what is the case. (A.Po. 2.19
100a1–10)
This passage elides somewhat the distinction between experience and the
universal judgment drawn from experience, but it indicates again that
experience can be acquired only by a being with intelligence.
If intelligence requires universal judgments drawn from experience and
built on memories, then the accuracy of memories will affect the
intelligence of a person. This is apparent when, in On Memory, Aristotle
describes memory formation with the metaphor of a stamp making an
impression on a surface:
For it is obvious that one must consider the affection which is produced by sensation in the soul,
and in that part of the body which contains the soul—the affection (τὸ πάθος), the lasting state
of which we call memory (μνήμην)—as a kind of picture (οἷον ζωγράφημά τι); for the stimulus
produced impresses a sort of likeness of the percept, just as when men seal with signet rings.
Hence in some people, through disability or age, memory does not occur even under a strong
stimulus, as though the stimulus or seal were applied to running water; while in others owing to
detrition like that of old walls in buildings, or to the hardness of the receiving surface (διὰ
σκληρότητα τοῦ δεχομένου), the impression does not penetrate. . . . For a similar reason neither
the very quick nor the very slow (οἱ βραδεῖς) appear to have good memories; the former are
moister than they should be, and the latter harder (οἱ μὲν γάρ εἰσιν ὑγρότεροι τοῦ δέοντος, οἱ δὲ
σκληρότεροι); with the former the picture (τὸ φάντασμα) does not remain in the soul, with the
latter it makes no impression. (Mem. 1 450a28–b12)
It is clear, then, that thumos is “productive of heat” and that this heat affects
the blood in particular. Moreover, heat seems to produce or at least to retain
thumos, since animals with fibrous blood that retains heat are more
thumotic. So the second path that might trace the foundation of political
sexual differences to physiological differences, like the first, depends on a
claim about the effect of heat on blood. On this account, thick and abundant
fibers in the blood make it less pure and give the animal an “earthen” nature
and a “thumotic”—that is, choleric—temperament. This is because thumos
produces heat, which warms the blood, and when the fibers in the blood are
particularly thick and abundant, they retain that heat, causing the blood to
boil and sustaining the thumos.35 So although every animal will experience
thumos, the animal species that we identify as choleric in character are
those in which the same degree of thumos and its accompanying heat
produce stronger, more persistent effects, which manifest as a thumotic
temperament. So the difference between more and less thumotic species is
not only in the original quantity or degree of thumos, but also in the bodily
response to that thumos as determined by the physical constitution of the
blood.36 This is confirmed by a passage at Generation of Animals 3.1
749b30–35, where Aristotle says that “low-bred birds are more prolific than
high-bred ones (αἱ ἀγεννεῖς τῶν γενναίων πολυτοκώτερα), because their
bodies are more fluid and more bulky, whereas those of the high-bred are
leaner and drier, this being the kind of body in which a thoroughbred and
high-spirited temper (ὁ γὰρ θυμὸς ὁ γενναῖος) tends rather to make its
appearance.” As we have seen, in other contexts a lean and dry body is
caused by a higher degree of heat. The remark points to a correlation
between a leaner and drier body and a thumotic disposition but does not
make clear which produces the other. Interpreting the claim in light of the
Parts of Animals passage quoted earlier, however, suggests that the leaner
and drier bodies will be either those that produce more heat in the first
instance, or those with more fibrous (thicker, less watery) blood, which will
exaggerate the effects of heat produced by thumos and then—since thumos
itself is retained, produced or increased by heat—will generate further
thumotic outbursts (both explanations might hold). So it is not that the
experience of thumos makes the body leaner or drier or the blood thicker,
but rather that animals with these sorts of bodies will have a propensity to
exaggerate and reproduce the effects of thumos. These passages make clear
that thumos is not unqualifiedly good: it is good, as we have seen, to have
hot, pure, thin blood and a moderate degree of thumos, but certain species,
and certain individuals, have the sort of blood (fibrous and impure) that
increases the effects of thumos, such that the animal becomes choleric or
irascible and impulsive rather than deliberative.
Therefore, because thumos is a bodily phenomenon associated with
higher degrees of heat, and because male bodies are hotter, we should
expect to find that males are more thumotic than females of the same
species. As a general rule, this is the case, as Aristotle says in a passage
mentioned earlier at History of Animals 9.1 608a19–b18 (noting, as
exceptions, that the female bear and leopard are said to be more thumotic
than the male; see also HA 9.1 608a33–34).
This much, then, is clear: thumos produces heat and heat amplifies
thumos, males are hotter and therefore more thumotic than females, and in
species with more fibrous blood the effects of thumos (anger and
impulsiveness) will be magnified. Members of species that are excessively
hot or have fibrous blood will be excessively thumotic, and choleric,
particularly if they are male. Members of species that are excessively cold,
and the female sex generally, will have too little thumos, with the result that
they are querulous and timid. Male human beings, since they have blood
that is hot and pure (in the sense of non-fibrous), will have the best
physiology: their blood will be hot but easily cooled, and thus they will be
by nature spirited but not choleric, courageous but not reckless. Hot blood
will make one thumotic, but hot, fibrous blood will make one overly
thumotic. Men can be more thumotic than women even though women have
more fibrous blood, because the blood of men is hotter; men can be
appropriately and not excessively thumotic because their blood, although
hot, is not fibrous. (This will be true, at least, of Greek men, since the
climate in other regions will, on Aristotle’s account, have an effect on the
blood and hence on the degree of thumos manifested in the population; see
Pol. 7.7 1327b18–38, discussed in section 4.3.4.37)
The “hot and quick nature” of thumos is the physiological character that we
have seen attributed to it, here associated with desire. So thumos as a desire
should listen to reason but cannot be relied on to do so.43
Are there sexual differences in thumotic desires? We would expect the
different degrees of thumos in male and female to produce differences in
their desires. In the passage at History of Animals 9.1 608a19–b18
(mentioned earlier), in which Aristotle says that males are generally more
thumotic than females, he associates the differences in the degree of thumos
in the sexes with a number of other sexual differences: the female is less
courageous or spirited (ἀθυμότερα), “softer” (μαλακός), and “more
attentive to the feeding of the young,” as well as “more vicious, less simple,
more impetuous” (κακουργότερα καὶ ἧττον ἁπλᾶ καὶ προπετέστερα). In
human beings these sexual differences are “complete” or “perfect”: women
are “more compassionate . . . more given to tears . . . more jealous and
complaining and more apt to scold and fight . . . more dispirited and
despondent . . . more shameless and lying, . . . longer of memory
(μνημονικώτερον) . . . more wakeful, more afraid of action, and in general .
. . less inclined to move than the male”; furthermore, they take “less
nourishment.” Males, by contrast, are not only more thumotic and hence
courageous, but also “wilder [or more savage], simpler, less cunning”
(ἀγριώτερα καὶ ἁπλούστερα καὶ ἧττον ἐπίβουλα). At the same time, the
female is “more receptive of handling, and readier to learn” (προσίεται τὰς
χεῖρας μᾶλλον, καὶ μαθηματικώτερον). The degree of thumos in male and
female bodies may explain some of these attributes. It is likely to explain
the “softness” of women since, if the ordering of these attributes should
guide us, thumos or spiritedness is contrasted here with softness. Softness is
a moral state that resembles akrasia, except that it focuses on painful rather
than pleasurable objects; the akratic person has difficulty maintaining their
decisions because of the appeal of pleasures (typically, bodily pleasures),
while the soft person has difficulty maintaining their decisions because of
the fear of bodily pains (EN 7.7 1150a9–15).
At Nicomachean Ethics 3.7 1116a10–15 Aristotle confirms the contrast
between the thumotic and the soft person, asserting that courage (which is
linked to thumos, as we will see) “endures things” while “it is softness
(μαλακία) to fly from what is troublesome.” And at 7.7 1150a32–b16 he
says that the female is distinguished from the male by softness (μαλακία).
So it would seem that men, because they are more thumotic, are better able
to endure difficult things, and women, because they are less thumotic, are
more inclined to avoid what is difficult. The context of Nicomachean Ethics
7.7 is one in which it is clear that this entails different desires: in particular,
desires to endure or to resist will be characteristic of men, and desires to
flee or to submit will be characteristic of women. Aristotle spells out the
notion of moral softness in terms of one’s susceptibility to pleasure and pain
(EN 7.4 1147b21–23), and he later suggests that women, because of their
soft character, are likely to succumb to what most men can resist (EN 7.7
115032–b16).
This may appear to be a criticism of women’s moral character, and in
particular an accusation of akrasia. In calling women “soft” Aristotle
meant, on one interpretation, that women are less able to govern their
desires to pursue pleasure and avoid pain through rational judgment (this is
how many commentators have construed the claim that women’s
deliberative faculty is less authoritative than men’s, as we saw in chapter 3,
section 3.4.1).44 There was certainly historical precedent for such a view.
As we saw in chapter 1, the idea that women were less well able than men
to control their appetites was a view widely held by Aristotle’s
predecessors. But, as we have seen, at Nicomachean Ethics 7.7 1150a9–15
Aristotle distinguishes softness from akrasia. Moreover, at 7.7 1150a32–
b16 he is not criticizing women for their softness; he is criticizing men who
are softer than they should be as men. A woman who is softer in character
than a man is not to be subjected to moral criticism; she should only be
blamed if she is softer than a virtuous woman should be. Since Aristotle is
clear that women are capable of virtue, although it is different in kind than
the virtue of men, in calling women softer than men he is not saying that
women as a sex are akratic. If they were, they could not be virtuous. My
suggestion is that Aristotle construes the softness of a woman’s character,
her disposition to submit rather than to resist, as part of her virtue. It both
makes her someone who should be ruled over by someone with more
thumos and makes her good at being ruled over.
Aristotle here correlates being spirited with being courageous: the female of
a species is generally less spirited than the male, and the male is “more
courageous,” as he had said earlier, that is, when males were identified as
more spirited. Aristotle acknowledges that the expression of thumos often
resembles courage, and indeed is taken to be courage: “People also count
thumos as courage (τὸν θυμὸν δ᾿ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν ἀναφέρουσιν); for the
courageous are thought also to include people who act through thumos . . .
because courageous people are too thumotic; for thumos especially strains
to go out and meet dangers” (EN 3.8 1116b24–27).
The resemblance between thumotic and courageous actions is close
enough that Aristotle makes some effort to distinguish them. The
fundamental points of distinction concern the sources and the aims of these
actions: courageous actions emanate from a process of deliberation and aim
at the good, whereas thumotic actions are impulsive and aim not at the good
as such, but at something like honor. At the same time, courageous actions
have their origin in thumos. Courageous people are aided by thumos,
although it is not their sole or even primary source of motivation, so
Aristotle concedes that “the ‘courage’ that comes about through thumos
does seem . . . to be courage once the factors of decision and the end for the
sake of which have been added” (EN 3.8 1117a4–8). “Decision” here
implies deliberation, and the aim in question is the good. In other words, an
action that is motivated by a desire for honor or victory may be a
courageous action, but only if it is undertaken after reasoned deliberation
and decision (rather than on thumotic impulse alone), and with the aim of
achieving honor or victory, because they are the good. By contrast, an
action that is strictly thumotic is not the result of deliberation (EN 5.8
1135b26–27), and is undertaken with the sole aim of preserving the honor
of the agent, whether or not that aim is coincident with the good. Such
actions might well resemble courageous actions, but are to be distinguished
since courageous actions will be “because of the fine” even if aided by
thumotic impulse, rather than undertaken because of “distress and temper”
(EN 3.8 1116b29–34). Although thumos is not, then, identical with courage,
Aristotle does emphasize the importance of thumos for courage and more
generally for the development of human excellence. At Politics 7.7
1327b36–39 he says that “those who are to be readily guided to virtue by
the legislator should be both endowed with thought [διανοητικούς] and
spirited [θυμοειδεῖς] in their nature.” All of this suggests that thumos is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for courage. Men, who have the
appropriate degree of thumos, will be better disposed to acquire the virtue
of courage, whereas women, with an insufficient degree, will be unable to
develop (masculine) courage.
The second virtue associated with thumos is justice. The connection is
more oblique than in the case of courage, stemming from the notion of
thumos as a desire for revenge in response to some insult or wrong, with the
accompanying expression of anger or outrage. Aristotle distinguishes
uncontrolled thumos from uncontrolled appetite on the ground that
impulsive thumos is guileless and open, whereas uncontrolled appetite is
stealthy and deceptive (EN 7.6 1149b13–26). He concludes that when we
fail to check our thumos we are less unjust than when we fail to control our
appetites. This is presumably because challenging insults or wrongdoing, as
thumos does, is more honorable than pursuing pleasure, as appetite does,
and while a thumotic impulse may be hasty or mistaken, it moves us to act
in principle in pursuit of justice. Aristotle thinks that this is evidence of the
lack of guile in the case of thumotic acts in that they are an unstudied
response to acts of injustice. Moreover, he takes the responsibility for
uncontrolled thumos to lie with the person who provokes thumos in another
(by acting unjustly in some way, at least apparently), and not with the
person who suffers from thumos (EN 5.8 1135b26)—whereas he does not
assign the responsibility for appetite to the object that arouses appetite. That
is, he seems to blame not the person who experiences excessive thumos so
much as the person whose words or actions instigate it, suggesting that it is
not absolutely wrong to suffer from excessive or mistaken thumos, although
it would be to suffer from excessive or mistaken appetites.
Because of the close alignment of justice with friendship, this
association of thumos with justice suggests again a link between thumos and
friendship. As we saw in the passage at History of Animals 9.1 608a33–b18,
men are not only more courageous than women, but also more
“sympathetic,” because they are more thumotic. An appropriately thumotic
character will have certain affective dispositions: it will not only be
disposed to the correct degree of anger appropriate to the circumstance, but
will also be inclined to affection and the desire to help that founds
friendships. Aristotle compares justice with friendship and comes close to
identifying them when he says that if one has friendship one does not need
justice in addition (EN 8.1 1155a27–29). As we have seen, he also asserts
that thumos is the foundation of friendship (Pol. 7.7 1327b36-1328a16),
insofar as it is the source of feelings of affection as well as feelings of
anger. If thumos is the source of affection, and affection is the bond of
friendship, and if friendship is a form of justice, then we can draw certain
parallels between the affective character of thumos and its justice-seeking
impulse. Although, then, thumos is not good without qualification, as the
source of affection and courage and as an impulse to honor and justice, it
has moral value.
Here is a case, then, in which nature regularly fails to attach to a soul the
body that would best serve the capacities of that soul. This suggests that
there is no causal relation between the innate capacities of a person’s body
and the possession of a deliberative capacity, and hence that we cannot give
a physiological explanation for the deliberative defect of the natural slave.
We might conclude that one is not fated to be a natural slave by a
morphological or physiological defect of the body; and that the lack of a
deliberative faculty is not itself caused by a bodily defect, since Aristotle
allows that a body that is “straight” and useless for the necessary tasks—a
“free” body—might belong to a natural slave.
Perhaps, however, climate might exert enough influence over physiology
—by heating or cooling—to produce natural slaves of a population in a
particular region.51 Aristotle certainly suggests in the passage at Politics 7.7
1327b18–38 (discussed in section 4.3) that Asia will produce “slavish”
people who have too little thumos, and he links the incidence of slavishness
with climatic conditions: Asians have colder blood, perhaps to compensate
for their region’s hot climate. They seem to be slavish because they are
athumotic, or low in thumos. But at Politics 3.14 1285b19–20 Aristotle
indicates that Europeans, who live in a very different, much colder climate,
will also be slavish, although less so than Asians. And he suggests more
generally that all barbarians will have a propensity to be natural slaves:
The barbarians, though, have the same arrangement for female and slave. The reason for this is
that they have no naturally ruling element; with them, the community of man and woman is that
of female slave and male slave. This is why the poets say “it is fitting for Greeks to rule
barbarians.” (Pol. 1.2 1252b5–9)
On the other hand, a little further on Aristotle suggests that climate may not
entirely explain the condition of natural slavery:
Accordingly, they [people who support slavery from war] do not want to speak of these as
slaves, but rather barbarians. When they say this, however, they are in search of nothing other
than the slave by nature of which we spoke at the beginning; for they must necessarily assert
that there are some persons who are everywhere slaves, and others who are so nowhere. (Pol.
1.6 1255a27–30)
The context of this passage is a discussion of the justice of slavery. Aristotle
has distinguished the slave by nature from the legal slave (who has been
enslaved by force in war rather than by nature). He is discussing the
position of those who claim that forcing captives into slavery in war is just
and arguing that they nonetheless imply that there are circumstances in
which it is not just—for example, when the war began in injustice, or when
the person does not deserve to be enslaved. Aristotle’s point is that to speak
of slaves as “barbarians” rather than as “slaves” is implicitly to
acknowledge that they are not natural slaves. And so he thinks those
attempting to justify the enslavement of captives are forced to accept a
point that Aristotle takes to be true: that some persons will not be slaves by
nature no matter what place they inhabit; this is what it means to say that
some people do not deserve to be enslaved.
So, while climate may contribute to slavishness, it does not seem to
produce slavishness in every case. And it certainly does not produce
slavishness in every case by making a person less thumotic; the case of
Europeans makes that clear. They are in fact highly thumotic and
inadequately intelligent on Aristotle’s account. So, while he associates a
lack of thumos with a “slavish” or servile character (EE 2.5 1222a41–b4;
EE 3.3 1231b5–26) (which, if nothing else, suggests that the degree of
thumos in a body will have some impact on the deliberative capacity), he
also associates low intelligence with slavishness. At Eudemian Ethics 3.3
1231b10 he says that those who accept insults are called “servile and meek”
(τὸν ἀνδραποδώδη καὶ τὸν ἀνόργητον). It seems, then, that while climate
may induce either a low degree of thumos or of intelligence, it is unlikely to
produce both at once. If the natural slave is deficient not only in thumos but
also in intelligence (or intelligence of a certain sort), which the lack of a
bouleutikon suggests, then while either deficiency is sufficient to make one
“slavish” it is not sufficient to make one a natural slave. So while barbarians
are, on Aristotle’s account, more likely to be natural slaves than Greeks,
they will not all be natural slaves—or if they are, it will not be because of
the climate of the regions in which they live.52
There is, moreover, a further problem with the proposal that climate
might explain the occurrence of natural slaves, a problem that is pertinent to
the question of women and sexual difference: how are we to distinguish the
effect of a lower degree of thumos that is climatic and affects an entire
population from the lower degree of thumos that is characteristic of the
female, and hence will distinguish one sex from the other in any region?
More precisely—since we might think the difference between slave and
woman is the difference between vital and climatic heat—why does one
kind of lower heat produce the limited but significant impairment suffered
by the natural slave, while the other produces the even more limited, but
still significant, impairment suffered by women?
It is not clear that Aristotle has an answer to this question, although, as
we have seen, he insists that there is a difference between natural slave and
free woman, and it seems likely to be a difference that cannot be reduced to
one of degree (“the female is distinguished by nature from the slave” [Pol.
1.2 1252a35]). My suggestion is that in calling the people of certain regions
“slavish” (Pol. 3.14 1285a18–20), he does not mean to say that they are
natural slaves (although they may be), but rather that they resemble natural
slaves in having some impaired capacity for deliberation. This is consistent
with Aristotle’s use of the word elsewhere: there are a number of passages
in which he refers to someone’s tastes, behavior, or character as “slavish” or
“servile” without meaning that they are natural slaves (EN 1.5 1095b18–20,
3.11 1118b20–21, 4.4 1124b31–1125a2, 4.5 1126a7–8, 4.8 1128a20–22; EE
1.5 1215b34–1216a1, 3.3 1231b9–20; Pol. 3.11 1282a16–17, 5.11 1313b9,
7.17 1336b11–12; Vir. 7 1251b11–12; Rhet. 2.9 1387b15–17). I am
claiming, then, that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that Aristotle
believed that natural slavery is caused by some condition of the body,
whether innate or environmentally induced. On this interpretation, Aristotle
does not offer a physiological explanation for the occurrence of natural
slaves, the souls of whom he seems to believe have been compromised in a
way unmediated by their bodies.
If this is correct, there is an important divergence in the ways Aristotle
explains the existence of women and that of natural slaves: there is, as we
have seen, a case to be made for the physiological basis of the deliberative
incapacity Aristotle attributes to women, whereas there does not seem to be
a parallel case to be made for the deliberative incapacity he attributes to
natural slaves. This supports his claim that women and natural slaves are
different in kind, since not only is the nature of their incapacity different,
but the causal origins of those incapacities are different. Moreover, because
to be a natural slave it would seem to be necessary to be lacking in
intelligence as well as thumos, we have some reason to suppose that women
are not less intelligent than men: if they were, given their low degree of
thumos, they would have to be natural slaves. Since Aristotle explicitly
denies, as we have seen, that women are no more than natural slaves, this
suggests that the best physiological explanation for women’s lack of
deliberative authority is that which traces its causes through lower degrees
of thumos to an incapacity for decision-making and command.
Although the two explanations I explored in sections 4.2. and 4.3 are in
principle compatible with one another, there is better evidence for the
explanation through thumos. Since my two explanations cannot both be true
without compromising Aristotle’s distinction between natural slaves and
women, we should adopt the explanation through thumos.
4.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I have been exploring the ways in which political sexual
differences might be caused by physiological sexual differences, primarily
differences in temperature and their effects on the blood. It is possible that
Aristotle did not believe that the political inferiority of women stemmed
from any physiological difference characteristic of females, but that it was
an independent political phenomenon, emerging from the structure and
requirements of the household and the polis and the natural roles of men
and women in those structures. That is, Aristotle may not have intended to
suggest that the physiology of the female somehow determined the political
incapacity of women as he describes it. But two points make it likely that he
did believe there was a link between physiological and political sexual
differences. First, although Aristotle never says in the discussions of women
in the Politics that their subjection to men stems from the character of their
bodies, there is a priori evidence for a link between the claims he makes
about women in the biology and in the Politics in the parallel assertions of
biological and political inferiority. Second, the description in the
Metaphysics of sex as a difference in the matter of the genus (see chapter 2,
section 2.2), and the parallels between the account of the value and
inferiority of the female in the biology and of the worth and inferiority of
women in the polis, suggest that Aristotle believed there to be some link
between the physiology of the female and the political status of women.
That link is found in the lower degree of thumos in the female’s bodily
constitution, which affects her practical reason in a particular way, making
it less suited to decision and command, and lacking in authority in that
sense.
Conclusion
The Value of Females and Women
Introduction
1. For a general account of Aristotle’s teleology, see Monte R. Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); for accounts of Aristotle’s teleology in the context of animal
generation and activity, see Allan Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality,” in
Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 204–42; Charlotte Witt, “Teleology in
Aristotelian Science and Metaphysics,” in Method in Ancient Philosophy, ed. Jyl Gentzler
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 253–69; and Mariska Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology
in Aristotle’s Science of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
2. For this categorization, see Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 12–13.
3. This can be found especially in the seventeenth century, where pro-woman writers accused
Aristotle of making his claims out of cruelty or anger at women for rejecting him (see, e.g.,
Lucrezia Marinella, La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne (Venice: Giolito, 1601), 108–9.
4. For defenses of Aristotle see Robert Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or
Rationalization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Darrell Dobbs, “Family
Matters: Aristotle’s Appreciation of Women and the Plural Structure of Society,” American
Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (1996): 74–89.
5. See, e.g., Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “Aristotle and Woman,” Journal of the History of
Biology 9, no. 2 (1976): 183–213.
6. Nielsen makes this point (Karen Margrethe Nielsen, “The Constitution of the Soul: Aristotle
on Lack of Deliberative Authority,” Classical Quarterly 65, no. 2 [2015]: 574). For a
comprehensive and sensitive assessment of recent attacks on and defenses of Aristotle with
respect to sexism, see Sophia M. Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016).
7. The question of Aristotle’s motivations is often posed in terms of ideology; my point is that
while ideological concerns partly explain Aristotle’s view on females and women, there is
considerable evidence that his views were formulated in response to philosophical questions
and commitments. In this I agree with Connell (Aristotle on Female Animals, 45). For the
opposing argument—that Aristotle’s views on the deficiencies of women and natural slaves
are nothing but ideological affirmations and therefore pseudo-scientific—see Claudio William
Veloso, “Aristote, ses commentateurs et les déficiences délibératives de l’esclave et de la
femme,” Les études philosophiques 107 (2013–14): 513–34.
Chapter 1
1. For an argument that Aristotle sees value in the female, see Connell, Aristotle on Female
Animals.
2. By “non-sexual forms of reproduction” I mean those that do not require sexual differentiation,
in the sense that a male principle and a female principle are isolated in separate individuals.
Aristotle’s predecessors commonly believed that non-sexual forms of reproduction included
spontaneous generation from the earth and myths about an autochthonous origin of the human
species (see Nicole Loraux, The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the
Division between the Sexes, trans. Caroline Levine [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1993], 37–71).
3. There are exceptions to this, cases in which an author argues that the sexes effectively perform
the same function, but in such cases the author is likely to make explicit that the sexes share a
function (e.g., in the accounts of Empedocles and Democritus, as reported by Aristotle, both
sexes contribute body parts to the embryo). See GA 4.1 764b10–21.
4. This and other translations from Hesiod are from Hesiod, Theogony; Works and Days;
Testimonia, trans. and ed. Glenn W. Most (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
5. Sedley points out that one significant difference between the story of Pandora in the Theogony
and the one in Works and Days is that in the latter women are merely the conduit of evil into
the world, whereas in the former women are themselves the embodiment of evil (David
Sedley, “Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s Timaeus,” in Plato and Hesiod, ed. G. R. Boys-Stones
and J. H. Haubold [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009], 256).
6. He also uses the term “tribe” (φῦλα) to describe people but not men in particular; see
Theogony 556, Works and Days 90. Loraux writes: “There are no phyl’andrôn, nor is there a
genos andrôn—only a genos anthrôpôn alongside a genos gynaikôn,” citing Theogony 50
(Loraux, The Children of Athena, 87).
7. Mark Morford, Robert J. Lenardon, and Michael Sham, Classical Mythology, 10th ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 97.
8. Texts and translations of Semonides are from Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species:
Semonides on Women (London: Duckworth, 1975). Loraux remarks that Semonides
“deliberately ignores the unity of the genos in order to describe the varied plurality of the
phyla” and suggests that the poem can be seen as a reading of Hesiod’s story of the origin of
women, mixing elements of both the Theogony and the Works and Days (Loraux, The
Children of Athena, 90).
9. In discussing Empedocles I am primarily following two attempts at the reconstruction and
interpretation of the poem that followed on the identification of a papyrus fragment as part of
Empedocles’ poem in 1994: David Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008); Alain Martin and Oliver Primavesi,
L’Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666): Introduction, édition et
commentaire (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999). For other interpretations of Empedocles, see
W. K. C. Guthrie, “III. Empedocles,” in A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1965), 122–265; Denis O’Brien, Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle: A
Reconstruction from the Fragments and Secondary Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969); M. R. Wright, Empedocles: The Extant Fragments (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1981); Daniel W. Graham, “Symmetry in the Empedoclean Cycle,”
Classical Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1988): 297–312; Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy before
Socrates (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994); Simon Trépanier, “Empedocles on the Ultimate
Symmetry of the World,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003): 1–57.
10. Translations of Empedocles are from Brad Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles, 2nd ed.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), unless otherwise noted. Of the four stages
Sedley says: “Like many supporters of the double-zoogony interpretation, I assume that the
first two stages (disjointed limbs, followed by joined-up hybrids) are the zoogony under Love,
the third and fourth (whole-natured beings, and finally the practitioners and products of sexual
intercourse) the zoogony under Strife” (Sedley, Creationism, 41).
11. The line numbers of the new fragments are from Martin and Primavesi, L’Empédocle de
Strasbourg. For discussions of the ordering of the fragments, see Bignone, who refers back to
Stein and Diels (Ettore Bignone, “Appendice VI: La struttura del poema fisico e l’ordine dei
frammenti,” in Empedocle: Studio critico, traduzione e commento delle testimonianze e dei
frammenti [Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1963], 651–76). For a more recent discussion, see
Inwood, who refers back to O’Brien and Osborne (Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles, 8–21).
Hermann Diels, “Studia Empedoclea,” Hermes 15, no. 2 (1880): 161–79, and Doxographi
Graeci (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1879). Heinrich Stein, Empedocles Agrigentinus
Fragmenta (Bonn: Marcus, 1852). O’Brien, Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle; Catherine Osborne,
“Empedocles Recycled,” Classical Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1987): 24–50.
12. Sedley sees Strife’s division of the sexes as a development of Hesiod’s Pandora myth, where
women are introduced as an act of divine spite. “It seems possible that in Empedocles both
stages of Strife’s zoogony originated as an allegorical reading of the Hesiodic myth” (Sedley,
Creationism, 47). That is, in the first stage there is a release of underground fire that generates
unisex creatures, and in the second women are separated from men.
13. For other versions of this myth, see Diodorus Siculus I 7.3–6, 10.1–7; Ovid, Metamorphoses I
416–37; Aristotle, GA 3.11 762b28–30; and Philo, Aet. mundi 57. For more on these see
Gordon Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on “De Rerum
Natura” 5.722–1104 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 61–63, 330–33.
14. “τὰ δ’ ἔμπαλιν ἐξανατέλλειν ἀνδροφυῆ βούκρανα, μεμειγμένα τῇ μὲν ἀπ’ ἀνδρῶν τῇ δὲ
γυναικοφυῆ, σκιεροῖς ἠσκημένα γυίοις” (DK 31B61).
15. “L’expression, fidèlement rendue par Lucrèce 2, 1082, à l’aide de sic hominum geminam
prolem, désigne le genre humain, considéré du double point de vue des hommes et des
femmes” (Martin and Primavesi, L’Empédocle de Strasbourg, 234).
16. Sedley, Creationism, 50. Nonetheless, Sedley suggests an alternative: that the double birth is a
reference to a distinction between the race of daimons, subject to reincarnation, and a race of
perishable humans who can achieve immortality only through sexual reproduction
(Creationism, 50–52). Sedley does not doubt that there are both men and women among the
daimons created by Love.
17. Sedley suggests that Empedocles’ account of this process anticipates the division of the round
creatures of Aristophanes’ story in Plato’s Symposium (Creationism, 46). I discuss the myth
recounted by Plato’s Aristophanes in this chapter (section 2.2.2.3).
18. “τὰς δὲ τετάρτας οὐκέτι ἐκ τῶν ὁμοίων οἷον ἐκ γῆς καὶ ὕδατος, ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἀλλήλων ἤδη, τοῖς
μὲν πυκνωθείσης [τοῖς δὲ καὶ] τοῖς ζῴοις τῆς τροφῆς, τοῖς δὲ καὶ τῆς εὐμορφίας τῶν γυναικῶν
ἐπερεθισμὸν τοῦ σπερματικοῦ κινήματος ἐμποιησάσης” (Aetius V 19.5). Text and translation
Sedley, Creationism, 40–41.
19. Empedocles may not intend to suggest that other animals do not experience sexual desire, nor
that women do not experience it, nor that women are the exclusive objects of desire, but his
emphasis here is on the desire of men for women. If Plato were familiar with this, it might
explain why he writes in the Symposium (208e3–209e5) as though it were only men who
experience sexual desire, although there he plainly does not see women as the only possible
objects of that desire. We should note, however that at Timaeus 91c1–4 he attributes to the
bodies of women “the desire to conceive,” which may be a form of sexual desire.
20. In refuting pangenesis, at GA 1.18 722b 25–28, when Aristotle says “just as it was in the
beginning in the earth in the Reign of Love, so it is, according to them, in the living body,” he
is not suggesting that Empedocles believed that spontaneous generation continued to occur
after sexual generation was introduced under the rule of Strife; rather, his point is that a
pangenetic account of sexual generation cannot account for how the parts of the body in the
embryo come together in an organized way.
21. My brief summary of the myth here assumes that there are two alternating eras; this
interpretation is adopted by many commentators (including Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “Plato’s
Myth of the Statesman, the Ambiguities of the Golden Age and of History,” Journal of
Hellenic Studies 98 (November 1978), 132–41; Dimitri El Murr, “Hesiod, Plato, and the
Golden Age: Hesiodic Motifs in the Myth of the Politicus 1,” in Plato and Hesiod, ed. G. R.
Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 276–97; Francis
MacDonald Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1997), 206–8, but disputed by some (Luc Brisson, Lectures de Platon [Paris: Librairie
philosophique J. Vrin, 2000]); Gabriela R. Carone, “Reversing the Myth of the Politicus,”
Classical Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2004): 88–108; Plato, Statesman, ed. and trans. Christopher J.
Rowe (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995), 189–93.
22. “ἀπομιμούμενα καὶ ξυνακολουθοῦντα τῷ τοῦ παντὸς παθήματι, καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ τῆς κυήσεως καὶ
γεννήσεως καὶ τροφῆς μίμημα συνείπετο τοῖς πᾶσιν ὑπ᾿ ἀνάγκης· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν ἔτ᾿ ἐν γῇ δι᾿
ἑτέρων συνιστάντων φύεσθαι ζῷον” (Polit. 274a2–5).
23. There are evident similarities between the era of Kronos and “our time”, on the one hand, and
the two cycles of creation, under the rule of Love and that of Strife, as described by
Empedocles. For an analysis of these similarities see Charles Kahn, “The Myth of the
Statesman,” in Plato’s Myths, ed. Catalin Partenie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 149–50.
24. The symbolism of the autochthonous origins of men is important; as Loraux points out, having
their origins in the soil of a place gives men a special claim to citizenship and hence to
political authority (see Loraux, The Children of Athena, 37–38, 121–22).
25. “Τῶν γενομένων ἀνδρῶν ὅσοι δειλοὶ καὶ τὸν βίον ἀδίκως διῆλθον, κατὰ λόγον τὸν εἰκότα
γυναῖκες μετεφύοντο ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ γενέσει. καὶ κατ᾿ ἐκεῖνον δὴ τὸν χρόνον διὰ ταῦτα θεοὶ
τὸν τῆς ξυνουσίας ἔρωτα ἐτεκτήναντο, ζῶον τὸ μὲν ἐν ἡμῖν, τὸ δ᾿ ἐν ταῖς γυναιξὶ συστήσαντες
ἔμψυχον” (Ti. 90e6–91a5).
26. There is some uncertainty as to what the ensouled living thing in men comprises. The passage
at Timaeus 91a5–c1 describes how the sexual parts of the male are made. The “marrow” that
Plato also calls “seed” has soul in it and “instilled a life-giving desire for emission right at the
place of venting. . . . This is why . . . the male genitals are unruly and self-willed, like an
animal. . . . The very same causes operate in women. A woman’s womb or uterus . . . is a
living thing within her with a desire for childbearing” (91a5–c4). This makes clear that the
ensouled living thing in women is the uterus, but leaves open the possibility that in men it is
the genitals (described here as “like an animal”) together with the marrow or seed that has soul
in it.
27. In the description of the era of Kronos we learn that there was no taking of women and
children as possessions. We know that children in that era were not born, but rather developed
from the mature human beings first produced from the earth, and did not resemble the children
of “our time,” since they were gray-haired babies at the end of a life, not at the beginning. It
seems likely, then, that they were not women either, at least not women as we know them in
“our time.” Moreover, there is no mention in the myth of the gods regulating sexual activity
between the sexes in the time of Kronos, which we might have expected if there were both
women and men and sexual activity. Certainly the myth suggests that intercourse between the
sexes is an important focus of human governance, a focus that is necessary because the change
from divine to human governance corresponds with the introduction of sexual reproduction.
28. We should note that in the Statesman it is not clear that women are the cause of misery, as they
certainly are in Hesiod’s works. At the same time, the introduction of women certainly
coincides with misery in the myth of the Statesman and the Timaeus.
29. For an argument that despite the resemblances between Plato’s and Hesiod’s description of the
era of Kronos, there are significant differences, see El Murr, “Hesiod, Plato, and the Golden
Age.” For the claim that Hesiod and Plato differ on the nature of the unhappiness experienced
by human beings in the unhappy era, see Sedley, “Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s Timaeus,”
256–57.
30. See Catherine Osborne, Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the
Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1987), 322–23, for text and translation of this passage. See
also Sedley, Creationism, 47.
31. Sedley argues that there was no sexual reproduction under the rule of Love: “I suggest that
Love’s original ‘human’ creations were solely the blissful gods or daimons, so that their resort
to sexual reproduction occurred only after their fall (engineered by Strife according to B
115.14), when they were condemned to the familiar relatively short human life span”
(Creationism, 51 n. 63).
32. See section 1.3 for more on the association of the receptacle with the female.
33. Sedley writes: “The close parallelism between Hesiod and Plato now begins to reassert itself.
In both writers it is with the addition of women to the scala naturae that the degeneration sets
in and unhappiness unmistakably enters the world” (Sedley, “Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s
Timaeus,” 257). In the case of Plato, however, it is not so much women per se who are evil as
what women represent: otherness and the dyad.
34. Scodel sees this hesitation as key to the interpretation of the myth, which he reads as
“profoundly pessimistic,” presenting “a picture of man as chattel to the gods” and serving as a
counter-model to the era of our time (Harvey Ronald Scodel, Diaeresis and Myth in Plato’s
Statesman [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987], 85). If this were right, we would
expect to find sexual reproduction represented as superior to non-sexual reproduction, but it is
not. For a more nuanced account of the myth, see El Murr, who suggests that the myth is not
an unqualifiedly glowing account (“Hesiod, Plato, and the Golden Age”).
35. There is a third conclusion to be drawn here, which I will take up later in section 1.5 of this
chapter. The Symposium suggests a reason that the ruler who is human and not divine, the sort
of statesman who is the object of the search in the Statesman, must concern himself with the
regulation of sexual reproduction. The reason is that an excessive indulgence in sexual
intercourse that leads to sexual reproduction will increase the bodily, and diminish the element
of the divine, in the political community as a whole. So the ruler with an eye to the moral
development of the population, and a desire to make the members of the political community
as divine as possible, will strictly regulate the sexual reproduction of children—and this is just
what we find in the Republic (and the Laws, where a variety of sexual controls are introduced,
including controls over pregnancy [ 6 772d6–773e5, 775b7–e6, 783d7–785a4; 7 788c6–
790c3, 792e2–8; 8 838a4–842a2]).
36. For an overview of the Pythagorean opposites in terms of their characterization of women, and
in particular the influence of this on ancient medicine, see Parker Holt, “Women and
Medicine,” in A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, ed. Sharon James and Sheila
Dillon (Chichester: Blackwell, 2012).
37. “τὰς ἀρχὰς δέκα λέγουσιν εἶναι τὰς κατὰ συστοιχίαν λεγομένας, πέρας ἄπειρον, περιττὸν
ἄρτιον, ἓν πλῆθος, δεξιὸν ἀριστερόν, ἄρρεν θῆλυ, ἠρεμοῦν κινούμενον, εὐθὺ καμπύλον, φῶς
σκότος, ἀγαθὸν κακόν, τετράγωνον ἑτερόμηκες” (Met. 1.5 986a23–28). There are other
Pythagoreans who “consider that number is the principle both as matter for things and as
forming the modifications and states” of those things (Met. 1.5 986a15–17). The elements of
number are even (which is unlimited, ἄπειρον) and odd (which is limited, πέρας).
38. G. E. R. Lloyd, “Right and Left in Greek Philosophy,” in Right and Left: Essays on Dual
Symbolic Classification, ed. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973),
171.For the origins of Aristotle’s account of Pythagoreanism, see James A. Philip, “Aristotle’s
Sources for Pythagorean Doctrine,” Phoenix 17, no. 4 (1963), 251–65. Goldin says that “it
goes without saying that Aristotle had access to [Pythagorean] texts and testimony lost to us”
and so his account “is to be rejected only if . . . his account is inconsistent with other reliable
evidence” (Owen Goldin, “The Pythagorean Table of Opposites, Symbolic Classification, and
Aristotle,” Science in Context 28, no. 2 [2015]: 173.
39. Aristotle’s inclusion of good/bad in his list may indicate that he was not referring solely to the
list of Philolaus (Philolaus fr. 1, Diogenes Laertius 8.85), since that list does not include
good/bad, but in other respects Aristotle’s account of the columns of opposites is similar. See
Carl A. Huffman, Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 28–92; Malcolm Schofield, “Pythagoreanism: Emerging from the
Presocratic Fog (Metaphysics A 5),” in Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Alpha: Symposium
Aristotelicum, ed. Carlos Steel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 147; Oliver
Primavesi, “Second Thoughts on Some Presocratics (Metaphysics A 8, 989a18–990a32),” in
Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Alpha, ed. Steel (2012), 254–56, for discussion.
40. Aristotle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, revised ed., trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966), 151 n. 26. Sabina Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender: Plato and the Pythagorean
Table,” in Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night, ed. Léonie J. Archer, Susan
Fischler, and Maria Wyke (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994). Anne Carson, “Putting Her in
Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic
Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I.
Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 135–69.
41. Simplicius, On Aristotle’s “Physics 3,” trans. J. O. Urmson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2002), 74.
42. See also Met. 1.5 985b23–986a12 for Aristotle’s discussion of the claim that to the
Pythagoreans “all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modelled after numbers.”
For more on spatialization, see Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief
History (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001), 30–33.
43. “ταῖς γὰρ εἰς ἴσα τομαῖς τῶν ἀριθμῶν, ὁ μὲν ἄρτιος πάντῃ διιστάμενος ὑπολείπει τινὰ
δεκτικὴν ἀρχὴν οἷον ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ χώραν, ἐν δὲ τῷ περιττῷ τὸ αὐτὸ παθόντι μέσον ἀεὶ
περίεστι τῆς νεμήσεως γόνιμον· ᾗ γονιμώτερός ἐστι τοῦ ἑτέρου, καὶ μειγνύμενος ἀεὶ κρατεῖ,
κρατεῖται δ᾿ οὐδέποτε” (De E. 8 388a–b). Plutarch suggests (Quaestiones Romanae 2 264a)
that maleness and femaleness appear in the list only as an afterthought, but two other passages
in Plutarch’s Moralia, cited in Aristotle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. Ross, 150 n. 24, “seem
in fact to cast doubt on his own suggestion”: Quaestiones Romanae 102.288c–e and De E.
8.388a–c (Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 89). Translations of Plutarch are from
Plutarch, Moralia, Volume V, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936).
44. Primavesi seems to follow Plutarch’s suggestion, referring to Met. 1.5 986a1–2, and
Aristotle’s remarks on odd and even as the “elements of number.” He writes: “The ascription
of female and male gender to even and odd numbers makes more sense than one would think:
when numbers set out as patterns of pebbles (ψῆφοι) are divided into two, in even numbers an
empty middle space seems to open up ready to conceive, whereas in odd numbers a
procreative middle part seems to remain. In a sense, then, even the ascription of gender to
numbers expresses a structural feature, a pathos; accordingly, the arithmological interpretation
of the number 5, too, can be set out in a way closely corresponding to the model described in
Metaph. A. 5” (Oliver Primavesi, “Aristotle on the ‘So-Called Pythagoreans’: From Lore to
Principles,” in A History of Pythagoreanism, ed. Carl A. Huffman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), 243–44). To describe a space as “ready to conceive” and a pebble as a
“procreative middle part” seems to rely on a prior decision to understand female and male
genitals in a certain way.
45. We need not be convinced by this, as Lovibond points out. The comparison between the
relation of odd and even numbers to the relation of male and female in generation is
unsatisfactory because “not all children are male”—i.e., not all are “odd,” as we should expect
when adding odd to even. Moreover, “you might just as well say that the odd numbers are
reproductively incompetent because they cannot produce another one of their own kind”
(Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 91). Plutarch’s explanation of the association
between the female and the even may be unconvincing, but it seems to be all we have.
46. Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 91–92.
47. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 153–54. The receptacle is one of three fundamental
constituents of reality described at Timaeus 49–51: the intelligible and unchanging mode, the
visible and changing copy modeled on it, and finally “the receptacle and nurse of all
becoming” (Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 93).
48. Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 94. In the context of discussions of reproduction
the notion of female passivity is also widespread. For example, in Aeschylus’s Eumenides,
658–61, Apollo says: “The mother is no parent of that which is called / Her child, but only
nurse of the new-planted seed / That grows. The parent is he who mounts. A stranger she /
preserves a stranger’s seed, if no god interfere” (Aeschylus, Eumenides, trans. Richmond
Lattimore, in The Complete Greek Tragedies: Aeschylus, vol. 1, ed. David Grene and
Richmond Lattimore [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959]).
49. The evidence and translations in this paragraph can be found in Carson, “Putting Her in Her
Place,” 137–38.
50. Aristotle’s views on the physical traits of male and female will be discussed in chapter 2 at
greater length. He is ambivalent about “the moist”; healthy bodies are both hot and moist, and
they will become increasingly cold and dry as they age—but to be both cold and moist (which
is how he characterizes the female) is the worst combination. I assume that the elemental
theory of GC Book 2 underpins the theory of animal generation in the GA, but that is not to
say that conception and embryological development on Aristotle’s view can be explained
simply by appeal to material processes, as we will see.
51. See G. E. R. Lloyd, “The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy,”
Journal of Hellenistic Studies 84 (1964): 102–4.
52. Notice that Parmenides nonetheless identifies the female with the left; we will see later that
usually what is hot is identified with the right.
53. Aristotle has a very interesting discussion at PA 2.2 648b11–649b8 of the different senses in
which something might be said to be hotter than another, enumerating at least five, including
(1) “that which makes what touches it hotter [than the other]” to (3) “the more meltable and
more combustible [than the other]” (PA 2.2 648b14–19). His point seems to be that both
Parmenides and Empedocles might be right—we would have to know just which sense of
“hotter” they were ascribing to one sex.
54. See Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 171.Galen interpreted Parmenides to mean that the male is
conceived (κυῖσκομαι) on the right side, but the passage might mean only that male embryos
are located more often on the right side, which would be consistent with Aristotle’s own view.
55. Peck treats this passage as problematic, glossing “the right side” in the first phrase as “the
right testis,” and speculating that the second phrase is an interpolation “as they [the words in
question] are inconsistent with the view just described” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals,
trans. A. L. Peck, 373 nn. b–c). But there is no necessary inconsistency; Anaxagoras’s view
may simply have been that the testes and the uterus are analogous.
56. Someone must have thought that the placement in the uterus was causally responsible for the
sex of offspring, since Aristotle attacks that view at GA 765a11–21, but it is worth noting that
Galen may have misinterpreted Parmenides, who may only have meant that the male embryo
is more likely to develop on the right side (a position Aristotle himself holds), and in the case
of Anaxagoras it seems to be the male seed that determines the sex rather than its location in
the uterus.
57. Aristotle’s reference here to columns and to pairs of contraries may have been based on
something more than, or other than, the Pythagorean lists of opposites. In the De caelo he is
critical of the Pythagoreans for focusing on right and left to the exclusion of front and back,
above and below, which Aristotle believes are more “fundamental” than or “prior” to right and
left (DC 2.2 285a11–27). Lloyd argues that “Aristotle’s use of the word sustoichia,
‘coordinate,’ in connection with his own theory of the pairs right and left and hot and cold at
PA 670b22 is obviously reminiscent of the way in which he refers to the Pythagorean
principles as arranged in coordinate columns (kata sustoichian, Met. 986a22f.), and yet on
several occasions he explicitly contrasts his own account of these and other related opposites
with that of the Pythagoreans; and many of his detailed biological theories based on the
distinction between right and left are clearly original. It seems, then, that the belief in the
inherent superiority of the right-hand side is not an exclusively Pythagorean doctrine. Indeed,
in some of the elements the Pythagorean Table of Opposites itself merely defined and made
explicit extremely old, and no doubt widespread, Greek beliefs (Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 178).
For Aristotle’s analysis of and disagreements with Pythagoreans, see DC 2.2.
58. Aristotle does concede some plausibility to the views on right and left that he criticizes, saying
that “the opinion that the cause of male and female is heat and cold, and that the difference
depends upon whether the secretion comes from the right side or from the left, has a modicum
of reason in it, because the right side of the body is hotter than the left; hotter semen is semen
which has been concocted . . . set and compacted, and the more compacted semen is, the more
fertile it is” (GA 4.1 765a35–b4). But he adds, “All the same, to state the matter in this way is
attempting to lay hold of the cause from too great a distance” (GA 4.1 765b4–6).
59. See Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 176; Charlotte Witt, “Aristotle on Deformed Animal Kinds,” in
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 43 (2012): 83–106.
60. Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 177. See also PA 4.10 686a27–31, where human beings are described
as the species that conforms best to the natural orientation of the cosmos.
61. Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 170.
62. Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 170.
63. Aristotle seems, then, to accept the Pythagorean list of opposites, except that he has transposed
the resting-moving opposition, placing “movement” in the column with “male” and “better.”
But the Pythagorean connotation may have been different, with “rest” signifying not passivity
but permanence.
64. For an account that emphasizes the naturalness of the purported weakness of women, see
Susan B. Levin, “Women’s Nature and Role in the Ideal Polis: Republic V Revisited,” in
Feminism in Ancient Philosophy, ed. Julie K. Ward (New York: Routledge, 1996), 13–30.
65. See, e.g., Aeschylus, fr. 243, Ch. 594–98; Sophocles, fr. 932; Aristophanes, Thesm. 504ff.,
Ekkl. 468–70, 616–20; Lys. 551ff. See also Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 139.
66. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 139.
67. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 142.
68. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 138–39, 142–43, 156.
69. Fear is wet and causes Anakreon to drip; painful anxiety “falls in drops” within the minds of
Aeschylus’s chorus (Ag. 179–80) (Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 138).
70. I follow here the order of the books of the HA proposed by Gaza, and usually (although not
always) followed by editors since, transposing the book now numbered 7 from its position in
the manuscripts after the book now numbered 9, and so calling Book 9 that which in the
manuscripts appeared as 8. In Balme’s ordering of the books, they are as follows, with the
Bekker numbers at which they start: 7 (8) 588a10, 8 (9) 608a10, 9 (7) 581a10, 10 633b10 (see
also this chapter, n. 72).
71. Doubts about the authorship of Book 9 were raised by L. Dittmeyer (“Die Unechtheit des IX
Buches der Aristotelischen Tier-Geschichte,” Blätter f. d. bayerische Gymn. 23, 10 [1887],
65–79), H. Joachim (“De Theophrasti libris περὶ ζῴων” [Ph.D. diss., Bonn, 1892]) (both cited
in D. M. Balme, “Authenticity and Date of HA VII–X,” in Aristotle: History of Animals,
Volume III: Books 7–10, trans. D. M. Balme [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991]) and more recently Carnes Lord (“On the Early History of the Aristotelian Corpus,”
American Journal of Philology 107, no. 2 [1986]: 152–53), all of whom suggest that
Theophrastus may have been the author. J. Tricot (Aristote: Histoire des Animaux I–X [Paris:
Vrin, 1957]); G. E. R. Lloyd (Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in
Ancient Greece [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], 21–22); and A. L. Peck
(“Authenticity,” in Aristotle, History of Animals, Books 1–3, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press], lvi) are unpersuaded by their arguments. For an overview of the arguments
against the authenticity of Book 9, and an argument that Aristotle is in fact the author, see
Balme, “Authenticity and Date of HA VII–X,” 1–30.
72. Carson, for example, sees women’s restriction to the household as a social strategy to prevent
the unboundedness attributed to women from infecting the larger political community. She
cites as evidence for this view the legal prohibitions imposed on women by Solon (Carson,
“Putting Her in Her Place,” 156). There is some indication of this fear of infection in a speech
by Eteocles, addressing a chorus of Theban women in Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes,
which included the lines: “Here now running wild among the citizenry / You have roared them
into spiritless cowardice” and “What is outside is a man’s province: let no / Woman debate it:
within doors do no mischief!” (191–92, 200–201) (Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes, trans.
David Grene, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, vol. 2, ed. David Grene and Richmond
Lattimore [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959]).
73. Lovibond, for example, suggests that the view of what she calls the “Platonic-Aristotelian
tradition” was that because the appropriate place for women is the household, there was no
need for them to have a capacity to determine boundaries. She understands the notion of the
unbounded against a background in which virtue is a formal principle and purposive action
“expresses an enduring psychic structure of the kind appropriate to (civilized) humanity,” and
so moral rationality emerges “from the gradual exchange of a mental condition that is private
for one that is shared” (Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 92). Since women belong
in the household (by convention), they do not develop this shared mental condition and hence
are incapable of purposive action, which Lovibond takes to be the process of imposing
boundaries; this is the sense in which, and the reason that, they are unbounded. She says:
“Because the setting of women’s existence is not the public but the private sphere, there is not
the same need for women to have installed in their souls that identical form whose presence in
each male citizen makes him a fit person to participate in social and political life. That is why
it is only to be expected that the female mind should be multiple, unstable (cf.
‘resting/moving’), devious (cf. ‘straight/curved’), obscure (cf. ‘light/dark’) . . . in short, that it
should have all the qualities typical of those who have not been fully integrated into the
cultural order and whose behavior is therefore not fully intelligible (to others or even to
themselves) in terms of the current conceptual repertoire” (Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of
Gender,” 92).
74. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 157.
75. For an overview of the Hippocratic works, see Elizabeth Craik, “The ‘Hippocratic Question’
and the Nature of the Hippocratic Corpus” (25–37), and Jacques Jouanna, “Textual History”
(38–62), in The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates, ed. Peter Pormann (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018). Hippocratic texts are cited here with title, book (where
applicable) and section numbers, as found in the LCL editions, sometimes supplemented with
references in parentheses to volume, page, and line numbers in Emile Littré’s, Oeuvres
completes d’Hippocrate, 10 vols. (Paris: Baillière, 1839-61; repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–
2).
76. Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London:
Routledge, 1998), 28.
77. Translations of Diseases of Women 2 are from Hippocrates, Diseases of Women 1–2, ed. and
trans. Paul Potter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
78. For a discussion of the anatomy of the uterus in Hippocratic works, see Lesley Dean-Jones,
Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 65–69.
79. King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 28–29.
80. For a more detailed discussion of Hippocratic accounts of menarche and the accumulation and
evacuation of menstrual fluid, see Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 47–65. She notes that
“because the majority of Hippocratic gynaecological treatises deal with pathology, and most
pathological conditions were thought to originate after menstrual blood had passed into the
womb, it is not possible to say with certainty that all the gynaecological authors believed that
menstrual blood was originally nourishment soaked from the stomach into the flesh of a
woman, but no alternative theory is put forward apart from that of Genit. and Nat. Puer.”
(Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 59).
81. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 45. See also Ann Ellis Hanson, “The Medical Writer’s Woman,”
in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed.
David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1991), 309–38.
82. Hippocrates, Diseases of Women 1–2, trans. Potter.
83. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 45.
84. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 46; but see Hanson, “The Medical Writer’s Woman,” 332.
85. “The males of all species are warmer and drier, and the females moister and colder, for the
following reasons: originally each sex was born in such things and grows thereby, while after
birth males use a more rigorous regimen, so that they are well warmed and dried, but females
use a regimen that is moister and less strenuous, besides purging the heat out of their bodies
every month” (Vict. 1.34). Translations of Regimen 1–3 are from Hippocrates, Nature of Man;
Regimen in Health; Humours; Aphorisms; Regimen 1–3; Dreams; Heracleitus: On the
Universe, vol. 4, trans. W. H. S Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931).
86. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 46. Aristotle may have been following the Sicilian tradition of
Pythagoras and Empedocles, rather than the Hippocratic tradition, in taking a colder
temperature to explain wetness.
87. It is not clear how widespread or credible this view might have been, but we may see some
indication of its influence in the citizenship laws of Athens. Until 451/0 these laws stipulated
that a freeborn adult man qualified as a citizen if he was descended on his father’s side from
an Athenian citizen. This may have been because mothers were believed not to contribute
anything but a place for gestation for their offspring. After 451/0, however, a free adult man
had to have descended from Athenian citizens on both sides in order to count as a citizen,
suggesting that by then mothers were generally believed to have some influence over the
nature or quality of their offspring (see this chapter, section 1.5.1, for the legal status of
women in Athens). On citizenship see also Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life
(London: Routledge, 1989), chap. 3; Loraux, The Children of Athena, 111–23.
88. For Hippocratic treatments of infertility, see Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 152–53.
89. Censorinus writes: “Illud quoque ambiguam facit inter auctores opinionem, utrumne ex patris
tantummodo semine partus nascatur, ut Diogenes et Hippon stoicique scripserunt, an etiam ex
matris” (De die nat. 5.4). See Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 149, and Lloyd, Science, Folklore,
and Ideology, 87–88, 107 n. 182, for these citations.
90. See Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 93–101, for an argument that we should understand
Aristotle’s account of generation as a “two-seed” theory.
91. See Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 149, and Lloyd, Science, Folklore, and Ideology, 87–88,
107 n. 182, for these citations.
92. On the subject of the authenticity of HA 10, Dean-Jones notes that “until recently, it has been
widely accepted by modern scholars that HA X is not part of HA and Aristotle is not the
author of this work,” and adds that the “main argument against Aristotelian authorship is that
the author describes a woman as contributing seed to conception in the same way a man does,
while Aristotle argues vigorously in Generation of Animals (GA) and elsewhere that among
animals that reproduce sexually, the roles of the mother and father are not parallel, and in
particular that the female contribution to conception cannot involve the equivalent of the male
seed” (Lesley Dean-Jones, “Clinical Gynecology and Aristotle’s Biology: The Composition of
HA X,” Apeiron 45, no. 2 (2012): 181). Peck believes that since HA 10 is about the causes of
sterility in humans, it does not belong to HA, which is why it is omitted from the LCL (Peck,
“Authenticity”), and Föllinger points out that HA 10 does not use the terms “form” and
“matter” in speaking about reproduction and so may not have been written by Aristotle
(Sabine Föllinger, Differenz und Gleichheit: Das Geschlechterverhältnis in der Sicht
griechischer Philosophen des 4. bis 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1996), 143–
56). Dean-Jones also argues that “much is explained by accepting it as a treatise written by a
doctor” for clinical medical use, because (1) HA 10’s theory of conception differentiates
between three reproductive fluids in the female (female seed, menses, and vaginal lubricant),
(2) it is practical and therapeutic in emphasis, and (3) it bears similarities to works by
Hippocratic authors (Dean-Jones, “Clinical Gynecology,” 183, 188, 198–99). For counter-
arguments, see Balme, “Authenticity and Date”; Philip J. van der Eijk, “On Sterility (‘HA X’),
a Medical Work by Aristotle?,” Classical Quarterly 49, no. 2 (1999): 490–502; Connell,
Aristotle on Female Animals, 106–7.
93. “Now whereas food gives everything strength, a man’s seed comes from all the moisture in his
body (ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ ὑγροῦ τοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι ἐόντος), and is the excretion of its most
powerful part (τὸ ἰσχυρότατον): proof that what is excreted is the most powerful part is the
fact that when we have intercourse we become weak (ἀσθενέες), although what we emit is so
little” (Genit. I.1 470.1–5); “I assert that seed is secreted from the whole body (ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ
σώματος), from the solid parts and the soft parts, and from all its moisture (ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑγροῦ
παντός)” (Genit. I.3 474.6–8); “In the uterus the seed (ἡ γονὴ) of both the woman and the man
comes from their whole body (ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ σώματος)—weak from the weak parts and
strong from the strong parts—so that the child must be formed accordingly” (Genit. I.8 480.7–
10). All translations of Genit. are from Hippocrates, Generation; Nature of the Child;
Diseases 4; Nature of Women and Barrenness, ed. and trans. Paul Potter, vol. 10 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
94. See GA 4.1 764b4–6. There are many questions about how this might work: for example, how
is it arranged that in a given coupling one animal will, and the other will not, contribute certain
parts?
95. See DK 68A141, A143, and GA 4.1 764b19.
96. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 163–64.
97. Ἔτι εἰ τὸ θῆλυ μὴ προΐεται σπέρμα, τοῦ αὐτοῦ λόγου μηδ᾿ ἀπὸ παντὸς ἀπιέναι. κἂν εἰ μὴ ἀπὸ
παντὸς ἀπέρχεται, οὐθὲν ἄλογον τὸ μηδ᾿ ἀπὸ τοῦ θήλεος, ἀλλ᾿ ἄλλον τινὰ τρόπον αἴτιον εἶναι
τὸ θῆλυ τῆς γενέσεως” (GA 1.18 724a8–12).
98. Although some commentators have speculated that those who denied that the female
contributed seed to the embryo were motivated by ideology, in the sense that the rejection was
a way of insisting on the lesser importance of women, there does not seem to be adequate
evidence for that explanation. The problem is not only that we lack positive evidence for the
motives of those denying female seed, but that there is plenty of misogyny among those who
did posit female seed, so that in the contemporary context it does not seem to be true that
positing female seed would have been understood as claiming equal importance for men and
women. See Horowitz, “Aristotle and Woman”; Suzanne Saïd, “Féminin, femme et femelle
dans les grands traités biologiques d’Aristote,” in La femme dans les sociétés antiques, ed.
Edmond Lévy (Strasbourg: Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg, 1983), 93–117;
Stephen R. L. Clark, “Aristotle’s Woman,” History of Political Thought 3, no. 2 (1982): 177–
91; and Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1988), 24–46, for the claim that denying the existence of female seed was an
ideological position.
99. “Τῇσι δὲ γυναιξί <φημι> ἐν τῇ μίξει τριβομένου τοῦ αἰδοίου καὶ τῶν μητρέων κινευμένων,
ὥσπερ κνησμὸν ἐμπίπτειν ἐς αὐτὰς καὶ τῷ ἄλλῳ σώματι ἡδονὴν καὶ θέρμην παρέχειν. μεθίει
δὲ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ὁτὲ μὲν ἐς τὰς μήτρας, αἱ δὲ μῆτραι ἰκμαλέαι γίνονται, ὁτὲ δὲ
καὶ ἔξω, ἢν χάσκωσιν αἱ μῆτραι μᾶλλον τοῦ καιροῦ . . . διότι δὲ μᾶλλον ὁ ἀνὴρ ἥδεται,
ἀποκρίνεται αὐτῷ ἐξαπίνης ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑγροῦ ἀπὸ ταραχῆς ἰσχυροτέρης ἢ τῇ γυναικί” (Genit. I. 4
474.16–476.10).
100. See also Prob. 4.15 878b1–14.
101. Some but not all of these theories were preformationist. As Dean-Jones says about the view in
Nature of the Child: “It was thus a question of which parent provided the most material from
their nose, not which nose nudged its way on to the face” (Women’s Bodies, 164).
102. Dean-Jones points out that most Hippocratic theories, while they can explain how children
might resemble mothers and why conception can only occur at a certain moment, “have
difficulty explaining why, if a woman can produce her own seed, she cannot produce
parthenogenically” (Women’s Bodies, 161). Moreover, HA 10 says that females in some
species do reproduce parthenogenically (e.g., locusts at HA 10.6 637b16–19), but in other
animals, if seed from only one parent formed the matter in the uterus, then it would produce a
molar pregnancy, analogous to a wind-egg (HA 10.7 638a6–b38).
103. He has already quoted Empedocles, at GA 1.18 723a23–26: “Suppose it is true that the
differentiation between male and female takes place during conception, as Empedocles says:
Into clean vessels were they poured forth; / Some spring up to be women, if so be / They meet
with cold” (DK B65).
104. See Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1942), 373 n. e; Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 171–72, 182 n. 19; Dean-Jones, Women’s
Bodies, 167.
105. See Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 182 n. 19.
106. See Galen Hippocr. Epid. VI. 48, CMG V 10.2.2 119 12ff., quoting Parmenides (DK B17: “on
the right, boys; on the left, girls”), cited by Lloyd, “Left and Right,” 171.
107. See Lloyd, “Right and Left,” 182–83 nn. 21–22, who cites Epid. II.6.15 (v.136.5 ff.); Epid.
VI.2.25 (v.290.7 ff.); Aph. V.48 (iv.550 ff.); cf. Prorrh., II.24 (ix.56.19 ff.). Other Hippocratic
treatises indicate other correlations between the male embryo and the right-hand side of the
mother’s body, e.g., Aph. V.38 (iv.544.11 ff.).
108. For commentary, see Iain M. Lonie, The Hippocratic Treatises, “On Generation,” “On the
Nature of the Child,” “Diseases IV”: A Commentary (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 7.478.
See also Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 39; Föllinger, Differenz und Gleichheit,
42; King, Hippocrates’ Woman, 8.
109. Dean-Jones suggests this elegant explanation: “A possible answer is that the ‘parts’ from
which the seed is drawn are the humors which have different potencies” (Women’s Bodies,
168).
110. Plutarch attributes this to Solon and attempts to explain the motivation of the law: “It seems an
absurd and foolish law which permits an heiress, if her lawful husband fail her, to take his
nearest kinsman; yet some say this law was well contrived against those who, conscious of
their own unfitness, yet, for the sake of the portion, would match with heiresses, and make use
of law to put a violence upon nature; for now, since she can quit him for whom she pleases,
they would either abstain from such marriages, or continue them with disgrace and suffer for
their covetousness and designed affront; it is well done, moreover, to confine her to her
husband’s nearest kinsman, that the children may be of the same family” (Plutarch, “Solon,” in
Lives, Volume 1, Books 1–5, trans. John Dryden, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough [Boston: Little,
Brown, 1859], 187). For the legislation of Solon, see Claude Wehrli, “Les gynéconomes,”
Museum Helveticum 19, no. 1 (1962): 33–38; see also Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,”
156.
111. See also Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life, 29; Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, ed. R. G.
Ussher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 197), 1024f.
112. Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 156: “A good woman does not exceed the boundary of her
oikos.” See Leonard Woodbury, “The Gratitude of the Locrian Maiden: Pindar, Pyth. 2.18–
20,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 108 (1878): 296–97, with
references. For restrictions on space and movement see Plutarch, Is. et Os. 75: the tortoise on
which Aphrodite rests her foot in the statue by Pheidias at Elis represents “a woman’s life,
closed upon itself in its own domestic space” (Carson, “Putting Her in Her Place,” 156);
Xenophon Oec. 7.20, 22, 30; Demosthenes, 59.122; Plato, Rep. 9 579b3–c4; Jean-Pierre
Vernant, “Hestia-Hermes: Sur l’expression religieuse de l’espace et du movement chez les
Grecs,” L’homme 3, no. 3 (1963): 12–50; Michael N. Nagler, Spontaneity and Tradition: A
Study in the Oral Art of Homer (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1974), 77–78; Ruth Padel, “Women: Model for Possession by Greek Daemons,” in Images of
Women in Antiquity, ed. Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt (London: Routledge,1983), 3–19.
113. We can distinguish among pallakê, hetaera, and pornê. Pallakai were concubines, in practice
much like wives except that they were not provided with a dowry. Concubines were “kept for
the procreation of legitimate children” and treated in the same way as wives, sisters, mothers,
and daughters (Demosthenes, 23.53–55; see also Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores,
Wives and Slaves [New York: Shocken Books, 1975], 91). Hetaerai were companions, a kind
of aristocratic prostitute, “though the status of such women was hardly fixed. . . . First seen in
the sixth century BCE, the hetaira may be an aristocratic reaction-formation, an ‘invention of
the symposium’ ” (Madeleine M. Henry and Sharon L. James, “Woman, City, State: Theories,
Ideologies, and Concepts in the Archaic and Classical Periods,” in A Companion to Women in
the Ancient World, ed. Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon [Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2012], 88); see Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in
Ancient Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 181. Pornai were slave
prostitutes, usually foreign women captured during conflicts. For the claim that non-citizen
women might have work that was non-sexual in nature, see Pomeroy, Goddesses, 71–73.
114. Commentators sometimes suggest that enslaving women for men’s sexual use was a pragmatic
strategy for preserving the chastity of free women: “Because urbanization brought men easier
access to one another’s wives, sisters, and daughters, men’s sexual urges also constituted a
public danger. . . . The slave prostitute (pornê, ‘purchased female’) was a civic necessity for
peaceable relations among citizen men” (Henry and James, “Woman, City, State,” 88).
115. Ussher, in Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, xx–xxv.
116. Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1993), 224.
117. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 61; Plato,
The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 381.
Saxonhouse says that “there are enough questions raised within Book V itself and elsewhere
in the dialogue to make us doubt the seriousness of these proposals,” but she does not suggest
that they were humorous (Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Philosopher and the Female in the
Political Thought of Plato,” Political Theory 4, no. 2 [1976]: 195).
118. See Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 224–25.
119. Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 224–25. Some commentators have speculated that
Aristophanes may have known an early version of the Republic, or that both he and Plato drew
on some common unknown theoretical tract (despite Aristotle’s later assertion of the
uniqueness of the Socratic proposals). See Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 224–25,
and James Adam, ed., The Republic of Plato, Vol. 1, Books I–V (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1963), 345–55, for summaries. For a discussion of possible sources for these
ideas, see Moses Hadas, “Utopian Sources in Herodotus,” Classical Philology 30, no. 2
(1935): 113–21; Nancy Demand, “Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Speeches of Pythagoras’,”
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 23, no. 2 (1982): 179–84; Friedrich Solmsen, Intellectual
Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015),
chap. 3. Schofield says: “I think that fun [i.e., the fun that readers feel Plato is having with
them] consists precisely in arguing out in all seriousness and from first principles a social
political programme which . . . had quite recently been most memorably acted out as a sexual
extravaganza on the Attic stage” (Malcolm Schofield, Plato: Political Philosophy [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006], 229).
120. Translations of Assemblywomen are from Aristophanes, Assemblywomen, trans. Jeffrey
Henderson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
121. “τὴν γῆν πρώτιστα ποιήσω κοινὴν πάντων καὶ τἀργύριον καὶ τἄλλ᾿ ὁπόσ᾿ ἐστὶν ἑκάστῳ. εἶτ᾿
ἀπὸ τούτων κοινῶν ὄντων ἡμεῖς βοσκήσομεν ὑμᾶς ταμιευόμεναι καὶ φειδόμεναι καὶ τὴν
γνώμην προσέχουσαι” (Ekkl. 597–600).
122. “πάνθ᾿ ὅσα ξύννομα ζῶα θήλεα καὶ ὅσα ἄρρενα, τὴν προσήκουσαν ἀρετὴν ἑκάστῳ γένει πᾶν
κοινῇ δυνατὸν ἐπιτηδεύειν πέφυκεν” (Criti. 110c1–3).
123. Schofield calls this the “alienating” image, where his point is that in suggesting that it would
be best for the city and most respectful of human nature to train and employ men and women
in the same ways, Socrates draws the analogy with dogs in order to alienate us from
convention and from a conventional sense of ourselves as human beings (Schofield, Plato,
227–28). But dog analogies are common in the Republic (e.g., at 3 416a1–b5; 4 422d2–7; 5
451d4–e5, 466c6–d8; 7 537a5–8) and do not always seem to be intended to suggest a distance
from human nature. For example, at Rep. 2 375a2–76c7 the philosopher is compared to a
purebred dog, where the point seems to be that a philosophical nature is innate to some people.
So the point of the dog analogy here may be to emphasize the identical nature of men and
women (I’m grateful to Léa Derome for this suggestion).
124. These proposals are summarized at Timaeus 18b1–d5.
125. Cohen argues that the changes to women’s role proposed in the Laws are “revolutionary,” and
that “in Plato’s state women were expected, indeed required, to participate in all aspects of
political and civic life” (David Cohen, “The Legal Status and Political Role of Women in
Plato’s Laws,” Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité 34 [1987]: 37). There is
disagreement about that last point, since some commentators believe that while Plato in the
Laws proposes education and military training for women, he restricts their political role to
offices related to marriage, or at any rate does not grant them equality in political participation
(see Glenn R. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the “Laws”
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960)).
126. “τὰ αὐτὰ δὲ δὴ καὶ περὶ θηλειῶν ὁ μὲν ἐμὸς νόμος ἂν εἴποι πάντα ὅσαπερ καὶ περὶ τῶν
ἀρρένων, ἴσα καὶ τὰς θηλείας ἀσκεῖν δεῖν . . . τὰ δὲ νῦν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οἶδα ὅτι μυριάδες
ἀναρίθμητοι γυναικῶν εἰσὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Πόντον, ἃς Σαυρομάτιδας καλοῦσιν, αἷς οὐχ ἵππων
μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τόξων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅπλων κοινωνία καὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἴση προστεταγμένη
ἴσως ἀσκεῖται . . . φημί, εἴπερ ταῦτα οὕτω ξυμβαίνειν ἐστὶ δυνατά, πάντων ἀνοητότατα τὰ νῦν
ἐν τοῖς παρ᾿ ἡμῖν τόποις γίγνεσθαι τὸ μὴ πάσῃ ῥώμῃ πάντας ὁμοθυμαδὸν ἐπιτηδεύειν ἄνδρας
γυναιξὶ ταὐτά. σχεδὸν γὰρ ὀλίγου πᾶσα ἡμίσεια πόλις ἀντὶ διπλασίας οὕτως ἐστί τε καὶ
γίγνεται ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν τελῶν καὶ πόνων· καί τοι θαυμαστὸν ἂν ἁμάρτημα νομοθέτῃ τοῦτ᾿
αὐτὸ γίγνοιτο” (Laws 7 804d7–805b1).
Okin says “Plato’s arguments and conclusions in the Laws about the natural potential of
women are far more radical than those put forward in the Republic” (Susan Moller Okin,
“Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on the Family,” Philosophy and Public Affairs
6, no. 4 [1977]: 361 and Women in Western Political Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1979], 43). Schofield concurs, remarking that “the Republic’s more
strenuously argued thesis that women should receive the same training and education for the
same occupations as men is reiterated in the Laws with more force and passion than ever”
(Schofield, Plato, 232).
127. Schofield concludes: “The Laws retains the Republic’s rejection of discrimination between
women and men—at least in its most general theoretical statements—with undiminished
fervour” (Schofield, Plato, 234).
128. See Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 224–25, for a concise and complete account of
the similarities and differences between the proposals of Socrates and those of Praxagora.
129. Schofield says: “Plato’s collectivist proposals in Book 5 of the Republic are designed to secure
the advantage of aristocracy so defined while pre-empting its characteristic disadvantage”
(Schofield, Plato, 225). The characteristic advantage of aristocracy is that power is “placed in
the hands of the best men, i.e. those best qualified for deliberation” (see Herodotus, Histories
3.81); the characteristic disadvantage is a tendency to stasis among the aristocracy (Schofield,
Plato, 225).
130. Schofield, Plato, 212.
131. The question is not whether Plato or Socrates was a feminist; the question is whether the
proposals of Republic 5 should be interpreted to be feminist.
132. This is why Annas argues that “it is quite wrong to think of Plato as ‘the first feminist’ ” (Julia
Annas, “Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” Philosophy 51, no. 197 [1976]: 747). See also Plato,
Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 14–15.
133. For example, Stalley argues that while the Laws would make important changes to the
political role of women (compared to their status in Athens in the time of Plato), the proposed
changes were motivated not by a desire to achieve justice for women, but by Plato’s
collectivist desire to maximize the resources available to the state (R. F. Stalley, An
Introduction to Plato’s “Laws” [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983], 106). Annas had made the
same point about Republic 5: “[Plato’s] complete lack of interest [in the psychology of
women] underlines the fact that his argument does not recommend changing the present state
of affairs on the ground that women suffer from being denied opportunities that are open to
men . . . His argument is authoritarian . . . rather than liberal” (“Plato’s Republic and
Feminism,” 312).
134. Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 94.
135. Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 97.
136. Halliwell makes this point, noting that although Plato clearly intends not to make women
happier but to make the city happier, his proposals amount to a challenge that women are a
genos, a kind separate from men with certain distinctive and essential (as opposed to
contingent) features: “Bk. 5 presumes that in many activities, including the supreme fields of
philosophy and politics, the lives of male and female Guardians could be almost
indistinguishable; and it supposes that such an aim could be carried a very long way even in
the sphere of military training and warfare” (Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 15).
See also Saxonhouse, “The Philosopher and the Female,” for the argument that in Republic 5
the female is ‘de-sexed’ in the sense that her peculiar nature goes unrecognized.
137. See Annas, “Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” 307–21; Okin, Women in Western Political
Thought, 60–70; Susan B. Levin, “Plato on Women’s Nature: Reflections on the Laws,”
Ancient Philosophy 20, no. 1 (2000): 81–97.
138. See Cohen, “Legal Status and Political Role,” 27–40; Luc Brisson, “Ethics and Politics in
Plato’s Laws,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 28 (2005): 98–106; Trevor J. Saunders,
“Plato on Women in the Laws,” in The Greek World, ed. Anton Powell (London: Routledge,
1995), 591–609. For a discussion of the issues, see Schofield, Plato, 227–34; Christopher
Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 385–89.
139. Gregory Vlastos, “Was Plato a Feminist?,” in Feminist Interpretations of Plato, ed. Nancy
Tuana (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 11–23.
140. Schofield, Plato, 31.
141. For variations on this interpretation, see Lovibond, “An Ancient Theory of Gender,” 88–101;
Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 2–7, 18–22; Levin, “Plato on Women’s
Nature.”
142. As Halliwell says, “The radicalism of the idea of female Guardians resides not so much in the
specifics of a way of life, as in the degree to which Plato’s case approaches a gender-neutral
interpretation of ‘human nature.’ And in that sense we have grounds for judging that what is
really at issue in much of Bk. 5 is not a view of women, but a philosophical conception of
human beings as creatures to whose lives biological gender can be made largely irrelevant”
(Plato, Republic 5, ed. and trans. Halliwell, 15).
143. “Τῶν αὐτῶν ἄρα ἀμφότεροι δέονται, εἴπερ μέλλουσιν ἀγαθοὶ εἶναι, καὶ ἡ γυνὴ καὶ ὁ ἀνήρ,
δικαιοσύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης” (Meno 73b5–7). Schofield says that here “Socrates does not
endorse Meno’s belief that virtue for a man functions within the public sphere, but within the
domestic for a woman . . . cf. e.g. Xen. Symp. 2.9; Arist. Pol. 1.13, 1260a20–22; D.L. 6.12
[Antisthenes], 7.175 [Cleanthes]” (Schofield, Plato, 248 n. 106).
144. There are other passages in Plato’s corpus where it is suggested that the nature of rule across
contexts is identical: at Statesman 259b the Visitor says, “Well, then, surely there won’t be any
difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a large household, on the
one hand, and the bulk of a small city on the other?” and Socrates agrees. Given that Greek
city-states could have populations as small as twenty-five citizens, this is perhaps not so
surprising.
145. Translations of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus are from Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and
Historical Commentary, trans. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). This
passage reads: “ἀλλὰ σωφρόνων τοί ἐστι καὶ ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς οὕτως ποιεῖν, ὅπως τά τε
ὄντα ὡς βέλτιστα ἕξει καὶ ἄλλα ὅτι πλεῖστα ἐκ τοῦ καλοῦ τε καὶ δικαίου προσγενήαι” (Oec.
7.15).
Chapter 2
1. Many commentators have denied that the menses is a passive substratum, or (what amounts to
the same thing) asserted that it possesses dunameis. See, among others, Aristotle, Generation
of Animals, trans. Peck, xii–xiii; Jessica Gelber, “Form and Inheritance in Aristotle’s
Embryology,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 39 (2010): 198; Connell, Aristotle on
Female Animals, 121–22.
2. See Devin M. Henry, “How Sexist Is Aristotle’s Developmental Biology?,” Phronesis 52, no.
3 (2007): 251–69; Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 280–91. Gelber also argues that the
female is not a failure, although she grants that the male is the “default” result of the process
of generation (Jessica Gelber, “Females in Aristotle’s Embryology,” in Aristotle’s “Generation
of Animals”: A Critical Guide, ed. Andrea Falcon and David Lefebvre (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018), 171–87). See section 2.9.5 for a discussion of this issue.
3. Karen M. Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals: Aristotle on the Teleology of Sexual
Difference,” Phronesis 53, nos. 4–5 (2008): 373–405.
4. Henry, “How Sexist Is Aristotle,” 251–69; Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 344–49;
Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals,” 373–405.
5. This understanding is drawn from Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 64–84; see
especially 66–67.
6. See Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 81–84, for an argument that Aristotle presents a
coherent account of the female role in generation throughout the GA.
7. For a helpful discussion of male and female as opposed, see Connell, Aristotle on Female
Animals, 280–84.
8. Aristotle uses the terms genos and eidos as relative terms: a genos is divided into eidê, so that
the same kind may be a genos relative to species that fall under it, and a species relative to the
genera under which it falls. See Categories 5 2a12–3b23 and D. M. Balme, “Genos and Eidos
in Aristotle’s Biology,” Classical Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1962): 81–98.
9. Met. 10.3 1054a23–26: “ἐπεὶ οὖν αἱ ἀντιθέσεις τετραχῶς, καὶ τούτων κατὰ στέρησιν λέγεται
θάτερον, ἐναντία ἂν εἴη, καὶ οὔτε ὡς ἀντίφασις οὔτε ὡς τὰ πρός τι λεγόμενα.” Cat. 10 11b18–
19: “λέγεται δὲ ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ ἀντικεῖσθαι τετραχῶς, ἢ ὡς τὰ πρός τι, ἢ ὡς τὰ ἐναντία, ἢ ὡς
στέρησις καὶ ἕξις, ἢ ὡς κατάφασις καὶ ἀπόφασις.”
10. Despite the implication here that male and female, like odd and even, are contraries without an
intermediate, it is possible that Aristotle recognized such an intermediate in the phenomenon
of dual-sexed animals and people (tragainai), who he says have sexual organs of both male
and female (GA 4.4 770b36).
11. In sections 2.5 I take up the question of the nature of “vital heat” (also called “natural heat”
and “soul heat”).
12. Henry has a helpful discussion of male and female as archai of generation in two senses (as
starting-points and as causes), in which he points out that in GA 1.2 this is a hypothesis, which
has to be established in subsequent chapters (Devin M. Henry, Aristotle on Form, Matter, and
Moving Causes: The Hylomorphic Theory of Substantial Generation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2019), 111–12.
13. Aristotle says that both male and female contribute σπέρμα to generation, and that is why they
are both principles of generation (GA 1.2 716a11–14). In this passage σπέρμα refers to a
fertile residue of either sex. See the introduction to section 2.5, for a discussion of the terms
Aristotle uses throughout the GA for the fertile residues of male and female.
14. Aristotle is replying to those who assume that the male must contribute some material
component to the offspring (Anaxagoras, certain Hippocratic authors, Empedocles, and
Democritus), and arguing, by way of analogy, that it is possible that he does not; necessity
does not require it.
15. Several passages, at GA 1.20 729a9–12, 1.21 729b18–19, 2.1 732a4–5, and 4.1 765 b12,
associate the male with form, and some scholars have relied on them in developing
hylomorphic theories of natural generation, according to which (in its crudest form) the male
contributes form and the female matter (and nothing else) to the process of generation.
Connell argues against a hylomorphic theory of natural generation and for a theory that she
calls “archêkinêtic,” the broad outlines of which conform with my interpretation of Aristotle’s
account of animal generation in what follows (Sophia M. Connell, “Nutritive and Sentient
Soul in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals 2.5,” Phronesis [2020], 1–31. I agree with her, in
particular, on two points: that Aristotle emphasizes the role of the male as efficient cause, and
that both nutritive and sensitive soul must be present potentially in both semen and katamênia.
16. I agree with Connell that Aristotle’s discussion of wind-eggs does not demonstrate that the
female somehow contributes nutritive soul to the offspring independent of sensitive soul
(Connell, “Nutritive and Sentient Soul,” 16–19). For an interesting alternative view see Henry,
Aristotle on Form, Matter, and Moving Causes, 138–41. Although Henry advocates for a
hylomorphic theory of natural generation, it is not the crude version according to which the
male “provides” form to the material supplied by the female; he says that “the father’s semen
is responsible for endowing the offspring with sensory soul, not by implanting some kind of
latent soul directly into the female’s matter, but by endowing the matter with a set of active
powers which (in conjunction with its own passive powers) cause it to develop the sorts of
organs whose developed capacities constitute the sensory part of the offspring’s soul” (Henry,
Aristotle on Form, Matter, and Moving Causes, 141).
17. I discuss in sections 2.6.3 and 2.6.4 the issue of wind-eggs, and what they suggest about the
transmission of soul to the offspring.
18. These two points are rather different: although the males of many animal species act as the
source of the form by way of motions in the semen, there are ways of transmitting the motions
that bestow form on the offspring without producing semen (see GA 1.18 725b30–35; 726a5–
10). It is characteristic of all male animals to be the source or origin of form and to transmit it;
concocting and ejaculating semen is just one way of accomplishing the transmission. It is the
way the male serves as the source of form in all perfect or viviparous animals, including
humans (GA 2.4 737b26–29). So the difference between male and female in these animals is
some capacity or incapacity to concoct sperma, and thereby some capacity or incapacity to act
as the source of form.
19. I will have more to say about vital heat, the heart and their role in concoction in sections 2.4
and 2.5 of this chapter and also in chap. 4.
20. Connell argues that the two residues are not different in kind, but only in degree (Aristotle on
Female Animals, 150), but that view seems to depend on taking the ταὐτὸ at 766a1 (which in
the Platt translation is rendered as “the same product”) as indicating something that is identical
in the sense of the same in kind, which is not obviously the sense. The question is whether one
should understand a more perfect or complete stage in the concoction of a single thing (the
ultimate nutriment) as different in kind or only in degree. In some cases, e.g., the maturing of
a fruit, we might be inclined to understand it as a difference in degree. But the important point
about the difference between male and female fertile residues seems to be that they have
different capacities, and two things which are made from the same stuff but possess different
abilities are different in kind. This is true even though Connell is certainly right to assert that
“the female contribution is very far from being ‘raw’ material”—that it is, in fact, “highly
specialized and full of dynamic potential,” (149–50). The point is that the dynamic potential of
the katamênia is different from the dynamic potential of the semen, although they are
coordinated potentialities. The menses has a peculiar status, in one respect resembling blood
(insofar as it provides matter for the offspring), but in another respect resembling gonê
(insofar as it does potentially have soul).
21. I discuss in section 2.9.5 the claim that the female is a deformity or monstrosity.
22. Although I will not discuss oviparous or asexual species, it is worth noting that the account of
sexual difference in oviparous animals will be different. See GA 3.1–7.
23. The analogy with the craftsman suggests that the male need not provide matter, but the
conclusion that he does not provide matter seems unwarranted by that analogy. On the other
hand, the curdling analogy at GA 2.4 739b21–31 does help to motivate the idea that the male
does not provide matter, insofar as it suggests how it might be possible for a material
substance (rennet) to shape and form another material substance (milk) without becoming a
part of that substance.
24. The potentiality for sensitive soul in the katamênia is more remote; just as a block of marble
has a statue of Hermes in it potentially, so too the katamênia has sensitive soul. In both cases,
an external, active power must act on the matter to realize that potentiality.
25. Although this passage implies that sex is not a pervasive characteristic of an animal body, such
that we speak loosely when we say that an individual animal is “male” or “female,” in other
passages Aristotle asserts precisely that sex is pervasive of the whole body; see GA 4.1
764b28–765a3. So we might wonder whether sex belongs only to certain organs specifically
associated with reproduction or is a feature of the body as a whole.
26. We will see in section 2.8 that Aristotle describes embryological development in just this way.
27. He adds that “in the blooded animals the parts which serve for copulation differ in their
shapes” (GA 1.2 716b2–4). In this passage, the phrase “appear to the senses” is probably a
reference to empirical evidence, from dissections or graphs or diagrams. It cannot indicate a
distinction between external and internal organs, since the list of organs Aristotle offers as
appearing to the senses includes both internal and external organs.
28. Aristotle appears to be unaware of the ovaries, although there is one passage in History of
Animals 9 where the author (if it was Aristotle) seems to mention something like ovaries in
pigs, the kapria that “grows onto [the two sides of] the womb” (HA 9.50 632a25–6). He treats
breasts as insignificant for sexual difference (both men and women have breasts, on his view,
although they differ in size [GA 4.8 776b19–20]), and so does not mention them as among the
sexual body parts evident to the senses.
29. In animals that have longer spermatic ducts that double back on themselves, the testes function
as weights on the ducts, to hold them in place and allow the semen to proceed through the
ducts in a steady, unhurried way: “This then is the object for which the testes have been
contrived: they make the movement of the seminal residue more steady (στασιμώτεραν)” (GA
1.4 717a30–32). The testes do not then produce sperma or participate in its concoction.
30. Aristotle is concerned to explain the location of the uterus, as he is with other animal parts:
“The reason why the uterus is always inside is that it is the container for the young creature
while it is being formed, and this needs protection, shelter, and concoction, which the outer
part of the body cannot provide, being easily injured and cold” (GA 1.12 719a31–35).
31. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle understands the sexual organs he identifies
as such to be the same structures in male and female, differentiated only by size, or place. This
is the view propounded by Laqueur (Making Sex, 33), who sees Aristotle as introducing the
view later held by Galen. I do not think there is sufficient evidence to conclude, as Laqueur
does, that Aristotle sees a symmetry in male and female sexual organs. For criticisms of
Laqueur’s thesis and argument, see Katharine Park and Robert A. Nye, “Destiny Is Anatomy,”
New Republic, 18 February 1991, 53–57; Helen King, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The
Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013). The most interesting
evidence that Aristotle may have thought the sexual organs of male and female were parallel
structures occurs in contexts where Aristotle discusses sexual pleasure. For example, at GA
1.20 728a32–34 he says: “An indication that the female emits no semen is actually afforded by
the fact that in intercourse the pleasure is produced in the same place as in the male by contact,
yet this is not the place from which the liquid is emitted [τῇ ἁφῇ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον τοῖς
ἄρρεσιν· καίτοι οὐ προΐενται τὴν ἰκμάδα ταύτην ἐντεῦθεν.].”
32. In both passages I have cited, the heat in question is characterized as natural (φυσικήν); in one
it is described as inborn or connate (σύμφυτον). This is the heat that is usually called “vital
heat” to indicate that it is peculiar to living things (but, for example, in Mugnier’s French
translation in the Budé edition, it is also called “natural heat” [“une certaine chaleur
naturelle”]) (Aristotle, Petits traités d’histoire naturelle, trans. René Mugnier, 2nd ed. [Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1965]).
33. The heart in effect determines whether the individual animal is male or female by determining
the degree of vital heat transmitted to the blood and hence the degree to which the blood can
be concocted. I discuss in section 2.8.6 the passage at GA 4.1 764b21–765a3 where Aristotle
discusses how the heart determines the organs of sexual difference; for the moment we should
note that his answer is that the sexual organs are formed for the sake of the vascular
differences, which, in turn, are for the sake of the differences in the capacity of the heart to
transmit vital heat to the blood.
34. Ross, like Hett, translates “τὸ γε κύριον τῶν αἰσθητερίων” as “the supreme organ of the sense-
faculties” (“On Youth and Old Age,” in Aristotle, Parva Naturalia, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1955). Mugnier translates it as “le principe souverain des sensations”
(Aristotle, Petits traités d’histoire naturelle, trans. Mugnier). The point is that it exercises
some kind of supremacy over other organs.
35. I have modified Hett’s translation of this sentence to convey more clearly what Aristotle is
saying about the heart and its role. Hett has: “But the heart is the supreme power, and
contributes the final step”; Ross translates: “But it is the heart that has supreme control,
exercising an additional and completing function” (Aristotle, “On Youth and Old Age,” ed.
Ross); Mugnier renders the passage as: “Quant au coeur, c’est la partie la plus importante et il
ajoute la fin à tout le reste” (Aristotle, Petits traités d’histoire naturelle, trans. Mugnier).
Mugnier seems to me to capture best the sense of the Greek.
36. In this passage Aristotle does not demonstrate that the heart is the most authoritative organ by
associating the heart with blood vessels and blood vessels with sensation, and then identifying
sensation as the peculiar activity of animals. He argues, rather, that the heart is the seat of
nutrition and sensation from the premise that it is the most authoritative or sovereign organ.
37. The claim that the heart is the first organ formed is connected to Aristotle’s claim that the
heart is the origin of sensation. We have seen that he defines the male principle as that which
imparts sensitive soul to the offspring, and we will see in sections 2.6 and 2.7 that he
understands conception as a process that begins when sensitive soul actualizes the katamênia
provided by the female. The formation of the heart in the embryo occurs when the male
bestows sensitive form (through movements in the semen) on the katamênia, which already
possesses in potentiality a nutritive soul faculty.
38. We might expect Aristotle to say that the telos of an animal is sensation, but in fact he claims
that the telos of animals (other than human beings) is the reproduction of another like itself
(see GA 2.1 731b20–34 and DA 2.4 415a25–415b2). The nutritive and reproductive functions
of an animal are both included in the nutritive faculty, so the ends of nutrition are subordinated
to the ends of both sensation and reproduction.
39. The analogy is obviously imperfect; the heart is not a conscious being setting ends for other
conscious beings as the master craftsman sets the ends for his subordinates. Determining ends
is not, for Aristotle, always a conscious process.
40. Notice that Aristotle does not hold the view (attributed to him by some scholars, e.g., Jean
Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought, 2nd ed.
[Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981], 44) that the female’s contribution to
generation is only as a vessel, that the uterus is a place for the development of the form
provided by the male. The female, in Aristotle’s view, provides the material cause, which is
both the menses and the nutrition ingested by the female during gestation, as well as an
appropriate place for the embryo and fetus to develop.
41. This is why some commentators have supposed that Aristotle uses σπέρμα ambiguously (in
the sense of “seed”) to refer to the fertile residue of either sex, or both, only in the first book of
the GA, and that after the discussion of fertile residues at GA 1.17–23 it becomes a more
technical term that he uses to refer exclusively to the male residue (in the sense of “semen”).
But there is considerable evidence, some cited earlier, that Aristotle continues to use σπέρμα
(in the sense of “seed”) to refer to the fertile residues of both sexes later in the GA, even as he
sometimes uses it to refer only to semen. For a discussion of the evidence, and an argument
that Aristotle sometimes uses σπέρμα throughout the GA to refer to the female as well as the
male seminal fluid, see Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 101–7.
42. In one passage, at GA 2.7 747a18, where Aristotle compares the nature of the brain to the
nature of γονή, he might be referring to the fertile residue of either sex.
43. Pneuma is also the source of sensation: the blood in the central chamber of the heart is the
purest because it has most pneuma; see G. R. T. Ross, Aristotle, De Sensu and De Memoria:
Text and Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1906), 16–17; see chap. 4, section 4.2.
44. There are two passages concerned with lungs and their function in the PA (3.4 667a16–30 and
3.6 668b34–669b1) that suggest that pneuma, although it is defined as “hot air,” is capable of
cooling as well as heating. And as we will see in section 2.7.3, this seems to be necessary for
the process of embryological formation.
45. Notice in this passage the claim that the process of concoction is sometimes subject to outside
influences; this will be important when we come to discuss Aristotle’s explanation of wind-
eggs.
46. For the natural as an internal principle of change, see Metaphysics 5.4, where one of the senses
of “nature” is “the source from which the primary movement in each natural object is present
in it in virtue of its own essence [ὅθεν ἡ κίνησις ἡ πρώτη ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν φύσει ὄντων ἐν αὐτῷ
ᾗ αὐτὸ ὑπάρχει]” (1014b19–21), and Physics 2.1, where Aristotle says that a thing with a
nature “has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, or of
growth and decrease, or by way of alteration) [τὰ μὲν γὰρ φύσει ὄντα πάντα φαίνεται ἔχοντα
ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀρχὴν κινήσεως καὶ στάσεως—τὰ μὲν κατὰ τόπον, τὰ δὲ κατ᾿ αὔξησιν καὶ φθίσιν,
τὰ δὲ κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν]” (192b14–17).
47. But notice that at Meteor. 4.5 382b4–5 Aristotle says that the cold, because it is found in earth
and water, which are characterized primarily by the dry and the moist, is also passive.
48. There is a contrast here between two kinds of change: (1) mastery as a process of generation
(where what is generated is either concocted through heat or determined through cold) and (2)
the failure to master as a process which, at its most extreme, leads to decay. Decay occurs,
Aristotle points out, when external heat destroys the internal heat and thereby strips away its
natural moisture (Meteor. 4.1 379a11–26); notice that vital heat, by contrast with external heat,
attracts moisture (Meteor. 4.1 379a24–6). And so decay is caused by external heat and internal
coldness (Meteor. 4.1 379a21–22). It is not clear that there is a contrast between (1) the
“inconcoction” that is produced by cold (Meteor. 4.2 379b13–14), and (2) what results when
the hot “fails to master”, which is also described as inconcoction (Meteor. 4.2 379a2–3). We
might expect that there should be a contrast, since in (1) the cold is said to act to generate
something, whereas in (2) there is a resistance to being acted on, and nothing is generated. But
first, these may amount to the same thing, since in (1) something is imperfectly concocted
because of cold and in (2) imperfect concoction also occurs because of the presence of
cold/insufficient heat. And second, some of the cases that seem to fall under (1) mentioned in
the passages at Meteor. 4.3 381a17–23 and 381b18–19 (parboiling and scorching) suggest that
while some change is undergone, nothing new is generated, and in the case of rawness there is
no change at all, and certainly nothing new generated.
49. Neither the active nor the passive qualities—the hot, cold, moist, and dry—are in and of
themselves good or bad on Aristotle’s account. Clearly the passive and active qualities are
equally and mutually necessary if generation is to occur. Aristotle often does seem to define
the cold in negative terms (at, e.g., Met. 12.3 1070b12, Meteor. 4.1 379a18–19). And we may
think that the resistance to having a limit imposed on it is a negative feature for a passive
quality like the dry. But it is more usual for Aristotle to suggest that certain combinations of
these qualities are bad (or worse than others). For example, the combination of the cold and
the dry is associated with old age and death (Meteor. 4.1 379a15-b8), and the combination of
the cold and the moist is associated with the female.
50. G. E. R. Lloyd points out that the notion of “perfection” in the definition of concoction must
allow for different manifestations of perfection: “Concoction is a bringing of something to
perfection or completion achieved through heat operating principally on the wet. Its species
differ in the kind of completion they are, that is by the goal or end in view (379b25ff.). They
are further differentiated either by the kind of heat (e.g. ‘wet’ ‘dry’) or by the material worked
on, and failures, that is ‘inconcoctions,’ are similarly put down to one or other factor or the
relationship, the imbalance, between them” (G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 85). In other words, if concoction perfects or
completes its object, then there must be a determinate end to the process, but that end will
differ according to the species of concoction (i.e., maturation, digestion, seed production,
embryological development).
51. Aristotle defines a fetation (κύημα) as “the first mixture of male and female [sperma]” (GA
1.20 728b34–35). For the distinction between the fetation and the embryo see this chapter,
section 2.6.1.
52. On the variety of processes that are grouped together as instances of pepsis, see Lloyd,
Aristotelian Explorations, 85.
53. Aristotle describes the contrast between useful and useless nourishment this way: “By ‘useless
nourishment’ I mean that which contributes nothing further to the natural organism and which
if too much of it is consumed causes very great injury to the organism; ‘useful nourishment’ is
the opposite of this” (GA 1.18 725a5–7).
54. For a full account of the concoction of semen see Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations, 91–95; for
an account that emphasizes the role of different parts of the body, see Andrew Coles,
“Biomedical Models of Reproduction in the Fifth Century BC and Aristotle’s Generation of
Animals,’” Phronesis 40, no. 1 (1995): 48–88.
55. Sperma at GA 1.18 725b7 may refer only to semen, and not to both semen and katamênia,
since Aristotle seems to believe that the female need not emit sperma in the same way or at
the same time as the male; certainly he believes that conception does not require female
orgasm (GA 1.19 727b7–12). See this chapter, n. 67. It will still be the case that the sperma
produced by both sexes is the final product of the concoction of the ultimate nutriment.
56. The evidence that both seminal residues are useful and natural is among the evidence for the
view that Aristotle believes the female to be natural and valuable; if menses is natural, then the
female animal that produces menses must be natural.
57. Since the heart is the source of natural heat and the difference in natural heat between male
and female is ultimately responsible for their different capacities, in some species it may be
that the heart is the only bodily site where pneuma is added to the residue of the nutriment,
and hence the site where sperma is concocted. But in certain animals more pneuma is added
during intercourse, while the semen is in the spermatic ducts of the male, and it is this final
addition of pneuma that definitively differentiates semen from menses in these cases. In male
animals with testes, Aristotle tells us, the residue of blood is concocted into semen during
copulation when, because of the heat produced by friction, more pneuma is added (GA 1.5
717b23–6). Aristotle thus provides us with a functional account of intercourse, the final cause
of which is the friction that, by producing heat, further concocts the male semen in the
spermatic ducts. This makes clear that pneumatization does not occur only in the heart in
certain species.
58. “Le pneuma congénital se forme à partir du sang qui est en même temps chaud et humide:
cette production se fait principalement dans le coeur par une évaporation constante: nous
savons que le pneuma interne contient en lui la chaleur vitale; il en résulte que ce pneuma
remplit le rôle d’instrument dans les activités de l’âme et tout d’abord dans l’activité de l’âme
nutritive. Le coeur est donc vraiment l’organe central de l’organisme vivant” (G. Verbeke,
“Doctrine du pneuma et entéléchisme chez Aristote,” in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses:
Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. G. E. R. Lloyd and G. E. L. Owen
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 195). Henry writes, “Aristotle thinks of
concoction as a kind of refining process (cf. 728a28: πεπηρωμένον). For example, in several
places spermatogenesis is compared to the process of refining fruit (728a26–30, 765b19–35,
cf. 725a11–18). As in this process, spermatogenesis begins from a large bulk of material and
refines it, gradually removing its impurities (the fluid portion) until what results is a pure form
of concentrated seed” (Henry, “How Sexist is Aristotle,” 257). Although katamênia certainly
contains more fluid than does semen, the impurities that are removed in the process of
purification will also include “earthy” elements.
59. The female does not, Aristotle emphasizes, contribute a second residue to the generation of
offspring. We should notice that this position was controversial in the context of the ancient
debate, where many believed that the female provided two different fluids to the process of
generation, because they attributed formal generative powers to the fluids secreted at the
cervix and in the vagina. See, e.g., the Hippocratic discussion in Genit. and Nat. Puer.; see
also the discussion of this question in Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 153–60, and Aline
Rousselle, “Observation feminine et idéologie masculine: Le corps de la femme d’après les
médecins grecs,” Annales 35, no. 5 (1980): 1089–1115. The identification of the fluids
secreted at the cervix and in the vagina with the fertile fluid was probably due to the
resemblance between such clear or milky fluids and the semen produced by the male. See
Daryl McGowan Tress, “The Metaphysical Science of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and
Its Feminist Critics,” Review of Metaphysics 46, no. 2 (1992): 307–41.
60. See Andrea L. Carbone, “The Axes of Symmetry: Morphology in Aristotle’s Biology,”
Apeiron 49, no. 1 (2016): 1–2 n. 1; Scott Atran, “Pre-Theoretical Aspects of Aristotelian
Definition and Classification of Animals: The Case for Common Sense,” Studies in the
History and Philosophy of Science 16, no. 2 (1985): 122; Johannes Morsink, “Was Aristotle’s
Biology Sexist?,” Journal of the History of Biology 12, no. 1 (1979): 84 n. 7.
61. The difference in capacity is also, I will suggest in chap. 4, a difference that we might expect
to affect the capacity for sensation.
62. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, lxiv–lxv.
63. Connell claims that this heat is not different in kind from the heat of the sun (Aristotle on
Female Animals, 223–24), but if it were not we would expect Aristotle to explain why it can
produce effects in the body that it does not produce external to the body.
64. As Connell points out, rather than saying that the male “provides” sensitive soul to the
katamênia, we should say that “the male simultaneously establishes the beginning of the
development of the intertwined and co-dependent nutritive and sentient aspect of the soul of
the particular kind” (Connell, “Nutritive and Sentient Soul,” 29). This is why I generally
describe the action of semen on katamênia as one in which the male “produces” rather than
“transmits” or “provides” soul: the soul is already present in potentiality in the katamênia, and
both sexes participate in the transmission of soul.
65. Notice that in GA 2.1 731b20–24, Aristotle contrasts the coupling of efficient and material
cause as the “necessary” in opposition to the final cause.
66. In claiming that both male and female contribute sperma to generation and identifying the
sperma of the female as the menses, Aristotle is clearly establishing a position in contrast to
two distinct views: that the female is only a vessel (a view he attributes to Anaxagoras and
other physiologers at GA 4.1 763b30–764a1), and that her sperma is identical to that of the
male (a view he attributes to Empedocles and Democritus at GA 4.1 764a1–765a5).
67. A more obscure argument for the position is offered at GA 1.19 727b7–12, where Aristotle
says, “Here is an indication that the female does not discharge semen of the same kind as the
male, and that the offspring is not formed from a mixture of two semens, as some allege. Very
often the female conceives although she has derived no pleasure from the act of coitus.” If
conception does not require female orgasm, that will be because the female semen is not of the
same kind as the male, and need not be emitted during intercourse. But it is not clear what
follows from this.
68. Although Aristotle says that the female sperma lacks the ἀρχή or origin of the soul (GA 2.3
737a27), he cannot mean that the female sperma lacks any potentiality for soul; as the material
cause of the animal to be generated it must have some potentiality for soul. G. E. R. Lloyd
writes: “Aristotle is particularly exercised, in his account of reproduction, to specify how the
soul is present in the seed, distinguishing the nutritive soul, which is present already
potentially in the seed (and comes into operation as soon as the seed draws nourishment to
itself, GA 736b8ff.), from the perceptive soul, which is supplied by the male parent and is
present, again potentially, only at the point when a new animal is recognisable as such”
(Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations, 42). Lloyd implies that the nutritive soul is not supplied by
the male parent, and since no other explanation is offered by Aristotle, we must suppose that it
is supplied, in potentiality, by the female parent. But in a note Lloyd expresses some
uncertainty, allowing that there are passages where the female sperma is “said to lack the
arche of the soul” (GA 2.3 737a27), but also passages in which he “talks of movements in the
seed that are derived from both parents” (GA 4.3 768a10ff.; contrast with John M. Cooper,
“Metaphysics in Aristotle’s Embryology,” in Knowledge, Nature, and the Good [Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004], 174–203) (Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations, 42 n. 7).
The point, Lloyd says, is that “while in some texts the differences between male and female
contributions to reproduction are stressed, in others the emphasis is on the point that the
female katamênia are analogous to the semen in males (e.g. GA 727a2ff.) and are indeed seed,
even if not pure, not fully concocted . . . e.g. 728a26ff)” (42 n. 7). For evidence that the
nutritive soul is already potentially in the seed, while the perceptive soul is present potentially
only at the point when a new animal is recognisable as such, Lloyd directs us in a note to:
735a4ff., 735a16ff., 736a35ff., 736b1ff., 738b25ff., 757b15ff. (42 n. 6). On my view the
perceptive or sensitive soul must be present potentially in what Lloyd calls “the seed” (i.e., the
katamênia) since it is possible for perceptive soul to be actualized in the katamênia as it is
informed, but it is present as a passive potentiality rather than as an active potentiality.
69. Aristotle’s discussion of spontaneous generation (at GA 3.11 762a18–763b16; see also GA 2.6
743a35–36) may also offer some evidence of the capacity of the material cause in the
generation of an animal, although the tensions between this discussion and Aristotle’s larger
account of generation make it difficult to extend with confidence the claims he makes about
the material cause in the case of spontaneous generation to the case of sexual generation (on
the difficulties, see Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 255–64). Aristotle attempts to
identify the counterparts to the male and female principles in instances of spontaneous
generation. On his account, the heat present in the environment concocts and shapes in some
manner some quantity of sea-water and earth; this is the equivalent to the female principle (GA
3.11 762b13–16). In the Metaphysics, as Peck points out, Aristotle says that “the natural things
which (like some artificial objects) can be produced spontaneously are those whose matter can
be moved even by itself in the way in which the seed usually moves it; but those things which
have not such matter cannot be produced except by parents” (Met. 7.9 1034b16–19). Peck
comments: “ ‘Matter,’ the ἐξ οὗ of living things, might be looked upon as considerably more
than mere lifeless, inert material” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, 585). This
seems right and supports the idea that we should understand the katamênia as capable rather
than inert.
70. For an argument that Aristotle’s discussion of wind-eggs is not sufficient evidence to suggest
that he thought the female is capable of contributing form in some way, see Gelber, “Form and
Inheritance,” 198–202. Gelber’s argument depends on the claim that the wind-egg does not
have actual nutritive soul because it does not have organs—but it is actually growing, which
suggests that the nutritive soul it has, while clearly imperfect, is not entirely potential.
71. This passage from the GA reiterates the concept of degrees of actuality that we find in the De
anima in a passage in which Aristotle uses the distinction between sleeping and waking to
differentiate degrees of potentiality and actuality, although in this passage he seems to
compress the geometer who is awake and the one who is “busy at his studies” into a single
phase (see DA 2.1 412a21-26).
72. Alan Code, “Soul as Efficient Cause in Aristotle’s Embryology,” Philosophical Topics 15, no.
2 (1987): 55.
73. Many commentators have worried about this passage insofar as it suggests that pneuma is the
physical substance of soul. Whether it just is soul (Gad Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of
Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999],
106–48) or is the instrument of soul (Verbeke, “Doctrine du pneuma,” 191–214), whether this
is an intractable problem (François Nuyens, L’évolution de la psychologie d’Aristote [Leuven:
Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1948])—these are all important questions, about which I
have nothing to say here.
74. For this sense of “the faculty of soul of every kind” see DA 2.3: “Among the capacities of the
soul (τῶν δὲ δυνάμεων τῆς ψυχῆς), all belong to some, to others some of them belong, and to
still others only one belongs. The capacities we mentioned were: the nutritive faculty, the
perceptual faculty, the desiderative faculty, the faculty of motion with respect to place, and the
faculty of understanding. The nutritive faculty alone belongs to plants; both this and the
perceptual faculty belong to others” (414a29-b2). Later in the chapter Aristotle refers to these
“faculties of soul” simply as “souls” (ταῖς ψυχαῖς). So in the passage from the GA under
discussion here, the most natural reading of “souls” is “faculties of soul”—nutritive, sensitive,
etc. It is not, as one might suppose on first reading, a reference to the different souls that
different species possess (i.e., a reference to different essential forms), since then we would
not expect the link to be drawn to different values in the physical substances that transmit the
soul. That is, it is implausible that Aristotle is here suggesting that the semen of a giraffe is
more or less worthy than the semen of a hedgehog.
75. Some qualifying points: (1) I say “primarily” because it is clear both that the menses must also
have a passive potentiality for sensitive soul and that the potentiality for sensitive soul in the
semen must include an active potentiality for nutritive soul. (2) It has been suggested to me
that Aristotle’s point about a difference in value is not intended to contrast male and female
sperma, but rather to contrast “the hot” in sperma with fire (since the former is more worthy
because capable of generation). But that interpretation does not make sense of the claim that
the souls (or faculties of soul) differ from one another in worthiness. (3) Aristotle has already
excluded the possibility that one faculty of soul, nous, the rational faculty, could be conveyed
to the offspring in some physical substance (GA 2.3 736b27–29). I discuss this claim in
section 2.10.2 of this chapter.
76. Henry, for example, distinguishes between two stages in the formation of offspring: in the
first, embryogenesis, “the semen ‘gives form’ to the embryo in the purely mechanical sense of
imposing a limit or boundary (dioriountos) on the relatively indeterminate fluid causing it to
set)” (Henry, Aristotle on Matter, Form and Moving Causes, 119); in the second, in which
mature offspring are produced, the male provides the animal’s form in the sense of its essence,
insofar as the capacity for sensation is “the defining contribution of the male animal” (133).
77. For a discussion of Aristotle’s use of συνιστάναι and συνίστασθαι see Aristotle, Generation of
Animals, trans. Peck, lxi–lxii. Peck says, “ συνιστάναι . . .denotes the first impact of Form
upon Matter, the first step in the process of actualizing the potentiality of Matter,” because the
term is “specially frequent in passages describing the initial action of the semen in constituting
a ‘fetation’ out of the menstrual fluid of the female.” He also points out that it is the term
Aristotle uses to describe the action of rennet on milk. I argue that there are reasons to think
that, at least sometimes (as here at GA 2.1 733b20–23), it refers not only to the initial impact
but to the entire process of embryological development.
78. In the discussions of wind-eggs, setting is described as the separation of yolk and white, where
the white is identified as the part that bears the soul-heat, and the yolk as the matter that will
be acted on by the soul-heat. Aristotle is emphatic that both white and yolk are from the
female residue; the male sets but does not provide any matter (GA 3.1 751b21–752a4).
79. This is true of the conception of an animal, but Aristotle, as we have seen, also speaks of the
process by which a wind-egg is formed as “setting,” although the wind-egg does not have
differentiated organs.
80. Two points are worth remarking in this passage. First, the claim that the nature of milk and the
nature of menstrual fluid are the same may seem surprising, but it is obvious in light of
Aristotle’s views on the concocting of the bodily residues: both menstrual fluid and the milk
of blooded animals are useful residues concocted from the excess of blood produced by the
body of the female animal. Second, the claim that setting occurs both because of necessity and
for a purpose is an instance of a phenomenon we see often in the GA: the claim that material
necessity is at work at the same time that conditional necessity is at work. See this chapter,
section 2.9.
81. Gelber speculates that the κινήσεις are more like the changes in a chemical reaction than like
locomotive movements; if so, we can see that setting and organ formation may not be distinct
processes—it is the analogy with the carpenter that suggests the movements might be
locomotive (Gelber, “Form and Inheritance,” 187 n. 13). Connell distinguishes between the
plural κινήσεις and the singular κινήσις, arguing that “the male role as hê archê kinesêos is not
a spatial motion or a qualitative change in temperature and it is not initially characterized by
Aristotle as comprising a set of motions or changes. Instead the male provides hê archê
kinesêos, the beginning of the process of substantial change which must occur if a new
substance, that is a new animal, is to come into existence” (Connell, Aristotle on Female
Animals, 170). As I understand her, she is suggesting that there is a difference between the
κινήσις that the male is a principle of, which is something purely metaphysical, and the
κινήσεις that are in the male semen, which may be spatial motions or qualitative changes in
temperature. But I see no evidence that Aristotle thought there was some kind of metaphysical
change produced by the male that was not also a physical change in the katamênia, whether
the creation of the fetation, the differentiation of solids and fluids, or the formation of organs
in the embryo.
82. See also GA 2.1 734b9.
83. Code suggests that we understand the form in the male semen as “the active principle, or
efficient cause, for the generation,” and so as a degree of active potentiality prior to the form
in the fully formed and realized foetus (“Soul as Efficient Cause,” 56). On this view the
efficient cause of soul that is the “heat” in the semen is the same entity, but at a lower degree
of actualization, as the soul in the fully formed animal.
84. This language is reminiscent of Plato’s Timaeus at 69c3–5, where the god “himself fashioned
those that were divine, but assigned his own progeny the task of fashioning the generation of
those that were mortal.”
85. If the dunameis are identified with the soul, then they should be responsible only for formal
resemblance, but instead they seem to be responsible for other kinds of resemblance. Gelber
argues that non-formal inherited features (including sex) should not be construed as accidents
due to the matter, but as the per se result of certain kinêseis ( “Form and Inheritance,” 191).
She draws an analogy between these non-formal, non-accidental inherited features and an
accent acquired in the process of learning a language: they are not included in the goal of the
process, but neither are they accidental to the process (195–96).
86. On this point, see Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, 587; Aristotle, Aristotle. De
Sensu, ed. and trans. Ross, 16–17. See also this chapter, section 2.5.1, n. 44.
87. On the role of the “innate pneuma” (πνεῦμα σύμφυτον) see Martha C. Nussbaum, “The
Sumphuton Pneuma and the De Motu Animalium’s Account of Soul and Body,” in Aristotle,
Aristotle’s “De Motu Animalium,” trans. Martha C. Nussbaum (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1978), 143–64. See Jessica Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent Good (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 23–27, 58–61, for an account of the process of heating,
cooling, expanding, and contracting and its relation to motivation and action in the Movement
of Animals.
88. See Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, 583, for this parallel.
89. That a potential soul faculty should be a potentiality is not surprising; but the notion that heat
is a dunamis needs some clarification. In a passage of the Metaphysics at 9.1 1046a22–29,
Aristotle distinguishes active and passive potentialities: “For the one [i.e., the passive
potentiality] is in the thing acted on; it is because it contains a certain source of change (τινὰ
ἀρχήν), and because even the matter is a certain source of change, that the thing acted on is
acted on, one thing by one, another by another; for that which is oily is inflammable, and that
which yields in a particular way can be crushed; and similarly in all other cases. But the other
potentiality is in the agent, e.g. heat and the art of building (ἡ οἰκοδομική) are present, one in
that which can produce the heat and the other in the man who can build.” Here Aristotle
explicitly identifies heat as a dunamis, and moreover he mentions heat and the dunamis of
building in the same phrase. The suggestion is that producing heat and building are both active
potentialities, in the agent rather than in the patient of change. Given the analogy in the
Generation of Animals 1.22 (described earlier) between the activity of the builder and the
activity of heat in generation, we can conclude that Aristotle conceives of heat in sperma as a
dunamis that, when actualized, is active and constructive.
90. Connell views it this way; see Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 80.
91. Henry understands the male parent to be the primary external efficient cause, “responsible for
forming the embryo and fashioning its primitive heart,” but claims that the “proximate
efficient cause is the process of development itself (the ‘internal motion’), which is initiated
and controlled by a principle in the embryo itself (its own nature). This is the primary internal
efficient cause” (Aristotle on Matter, Form and Moving Causes, 155).
92. The movements imparted through the male semen probably do not cease with the formation of
the parts. The analogy with automated puppets (GA 2.1 734b8–10, 2.5 741b8–10) suggests
that the movements are passed on, and that soul takes over as the origin of motion in the newly
formed animal. See Code, “Soul as Efficient Cause,” 54–58.
93. Code also suggests that the soul of an animal can exist at various degrees of active
potentiality: “The crucial idea here is that the δύναμις in the male semen is such that (1)
embryological development is the incomplete actuality of that δύναμις and (2) the soul of the
animal is the complete actuality of that same δύναμις. This interpretive claim is motivated by
the attempt to see the embryological development as natural in the sense that its efficient cause
is the nature internal to the developing embryo” (Code, “Soul as Efficient Cause,” 56). But he
does not distinguish the various faculties of the soul.
94. For the first position see Henry, “How Sexist Is Aristotle,” 251–69; for the second see Nielsen,
“The Private Parts of Animals,” 373–405; for the third see Gelber, “Form and Inheritance,”
183–212.
95. Some commentators suppose that the movements here are exclusive to the semen so that these
“potential movements” of the female are in the male semen. For example, John Cooper
assumes that the female katamênia has no movements of its own, and is only able indirectly to
affect the form of the offspring (Cooper, “Metaphysics in Aristotle’s Embryology,” 174–203).
But this is a plausible reading only if in the passages where Aristotle speaks of semen in the
plural (spermata) he means only male semen. Henry, on the other hand, argues that the
maternal movements directly affect the form (the individual form) of the offspring (Devin M.
Henry, “Understanding Aristotle’s Reproductive Hylomorphism,” Apeiron 39, no. 3 [2006]:
257–88). Gelber, by contrast, argues that the maternal movements can cause resemblance to
the mother but that those resemblances are not formal features (even sub-specific formal
features) of the animal ( “Form and Inheritance,” 183–212). The important point for now is
that all fertile residues, both male and female, have, on my view, movements, whether
potential and/or actual.
96. The text of this passage is uncertain, with one editorial team (Aubert and Wimmer) omitting
the final sentence, and another (Susemihl) omitting the ἀνὴρ in that sentence (Aristotle,
Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, 406 n. 3). H. J. Drossaart Lulofs (Aristotelis, De
Generatione Animalium [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965]) and Peck retain the sentence as it is.
97. Further evidence that Aristotle does intend to distinguish the movements of the male from the
movements of the individual is found at GA 4.3 768a6–9, where he is speaking of the
consequences of a failure of mastery: “Hence, if this [the dunamis that has failed to master the
matter] is the faculty in virtue of which the agent is male, then the offspring formed is female;
if it is that in virtue of which the agent is Coriscus or Socrates, then the offspring formed does
not take after its father but after its mother.” I discuss the context of this passage later.
98. If Gelber is correct that there are non-essential features that are inherited, transmitted in the
process of generation by kinêseis rather than owing to material necessity, then the movements
of the male parent, both as a male and as a father, will be the movements responsible for such
non-essential features (see Gelber, “Form and Inheritance,” 183–212). Gelber distinguishes
the causal powers of the movements in the katamênia and those in the semen, arguing that the
movements in the katamênia cannot transmit form: “The male provides form, and the female
provides matter, but they both contribute kinēseis. The kinēseis, and not form, are the per se
causes of inherited traits. Since they are tools used in the process of generation, kinēseis can
have per se effects distinct from the effects of the first agent who imparts form,” (210). Three
points seem important to Gelber’s argument: (1) it is a mistake to think that all features that
are not due to substantial form are accidental, or due to matter (191–92 n. 22); (2) kinêseis are
tools by means of which substantial form is transmitted to the katamênia, but they are also the
per se causes of non-formal features, including sex; and (3) if (1) and (2) are true, then it is
possible for the offspring to inherit features (including sex) from the mother, by means of
kinêseis in the katamênia, and yet the female parent would not be contributing any formal
feature. It is not clear how, on her view, we are to distinguish between formal effects and per
se non-accidental effects.
99. Henry takes the movements of the male to be among the movements of the individual
(“Understanding Aristotle’s Reproductive Hylomorphism,” 270ff.). This is presumably
because Aristotle distinguishes them from the movements of the universal—and Henry thinks
(and I agree with him on this point) that Aristotle does not think maleness as such is a feature
of the species form or the genus form. But if maleness is not part of the species form, it could
still be true that the movements of the male are more universal than the movements of the
father without conveying the essential form.
100. I will justify this claim in the next section, where I discuss the teleology of sexual difference.
For a discussion of the question whether Aristotle views the production of male offspring (and
not female offspring) as the end for the sake of which generation occurs, see Henry, “How
Sexist Is Aristotle,” 251–69; and Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals,” 373–405.
101. He also distinguishes between “changing over” and another way in which offspring can fail to
resemble their male parent: “loosening” or “relapse” (λύεσθαι). When the movements relapse,
it is because the menstrual fluid is acting upon the semen, rather than being acted on by the
semen: “The reason why the movements relapse is that the agent in its turn gets acted upon by
that upon which it acts (e.g., a thing which cuts gets blunted by the thing which is cut, and a
thing which heats gets cooled by the thing which is heated, and, generally, any motive agent,
except the ‘prime mover,’ gets moved somehow itself in return, e.g. that which pushes gets
pushed somehow in return, and that which squeezes gets squeezed in return” (GA 4.3 768b16–
21). We need to consider the difference between the movements “relapsing” and the
movements “changing over” in terms of the difference between features that are (1) near or far
(GA 4.3 768b9–10) rather than (2) opposed, and the difference between (3) mastery and
failure to master on the one hand, and (4) acting upon and being acted upon, on the other.
“Changing over” occurs (2) between opposed features (e.g., male to female) and because of
(3) the failure to master; “relapsing” occurs (1) between features that are near or far and
because (4) the semen is acted upon. The difference, then, between changing over and
loosening movements is a question of the difference between different movements being
realized, and the same movements being realized, but with blunted contours (GA 4.3 768a22–
b29).
102. See Cooper for the view that male semen holds potentially all the movements that will
produce resemblance to any female with whom that male should copulate (“Metaphysics in
Aristotle’s Embryology,” 183, 192–97). That view makes nonsense of the distinction Aristotle
draws between species movements and movements of the individual. If male semen contains
movements that will permit resemblance to any fertile member of its species, then the
difference between individual and species movements collapses.
103. Connell makes the point that the sexual organs develop before an animal has the capacity to
generate a fertile residue, and hence that the organs cannot develop in response to the quantity
of residual blood or its degree of concoction and must develop from the principle of male or
female (Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 279–80).
104. In making this claim I disagree with Henry, who sees the first step in conception, in which the
katamênia is “set” and sex is determined, as preceding any resemblance (Henry,
“Understanding Aristotle’s Reproductive Hylomorphism,” 281–82). Since the morphological
development of the embryo follows, on Aristotle’s account, on the determination of sex and
always corresponds to it, it seems likely that he understands sex in the sense of a capacity for
concoction, and not just sex as a set of sexual organs, to exhibit resemblance to one parent or
the other. See also this chapter, n. 33.
105. For ways of understanding how these four senses of necessity correspond to the senses of
necessity in the natural treatises, see John M. Cooper, “Hypothetical Necessity and Natural
Teleology,” in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G.
Lennox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 260 n. 20; Mary Louise Gill,
“Material Necessity and Meteorology IV.12,” in Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen,
Methoden, Ergebnisse, ed. Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1997), 147 n. 6, cited in Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 99–103 n. 50.
106. He says, “Though the wall does not come to be without these [materials], it is not due to these,
except as its material cause,” and “but the end is not due to these except as the matter, nor will
it come to exist because of them. Yet if they do not exist at all, neither will the house, or the
saw. . . . The necessary in nature, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the
changes in it” (Phys. 2.9 200a5–6, 200a24–31). That is, while materials are conditionally
necessary for the achievement of the end, it is not material necessity that brings about that end.
107. For the reference to “the two sorts defined in our philosophical discussions” see A. Po. 2.11
94b37–95a3, cited earlier; they are what I am calling material necessity and compulsion.
Lennox calls material necessity “the unqualified necessity involved in objects obeying their
natural impulses” and compulsion “the enforced necessity of objects changing contrary to
their own natures due to an external power”; Balme calls the former “necessitated by a natural
state” and the latter “necessitated by force” (Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals I–IV, trans.
James G. Lennox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 148–49; Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium
I and De Generatione Animalium I: With Passages from II.1–3, trans. D. M. Balme [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972], 100).
108. Some commentators understand the structures of the body to be necessary but not
conditionally necessary, construing conditional necessity in a narrower way. That is, they think
that “parts the having of which is directly implied in the statement of the animal’s essential
nature” are not conditionally necessary; conditional necessity enters in only to explain why
certain materials are necessary to form those parts (Cooper, “Hypothetical Necessity and
Natural Teleology,” 253–54; see also Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione
Animalium I, trans. Balme, 87). But this assumes both that the essence of an animal kind
implies certain particular organs and other structures, and that it is clear which of these follow
directly from the human essence; neither of these assumptions seems evident. Moreover, the
argument at GA 2.1 takes the final cause to be separation of material and efficient causes
through the separation of male and female principles. As we saw in section 2.2, male and
female are not part of the essence of animal, but animal is part of their essence. So it cannot be
right to suppose that male and female are necessary as part of the essence of animal, and more
likely that Aristotle meant to say that they are conditionally necessary for the achievement of
the specified telos.
109. While some commentators have assumed that this necessity corresponds to the necessity of
compulsion, it is more likely to be a form of the necessity that cannot be otherwise. I am in
agreement with Peck on this question (Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, xli–xlii).
Peck refers to this per accidens necessity as “an instance of a necessity enforced by the nature
of the Matter” in a note on the passage at GA 4.3 767b10–13 (Aristotle, Generation of
Animals, trans. Peck, 402 n. a). The point of the example, as I see it, is not so much that the air
is forced (if this were the point, Aristotle would not say that the second form of necessity is
owing to nature) as that the hot substance and the air react as they do because of their material
natures. Lennox points out that the example does not conform to Aristotle’s own account of
breathing (Aristotle, Parts of Animals, trans. Lennox, 151).
110. There is a third kind of necessity that is necessary to explain, not the phenomena associated
with individual animals, but the cycle of the generation of animal kinds. We have seen that one
form of simple necessity (3a) is identified with material necessity (PA 1.1 642a33-b4). At the
same time, there is a distinct sense of simple necessity (3b) that Aristotle will say is only
found in the sub-lunary world in cyclical processes. Thus, at GC 2.11 338a15–18 Aristotle
says, “So that which is necessary simpliciter exists in movement and generation in a circle;
and if it is in a circle, it is necessary for each one to come to be and to have come to be; and if
necessary, the generation of these things is in a circle.” This is the conclusion of a discussion
in response to the question whether there is anything that will necessarily exist. In that
discussion Aristotle makes quite clear that it is not necessary simply (although it may be
necessary conditionally) that any individual in a sequence of generations should come to be; at
the same time, if the sequence in question is cyclical, then the sequence itself may be simply
necessary. The implication of this for animal kinds is: no individual animal is generated of
necessity, except perhaps of conditional necessity (i.e., if this offspring is to be generated, then
the parent of that offspring must of conditional necessity be generated); but a species is eternal
and absolutely necessary. For a particularly lucid account of the differences among material,
conditional, and simple necessity in the natural philosophy, see Leunissen, Explanation and
Teleology, 99–105.
111. Balme points out that Aristotle does not state clearly the connection between having a soul and
being as eternal as possible, although he allows that “presumably the connection is that soul
makes reproduction possible, as he will presently argue” (Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium I
and De Generatione Animalium I, trans. Balme, 156). See also this chapter, n. 119.
112. This is true although, as we saw in the discussion of pneuma in section 2.5, the soul heat in
pneuma is analogous to aether and more divine than other physical substances (GA 2.3
736b30–737a1); it is both capable of generating life and present in any living thing. So in a
sense, every ensouled being has an element of the divine, although it is incapable of eternal
being.
113. See GC 2.11 338b7–20. Also see Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations, 32–33.
114. The grammar of the second part of this sentence is a matter of debate among editors, but the
questions (principally whether the η should be read as ἡ (“the” in “the principle”) or ᾗ (“in
that”)) do not alter the basic sense of the passage.
115. The implication is probably that the efficient principle is better because it is more divine, but
Aristotle only says: βελτίονος δὲ καὶ θειοτέρας, without stating the causal link.
116. There are two other passages in which Aristotle makes arguments similar to this, at GC 2.11
338b7–18 and DA 2.4 415a27-b9. See also DC 2.8. In Plato’s Symposium at 206a–207a we
find a similar argument, cast as an explanation for the occurrence of erotic desire.
117. See Chap. 1, section 1.2.2.3.
118. The ways in which mortal beings might resemble divine beings are then several: (1) insofar as
any living being has pneuma which is analogous to aether (GA 2.3 736b30–737a1) they have
an element of divinity (see the beginning of this section); (2) in the capacity to generate other
beings like themselves, and so to enjoy eternal life as a species, every animal kind resembles
(in a way) eternal being; (3) insofar as human beings can engage in intellectual activity their
activity resembles the activity of the gods; (4) insofar as male animals act as efficient causes
of generation, and actualize the receptive matter provided by the female, they resemble the
causal efficiency of the gods. This means that while every living species attempts to approach
the divine by means of eternal reproduction, human beings have another avenue, intellectual
activity, by which they might approach the divine. Nonetheless, human beings are not divine:
the gods, while they have bodies, do not have corruptible bodies; their intellectual activities do
not rely on their bodies, whereas thinking for us depends on imagination and ultimately on
sensation; and the gods engage in intellectual activities eternally, where our activities are finite
because of our mortality and reliance on our bodies. For a helpful discussion of celestial
thinking, see Andrea Falcon, Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 95–96.
119. Sexual difference is then like what Leunissen calls “luxury parts”—they are “for the better” or
for “living well,” because they give rise to a function the animal could—strictly speaking—do
without (see Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 19–20). Animal kinds could do without
the separation of male and female principles, i.e., could do without sexual difference as a
feature, so long as the principle of male and female was preserved within the kind.
120. Henry argues that the separation of the inferior from the superior principle is “better” in an
unqualified sense—“not better for anything.” Henry, Aristotle on Matter, Form and Moving
Causes, 214, and “How Sexist Is Aristotle,” 16–18.
121. Because Aristotle calls it “accidental” some commentators have been reluctant to identify it as
a form of the necessity that cannot be otherwise (and hence as material necessity), and often
assume it must be a form of the compulsory. But it’s not clear what is acting to compel and
what is being compelled, and it seems more natural to see this form of necessity as a variation
on what cannot be otherwise, given the nature of the materials in question. See Leunissen,
Explanation and Teleology, 143–44. She takes this to be a case of secondary teleology; I will
offer reasons later to suggest that it is not.
122. For this distinction, see Met. 10.9 (discussed in this chapter, section 2.2), where Aristotle
describes the distinction of male and female as a distinction in the “matter” of the genus as
opposed to its form.
123. Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 18–19. Leunissen does not take the production of
females or the concoction of katamênia as examples of secondary teleology in this work, but
she does do so in her book From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017), 143.
124. I consider Henry’s case against this view—the possibility that Aristotle did not believe that
male offspring is the original telos of generation—later in the chapter.
125. Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 19.
126. Leunissen, Explanation and Teleology, 19.
127. Connell says that “femaleness is a sort of second-ranking goal for an individual animal,”
(Aristotle on Female Animals, 286) and compares the relation of male to female as goals to the
relation of the life of contemplation to the political life.
128. On “natural” monstrosities see Philip J. van der Eijk, “The Matter of Mind: Aristotle on the
Biology of ‘Psychic’ Processes and the Bodily Aspects of Thinking,” in Aristotelische
Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, ed. Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), 236–39.
129. Aristotle’s use of the terms τὸ τέρας and ἡ ἀναπηρία does not suggest a significant difference
in their sense. I follow Peck in translating τὸ τέρας as “monstrosity,” ἡ ἀναπηρία as
“deformity,” and πεπηρωμένος as “deformed.”
130. Witt argues that we should not read too much into the ὥσπερ (“Aristotle on Deformed Animal
Kinds,” 83–106).
131. Some commentators reject the claim that Aristotle asserts that the female is a deformity. See
Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 342–52; she argues that if we understand the verbs
parekbaino and existathai in more neutral terms—as “change” rather than “depart from
type”—then they do not have the negative valence conveyed by Peck’s influential translation.
Supporting evidence for Peck’s translation is available, however, in Aristotle’s claim that the
female has an incapacity, and is worse than the male. Connell denies that for Aristotle the
female is “simply” a failure (Aristotle on Female Animals, 287) and argues that the generation
of a female is also telic; that seems right. Gelber takes the less qualified view that females
cannot be failures because they are for the sake of something (“Females in Aristotle’s
Embryology,” 171–87). But it seems to me that Aristotle is trying to show that although the
female is a failure, or a defect, in one sense (the sense that she is not able to fully concoct
residual blood to the point where it is a fertile residue with the capacity to initiate conception),
she is also for the sake of something in another (because the fertile residue with this incapacity
is also a fertile residue with the capacity to act as the material cause for the generation of an
animal).
132. For the best recent defense of this interpretation, see Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals.”
133. Henry, “How Sexist Is Aristotle,” 251–69.
134. Henry has an inventive reading of the phrase παρεκβέβηκε ἐκ τοῦ γένους, acccording to which
the γένος refers not to the species form but rather to “a continuous generation of things of the
same kind, namely males producing males,” citing Met. 5.27 1024a29–30 (Henry, “How
Sexist Is Aristotle,” 259–61). See also Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 344–48.
135. It is not clear how to interpret the likeness in question: it may be as general as likeness of
species, or as particular as likeness to the male parent. On the narrower reading, the female
aims to generate something that is not like her in at least one respect: sex.
136. Connell attempts to address this by treating the inferiority of the female as an aesthetic rather
than a functional inferiority, by drawing a comparison of male animals with cakes that both
taste good and achieve certain aesthetic norms and female animals with cakes that taste good
but fail to achieve those norms (Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals, 286). This, however,
obscures the relation between male and female embodiment, the need for their subordinate
teloi, and the telos of the faculty of generation. The fertile residue of the female is, on
Aristotle’s account, not only aesthetically but also functionally different from that of the male.
137. The case of the female, represented by Aristotle as both deformed and necessary and for the
best, suggests that it is coherent to conceive of the animal kinds that Aristotle treats as
deformed in the same way—i.e., that “the existence of a deformed kind is, in principle,
compatible with Aristotle’s teleological view of nature” (Witt, “Aristotle on Deformed Animal
Kinds”: 101).
138. Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals,” 386.
139. Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals,” 397.
140. Lindsay Judson, “Chance and ‘Always or for the Most Part’ in Aristotle,” in Aristotle’s
Physics: A Collection of Essays, ed. Lindsay Judson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 73–99.
141. Witt, “Aristotle on Deformed Animal Kinds,” 87.
142. Malcolm Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” Phronesis 53, no. 3 (2008): 260. Heath
attempts here to distinguish between what he calls “deformities” (τέρατα) and impairments (or
deviations) (ἀναπηρία), but there is at least one passage, at GA 2.4 738a34–b4 (quoted earlier),
where Aristotle clearly implies that a female is a deformity. Thus, there does not seem to be an
important distinction between the two terms.
143. Van der Eijk, “The Matter of Mind,” 238. See GA 770b10ff., EN 1154b11ff., Prob. 954b8ff.,
955a39–40 for evidence of these claims.
144. There is considerable scholarly debate about the success of Aristotle’s proposal that unity of a
definition, or an essence, might be guaranteed by the actualization of one “part” by another
“part” (e.g., in a definition, the actualization of the genus by the differentia). For recent
contributions to that debate see Alan Code, “An Aristotelian Puzzle about Definition:
Metaphysics Z.12,” in Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf,
ed. James G. Lennox and Robert Bolton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 78–
96; Mary Louise Gill, “Unity of Definition in Metaphysics H.6 and Z.12,” in Being, Nature,
and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf, ed. James G. Lennox and Robert
Bolton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 97–121; Daniel Devereux, “Aristotle
on the Form and Definition of a Human Being: Definitions and Their Parts in Metaphysics 10
and 11,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 26 (2010): 167–
96; Frank A. Lewis, How Aristotle Gets By in Metaphysics Zeta (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013); David Charles, Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2002); David Charles, “Aristotle and the Unity and Essence of Biological Kinds,” in
Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, ed. Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine
Föllinger (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), 27–42; Theodore Scaltsas, David Charles,
and Mary Louise Gill, eds., Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Lucas Angioni, “Definition and Essence in Aristotle’s
Metaphysics vii 4,” Ancient Philosophy 34 (2014): 75–100; Marguerite Deslauriers, Aristotle
on Definition (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Here I do not intend to argue that Aristotle is successful.
My intention is only to show that his claim that when the sensitive faculty actualizes the
nutritive faculty, it produces a unity—a soul that is one although it contains different faculties
—is not an isolated claim, but one that we find him making in the logical works and in the
Metaphysics.
145. At least one commentator takes these to be two different problems, both concerned with unity:
see Edward Halper, “Metaphysics Z 12 and H 6: The Unity of Form and Composite,” Ancient
Philosophy 4 (1984): 146–58.
146. On this passage, see Stephen Menn, “The Aim and the Argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
Part Two: The False Path (Z and H), IIe: Z17-H6: How to Give the λόγος τῆς οὐσίας of a
Composite Thing,” 33. (https://www.philosophie.hu-
berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/antike/mitarbeiter/menn/contents).
147. On the transmission of reason see Code, “Soul as Efficient Cause,” 42 n. 6.
148. See Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Peck, 168–69 n. a.
149. While there is no specific organ or organs the development of which corresponds to the
acquisition of reason, it is clear that reason only emerges in beings with a fully actualized
human form, a form that includes a certain perceptual apparatus, blood of a certain quality,
high levels of vital heat, etc. I do not mean to suggest that there are no anatomical or
physiological requirements for the acquisition of reason, only that reason is unlike other soul
faculties in Aristotle’s account insofar as it is not associated by him with any particular organ
or set of organs.
150. There are distinctions within the faculty of reason that Aristotle considers in works of moral
and political philosophy; νοῦς (the intellect) does not exhaust the human capacity for reason.
It is not clear whether, in this passage, Aristotle has such distinctions in mind, and means to
say that it is intellect in particular that enters in from the outside (while, say, deliberative
reason is somehow transmitted to the offspring by a physical substance). Balme, commenting
on this passage, claims that “the position reached at 736b29, therefore, is that both the
perceptive and the intellective faculties are brought by the seed in a state of potentiality, the
former embodied in the seed, and the latter disembodied (cf. 737a7–10)” (Aristotle, De
Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I, trans. Balme, 160). In reaching this
conclusion, Balme argues that Aristotle holds that the perceptive faculties come to be without
pre-existing and without entering from outside, which seems right. But he also says, “The
intellect, on the other hand, both pre-exists (because it is everlasting) and enters the seed from
outside (which it can do because it is not in body)” (Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium I and
De Generatione Animalium I, trans. Balme, 160). It is not clear to me how, on this view, the
intellective faculties are “brought by the seed” at the same time that they are “disembodied.”
So what is mysterious is not only how the rational faculty gets into the male semen from the
outside, but also what it means for a non-physical entity to be conveyed by a physical entity.
Chapter 3
1. For an account of the oikos in ancient Athens, see chap. 5 in Cheryl Anne Cox, Household
Interests: Property, Marriage Strategies, and Family Dynamics in Ancient Athens (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). For an account focused on Aristotle, see D. Brendan
Nagle, The Household as the Foundation of Aristotle’s Polis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
2. Children, slaves, and women are treated together here, as in many other ancient texts, almost
certainly because of their shared civil status as minors under the control of some male citizen.
The household is centered on the patriarch, and those over whom he rules have that subjection
to rule in common. See David M. Halperin, “One Hundred Years of Homosexuality,” in One
Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York: Routledge, 1990), 30.
3. There are some textual uncertainties in this passage, and possibly a lacuna. Following Lord
(although reducing his suggested interpolation, and modifying the translation in other
respects) I have added a phrase in square brackets to make sense of the ’Επεὶ that begins the
first sentence (Aristotle, Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Carnes Lord, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2013).
4. If we assume that a man achieved adulthood in Athens at the moment that he acquired the
rights of political participation, then adulthood began at eighteen. Manville writes that “the
citizens of the polis were native Athenian males who had reached the age of eighteen, and who
had been duly registered in the same local Attic village, or deme, to which their fathers
belonged” (Philip Brook Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 8). For a discussion of the evidence for the age of
majority, see P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian “Athenaion Politeia” (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1981), 497–98. In social terms, adulthood may have been achieved
with marriage, ideally by the age of thirty-seven for a man, according to Aristotle (Pol. 7.16
1335a29).
5. This is not, of course, the only way of seeing the connection. An alternative view of the
relation between the claims of chaps. 1 and 2 and the discussion of the household in later
chapters is that this discussion is offered in support of the claim that the polis is natural: see
W. L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887); R. G. Mulgan,
Aristotle’s Political Theory: An Introduction for Students of Political Theory (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977).
6. At different times Aristotle will describe the parts of the polis in different ways. Some
commentators seem to assume that the primary elements are always the individual citizens or
inhabitants (see, e.g., Robert Mayhew, “Part and Whole in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy,”
Journal of Ethics 1, no. 4 [1997]: 329), but in fact there are a number of different
characterizations of the elements of the polis at different moments in the Politics: as individual
citizens: 3.1 1274b38–40, 3.1 1275b21, 7.4 1325b36–39; as households: 1.2 1252b15–17, 1.3
1253b1–2, 4.3 1289b25; as villages: 1.2 1252b16–30, 3.9 1280b39–a1; as classes: 1.3
1253b3–6, 3.12 1283a16–20, 4.3 1289b28–31, 7.14 1332b12–15.
7. For the view that the discussion of the household is intended as an analysis of the parts of the
polis, see, e.g., Raymond Weil, Aristote et l’histoire: Essai sur la “Politique” (Paris: Librairie
C. Klincksieck, 1960). He says that the subject of Book 1 is the household and quotes
Barthélémy-Saint-Hilaire: “L’auteur examine et décrit les éléments constitutifs de l’État: les
individus et les choses” (28). See also Benjamin Jowett, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1885). Jowett places emphasis on the analytical method of Book 1, which he
sees as allowing Aristotle to build up the state “out of its elements” (xiii). These elements, he
says, are “the parts into which it can be dissected, not the elements out of which it has grown”
(xix).
8. This point is important to Aristotle as a response to a claim advanced by Plato and Xenophon
that a capacity for rule is simply a question of a certain kind of knowledge; I discuss this
debate in chap. 1, section 1.5.6. It is also important because the argument of Book 1, on my
interpretation, is connected to the discussion of the constitutions later in the Politics; that there
are different kinds of people, and that these differences are natural, is fundamental to
Aristotle’s argument that there is more than one correct constitution.
9. In focusing on the natural rule to which women, children, and slaves are subject, I will have
nothing to say about the case of banausoi, those free citizens who are productive but whose
work is viewed by Aristotle as mechanical and menial. They are not by nature incapable of
rule and yet they are systematically excluded from rule. For an argument that “Aristotle does
not provide a clear argument that the workers in his ideal state are naturally unfitted for the
political rights that are denied them,” and so “we have to conclude that his ideal state is in his
own terms (and not merely ours) unjust, and that he does not face this point because he does
not focus on the workers and their status clearly enough,” see Julia Annas, “Aristotle on
Human Nature and Political Virtue,” Review of Metaphysics 49, no. 4 (1996): 751–52.
10. We should note that while Aristotle does argue that slavery can be a natural relation of rule, he
will also allow that it is often not natural, and in that case it is unjust.
11. We will see in section 3.5 of this chapter that these composite wholes are models for the
various koinôniai or associations that Aristotle believes aim to benefit the parts that constitute
them.
12. If the state is “prior” to the family and to the individual, then the priority in question clearly is
not temporal. Newman, in his note on this passage, calls the method Aristotle here employs
the “genetic method” and refers us to Meteor. 4.12 389b24ff. (Newman, The Politics of
Aristotle, 2:103). He adds, “In tracing the growth of the πόλις from its earliest moments,
Aristotle follows Plato’s example both in the Republic (369A) and in the Laws (678 sqq.).
Plato’s object, however, is different from Aristotle’s. In the Republic his object, or nominal
object, is to find justice—in the Laws it is to discover τί καλῶς ἢ μὴ κατῳκίσθη κ. τ. λ. (Laws
683B); whereas Aristotle’s object is to distinguish the δεσποτικός, οἰκονομικός, βασιλικός,
and πολιτικός, and still more to prove that the πόλις is by nature and prior to the individual,
and the source of αὐταρκεία to the latter. His substitution of this method of watching the
growth of the πόλις from its smallest elements is not a desertion of the method of division
(διαιρεῖν) announced just previously; it is, on the contrary, its best application” (Newman, The
Politics of Aristotle, 2:103–4).
13. Miller argues that these are the only senses of priority recognized by Aristotle that might
plausibly be at work here (Fred D. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], 47); I think he is right about that. For the sense of priority,
see Aristotle, Cat. 12 and Met. 5.11. Miller also directs us (in n. 48) to briefer discussions at
Phys. 7.7 and 9, PA 2.1, GA 2.6, Met. 1.8, 7.1 and 13, 9.8, 13.2, Rhet. 2.19, and summaries by
Ross (Metaphysics, 1948) ii. 317–18, and David Keyt (“Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle’s
Politics,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, A Companion to Aristotle’s “Politics”
[Blackwell, 1991], 126–27).
14. For this objection, see Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, 54–55, and David Keyt, “Three
Fundamental Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics,” Phronêsis 32, no. 1 (1987): 77–78. Keyt thinks
it makes no sense to suppose that a person would perish if separated from the polis, but that
doesn’t seem to be what Aristotle intends—only that a person would not properly speaking be
a person were he to be separated from the polis. See Mayhew, “Part and Whole,” 325–40;
Mayhew says that citizens in a city, united through a constitution, do not have the same
relation of parts to whole that we find in an organism or even a household; “So when, in
Politics i 2, Aristotle states that the city is or exists by nature, he cannot mean by this that the
city is a natural organism” (Mayhew, “Part and Whole,” 335). But this is premised on the
assumptions that (1) the parts of the polis are individuals and (2) that individuals can exist
separate from the polis.
15. Support for this is found also in Aristotle’s claim that only brutes and gods can live outside a
polis (Pol. 1.1 1253a27–30), and in the argument in Pol. 2 (discussed in section 3.5 of this
chapter) that the healthy and stable functioning of a polis depends on the structure of
households; this is why he rejects the Socratic suggestion that households might be eliminated,
at least among the guardian class.
16. In interpreting Aristotle’s claims that people are political animals and that the polis is natural, I
rely on Miller’s interpretation in Nature, Justice, and Rights, 32–36. Miller is responding to
David Keyt’s influential article, “Three Fundamental Theorems,” 54–79. In developing the
account of an extended sense of natural, Miller is responding to Keyt’s claim that the natural
impulse of human beings to live in a political community does not entail “the naturalness of
the polis,” because the “product of a natural impulse need not itself” be natural (Keyt, “Three
Fundamental Theorems,” 63). In particular, he contests Keyt’s conclusion that Aristotle’s
claims about nature in Politics 1 are incoherent; I agree with Miller that the claims are
coherent if interpreted correctly (Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, 35–36). My view differs
from Miller’s in the interpretation of the claim that the polis is prior to the household, and in
how that claim connects with the picture of social associations as organic wholes.
17. For an interesting argument that the polis is natural in the sense that it has an internal principle
of change, see Adriel M. Trott, Aristotle on the Nature of Community (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), especially chap. 2. On her view, the political community is natural
because its activity (which she identifies as “deliberation over living well”) “does not lead to
self-sufficiency but accomplishes it” (53). While I agree with Trott that Aristotle does not
think human individuals can thrive outside of political life, the teleological interpretation does
not seem to me to be incompatible with that claim.
18. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, 40–41.
19. He cites Susemihl and Hicks, Newman, Bradley, and Barker as predecessors in advocating this
reading (Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, 41 n. 37): Franz Susemihl and R. D. Hicks, The
Politics of Aristotle (London: Macmillan, 1894), 23–4; Newman, The Politics of Aristotle,
1:20; A. C. Bradley, “Aristotle’s Conception of the State,” in A Companion to Aristotle’s
“Politics,” ed. David Keyt and Fred D. Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 25–26; Ernest
Barker, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 7 n. 1. In a note, Miller
writes: “I do not claim that the teleological interpretation is original, but only that it is correct”
(Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, 41 n. 37).
20. For a discussion of the meaning of this phrase, see Pierre Pellegrin, “Natural Slavery,” trans.
E. Zoli Filotas, in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. Marguerite
Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 92–116.
21. This suggests that female children and natural slave children have a combination of
deliberative deficiencies, which resolve into a single deficiency as they mature.
22. In some places Aristotle uses the term phronêsis to designate a particular virtue, limited to free
adult men. In other places, he uses the term in a broader sense, where it refers to some
capacity to anticipate the future and to make judgments about different courses of action; in
this sense, animals as well as the different kinds of people can be said to have phronêsis. In
chap. 4 I discuss this distinction and its implications for political sexual difference.
23. For the argument that Aristotle cannot maintain that someone in whom the deliberative faculty
is defective is properly human, see Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle
(New York: Dover, 1959). Barker claims: “That reason should be present even in an imperfect
form means a potentiality of reason in its fullness” (365). See also Elizabeth Spelman,
“Aristotle and the Politicization of the Soul,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on
Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and
Merrill B. Hintikka, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003), 21–24. For the argument
that Aristotle can reconcile the claim that someone is missing a deliberative faculty with the
claim that that person is human, see Judith A. Swanson, The Public and the Private in
Aristotle’s Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 34–35 n. 8;
Malcolm Schofield, “Ideology and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Theory of Slavery,” in
Aristoteles’ “Politik”: Akten des XI Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. Günther Patzig (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 12–15; Deborah K. W. Modrak, “Aristotle: Women,
Deliberation, and Nature,” in Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and
Aristotle, ed. Bat-Ami Bar On (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 207–22.
24. Something like this is suggested by Plato at Republic 9, 590c–d, where Socrates argues that in
the case of a person in whom the “best part” (τὸ τοῦ βελτίστου εἶδος) of the soul is naturally
weak (590c3–4), that person ought to be enslaved to another in whom the “best part” rules,
because “it is better for everyone to be ruled by divine reason (ὑπὸ θείου καὶ φρονίμου),
preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without,” (590d 3–5).
25. This interpretation was first proposed by Horowitz, who claimed that the sense in which
women are without authority in the Politics has parallels to the sense in which females have a
weaker power to concoct semen in the GA. Horowitz cited two kinds of evidence: (1)
Aristotle took women to be “cleverer” than men, and understood this to be a biologically
determined trait that would undermine their decision-making abilities (209), (2) the biological
“softness” that Aristotle attributes to women makes them less able to control their appetites
(211) (Horowitz, “Aristotle and Woman,” 207–12). William W. Fortenbaugh developed the
idea that Aristotle meant to say that women are more easily overcome by non-rational desires
in “Aristotle on Slaves and Women,” in Articles on Aristotle, vol. 2, Ethics and Politics, ed.
Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1977), 135–
39; in “Aristotle on Women: Politics i 13.1260a13” (Ancient Philosophy 35 [2015]: 395–404)
Fortenbaugh reiterated the point (“Aristotle sees the female as naturally acratic,” [396]),
adding evidence from a scholion but also acknowledging that such an interpretation creates a
problem (401–2). See also Modrak, “Women, Deliberation, and Nature,” 207–22; Spelman,
“Politicization of the Soul.” Sparshott offers a rather different line of interpretation, denying
that Aristotle meant to say that women were overcome by emotion, and taking the lack of
authority of a woman’s deliberative faculty to be a function of the age difference between
(adolescent) wives and (middle-aged) husbands, based on the remark at Politics 1.12 1259b3–
4 (Francis Sparshott, “Aristotle on Women,” Philosophical Inquiry 7, no. 3 [1985]: 177–200).
But that remark could equally well be a reference to parents and children. At any rate
Sparshott recognizes that if Aristotle meant that men ruled women because they were older,
then he ought to have justified the age difference as natural (“Aristotle on Women,” 187–88).
Two more recent articles that interpret the claim that women’s deliberative faculty is without
authority to mean that women are controlled by non-rational motivations are David J.
Riesbeck, “Aristotle on the Politics of Marriage: ‘Marital Rule’ in the Politics,” Classical
Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2015): 134–52; Karen Margrethe Nielsen, “The Constitution of the Soul:
Aristotle on Lack of Deliberative Authority,” Classical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (2015): 572–86.
Nielsen has a particularly interesting analysis of the non-rational motivation.
26. Modrak argues that Aristotle does say things that suggest that women cannot control their
appetites (“Women, Deliberation, and Nature,” 213). She claims that the passage at HA 9.1
608a32–b12 indicates that women have less control over their appetites than men. She also
suggests that the deficiency of the deliberative faculty in women is equivalent to the
deficiency of morally weak agents, pointing to Aristotle’s description of weakness of a will as
a kind of softness (at EN 7.7 1150a32–b16), and the association of softness with women.
Bradshaw argues that Aristotle’s description of incontinence at EN 7.8 1151a (she does not
cite line numbers) might offer “an explanation of the peculiar condition of women” (as people
whose deliberative faculties are without authority); she cites Rist for this view and finds some
evidence to support it at EN 7.7–8 1150b, but she also acknowledges that there is no clear
evidence for a “natural” propensity in women toward incontinence (Leah Bradshaw, “Political
Rule, Prudence and the ‘Woman Question’ in Aristotle,” Canadian Journal of Political
Science 24, no. 3 [1991]: 567–68); see also John M. Rist, The Mind of Aristotle: A Study in
Philosophical Growth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 152–53.
27. Riesbeck acknowledges this objection but thinks it can be met if we allow that Aristotle “need
only have thought that women are somehow affected emotionally by being subject to their
husbands’ authority, so that their non-rational motives cooperate with rather than oppose their
reason” (“Aristotle on the Politics of Marriage,” 145). But he does not indicate how or why
women should be “affected emotionally” in this way by the rule of their husbands.
28. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 74, 78. Sister Prudence Allen argued for a “complementary”
account of sexual difference in The Concept of Woman, Vol. 1: The Aristotelian Revolution,
750 BC–AD 1250 (Montreal: Eden Press, 1985).
29. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 78. I think this claim is false. Aristotle certainly thinks that the
virtues of men and women are different in kind, and while it is possible that he means they are
different but not normatively different, that seems unlikely in the context, where women’s
moral abilities are compared to those of slaves and children. (see Pol. 1.5 1254b10–20; 1.13
1260a2–31). Moreover, women, as natural subjects, will not have the virtues of command, and
it is unlikely that Aristotle did not think that made them morally inferior.
30. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 84.
31. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 85.
32. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 78.
33. Dobbs, “Family Matters,” 85.
34. For a proponent of this view, see Swanson, The Public and the Private, 44–68. I once thought
that a version of this interpretation, according to which the authority of men is strictly
conventional, was right; see my “Social and Civic Implications of Aristotle’s Notion of
Authority,” in Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Baruch
Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,1993), 122–36.
35. The Rhetoric to Alexander is not a work by Aristotle, although it has been transmitted as part
of the Aristotelian corpus.
36. Aristotle, L’éthique à Nicomaque, trans. René Antoine Gauthier and Jean Yves Jolif, 2nd ed.
(Leuven: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1970).
37. Riesbeck makes this point (“Aristotle on the Politics of Marriage,” 143–44).
38. Notice that the comparison of forms of household rule with various political constitutions is
useful to Aristotle in distinguishing the case of women from the case of slaves, but not so
useful in distinguishing women from children. In this passage the constitutional rule of women
is contrasted with the kingly rule of children, but in other passages, as we will see, the rule
over women is characterized as both constitutional and kingly or aristocratic. In general,
Aristotle seems to be more concerned with distinguishing the case of women from that of
slaves.
39. I once argued that there was no way to reconcile the claim that men rule over women both
constitutionally and naturally; see my “Aristotle on Andreia, Divine and Sub-Human Virtues,”
in Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, ed. Ralph M. Rosen and
Ineke Sluiter (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 187–211. I have changed my mind.
40. Aristotle’s view reflects perhaps the peculiar legal status of free women in Athens in
Aristotle’s time: as free, they were politically distinct from slaves, and yet as women they
were politically disenfranchised. See Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and
Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity, trans. Maureen B. Fant (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 38–51.
41. Herodotus, Histories, ed. James Romm, trans. Pamela Mensch (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
2014).
42. Nielsen suggests that Aristotle refers to Amasis in order to highlight the importance of his
“strong executive powers” as differentiating him from those over whom he rules. So she takes
the point to be that although “women and men are equal in rational ability, they are unequal in
their ability to put decisions into action” (“The Constitution of the Soul,” 585). I am
sympathetic to this understanding of Aristotle’s views on the incapacity of women (which I
return to in chap. 4, section 4.3.4), but there is no suggestion that the Egyptians are unable to
put decisions into action. For a discussion of other interpretations of the Amasis story, see
Trott, Aristotle on the Nature of Community, 195–96.
43. I am assuming that the form of the foot-basin and the form of the statue are non-essential
forms, and that the essential form of the gold persists whichever of these forms it assumes.
This is the best way to construe the parallel between foot basin and statue on the one hand and
Amasis as subject and king on the other; the man who changes from subject to king clearly
does not change his essential form, but remains a man. “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
the man’s the gowd for a’ that” (Robert Burns, “A Man’s a Man for A’ That”).
44. “ἀνδρὸς δὲ καὶ γυναικὸς ἀριστοκρατικὴ φαίνεται· κατ᾿ ἀξίαν γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ ἄρχει, καὶ περὶ ταῦτα
ἃ δεῖ τὸν ἄνδρα· ὅσα δὲ γυναικὶ ἁρμόζει, ἐκείνῃ ἀποδίδωσιν. ἁπάντων δὲ κυριεύων ὁ ἀνὴρ εἰς
ὀλιγαρχίαν μεθίστησιν· παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν γὰρ αὐτὸ ποιεῖ, καὶ οὐχ ᾗ ἀμείνων” (EN 8.10
1160b32–1161a1). See also EN 8.11 1161a22–33.
45. At Met. 5.25 1023b19–22 he reiterates the point that being a whole is a question of having a
form, in naming one of the senses of “part”: “The elements into which the whole is divided, or
of which it consists—‘the whole’ meaning either the form or that which has the form; for
example, of the bronze sphere or of the bronze cube both the bronze—i.e. the matter in which
the form is—and the characteristic angle are parts.” Also in the Metaphysics, at 8.3 1043a31,
Newman points out that “τὸ κοινόν is used as equivalent to ἡ σύνθετος οὐσία ἐξ ὕλης καὶ
εἴδους, and such a σύνθετος οὐσία may be composed not only of συνεχῆ, but also of
διῃρημένα, like τὸ ὅλον in 4 (7). 8 1328a21 sqq.” (Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, 2:142).
46. In the case of the city-state, the form will be the constitution, which Aristotle identifies with
the form of the polis (Pol. 3.3 1276b1–6). And the form of the city-state not only determines
the aim and the excellence of the polis, but also influences the telos of households and of the
relationships that constitute the household, and the excellence proper to them: “For since the
household as a whole is a part of the city, and these things [men and women, fathers and
children] of the household, and one should look at the virtue of the part in relation to the virtue
of the whole, both children and women must necessarily be educated looking to the
constitution” (Pol. 1.13 1260b13–15). So the virtue and the function of the master/slave
relation, the male/female partnership, and the relation of father to children in the household
contribute to the virtue and the function of the polis. The collective aim, and hence the
collective task, and the excellence of each of these “wholes” will be determined by the larger
wholes—first the household, and then the city-state—in which they are found, and will
contribute to the excellence of those wholes.
47. At Pol. 1.6 1255b9–11 Aristotle makes the same point about the good of master and slave:
“the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and the slave is a part of the
master.”
48. κτῆμα here has sometimes been interpreted as a reference to slaves. Chase translates it as
“slave” (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. D. P. Chase [London: J. M.
Dent, 1911]). Rackham translates it as “a chattel,” and in a footnote writes “i.e., a slave” (293
n. b) (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1926]).
49. Some commentators have made this assumption, and so interpreted Aristotle’s concerns about
holding women in common (in Politics 2) as an instance of his concern about holding property
in common. But Aristotle did not take women to be property belonging to their husbands or
fathers (see footnote 65 in this chapter) and had, as I will argue later, other reasons for
objecting to Socratic proposals to hold women in common.
50. These will both be forms of natural rule. Aristotle takes for granted that the whole is better
than its parts—that they exist for the sake of the whole. At the same time, clearly one part of
an organic whole might be better than other parts—as reason is better than desire, and the
heart better than the other organs of the body.
51. Garsten makes this point: “Although Aristotle treats citizens as equals, he also preserves a
distinction between citizens who are ruling and those who are being ruled. He stipulates that
all citizens can participate in deliberating and judging, but he also insists that ‘all cannot rule
at the same time’ (II 2, 1261a31–32). Moreover, he directly discusses the fact that free citizens
are often in the circumstance of being ruled (III 4, 1277a21, 25 ff.). These statements seem to
indicate that participating in the citizenly activities of judging and deliberating does not
amount to ruling. Perhaps this is why he is willing to say that juries and assemblies open to all
citizens can be spoken of as some kind of indefinite office but not simply as an office (archê)
(III 1, 1275a31)” (Bryan Garsten, “Deliberating and Acting Together,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013], 337).
52. Garsten points out that “judging well what others are saying about deliberative questions
seems a fair rendering of what most citizens sitting in the Assembly need to do. The
deliberation occurring in these institutions is the sort in which a few speakers address a large
audience of listeners and judges. . . . The intellectual virtue that is required of citizens when
they are deliberating but not ruling seems to be the ability to judge well the arguments that are
made in the Assembly about what the city should do” (Garsten, “Deliberating and Acting
Together,” 338–39).
53. Joseph Karbowski argues that on Aristotle’s view women are “not only naturally limited in
their ability to grasp the ends of human action but also in their ability to determine the proper
means to achieving them, at least at the political level,” and so understands the lack of
authority he attributes to women to be a set of intellectual deficiencies (Joseph Karbowski,
“Aristotle on the Deliberative Abilities of Women,” Apeiron 7, no. 4 [2014]: 450). But there
does not seem to me to be sufficient evidence that Aristotle believes women are intellectually
defective in these ways, and, if he did, it is difficult to see how he thought they could achieve
virtue.
54. Heath points out that slaves must deliberate about technical matters, even if they do not
deliberate about moral matters (Malcolm Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” Phronêsis 53,
no. 3 [2008]: 246–53). For this point see also Pellegrin, “Natural Slavery,” 92–116, footnote
55 in this chapter, and chapter 4, section 4.4.3 and note 50.
55. Again, both slaves and women will, and should, participate in deliberations and decisions
about technical matters within their purview. That is, Aristotle does not intend to exclude
women or even slaves from all decision-making (in particular, the decision making that is part
of the pragmatic management of a household), just from decisions that are central to a good
human life.
56. In setting out these objections I have largely used the language of Newman (The Politics of
Aristotle, 2:229). One might think that there is a third objection: (iii) It is unclear how we are
to interpret the sense of “possessed in common” Socrates intends (1261a13–14). Aristotle
certainly says this; the question is whether it is a distinct objection. I have interpreted it as part
of (ii). See Peter Simpson, “Aristotle’s Criticisms of Socrates’ Communism of Wives and
Children,” Apeiron 24, no. 2 (1991): 100–103 for a discussion of other ways in which one
might distinguish the objections.
57. This feature of Aristotle’s account of sexual difference may remind the reader of later
concerns that the liberation of women from their traditional role in the family would result in
the destruction of the family, where the family is assumed to rely upon the subordination of
women to men. Notice, however, that Aristotle attempts to show why that subordination is
good for the larger community, and how it serves the political aim of living well.
58. On the naturalness of the household, and the importance of this point, see Thanassis Samaras,
“Aristotle on Gender in Politics I,” History of Political Thought 37, no. 4 (2016): 600–601.
59. Affection characterizes the true city, as well as the household, because people are unwilling to
form communities with their enemies (Pol. 4.11 1295b24). This passage might seem to imply
that communities can only be formed by equals, since immediately before saying that people
are unwilling to form communities with their enemies Aristotle was describing the enmity
between masters and slaves. And at Politics 7.8 1328a36 he says that a city is a “community
of equals,” which might suggest that communities more generally will be limited to political
equals. But in other passages, he allows that friendships between unequals are possible, so
long as the inequality is addressed. Moreover he is clear that couples of men and women
constitute communities, and that friendship is possible between them (EN 8.12 1162a17–29;
see also EN 8.11 1161a24–26, EN 8.7 and 9). So philia is possible between those who are
unequal, and communities can be constituted by non-equals.
60. In the middle books of the Politics (see, e.g., 4.11 1295b34–1296a17, 5.3 1303a24–b7), by
contrast, Aristotle argues that differences foment faction; this apparent tension can be
explained, as we will see, by distinctions among differences: certain differences promote
unity, others promote conflict.
61. There are different ways to read the phrase “just as if a greater weight depresses the scale,” but
either way the import remains the same. For a discussion of the sense of τῷ τοιούτῳ in this
passage, and the reference to Arcadia, see Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 2, 231–33.
62. Aristotle has a second objection: that the affection pursued by the halved creatures, an intense
and passionate bond, is not the kind of affection that would in fact be promoted among
citizens by the common possession of women and children (Pol. 2.4 1262b14–16).
63. This passage takes up an objection first voiced at Pol. 2.2 1261a13–14. One issue that
Aristotle himself raises, and that many commentators have subsequently noted, is that Plato
does not make clear whether his proposals for women are confined to the guardian class or are
intended to extend to all classes in the Kallipolis.
64. While Socrates seems to think that common possession would lead each person to think of the
object possessed as belonging to him individually (the distributive sense of “mine”), Aristotle
claims that in fact it would lead each person to view the object possessed as a common
possession (the collective sense). For a discussion of the distributive and collective sense, and
its bearing on Aristotle’s criticisms of Socrates, see Martha C. Nussbaum, “Nature, Function,
and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,
suppl. (1988): 145–84; David Charles, “Perfectionism in Aristotle’s Political Theory: Reply to
Martha Nussbaum,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. (1988): 185–206; and
Martha C. Nussbaum, “Reply to David Charles,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl.
(1988): 207–14. See also Karen Margrethe Nielsen, “Economy and Private Property,” in the
Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 67–91.
65. Aristotle’s views on affection also make clear that he does not treat women and children
simply as a form of property, as some commentators have contended (see, e.g., Okin, Women
in Western Political Thought), construing the arguments against holding women in common as
an instance of the arguments against abolishing private property. One reason to suppose that
Aristotle does not see women as a form of property is that he allows that in the household
affection occurs, and indeed insists that it should occur, between men and women as well as
between parents and children. Aristotle is concerned with affection not only among equal
citizens, but also between those who rule and those who are ruled, and the ways in which
affection might equalize people who are naturally unequal. While the arguments about holding
property in common are concerned only with the effect of private property on free men (e.g.,
on whether two men who share property feel more united or more affectionate toward one
another), the arguments about holding women in common are not only about the effects of
common possession on the relationships among men, but also about the effects on the
relationships between men and women.
66. Aristotle is emphatic that while every community should have organic unity, they should not
have it to the same degree. He goes so far as to suggest at Pol. 2.2 1261a16–22 that a city that
is more unified than it should be will become a household, and a household that is too unified
will become an individual.
67. See, e.g., Aristotle, Politics, Books I and II, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995), 110. Newman also takes the “likes” in the passage at Politics 2.2 1261a29–b5,
where Aristotle says that a city must be made of people different in kind, and not from people
who are alike, to be people with the same profession (e.g., shoemakers); see Newman, The
Politics of Aristotle, 2:233. Annas, while implying a distinction between “minimal” self-
sufficiency as economic and some larger sense of self-sufficiency that might include a moral
dimension, points out that a state “can hardly be a paradigm of self-sufficiency . . . if it is
economically dependent on the commercial activities of people whose primary political
loyalties lie elsewhere” (Annas, “Aristotle on Human Nature,” 739).
Chapter 4
1. Kraut, for example, says that “ethics is an autonomous field” for Aristotle, and that a “full
understanding of what is good does not require expertise in any other field” (Richard Kraut,
“Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta, 3.2,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/aristotle-ethics/). On such a view,
Aristotle’s practical philosophy is independent of his natural philosophy, which suggests that
we should not look for explanations of moral or political phenomena in natural science. By
contrast, some commentators think that the methods of the sciences are employed by Aristotle
in the practical works, without necessarily claiming that the biology provides a theoretical
foundation for practical philosophy; see, e.g., Allan Gotthelf, “First Principles in Aristotle’s
Parts of Animals,” in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James
G. Lennox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 167–98; Carlo Natali, “Posterior
Analytics and the Definition of Happiness in NE I,” Phronesis 55, no. 4 (2010): 304–24).
Others defend the view that Aristotle thought our political views should be informed by the
facts of natural science (see, e.g., Mariska Leunissen, From Natural Character to Moral Virtue
in Aristotle [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], xxiii–xxvi; James G. Lennox, “Aristotle
on the Biological Roots of Virtue: The Natural History of Natural Virtue,” in Bridging the Gap
between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics, ed. Devin Henry and Karen Margrethe Nielsen
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015], 193–213; Christopher Shields, “The Science
of Soul in Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Bridging the Gap between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics, ed.
Devin Henry and Karen Margrethe Nielsen [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015],
232–53).
2. One of the first attempts to connect the biological claims to the political (though undeveloped)
is that of Horowitz, who says that Aristotle took the distinction between natural rulers and
natural subjects to be biological: “The vital heat of the heart, which gives an embryo the future
potential to concoct generative seed, might also give an embryo the future potential to
deliberate” (211) (Horowitz, “Aristotle and Woman,” 207–12). Horowitz seems to think that
on Aristotle’s account women are “cleverer” than men in a way that interferes with the
deliberative capacity, and that “cleverness is ‘a biologically based female trait’ ” (209–10),
although she does not elaborate on that biological basis beyond pointing to the deficiency in
vital heat attributed to the female. See also this volume, chap. 3, section 3.4.1, n. 25. Deborah
Modrak is appropriately cautious in her interpretation, recognizing that Aristotle does not say
that the lack of authority of deliberative reason in women is a result of sexual differences in
the body (Modrak, “Aristotle: Women, Deliberation, and Nature,”). She does, however, seem
to think that he ought to have done so, saying, “What is needed to fill out Aristotle’s story in
the Politics is evidence that weakness in the movements of the semen correspond to the
defective replication of the human form such that female humans have poorer ratiocinative
powers. Such evidence, however, is hard to come by” (209). A more recent and more
developed interpretation of this path to explaining political sexual differences in terms of
physiology is found in Leunissen, From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle.
3. See Allen, The Concept of Woman, 83–126; Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology, 92–
113. See also Dobbs, “Family Matters.” Dobbs, whose views I discussed in chap. 3, section
3.4.1, thinks there are links between biological and political sex differences, although he does
not trace the links so much as assert them (75). He claims that Aristotle’s account of
reproductive biology has “unequivocal” political implications (75). Dobbs says that Aristotle
“acknowledges that women and men are equal in substance” but also “recognizes that the
sexes are, by nature, functionally different and complementary” (75). What is interesting for
my purposes is Dobbs’s claim that these functional differences are differences in spiritedness
and the capacity for nurture (82). He denies that Aristotle believes men to be superior to
women in intellect or virtue (82, 84), and so does not see Aristotle’s commitment to the
naturalness of men’s rule over women as founded on intellectual or moral differences as such.
Rather, he argues that men are to rule as a “therapy” rather than a privilege, where the therapy
of rule is intended to chasten and subdue the high degree of thumos that men, by nature, have
(86). On this view, Aristotle excludes women from rule not because of some inferiority on
their part, but rather because their desires are better ordered in the first place (85).
4. The implausibility of Dobbs’s interpretation stems largely from his assertion that Aristotle did
not believe that women were inferior in intellect or virtue to men. While Aristotle ascribes all
the virtues that men have to women, he also implies that, as those who are ruled, they will be
lacking the virtue that is peculiar to rulers (Pol. 1.5, 1.12–13). And he plainly states, as we
have seen, that the deliberative faculty of women is without authority relative to that of men
(Pol. 1.13 1260a11–14). In arguing that Aristotle sees the differences between men and
women as complementary, Dobbs is attempting to harmonize the claim that women and men
are the same in substance (and hence equal in that respect), with the claim that men and
women are different—if the differences are complementary, then they are equally valuable, no
hierarchy is implied, and we can understand Aristotle to mean that the sexes are different and
yet equally good (82). (As an aside, Dobbs seems to accept that the differences Aristotle posits
between the sexes are indeed natural, since he says that Aristotle “recognizes that the sexes
are, by nature, functionally different and complementary” [italics added]; to recognize
differences is to see differences that really are there.) But Aristotle plainly does want to justify
the rule of men over women in terms of the superiority of men (Pol. 1.13 1259b31–1260a18),
and he nowhere says or implies that rule should be undertaken by men as a therapy and hence
a benefit to themselves. The rule of those who are superior is always justified by Aristotle on
the grounds that the superior will be able to rule in a way that provides a benefit to those who
are ruled. So it is implausible to suggest that Aristotle represents rule as a kind of therapeutic
intervention intended to improve the character of the ruler rather than a privilege obtained—in
the best circumstances, at least—by excellence of character, or—in other circumstances—by
wealth, social status, or force.
5. This is true even though the nutritive/reproductive faculty is not the highest in the animal soul,
and we might expect the highest faculty to be the source of the activity that is the final cause.
6. Pol. 1.2 1252b29–30: “The community (κοινωνία) arising from [the union of] several villages
that is complete is the city. It reaches a level of full self-sufficiency (ἤδη πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας
τῆς αὐταρκείας), so to speak; and while coming into being for the sake of living, it exists for
the sake of living well (γινομένη μὲν οὖν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν).” EN 8.12
1162a19–22: “With the other animals the sharing (ἡ κοινωνία) only goes this far [i.e., to the
point that it serves reproduction], whereas human beings cohabit not only for the sake of
producing offspring but also for the sake of the necessities of life (οὐ μόνον τῆς τεκνοποιίας
χάριν συνοικοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν εἰς τὸν βίον).” Pol. 1.2 1252a27–28: “First, then, there must
of necessity be a conjunction of persons who cannot exist without one another: on the one
hand, male and female, for the sake of reproduction (τῆς γενέσεως ἕνεκεν).” These passages
do not suggest that Aristotle is distinguishing carefully between βιόω and ζάω. For a
discussion of this distinction in Aristotle, see James Gordon Finlayson, who argues that the
distinction between living and living well does not track the distinction between βιόω and ζάω
as Aristotle uses them (James Gordon Finlayson, “ ‘Bare Life’ and Politics in Agamben’s
Reading of Aristotle,” Review of Politics 72, no. 1 [2010]: 111–12).
7. As Malcolm Heath points out, “Intellect (νοῦς) as such is not embodied (DA 2.1, 413a3–7;
3.4, 429a10–29), but thinking is. For thought is ‘not without’ phantasia (DA 1.1., 403a8–10;
3.7, 431a14–17; 3.8, 432a7–14); deliberation, in particular, involves ‘deliberative’ (as distinct
from perceptual) phantasia (DA 3.11, 434a5–10; cf. 3.10, 433b29); and the faculty of
phantasia is the same as the perceptual faculty (Insomn. 1, 459a14–22)” (Heath, “Aristotle on
Natural Slavery,” 254). On the physical aspects of thinking, see Philip van der Eijk, “The
Matter of Mind,” in Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and
Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 217–37. In section 4.2.4 I discuss the distinction between the two kinds of phantasia
that Heath calls “deliberative” and “perceptual” (“Aristotle on Natural Slavery”).
8. See Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals I–IV, trans. Lennox, 187; Henry, “How Sexist Is
Aristotle.” Henry does not extend the claim to the political realm.
9. Nielsen, “The Private Parts of Animals.”
10. References to animal intelligence are found both in the biological works (HA 1.1 488b15, 8.1
589a1, 9.48 631a27; PA 2.2 648a6 [φρονιμώτερα], 2.4 650b24 [διάνοιαν]; GA 3.2 753a10
[φρονιμώτερα]) and in other works (e.g., Met. 1.1 980b22, EN 6.7 1141a26ff). While different
terms are used to refer to animal intelligence in these passages, phronimos and its cognates are
recurrent.
11. See J. L. Labarrière, “De la phronesis animale,” in Biologie, logique, et métaphysique, ed.
Daniel Devereux and Pierre Pellegrin (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
1990), 405–28; Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance, 52–53, who also cites
Urs Dierauer, Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike: Studien zur Tierpsychologie,
Anthropologie und Ethik (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1977), 122–23, 135–37, 145–48.
12. We should notice the incongruity of identifying the practical failure of female animals as one
of an incapacity to care for the young, since Aristotle, among many, supposed that nature
assigns this task primarily to the female, and it would be odd for nature to assign the task to
the sex that is especially unfit to carry it out successfully.
13. Ross says that while the organ in which “the central function of sense is localised” is
“universally admitted to be the heart,” “great difficulties arise when we attempt to determine
whether it is the heart as a whole which is the organ or only some part of or constituent in it.”
He concludes that “if the organ of consciousness is not the heart as a whole but only some
constituent in it, the seat of this organ is probably the middle chamber of the heart,” citing
Joseph Neuhaeuser, Aristoteles’ Lehre von den sinnlichen Erkenntnissvermögen und seinen
Organen (Leipzig: Verlag von Erich Koschny, 1878), 86. This is because “the central organ of
sensation is not the heart itself, but a substance found in its middle chamber. . . . The point is
that this substance is different from the elements of the sublunary world and seems to serve as
a basis or substratum for terrestrial conscious life” (Ross, Aristotle, De Sensu and De
Memoria, 14–17).
14. The terms Aristotle uses to denote intelligence in these contexts vary, although he speaks most
often of διάνοια.
15. The term I have translated here as a “good blend” is sometimes rendered as “temperament” or
“constitution”. See PA 673b30 for the contrast with a bad blend or constitution of body (in
toads and tortoises). “τὸν ἐγκέφαλον ὑγρότατον ἔχουσι καὶ πλεῖστον τῶν ζῴων, τούτου δ᾿
αἴτιον ὅτι καὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ θερμότητα καθαρωτάτην. δηλοῖ δὲ τὴν εὐκρασίαν ἡ διάνοια·
φρονιμώτατον γάρ ἐστι τῶν ζῴων ἄνθρωπος” (GA 2.6 744a27–32).
16. A passage that may seem to tell against this is at PA 3.4 667a1–6 (mentioned earlier), where
Aristotle says that the blood in the central cavity of the heart (located between the right and
the left) is intermediate both in amount and in heat and is also purest. But of course the most
unadulterated blood may not also be the hottest blood, although heating will purify blood that
is adulterated. If pure heat produces hotter blood, we can make sense of the association in the
passage at GA 2.6 744a28–32 of purer heat with a bigger and more fluid brain: if the heat of
the heart is purer and therefore hotter, the brain will have to be better able to cool down the
blood.
17. Lennox, in a note on this passage (referred to in this chapter, section 4.1.3, n. 8), says: “Blood
types (and blood-analogue types) are correlated with differences in character and intelligence
(noêsis). It would be wrong to see this as accounting for the character differences by reference
to differences in blood—ultimately the blood/blood-analogue differences will need to be
explained by reference to the role of differences in character and intelligence in the animal’s
life” (Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals I–IV, trans. Lennox, 187). His point is that the blood
and its qualities as a material part must be supposed to be a function of the character and
intelligence of the animal, because the material parts are for the sake of the functions of the
animal, which are prior, in this sense, to the material parts. If we transfer this point to the case
of the distinction between males and females, then the differences in the blood of males and
females will need to be explained by reference to the differences in the functions of male and
female—and those differences in function will not themselves be explained by the differences
in blood. In that case the material constitution of females would not be an imperfection or
accident, but the consequence, natural and purposeful, of the function of the female. This
would align Lennox’s position with the interpretation according to which the female is a
distinct telos of nature from the male.
18. This association of the right side with hotter blood is in accord with Aristotle’s claim in the
passage at PA 3.4 667a1–6 that the right cavity of the heart has the hottest blood. He says,
“That is why the right side of the body is hotter than the left” (667a2–3). We should be
reminded here of the Pythagorean columns of opposites (see chap. 1, section 1.3); Aristotle
also thinks that the right is axiologically better than the left, and what is “up” better than what
is “down,” and uses these spatial principles in his biology.
19. This phrase is difficult to interpret, for two reasons. First, the verb ἐκόπτω is describing what
the movement of the heat in the blood does to perceptual activity. Ogle translates it as
“destroys,” Louis as “émousse,” and Pellegrin as “réduit.” Aristotle himself uses the same
verb in the Rhetoric to mean that an inscription has been excised (ἐκκόψαι, Rhet. 2 400a25);
and at Div. 464b7–17 Aristotle says that “dream images are analogous to the forms reflected in
water” and thus difficult to interpret, “for the internal movement effaces the clearness of the
dream (ἡ γὰρ κίνησις ἐκκόπτει τὴν εὐθυονειρίαν)” (Aristotle, On Divination in Sleep, trans. J.
I. Beare in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan
Barnes [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984], 736–39). So perhaps “erases” or
“muddies” best reflects the idea that the movements somehow impede the clarity of
perception. What is clear is that the movement of heat in the blood somehow interferes with
perceptual activity, whether it is simply dulling it or removing it altogether. Second, it is not
clear what the motion of the heat in the blood (ἡ τῆς ἐν τῷ αἵματι θερμότητος κίνησις) refers
to; presumably this motion is not itself the movement of prior sensations, but in the context
Aristotle does not discuss other movements. See also GA 5.1 780a5–14, where Aristotle says
that stronger movements drive out (ἐκκρούει) weaker movements in the eye.
20. The De anima passage reads: “For in the other senses humans are surpassed by many other
animals, whereas in the case of touch humans differ from the others in being by a long
measure more precise. Humans are, accordingly, the most intelligent (φρονιμώτατόν) of
animals. As an indication of this: in the human race, natural aptitude (εὐφυεῖς καὶ ἀφυεῖς)
depends upon this sensory faculty but not upon any other. For whereas those with hard flesh
(οἱ σκληρόσαρκοι) have no natural aptitude for thought (ἀφυεῖς τὴν διάνοιαν), those with
delicate flesh (οἱ μαλακόσαρκοι) do [have such a capacity] (εὐφυεῖς).”
21. Freeland points out that “this should be taken with a grain of salt because Aristotle offers
several alternative explanations for humans’ superior intelligence,” referring us to PA 4.10, PA
2.7, PA 2.17 660a15–28, and HA 9.1 608a17–21(Cynthia Freeland, “Aristotle on the Sense of
Touch,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg
Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 234.
22. For a summary of the evidence that female animals are less perceptually intelligent than males
because of their inferior bodies, see Leunissen, From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in
Aristotle, 153–54.
23. Aristotle says that the bones of male animals are harder than those of females (PA 2.9 655a11–
15), which suggests that the bones of females are softer, but we cannot extrapolate from that to
a claim that females have softer flesh or sense organs.
24. On the notion of “articulation” see Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The
Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2010), 185.
25. At least one commentator does think that Aristotle believes that women (and eunuchs) tend to
have flesh that is “softer” than “normal men,” and that this “contradicts his claim that among
humans, softer flesh means greater intelligence” (Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology,
67). But Mayhew thinks this contradiction can be resolved by supposing that “Aristotle does
think women have a more accurate and discriminating sense of touch” but that this does not
cause women to have greater intelligence “since she otherwise lacks the intellectual
potentialities of normal men,” (67). Freeland asks why, if softer flesh leads to greater
intelligence, Aristotle does not extend the point to “those delightfully soft, squishy—and
unintelligent—beings, the oyster and the clam?” (Freeland “Aristotle on the Sense of Touch,”
235).
26. He does, however, attribute to the female a moral softness, as we will see in sections 4.3.1 and
4.3.2.
27. Labarrière writes: “c’est ici qu’intervient la différence constitutive de l’humain: il va former
une notion une [sic] de tout cela en tirant effectivement ‘la leçon de l'expérience’, tandis que
l’animal s’arrête en chemin” (J. L. Labarrière, “Imagination humaine et imagination animale
chez Aristote,” Phronesis 29, no. 1 (1984), 25). He argues that the difference between animals
and humans is manifest in the practical syllogism: in the process of practical reasoning
represented by the syllogism, a person is able to formulate the universal premise (i.e., the
“universal judgment”), which requires the ability to form a single phantasma from many (DA
3.11 434a9–10). This is just what animals cannot do (I will return to this point later).
28. The mention of age (δι᾿ἡλικίαν) in the On Memory passage as one reason that impressions
might not be formed because the surface is too like running water, and the mention of “old
walls” as unreceptive because hard, suggests that in this passage Aristotle primarily has in
mind differences between old and young people and those in their prime. But because the
features that distinguish the young (lack of heat and excessive moisture) also characterize
women, we can extend the claims about the young to women.
29. See Leunissen, From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle, 160–61. Mayhew
suggests that Balme (in Aristotle, History of Animals, Books VII–IX, trans. D. M. Balme
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991], 219) is right to translate μνημονικώτερον
as “has a longer memory,” if “he means to connote that Aristotle is saying that females are
petty and thus more likely to hold a grudge or not forget a perceived slight” (Mayhew, The
Female in Aristotle’s Biology, 96). On this interpretation, to be μνημονικώτερον is not to have
a positive intellectual quality, but is instead a moral failing: to be vindictive.
30. See Labarrière, “De la phronesis animale,” 417–20. He says: “Lorsqu’un animal exerce un
acte de phronèsis . . . cet acte . . . est bien un acte intelligent (c’est-à-dire une position du
bien), mais il faut que ce bien soit ‘représenté imaginativement’ dans le cas particulier et telle
est la fonction de la phantasia aisthètikè qui, pour être supérieure à la simple sensation, y reste
rattachée” (420).
31. Moss allows that this passage might be read to mean that “non-rational motivation is based on
perceptual phantasia and rational motivation on rational (or ‘calculative’) phantasia” (citing
David Charles, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984],
89). She argues it is better to understand it to mean that “rational phantasia is at the basis of
decision” but “wish relies instead on perceptual phantasia” (Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent
Good, 140).
32. C. D. C. Reeve argues (“Aristotle on Women: Diminished Deliberation and Divine Male
Rule,” Revue Roumaine de Philosophie 64, no. 1 (2020): 3–38) that Aristotle believes the
deliberative defect of women to be severe, in that they lack “an understanding that grasps the
good” (28) which he believes can be traced to the earthiness of women’s blood, which has
“cognitive consequences” (32). This may be right; my point is that it is not clear how earthy
blood and the consequent perceptual inaccuracy would produce a deficiency in the
understanding that grasps the good, even once we allow that it will interfere with perceptual
accuracy.
33. See, e.g., Plato, Republic 4 439d for the distinction of the non-rational from the rational part of
the soul, and 439e3 for the description of thumos as a part of the non-rational—“that by which
we get angry (ᾧ θυμούμεθα).” Homer employs the term in varied senses, to mean something
like soul, spirit, or mind (see, e.g., Iliad II. 142, III. 395, IV. 494, XIII. 487, XIII. 704, XV.
710, XVI. 219, XVI. 410, XVII. 267). Snell says that “Thumos in Homer is the generator of
motion or agitation” (Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind [New York: Dover, 1953], 9).
34. For a discussion of this passage see Giles Pearson, Aristotle on Desire (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 116–17, 127.
35. For a discussion of the physiology of desire and locomotion, see Moss, Aristotle on the
Apparent Good, 23–26. Moss points to a passage in the De motu animalium where Aristotle
associates heating and cooling of the body with the experience of a variety of passions, saying
that “daring and fears and lusts and the other bodily painful and pleasant [passions] are
accompanied by heating or cooling” (MA 8 702a3–4).
36. From what we have seen, we would expect heat to make blood less fibrous by concocting it
more, making it less earthy, less retentive of heat, and less likely to produce a choleric
temperament. But it may be that some blood is inherently fibrous, in which case it would
retain heat over time (rather than cooling off to a point conducive to accurate perceptions and
moderate responses to insult or contempt).
37. Aristotle allows that there will be variations even within Greece. But the general point is that
the climate of Greece is the most propitious for producing people who are likely to have both
thumos and dianoia—spirit and intelligence. Leunissen has an interesting discussion of this
passage and the physiology that it presupposes in From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in
Aristotle, section 2.2, especially p. 68.
38. Later in the De anima, at 3.9 432a22–b8, Aristotle acknowledges that the source for these
distinctions in the forms of desire is the Platonic tripartite division of the soul, without
endorsing that division: “And it is definitely absurd to break this [ὄρεξις] up, because wish
comes to be in the rational faculty, while appetite and spirit come to be in the irrational part,
and if the soul is threefold, there will be desire in each part” (DA 3.9 432b5–8). In this
passage, the contrast of thumos and two other forms of desire is reiterated, even though
Aristotle wonders whether it would be more accurate to say that desire is a separate faculty of
the soul, or alternatively to say that the different faculties each generate desires that
correspond to their operations. He is not arguing against the tripartite division; rather, his point
is that if we agree that there are three distinct parts of the soul, then ὄρεξις would be found in
all three parts, and so ὄρεξις would not constitute a distinct and separate part of the soul.
Aristotle preserves the tripartite division of desires consistently not only within the biological
works (among which I include the De anima) but also in the practical works. See also Plato,
Rep. 4 439a–41a, for the notion that kinds of desire correspond to parts of the soul.
39. Although Aristotle often uses ἐπιθυμία to refer to a desire for bodily pleasures in particular,
there are passages where he is clearly using it to refer to desires for a broad range of pleasures,
both those associated with the body and others (for the narrower use, see, e.g., EN 3.11
1118b9–15; for the broader use, see EN 3.3 1111a31–35).
40. For a helpful discussion of thumos as a desire (which he calls “retaliatory desire” because he
sees its primary object as revenge), see Pearson, Aristotle on Desire, 111–39.
41. This passage indicates that children have not only appetite (ἐπιθυμία) and thumos but also
βούλησις (wish) from the moment they are born, but not reasoning or intelligence. “Next, just
as soul and body are two things, so also do we see two parts of the soul, the irrational and that
having reason, and the dispositions belonging to these are two in number, one of which is
desire [ὄρεξις] and the other intellect [νοῦς]; and just as the body is prior in birth to the soul,
so is the irrational part to that having reason. This too is evident, for spiritedness [θυμὸς] and
wish [βούλησις], and furthermore appetite [ἐπιθυμία], are present in children immediately on
their being born, while reasoning [ὁ λογισμὸς] and intellect develop naturally in them as they
go along,” (Pol. 7.15 1334b17–26). This is odd, because elsewhere, as we have seen, Aristotle
identifies βούλησις as a form of rational desire. But the point remains that thumos is attributed
to the non-rational soul.
42. For a discussion of this passage that attempts to illuminate the claim that thumos listens to
reason, see Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 191–94. Lorenz says “The central point is that, in
appropriately conditioned adults, the functioning of spirit incorporates a general evaluative
outlook which derived from correct reason and which partially reflects reason’s own
evaluative outlook” (193). See also John M. Cooper, “Reason, Moral Virtue and Moral Value,”
in Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1999), 253–80.
43. Appetite (ἐπιθυμία) also can and should be subjected to reason, but Aristotle seems to draw a
distinction between ἐπιθυμία and θυμὸς with respect to their relations to reason. Aristotle says:
“Thumos follows reason in a way, but appetite does not. In that case not being able to control
it [ἐπιθυμία] is the more shameful, in so far as the person behaving uncontrolledly with regard
to thumos is in a way giving in to reason, whereas the other sort is giving in to appetite and not
to reason” (EN 7.6 1149b1–4). This again suggests that thumos has some element of reason,
even when it is excessive.
44. The most developed recent account of the interpretation of women as akratic is in Nielsen,
“The Constitution of the Soul,” 577–78.
45. See also Topics 2.7 113a31–b1 for the suggestion that affection has thumos as its source:
“Again, if there be posited an accident which has a contrary, look and see if that which admits
of the accident will admit of its contrary as well; for the same thing admits of contraries. Thus
(e.g.) if he has asserted that hatred follows anger, hatred would in that case be in the spirited
faculty (ἐν τῷ θυμοειδεῖ); for that is where anger is. You should therefore look and see if its
contrary is also in the spirited faculty; for if not—if friendship is in the faculty of desire—then
hatred will not follow anger.”
46. The blood of the female is colder than that of the male of the species, and more fibrous (HA
3.19 521a21–25). More perfect animals have less fibrous blood (GA 2.1 732b31–32, GA 5.2
781b18–21). While the perfection in question belongs to the species, and not to the male sex,
the result will be that women have more fibrous, hence less perfect, blood relative to men,
although they have less fibrous, and hence more perfect, blood than other animal species.
47. See n. 42 in this chapter.
48. Aristotle allows that there will be variations even within Greece, such that some people will
have only thumos or dianoia, while others will have both. But the general point is that the
climate of Greece is the most propitious for producing people who are likely to have both. We
might have expected that a cold climate would make a people insufficiently thumotic, and a
hot one excessively thumotic, given the association of thumos with heat. Perhaps Aristotle
supposes that those who live in a cold climate must have hotter blood, and those in a warm
climate cooler blood, to compensate for the climatic conditions. Alternatively, Aristotle may
have subscribed to the Hippocratic idea that colder climates are more challenging and thus
stimulate manliness in Europeans, whereas hotter climates induce laziness in Asians (On Airs,
Waters, Places 16.1–14, 24.1–35).
49. One implication of this is that free Greek women would resemble in character the Asian men
that Aristotle describes as intelligent but incapable of rule in the ethnographic passage at
Politics 7.7 1327b19–38.
50. Malcolm Heath has argued persuasively that we should understand the impairment of slaves as
limited in important ways: “It is an impairment of the capacity for practical (not technical or
theoretical) reasoning; it is an impairment of the capacity for deliberation (not a conceptual or
motivational failure); it is an impairment of the capacity for global deliberation; and it is an
impairment that disrupts deliberation by detaching an individual’s conception of intrinsic
value from executive control of his behaviour” (Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” 253).
The point is that, while the lack of a deliberative capacity is significant, it is not the case, as
some commentators have suggested, that slaves have no capacity for reasoning autonomously
(Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” 145). (Heath mentions Fortenbaugh (“Aristotle on
Slaves and Women”) and Richard Kraut (Aristotle: Political Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002]) as among those who have argued that slaves have no capacity for
reasoning autonomously.) On Heath’s view, natural slaves are not entirely bereft of reason,
and indeed might have advanced technical and theoretical knowledge, and a capacity to
deliberate about the means to achieve a particular moral goal; what they will not be able to do
is to deliberate in a way “guided by a stable architectonic conception of the good life”—it is
not even that they may not have such a conception, just that they will not be able to use it to
guide their deliberation (Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” 251). See chap. 3 (section
3.4.3 and nn. 54 and 55).
51. See Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery” (254), for an account of how “climate affects
thumos, and thumos affects practical deliberation.”
52. I am in agreement, then, both with Heath, who argues that the barbarian will usually but not
without exception be a natural slave, citing Politics 1.2 1252b5–9, 1.6 1255a28–b2, and 3.14
128a19–21 (Heath, “Aristotle on Natural Slavery,” 245 n. 6), and especially with Pellegrin,
who says, “We must certainly suppose that the determinism of climate invoked here is not
strict, for Aristotle surely does not think that all the inhabitants of Asia Minor are natural
slaves, to say nothing of the Greeks living in Asia Minor” (Pellegrin, “Natural Slavery,” 107).
References
Ancient Works
Aeschylus. The Eumenides. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. In The Complete Greek Tragedies,
vol. 1, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, 135–173. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1959.
Aeschylus. Seven against Thebes. Translated by David Grene. In The Complete Greek Tragedies, vol.
1, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, 263–303. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1959.
Aristophanes. Assemblywomen. Translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002.
Aristophanes. Ecclesiazusae. Edited by R. G. Ussher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Aristotle. Aristotle’s Politics. Translated by Carnes Lord. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2013.
Aristotle. Categories. Translated by J. L. Ackrill. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised
Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 3–24. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Constitution of Athens. Translated by F. G. Kenyon. In The Complete Works of Aristotle:
The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 2341–83. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. De Anima, Books II and III. Translated by D. W. Hamlyn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
Aristotle. De Generatione et Corruptione. Translated by C. J. F. Williams. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982.
Aristotle. Aristotle’s “De Motu Animalium.” Translated by Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1978.
Aristotle. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Revised ed. Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966.
Aristotle. De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I. Translated by D. M. Balme.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Translated and edited by Brad Inwood and Raphael Woolf. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Translated by J. Solomon. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The
Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 1922–81. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Athenian Constitution; Eudemian Ethics; Virtues and Vices. Translated by H. Rackham.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Aristotle. Aristotelis, De Generatione Animalium. Edited by H. J. Drossaart Lulofs. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1965.
Aristotle. Generation of Animals. Translated by A. L. Peck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1942.
Aristotle. History of Animals, Books I–III. Translated by A. L. Peck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1965.
Aristotle. History of Animals, Books IV–VI. Translated by A. L. Peck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1970.
Aristotle. History of Animals, Books VII–IX. Translated by D. M. Balme. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991.
Aristotle. History of Animals. Translated by d’A. W. Thompson. In The Complete Works of Aristotle:
The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 774–993. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Aristote: Histoire des Animaux I–X. Translated by J. Tricot. Paris: Vrin, 1957.
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2016.
Aristotle. Meteorologica. Translated by H. D. P. Lee. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1952.
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Translated by D. P. Chase. London: J. M. Dent, 1911.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1926.
Aristotle. L' éthique à Nicomaque. 2nd ed. Translated by René Antoine Gauthier and Jean Yves Jolif.
Leuven: Publications universitaires; Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1970.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher Rowe. Edited by Sarah Broadie and
Christopher Rowe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Aristotle. On the Heavens. Translated by J. L. Stocks. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The
Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 447–511. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. On the Parts of Animals I–IV. Translated by James G. Lennox. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2001.
Aristotle. Parts of Animals; Movement of Animals; Progression of Animals. Revised ed. Translated
by A. L. Peck and E. S. Forster. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. https://www-
lib.shinshu-u.ac.jp/opc/en/recordID/catalog.bib/BA18541230?hit=1&caller=xc-search
Aristotle. On the Soul. Translated by J. A. Smith. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised
Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 641–92. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. On the Soul; Parva Naturalia; On Breath. Translated by W. S. Hett. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1957.
Aristotle. De Anima. Translated by Christopher Shields. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2016.
Aristotle. On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration. Translated by G. R. T. Ross. In The
Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes,
745–63. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Parva Naturalia. Edited by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.
Aristotle. Sense and Sensibilia. Translated by J. I. Beare. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The
Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 693–713. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. On Memory. Translated by J. I. Beare. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised
Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 714–20. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. On Divination in Sleep. Translated by J. I. Beare. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The
Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 736–39. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Petits traités d’histoire naturelle. Translated by René Mugnier. 2nd ed. Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1965.
Aristotle. Physics. Translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. In The Complete Works of Aristotle:
The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 315–446. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Politics. Translated by B. Jowett. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford
Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 1986–2129. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2005.
Aristotle. Politics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998.
Aristotle. Politics, Books I and II. Translated by Trevor J. Saunders. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Aristotle. The Politics of Aristotle. Edited and translated by Ernest Barker. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1946.
Aristotle. The Politics of Aristotle. Edited and translated by Franz Susemihl and R. D. Hicks.
London: Macmillan, 1894.
Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Translated by Jonathan Barnes. In The Complete Works of Aristotle:
The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 114–66. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Problems, Books 1–19. Edited and translated by Robert Mayhew. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised
Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 2152–2269. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Aristotle. Topics. Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge. In the Complete Works of Aristotle: The
Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 167–277. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Herodotus. Histories. Edited by James Room. Translated by Pamela Mensch. Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 2014.
Hesiod. Theogony; Works and Days; Testimonia. Translated and edited by Glenn W. Most.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
Hippocrates. Diseases of Women 1–2. Translated and edited by Paul Potter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2018.
Hippocrates. Generation; Nature of the Child; Diseases 4; Nature of Women and Barrenness.
Translated and edited by Paul Potter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
Hippocrates. Nature of Man; Regimen in Health; Humours; Aphorisms; Regimen 1–3; Dreams;
Heracleitus: On the Universe. Translated and edited by W. H. S Jones. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1931.
Hippocrates. Ancient Medicine; Airs, Waters, Places; Epidemics 1 and 3; The Oath; Precepts;
Nutriment. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923.
Hippocrates. Oeuvres completes d’Hippocrate, 10 vols. Edited by Emile Littré. Paris: Baillière,
1839–61; repr. Amsterdam : Hakkert, 1961–2.
Plato. Critias. Translated by Diskin Clay. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, 1292–1306.
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
Plato. Laws. Translated by Trevor J. Saunders. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, 1318–
1616. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
Plato. Meno. Translated by G. M .A. Grube. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, 870–97.
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
Plato. Statesman. Translated by C. J. Rowe. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, 294–358.
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
Plato. The Republic. 2 vols. Translated by Paul Shorey. London: W. Heinemann, 1930.
Plato. Republic 5. Edited and translated by Stephen Halliwell. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1993.
Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
Plato. The Republic of Plato, Vol. 1, Books I–V. Edited by James Adam. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1963.
Plato. Statesman. Edited and translated by Christopher J. Rowe. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995.
Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Donald J. Zeyl. In Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, 1225–
91. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
Plutarch. Moralia, Volume V. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936.
Plutarch. “Solon.” In Lives, Vol. 1, Books 1–5, translated by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh
Clough, 168–202. Boston: Little, Brown, 1859.
Simplicius. On Aristotle’s “Physics 3.” Translated by J. O. Urmson. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2002.
Xenophon. Memorabilia. Translated by Amy L. Bonnette. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1994.
Xenophon. Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary. Translated by Sarah B. Pomeroy.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Modern Works
Allen, Prudence. The Concept of Woman, Vol. 1: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC–AD 1250.
Montreal: Eden Press, 1985.
Angioni, Lucas. “Definition and Essence in Aristotle’s Metaphysics vii 4.” Ancient Philosophy 34
(2014): 75–100.
Annas, Julia. “Aristotle on Human Nature and Political Virtue.” Review of Metaphysics 49, no. 4
(1996): 731–53.
Annas, Julia. “Plato’s Republic and Feminism.” In Philosophy 51, no. 197 (1976): 747–61.
Atran, Scott. “Pre-Theoretical Aspects of Aristotelian Definition and Classification of Animals: The
Case for Common Sense.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 16, no. 2 (1985):113–
63.
Balme, D. M. “Authenticity and Date of HA VII–X.” In Aristotle, History of Animals, Volume III:
Books 7–10, translated by D. M. Balme, 1–30. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Balme, D. M. “Genos and Eidos in Aristotle’s Biology.” Classical Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1962): 81–98.
Barker, Ernest. The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle. New York: Dover, 1959.
Bignone, Ettore. “Appendice VI: La struttura del poema fisico e l’ordine dei frammenti.” In
Empedocle: Studio critico, traduzione e commento delle testimonianze e dei frammenti, 651–76.
Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1963.
Bobonich, Christopher. Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Bradley, A. C. “Aristotle’s Conception of the State.” In A Companion to Aristotle’s “Politics,” edited
by David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, 25–26. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Bradshaw, Leah. “Political Rule, Prudence and the ‘Woman Question’ in Aristotle.” Canadian
Journal of Political Science 24, no. 3 (1991): 557–73.
Brisson, Luc. “Ethics and Politics in Plato’s Laws.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 28 (2005):
93–121.
Brisson, Luc. Lectures de Platon. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2000.
Campbell, Gordon. Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on “De Rerum Natura” 5.
722–1104. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Cantarella, Eva. Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity.
Translated by Maureen B. Fant. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Carbone, Andrea L. “The Axes of Symmetry: Morphology in Aristotle’s Biology.” Apeiron 49, no. 1
(2016): 1–31.
Carone, Gabriele R. “Reversing the Myth of the Politicus.” Classical Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2004): 88–
108.
Carson, Anne. “Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire.” In Before Sexuality: The
Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, edited by David M. Halperin, John
J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin, 135–69. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Charles, David. “Aristotle and the Unity and Essence of Biological Kinds.” In Aristotelische
Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, edited by Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger,
27–42. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.
Charles, David. Aristotle on Meaning and Essence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
Charles, David. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Charles, David. “Perfectionism in Aristotle’s Political Theory: Reply to Martha Nussbaum.” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. (1988): 185–206.
Clark, Stephen R. L. “Aristotle’s Woman.” History of Political Thought 3, no. 2 (1982): 177–91.
Code, Alan. “An Aristotelian Puzzle about Definition: Metaphysics Z.12.” In Being, Nature, and Life
in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf, edited by James G. Lennox and Robert Bolton, 78–
96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Code, Alan. “Soul as Efficient Cause in Aristotle’s Embryology.” Philosophical Topics 15, no. 2
(1987): 51–59.
Cohen, David. “The Legal Status and Political Role of Women in Plato’s Laws.” Revue
internationale des droits de l’antiquité 34 (1987): 27–40.
Coles, Andrew. “Biomedical Models of Reproduction in the Fifth Century BC and Aristotle’s
Generation of Animals.” Phronesis 40, no. 1 (1995): 48–88.
Connell, Sophia M. “Nutritive and Sentient Soul in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals 2.5.” Phronesis
(2020): 1–31.
Connell, Sophia M. Aristotle on Female Animals: A Study of the Generation of Animals. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Cooper, John M. “Hypothetical Necessity and Natural Teleology.” In Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 243–74. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Cooper, John M. “Metaphysics in Aristotle’s Embryology.” In Knowledge, Nature, and the Good,
174–203. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Cooper, John M. “Reason, Moral Virtue and Moral Value.” In Reason and Emotion: Essays on
Ancient Moral Theory, 253–80. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Cornford, Francis MacDonald. Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1997.
Cox, Cheryl Anne. Household Interests: Property, Marriage Strategies, and Family Dynamics in
Ancient Athens. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Craik, Elizabeth. “The ‘Hippocratic Question’ and the Nature of the Hippocratic Corpus.” In The
Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates, edited by Peter Pormann, 25–37. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018.
Dean-Jones, Lesley. “Clinical Gynecology and Aristotle’s Biology: The Composition of HA X.”
Apeiron 45, no. 2 (2012): 180–99.
Dean-Jones, Lesley. Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994.
Demand, Nancy. “Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Speeches of Pythagoras’.” Greek, Roman and
Byzantine Studies 23, no. 2 (1982): 179–84.
Deslauriers, Marguerite. “Aristotle on Andreia, Divine and Sub-Human Virtues.” In Andreia: Studies
in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, edited by Ralph M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter,
187–211. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Deslauriers, Marguerite. Aristotle on Definition. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Deslauriers, Marguerite. “Social and Civic Implications of Aristotle’s Notion of Authority.” In Law,
Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World, edited by Baruch Halpern and Deborah
W. Hobson, 122–36. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.
Deslauriers, Marguerite, and Pierre Destrée, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s
“Politics.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Devereux, Daniel. “Aristotle on the Form and Definition of a Human Being: Definitions and Their
Parts in Metaphysics 10 and 11.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient
Philosophy 26 (2010): 167–96.
Diels, Hermann. Doxographi Graeci. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1879.
Diels, Hermann. “Studia Empedoclea.” Hermes 15, no. 2 (1880): 161–79.
Dierauer, Urs. Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike: Studien zur Tierpsychologie, Anthropologie
und Ethik. Amsterdam: Grüner, 1977.
Dobbs, Darrel. “Family Matters: Aristotle’s Appreciation of Women and the Plural Structure of
Society.” American Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (1996): 74–89.
El Murr, Dimitri. “Hesiod, Plato, and the Golden Age: Hesiodic Motifs in the Myth of the Politicus
1.” In Plato and Hesiod, edited by G. R. Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold, 276–97. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. 2nd ed.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Falcon, Andrea. Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Falcon, Andrea, and David Lefebvre, eds. Aristotle’s Generation of Animals: A Critical Guide,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Fant, Maureen B., and Mary R. Lefkowitz. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome, 3rd ed. Translated by
Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
Finlayson, James Gordon. “‘Bare Life’ and Politics in Agamben’s Reading of Aristotle.” Review of
Politics 72, no. 1 (2010): 97–126.
Föllinger, Sabine. Differenz und Gleichheit: Das Geschlechterverhältnis in der Sicht griechischer
Philosophen des 4. bis 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1996.
Fortenbaugh, William W. “Aristotle on Women: Politics i 13.1260a13.” Ancient Philosophy 35
(2015): 395–404.
Fortenbaugh, William W. “Aristotle on Slaves and Women.” In Articles on Aristotle, vol. 2, Ethics
and Politics, edited by Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji, 135–39.
London: Duckworth, 1977.
Freeland, Cynthia. “Aristotle on the Sense of Touch.” In Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, edited by
Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 227–48. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Freudenthal, Gad. Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
Garsten, Bryan. “Deliberating and Acting Together.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s
Politics, edited by Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée, 324–49. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013.
Gelber, Jessica. “Females in Aristotle’s Embryology.” In Aristotle’s “Generation of Animals”: A
Critical Guide, edited by Andrea Falcon and David Lefebvre, 171–87. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018.
Gelber, Jessica. “Form and Inheritance in Aristotle’s Embryology.” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 39 (2010): 183–212.
Gill, Mary Louise. “Material Necessity and Meteorology IV.12.” In Aristotelische Biologie:
Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, edited by Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger, 145–61.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.
Gill, Mary Louise. “Unity of Definition in Metaphysics H.6 and Z.12.” In Being, Nature, and Life in
Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf, edited by James G. Lennox and Robert Bolton, 97–
121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Goldin, Owen. “The Pythagorean Table of Opposites, Symbolic Classification, and Aristotle.”
Science in Context 28, no. 2 (2015): 171–93.
Gotthelf, Allan. “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality.” In Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s
Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 204–42. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Gotthelf, Allan. “First Principles in Aristotle’s Parts of Animals.” In Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, 167–98. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Gotthelf, Allan, and James G. Lennox, eds. Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Graham, D. W. “Symmetry in the Empedoclean Cycle.” Classical Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1988): 297–
312.
Guthrie, W. K. C. “Empedocles.” In A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, 122–265. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Hadas, Moses. “Utopian Sources in Herodotus.” Classical Philology 30, no. 2 (1935): 113–21.
Halper, E. “Metaphysics Z 12 and H 6: The Unity of Form and Composite.” Ancient Philosophy 4
(1984): 146–58.
Halperin, David M. “One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.” In One Hundred Years of
Homosexuality, 15–40. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Hanson, Ann Ellis. “The Medical Writer’s Woman.” In Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic
Experience in the Ancient Greek World, edited by David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma
I. Zeitlin, 309–38. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Heath, Malcolm. “Aristotle on Natural Slavery.” Phronesis 53, no. 3 (2008): 246–53.
Henry, Devin. Aristotle on Form, Matter, and Moving Causes: The Hylomorphic Theory of
Substantial Generation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Henry, Devin M. “How Sexist Is Aristotle’s Developmental Biology?” Phronesis 52, no. 3 (2007):
251–69.
Henry, Devin M. “Understanding Aristotle’s Reproductive Hylomorphism.” Apeiron 39, no. 3
(2006): 257–88.
Henry, Madeleine M., and Sharon L. James. “Woman, City, State: Theories, Ideologies, and Concepts
in the Archaic and Classical Periods.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by
Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, 84–95. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Holmes, Brooke. The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient
Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Holt, Parker. “Women and Medicine.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by
Sharon James and Sheila Dillon, 107–204. Chichester: Blackwell, 2012.
Horowitz, Maryanne Cline. “Aristotle and Woman.” Journal of the History of Biology 9, no. 2
(1976): 182–213.
Huffman, Carl A. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Inwood, Brad. The Poem of Empedocles. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
Johnson, Monte R. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
Jouanna, Jacques. “Textual History.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates, edited by Peter
Pormann, 38–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Jowett, Benjamin. The Politics of Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885.
Judson, Lindsay. “Chance and ‘Always or for the Most Part’ in Aristotle.” In Aristotle’s Physics: A
Collection of Essays, edited by Lindsay Judson, 73–99. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Just, Roger. Women in Athenian Law and Life. London: Routledge, 1989.Kahn, Charles H. “The
Myth of the Statesman.” In Plato’s Myths, edited by Catalin Partenie, 148–66. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Kahn, Charles H. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
2001.
Karbowski, Joseph. “Aristotle on the Deliberative Abilities of Women.” Apeiron 47, no. 4 (2014):
435–60.
Keyt, David. “Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics.” In David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, A
Companion to Aristotle’s “Politics,” 118–41. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Keyt, David. “Three Fundamental Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics.” Phronêsis 32, no. 1 (1987): 54–
79.
Keyt, David, and Fred D. Miller. A Companion to Aristotle’s “Politics.” Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
King, Helen. Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London:
Routledge, 1998.
King, Helen. The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence. Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2013.
Kraut, Richard. Aristotle: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kraut, Richard. “Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta,
3.2, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/aristotle-ethics/.
Kurke, Leslie. Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Ancient Greece.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Labarrière, J. L. “De la phronesis animale.” In Biologie, logique, et métaphysique, edited by Daniel
Devereux and Pierre Pellegrin, 405–28. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1990.
Labarrière, J. L. “Imagination humaine et imagination animale chez Aristote.” Phronesis 29, no. 1
(1984): 17–49.
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992.
Lennox, James G. “Aristotle on the Biological Roots of Virtue: The Natural History of Natural
Virtue.” In Bridging the Gap between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics, edited by Devin Henry and
Karen Margrethe Nielsen, 193–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Leunissen, Mariska. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Leunissen, Mariska. From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2017.
Levin, Susan B. “Plato on Women’s Nature: Reflections on the Laws.” Ancient Philosophy 20, no. 1
(2000): 81–97.
Levin, Susan B. “Women’s Nature and Role in the Ideal Polis: Republic V Revisited.” In Feminism
in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Julie K. Ward, 13–30. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Lewis, Frank A. How Aristotle Gets By in Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Lloyd, G .E. R. Aristotelian Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Lloyd, G. E. R. “Right and Left in Greek Philosophy.” In Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic
Classification, edited by Rodney Needham, 167–86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Lloyd, G. E. R. “The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy.” Journal of
Hellenistic Studies 84 (1964): 92–106.
Lloyd, G. E. R. Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. Females of the Species: Semonides on Women. London: Duckworth, 1975.
Lonie, Iain M. The Hippocratic Treatises, “On Generation,” “On the Nature of the Child,”
“Diseases IV”: A Commentary. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981.
Loraux, Nicole. The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between
the Sexes. Translated by Caroline Levine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Lord, Carnes. “On the Early History of the Aristotelian Corpus.” American Journal of Philology 107,
no. 2 (1986): 137–61.
Lorenz, Hendrik. The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Lovibond, Sabina. “An Ancient Theory of Gender: Plato and the Pythagorean Table.” In Women in
Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night, edited by Léonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler, and Maria
Wyke, 88–101. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994.
Manville, Philip Brook. The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
Marinella, Lucrezia. La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne. Venice: Giolito, 1601.
Martin, Alain, and Oliver Primavesi. L’Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666):
Introduction, édition et commentaire. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999.
Mayhew, Robert. “Part and Whole in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy.” Journal of Ethics 1, no. 4
(1997): 325–40.
Mayhew, Robert. The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationalization. Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 2004.
Menn, Stephen. “The Aim and the Argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Part Two: The False Path (Z
and H), IIe: Z17–H6: How to Give the λόγος τῆς οὐσίας of a Composite Thing, 33.”
https://www.philosophie.hu-berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/antike/mitarbeiter/menn/contents.
McKirahan, Richard D. Philosophy before Socrates. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994.
Miller, Fred D. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Modrak, Deborah K. W. “Aristotle: Women, Deliberation, and Nature.” In Engendering Origins:
Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle, edited by Bat-Ami Bar On, 207–22. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994.
Morford, Mark, Robert J. Lenardon, and Michael Sham. Classical Mythology. 10th ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014.
Morrow, Glenn R. Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1960; revised edition 1993.
Morsink, Johannes. “Was Aristotle’s Biology Sexist?” Journal of the History of Biology 12, no. 1
(1979): 83–112.
Moss, Jessica. Aristotle on the Apparent Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Mulgan, R. G. Aristotle’s Political Theory: An Introduction for Students of Political Theory. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977.
Nagle, D. Brendan. The Household as the Foundation of Aristotle’s Polis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
Nagler, Michael N. Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1974.
Natali, Carlo. “Posterior Analytics and the Definition of Happiness in NE I.” Phronesis 55, no. 4
(2010): 304–24.
Neuhaeuser, Joseph. Aristoteles’ Lehre von den sinnlichen Erkenntnissvermögen und seinen
Organen. Leipzig: Verlag von Erich Koschny, 1878.
Newman, W. L. The Politics of Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887.
Nielsen, Karen Margrethe. “Economy and Private Property.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Aristotle’s Politics, edited by Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée, 67–91. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Nielsen, Karen Margrethe. “The Constitution of the Soul: Aristotle on Lack of Deliberative
Authority.” Classical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (2015): 572–86.
Nielsen, Karen M. “The Private Parts of Animals: Aristotle on the Teleology of Sexual Difference.”
Phronesis 53, nos. 4–5 (2008): 373–405.
Nussbaum, Martha C. “Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution.” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. (1988): 145–84.
Nussbaum, Martha C. “Reply to David Charles.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl.
(1988): 207–14.
Nussbaum, Martha C. “The Sumphuton Pneuma and the De Motu Animalium’s Account of Soul and
Body.” In Aristotle, Aristotle’s “De Motu Animalium,” translated by Martha C. Nussbaum, 143–
64. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Nuyens François. L’évolution de la psychologie d’Aristote. Leuven: Institut supérieur de philosophie,
1948.
O’Brien, Denis. Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle: A Reconstruction from the Fragments and Secondary
Sources. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Okin Susan Moller. Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1979.
Okin, Susan Moller. “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on the Family.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 345–69.
Osborne, Catherine. “Empedocles Recycled,” Classical Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1987): 24–50.
Osborne, Catherine. Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics.
London: Duckworth, 1987.
Padel, Ruth. “Women: Model for Possession by Greek Daemons.” In Images of Women in Antiquity,
edited by Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt, 3–19. London: Routledge, 1983.
Park, Katherine, and Robert A. Nye. “Destiny Is Anatomy.” New Republic, 18 February 1991, 53–57.
Pearson, Giles. Aristotle on Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Peck, A. L. “Authenticity.” In Aristotle, History of Animals, Books 1–3, translated by A. L. Peck, lv–
lvii. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Pellegrin, Pierre. “Natural Slavery.” Translated by E. Zoli Filotas. In The Cambridge Companion to
Aristotle’s Politics, edited by Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée, 92–116. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Philip, James A. “Aristotle’s Sources for Pythagorean Doctrine.” Phoenix 17, no. 4 (1963): 251–65.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves. New York: Shocken Books, 1975.
Primavesi, Oliver. “Aristotle on the ‘So-Called Pythagoreans’: From Lore to Principles.” In A
History of Pythagoreanism, edited by Carl A. Huffman, 243–44. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Primavesi, Oliver. “Second Thoughts on Some Presocratics (Metaphysics A 8, 989a18–990a32).” In
Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Carlos Steel and Oliver
Primavesi, 225–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Reeve. C. D. C. “Aristotle on Women: Diminished Deliberation and Divine Male Rule.” Revue
Roumaine de Philosophie 64, no. 1 (2020): 3–38.
Rhodes, P. J. A Commentary on the Aristotelian “Athenaion Politeia.” Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1981.
Riesbeck, David J. “Aristotle on the Politics of Marriage: ‘Marital Rule’ in the Politics.” The
Classical Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2015): 134–52.
Rist, John M. The Mind of Aristotle: A Study in Philosophical Growth. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1989.
Ross, G. R. T. Aristotle, De Sensu and De Memoria: Text and Translation with Introduction and
Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906.
Rousselle, Aline. “Observation feminine et idéologie masculine: Le corps de la femme d’après les
médecins grecs.” Annales 35, no. 5 (1980): 1089–1115.
Rousselle, Aline. Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Saïd, Suzanne. “Féminin, femme et femelle dans les grands traités biologiques d’Aristote.” In La
femme dans les sociétés antiques, edited by Edmond Lévy, 93–117. Strasbourg: Université des
sciences humaines de Strasbourg, 1983.
Samaras, Thanassis. “Aristotle on Gender in Politics I.” History of Political Thought 37, no. 4
(2016): 595–605.Saunders, Trevor J. “Plato on Women in the Laws.” In The Greek World, edited
by Anton Powell, 591–609. London: Routledge, 1995.
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato.” Political
Theory 4, no. 2 (1976): 195–212.
Scaltsas, Theodore, David Charles, and Mary Louise Gill, eds. Unity, Identity, and Explanation in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Schofield, Malcolm. “Ideology and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Theory of Slavery.” In Aristoteles’
“Politik”: Akten des XI Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Günther Patzig, 12–15. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990.
Schofield, Malcolm. Plato: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Schofield, Malcolm. “Pythagoreanism: Emerging from the Presocratic Fog (Metaphysics A 5).” In
Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Carlos Steel, 141–166.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Scodel, Harvey Ronald. Diaeresis and Myth in Plato’s Statesman. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1987.
Sedley, David. Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2008.
Sedley, David. “Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s Timaeus.” In Plato and Hesiod, edited by G. R.
Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold, 256–57. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Shields, Christopher. “The Science of Soul in Aristotle’s Ethics.” In Bridging the Gap between
Aristotle’s Science and Ethics, edited by Devin Henry and Karen Margrethe Nielsen, 232–53.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Simpson, Peter. “Aristotle’s Criticisms of Socrates’ Communism of Wives and Children.” Apeiron
24, no. 2 (1991): 100–103.
Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind. New York: Dover, 1953.
Solmsen, Friedrich. Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2015.
Sparshott, Francis. “Aristotle on Women.” Philosophical Inquiry 7, no. 3 (1985): 177–200.
Spelman, Elizabeth. “Aristotle and the Politicization of the Soul.” In Discovering Reality: Feminist
Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, edited by
Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, 2nd ed., 17–30. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003.
Stalley, R. F. An Introduction to Plato’s “Laws.” Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Stein, Heinrich. Empedocles Agrigentinus Fragmenta. Bonn: Marcus, 1852.
Strauss, Leo. The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Swanson, Judith A. The Public and the Private in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992.
Trépanier, Simon. “Empedocles on the Ultimate Symmetry of the World.” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 24 (2003): 1–57.
Tress, Daryl McGowan. “The Metaphysical Science of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and Its
Feminist Critics.” Review of Metaphysics 46, no. 2 (1992): 307–41.
Trott, Adriel M. Aristotle on the Nature of Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2014.
van der Eijk, Philip J. “On Sterility (‘HA X’), a Medical Work by Aristotle?” Classical Quarterly 49,
no. 2 (1999): 490–502.
van der Eijk, Philip J. “The Matter of Mind: Aristotle on the Biology of ‘Psychic’ Processes and the
Bodily Aspects of Thinking.” In Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse,
edited by Wolfgang Kullman and Sabine Föllinger, 231–57. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.
van der Eijk, Philip. “The Matter of Mind.” In Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity:
Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease, 206–37. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Veloso, Claudio William. “Aristote, ses commentateurs et les déficiences délibératives de l’esclave et
de la femme.” Les études philosophiques 107 (2013–14): 513–34.
Verbeke, G. “Doctrine du pneuma et entéléchisme chez Aristote.” In Aristotle on Mind and the
Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by G. E. R. Lloyd and G. E.
L. Owen, 191–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. “Hestia-Hermes: Sur l’expression religieuse de l’espace et du movement chez
les Grecs.” L’homme 3, no. 3 (1963): 12–50.
Vidal-Naquet Pierre. “Plato’s Myth of the Statesman, the Ambiguities of the Golden Age and of
History.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 98 (November 1978): 132–41.
Vlastos, Gregory. “Was Plato a Feminist?” In Feminist Interpretations of Plato, edited by Nancy
Tuana, 11–23. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
Wehrli, Claude. “Les gynéconomes.” Museum Helveticum 19, no. 1 (1962): 33–38.
Weil, Raymond. Aristote et l’histoire: Essai sur la “Politique.” Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1960.
Witt, Charlotte. “Aristotle on Deformed Animal Kinds.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 43
(2012): 83–106.
Witt, Charlotte. “Teleology in Aristotelian Science and Metaphysics.” In Method in Ancient
Philosophy, edited by Jyl Gentzler, 253–69. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Woodbury, Leonard. “The Gratitude of the Locrian Maiden: Pindar, Pyth. 2.18–20.” Transactions of
the American Philological Association 108 (1878): 285–99.
Wright, M. R. Empedocles: The Extant Fragments. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Index Locorum
For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.
Aeschylus
Eumenides
655–65, 12
658–61, 37
Aetius
V 5.1, 37–38
V 19.5, 15, 16
Aristophanes
Ekkl.—Assemblywomen [Ecclesiazousae]
206–12, 48
206–40, 48
210–12, 57
441–59, 48
597–600, 48–49
611–18, 49
635–37, 49
Wasps
1265, 31
Aristotle
Phys.—Physics [Physica]
2.1 192b10–33, 163
2.2 194a27–29, 165
2.3 194b33, 3–4
2.8 198b29–33, 17
2.9, 125
2.9 200a2–3, 123–24
2.9 200a8, 122–23
2.9 200a11–13, 123–24
Meteor.—Meteorology [Meteorologica]
4.1, 91
4.1 378b10–14, 84
4.1 379a1–4, 84
4.2 379b13–14, 84
4.2 379b17–25, 83
4.2 379b25–32, 87–88, 133–34
4.2 379b32–34, 84
4.2 379b33, 84–85
Juv.—On Youth and Old Age, Life and Death [De juventute et senectute, De vita et morte]
3 469a5, 182
3 469a10, 219
3 469a10–21, 79
3–4 468b32–469a27, 80–81
4 469b8–9, 78
4 469b8–14, 77
26(20) 480a3–11, 89–90
HA—History of Animals [Historia animalium]
1.1 488a7–10, 160
1.16 494b27–29, 222–23
2.19 521a21–22, 224–25
3.19 521a2–5, 219–20
4.11 538b7–10, 224–25
7.3 583b3–5, 29
9.1 608a19–b18, 228, 236–37
9.1 608a33–34, 233, 237–38
9.1 608a33–b18, 241, 243
9.1 608b1–19, 33
10.2 634b30–39, 38
Physiog.—Physiognomics [Physiognomica]
2 806b32–34, 224–25
5 809b4–12, 224–25
Prob.—Problems [Problemata]
4.25 879a32–35, 32–33
4.25 879a33–34, 28
10.36 894b26, 78–79
Met.—Metaphysics [Metaphysica]
1.1 980a27–b2, 225
1.1 980b26–981a7, 226
1.5 986a23–28, 24
5.1 1013a9–14, 154–55
5.5 1015a33–34, 122–23
5.5 1015b11–15, 122–23
5.6 1016b11–16, 181
5.10 1018a22–24, 64
5.10 1018a25–32, 64
5.10 1018a29–30, 65
5.10 1018a29–31, 65
7.5 1030b25–27, 66
7.17, 144
8.4 1044a39–b3, 145
8.6 1045a23–34, 145
9.1 1046a19–28, 91
10.3 1054a23–26, 64
10.9, 68, 115, 135, 141
10.9 1058a29ff, 63–64
10.9 1058a37–b3, 61, 67
10.9 1058b5–6, 67
10.9 1058b23–24, 67–68
13.3 1078a7, 68
13.3 1078a7–8, 64–65
14.5 1092b10, 25
Pol.—Politics [Politica]
1.1 1252a9–17, 156
1.1 1252a12–13, 197–98
1.1 1252a17–1.2 1252a26, 156
1.1 1252a22, 157–58
1.2 1252a26–27, 156–57
1.2 1252a27–28, 140–41
1.2 1252a28, 212
1.2 1252a30–32, 166
1.2 1252a35, 253–54
1.2 1252b4–6, 186
1.2 1252b5–9, 252
1.2 1252b10–30, 162–63
1.2 1252b29–30, 212
1.2 1252b30–32, 5, 156
1.2 1253a1–2, 163
1.2 1253a8–10, 160, 163
1.2 1253a9–19, 229
1.2 1253a15–18, 190
1.2 1253a19–27, 161–62
1.2 1253b1, 156–57
1.3 1253b1–2, 156–57
1.3 1253b5–7, 155
1.4 1254a8–11, 181
1.4 1254a14–16, 181
1.4–7, 157–58
1.5, 161–62, 173, 175–76, 182
1.5 1254a20–b20, 159–60, 163, 165–66
1.5 1254a24–b16, 180–81
1.5 1254a27–28, 181
1.5 1254b5–6, 176–77
1.5 1254b21–3, 251
1.5 1254b27–32, 251
1.6 1255a27–30, 252
1.6 1255b11–12, 181
1.12 1259a37–b4, 155–56
1.12 1259a37–b9, 176
1.12 1259b3–9, 192
1.12 1259b8–9, 177
1.12 1259b10–11, 177–78
1.13, 140–41, 157–58, 172–74, 205–6, 230
1.13 1259b31ff., 201
1.13 1260a2–4, 168–69
1.13 1260a7–14, 167
1.13 1260a8–10, 186
1.13 1260a12, 251
1.13 1260a13, 174–75
1.13 1260a14, 1
1.13 1260a31–3, 170
1.13 1260b3–7, 171
2, 56
2.1 1261a8–9, 187
2.1 1261a10–12, 187
2.1 1261a13–14, 188
2.2 1261a22–30, 192
2.2 1261a29–b5, 198
2.2 1261b10–15, 196
2.3 1261b30–32, 193–94
2.4 1262b7–14, 193
2.4 1262b12–15, 196
2.5 1263b4–14, 196
2.5 1263b29–37, 196
2.5 1263b31–32, 193
2.5 1264a16–22, 201
2.5 1264b1–6, 188
2.6 1265a1–6, 51
2.6 1265b18–21, 201
2.9 1271a26–35, 203
2.11 1272b32–33, 203
3.4 1276b20–31, 202
3.4 1277a23, 202
3.4 1277a24, 183–84
3.4 1277b6–9, 183
3.4 1277b17–25, 169
3.4 1277b18–21, 184
3.4 1277b21–30, 179
3.4 1277b25–26, 169–70
3.4 1277b25–30, 179
3.9 1280a9–25, 200–1
3.9 1280a31–34, 190
3.9 1280b38–39, 190
3.9 1281a3, 190
3.11 1282a16–17, 253–54
3.14 1285a18–20, 253–54
3.14 1285b19–20, 252
3.16 1287a29–32, 245–46
3.16 1287a29–34, 235–36, 245
4.4 1291a10–19, 197
4.11 1295b34–1296a17, 200–1
5.3 1303a24–b7, 200–1
5.11 1313b9, 253–54
7.7 1327b18–38, 244–45, 252
7.7 1327b19, 245–46
7.7 1327b19–38, 234
7.7 1327b36–39, 242
7.7 1327b36–1328a16, 243–44
7.7 1327b38–39, 238–39
7.7 1327b38–1328a16, 238–39
7.7 1328a5–7, 244, 247
7.7 1328a8–9, 243–44
7.13 1332a40–b6, 171
7.13 1332b6–8, 171
7.14 1332b12, 190–91
7.14 1333a16–25, 217–18
7.14 1333a16–30, 168
7.15 1334b22, 232
7.15 1334b22–23, 235–36
7.17 1336b11–12, 253–54
Rhet.—Rhetoric [Rhetorica]
1.15 1376b12, 1.15 1376b27, 174–75
2.6 1383b16–18, 170
2.9 1387b15–17, 253–54
Censorinus
Democritus
DK A141, 274n.95
DK A143, 274n.95
Diogenes of Apollonia
DK A19, 27–28
Empedocles
DK B21, 15
DK B57-58, 15
DK B59, 15
DK B61, 15, 17
DK B62, 15–16
DK B64, 16
DK B65, 17, 274–75n.103
DK B67, 17, 42–43
DK B92, 15
DK B96, 15
DK B98, 15
Martin & Primavesi 294, 15
Martin & Primavesi 297, 16
Euripides
Orestes
552–54, 12
Galen
Heraclitus
DK B117, 27–28
DK B118, 27–28
Herodotus
The Histories
2.35, 33–34
2.172, 177
3.81, 278n.129
Hesiod
Theogony
50, 13–14
123–25, 22
211–25, 22
535-84, 13–14
582–88, 14
585, 14
591, 13–14
603–607, 14
607-610, 14
Works and Days
61–63, 13
67, 13
89, 13
107–76, 13
109–19, 20–21
582–88, 32–33
Hippocrates
Aph.—Aphorisms [Aphorismata]
5.48, 29
Epid.—Epidemics [Epidemiae]
6.4.21, 43–44
Homer
II.—Iliad
i 597, 31
vii 181, 31
xiv 165, 27–28
xxiv 315–21, 31
Od.—Odyssey
ii 146–54, 31
Parmenides
DK B17, 29, 275n.106
Plato
Criti.—Critias
109c5-d12, 19
109–112, 19
110b5–c3, 49
113c1–114b2, 19
121a9–b1, 19, 21–22
Laws
6 764c5–d3, 50
6 781a2–b3, 54
6 780d5–781d5, 50
7 805a3–d4, 50
7 794a7–b5, 50
7 804d1–e4, 50
7 804d7–805b1, 50
7 805c2–d1, 50
7 807b3–c2, 51
7 813e4–814c6, 50
Meno
72d4–73c5, 56–57
73a5–b1, 57
73b5–7, 56–57
Phaedrus
239c, 33–34
Polit.—Statesman
259b, 279n.144
271a1–4, 18–19
271a5–6, 18
271b4–c2, 18
272a2–3, 18
272b6–c7, 23
273a4–b6, 21–22
273b4–6, 21–22
274a2–5, 18–19
274b5–c5, 18–19
Rep.—Republic
3 395d5–e4, 54
4 431b4–c4, 54
5, 45–46, 47–48, 49, 50–57, 58–59, 186–87, 257
5 451d–e, 189
5 464a1–b5, 49
5 469d5–e1, 54
10 605c10–e8, 54
Smp.—Symposium
189d5–e6, 17–18
189e6–190b6, 17–18
190b6–d8, 17–18
191a8, 17–18
191a–b, 193
191b8–9, 17–18
191c1–3, 17–18
206a4–e7, 22–23
206e8–207a4, 22–23
208e3–209b5, 22–23
209c5–7, 22–23
223c, 31
Tht.—Theaetetus
148e1–151d, 23
Ti.—Timaeus
42a1–2, 16
49–51, 26–27
90d9–e2, 19–20
90e6–91a5, 19–20, 54–55
91c1–8, 32–33
91d6–7, 54–55
Semonides of Amorgos
1-2, 14
94-98, 14
Sophocles
Ajax
1225, 31
Xenophon
Economics
7.2, 7.30–31, 33–34
Memorabilia
3.4.6, 57–58
General Index
For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.
Aeschylus, 12, 37
Aetius, 15, 21
akrasia (weakness of will), 2–3, 236–37
Amasis, 176–78, 308n.42
Anaxagoras, 29, 37, 42, 43–44
androgyny, 17–18
anger. See also thumos, 234–36, 237–39, 241, 242–44
Aristophanes
on the left-right division of the body, 31
on moisture and the intellect, 27–28
on women’s role in political life, 6–7, 10, 47–49, 51–54, 56–57, 205
Aristotle. See specific works
Assemblywomen (Aristophanes), 47–49, 51–54, 56–57
Athens, 19, 45–47, 49, 167–68
Atlantis, 19, 21–22
blood
concoction and, 73, 80–81, 86–87, 215, 248
courage and, 221, 231–32
the heart, 77–81, 219, 220–21, 222–24, 227–28
heat and, 217, 218–24, 227–28, 232–34, 239–40, 252
intelligence and, 220–21, 231–32
moisture in, 220
nourishment and, 119–20, 219
parts of the body and, 221, 222–23
phronêsis and, 221
purity of, 219–25
sensation and, 218–20, 221–25
sexual difference and, 208, 217, 221, 222–25, 230–32, 234, 239, 248–49, 254–56
sperma (seed) and, 77–78, 80–81, 83–86, 88, 213–14
thumos and, 232–33, 234, 239–40
bouleutikon (deliberative faculty), 217–18, 231, 251–53, 259
eidos (species form). See also form; morphê. 133–34, 137–38, 149
the embryo. See also fetation
the heart and, 80–81, 111–12
nutritive soul and, 95–96, 101, 107
organ formation in, 28, 89, 111–13
pneuma’s role in forming, 106–7, 108, 109
rational soul and, 146–47
sensitive soul and, 101, 112
sex determination in, 7, 10, 41–45, 59, 60, 62, 109–11, 113, 116–18, 133–34, 136, 209, 215–16
telos of, 101, 121–22
thumos and, 209
emotion, 33, 54–56, 160, 171–72, 238. See also specific emotions
Empedocles
on offsprings’ resemblance to parents, 40–41
on the origins of sexual difference, 14–17, 20–21, 23, 119
on reproduction, 10, 16–17, 21–22, 39
on sexual determination in utero, 41–43
on sperma, 37–39, 74–75
on women and coldness, 28–29, 35–36
Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 181–82, 190–91, 235–36, 244, 253
Euripides, 12
Eurytus, 25
Galen, 42–44
Generation/Nature of the Child (Hippocratic text), 34, 37–41, 44, 82
Generation of Animals (Aristotle)
on animal body types and heat, 232–33
on concoction, 73, 78, 85–88
on conditional necessity and material necessity, 124–25, 130–31
definitions of male and female in, 70–71, 74
on katamênia, 37, 82
on the nutritive soul, 71–72
on organ formation in the embryo, 109–10, 111
on pneuma, 106–7
on reproduction, 70–73
on semen, 82, 105–6
on sex determination, 10, 60, 109–11, 116–17
on sexual difference, 61, 62–63, 69–73, 78–79, 125–26, 149, 207
on sexual organs, 76, 211
on sperma, 70
on transmission of the soul, 61
on female as deformity, 1, 61, 73–74, 134–35, 136, 138–39, 142
gonê (semen). See also semen; sperma, 113–14, 137–38
the heart
blood and, 77–81, 219, 220–21, 222–24, 227–28
dryness and, 29, 227–28
the embryo and, 80–81, 111–12
heat and, 29, 73, 77–79, 80–81, 86, 138–39, 219, 220–21, 287n.57
imagination and, 227–28
memory and, 227–28
nutritive soul and, 80
sensation and, 79–81, 219, 222–24, 227–28
sensitive soul and, 80, 112
sexual difference and, 78–79, 81, 118, 138–39, 219, 284n.33
sexual organs and, 77–81, 118–19, 138–39
heat
animals and, 30–31
blood and, 217, 218–24, 227–28, 232–34, 239–40, 252
concoction and, 73–74, 77–79, 83–85, 86, 89, 209, 213–15, 248
courage and, 231–32
deliberation and, 218–19, 258–59
females’ lower levels of, 1, 4, 7, 17, 27–29, 31–32, 35–36, 43, 73–74, 86–87, 131, 145–46, 210,
213–15, 217, 230–31, 234, 237–38, 239, 246, 248, 255–56, 257–59
the heart and, 29, 73, 77–79, 80–81, 86, 138–39, 219, 220–21, 287n.57
katamênia and, 86–87, 89, 209–10
males and, 17, 27–28, 36, 43, 78–79, 90, 208–9, 222–23, 231–32, 233–34, 237–38, 239
phronêsis and, 218–19
sexual organs and, 86
soul heat (pneuma) and, 82–83, 86–87, 89–90
sperma and, 73, 90, 98
thumos and, 208–9, 217, 232–34, 237–38, 239, 246
Heath, Malcom, 321n.50
Heraclitus, 27–28
Herodotus, 33–34, 177
Hesiod
on the origins of sexual difference, 13–14, 20–21, 23
on Pandora, 13–14, 20–21
women viewed as punishment by, 12, 22
Hippocratic texts
Generation, 34, 37–41, 44, 82
The Nature of the Child, 34, 36, 40–42, 82
Regimen, 34, 36, 43, 44–45
Superfetation, 34, 43–44
History of Animals (Aristotle), 33, 37–38, 228, 233, 236–37, 241
Homer, 10, 27–28, 31–33, 232
honor, 190–91, 198–99, 234–35, 237–43, 245–46
the household (oikos)
acquisition versus preservation in, 179–80, 202–3
affection (philia) and, 190, 193
children and, 155, 157, 162–63, 183
as community, 189–91
exchange and, 190–91, 194–95
men and, 152–53, 179–80, 183, 256, 258
moral versus material aims in, 203
natural rule of men over women in, 1, 152–53, 155–57, 158–59, 162–63, 164–65, 173–74, 179–80,
204
natural slaves and, 155, 157, 162–63, 183
natural status of, 158–59, 163–64, 203
polis and, 152–53, 156–57, 161–63, 165, 188–89, 202
self-sufficiency and, 162–63, 196, 199–200
sexual difference and, 2–3, 7, 154, 186, 188–90, 191–92, 193, 200, 202–4, 208–9
telos of, 158–59, 163–64, 180
unity of, 192–93, 194–95
virtue and, 172
whole-part relationships in, 181–83
women and, 11, 33–34, 57, 59, 152–54, 179–80, 183, 185, 247, 255, 258–59, 271n.73
imagination
animals and, 228–29
deliberation and, 230
desire and, 229, 234
the heart and, 227–28
as highest soul faculty in most animals, 212
memory and, 225
rationality and, 213, 225, 228–29
sensation and, 213, 225, 228–29
sexual difference and, 208, 213, 217
thumos and, 213, 234, 240–41
intelligence
appetite and, 160
blood and, 220–21, 231–32
dryness and, 27–28
experience and, 226–27
judgments and, 227–28
memory and, 225–26, 227–28
men and, 231–32
rule and, 250
sensation and, 223–24, 249, 259
thumos and, 217, 244–46
women and, 249–50, 254–55, 259
intercourse. See also reproduction
desire and, 16–17
female seed and, 39–40
marriage in Athens and, 46
pleasure and, 39–40, 49, 51–52, 53
sperma and, 39–40
katamênia (menses)
capacities and potentiality of, 92–94, 107, 110–11, 145–46, 148–49
conception and, 100, 101–3, 104, 109, 257–58
fertility and, 87–88
heat and, 86–87, 89, 209–10
material versus conditional necessity of, 4, 131–32
moisture and, 36, 91, 106
movements of, 105–6, 113–14, 117–18, 120, 210, 294n.95
nutritive soul and, 41, 71, 74–75, 90, 91, 92–94, 95–96, 97–98, 101–2, 107, 110–11, 117, 144–45,
148–49
passive nature of, 98, 102, 146, 149–50
pneuma and, 106–7
semen and, 73–74, 82, 89, 91, 282n.20
sensitive soul and, 71, 74–75, 90, 92–94, 95–96, 97–98, 101–2, 107, 117, 144–45, 148–49,
288n.64, 291n.75
sex determination of offspring and, 43, 81, 116–18, 120, 129–30, 209, 215
telos of, 131
the uterus and, 78
women’s temperature and, 28–29, 35–36, 42–43
koinônia (community), 52, 163–64, 189–90, 199, 203, 238–39
Kronos, era of, 18–21, 23, 265n.27
natural rule
aristocratic versus constitutional forms of rule and, 175–80
of fathers over children, 153–54, 155–56, 157, 162–63, 167, 181
as exercised in organic wholes, 152–53, 159–60, 161–62, 164–66, 180
force and, 164
the household and, 1, 152–53, 155–57, 158–59, 162–63, 164–65, 173–74, 179–80, 204
of masters over natural slaves, 153–54, 155–57, 159–60, 161, 162–63, 166, 167, 181
of men over women, 1, 2–3, 7, 154–56, 159–60, 161–63, 164–66, 167, 172–73, 175–81, 204
phronêsis and, 169–70, 172, 179, 181, 183–85
rationality and, 168–70
telos of, 152–54, 161–62, 164–65
whole-part relations and, 181–83
The Nature of the Child (Hippocratic treatise), 34, 36, 40–42, 82
necessity
of females and women, 9–10, 14, 87, 121–22, 128–34,
150
of katamênia, 4, 131–32
material versus conditional, 124–25, 130–31
Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle)
moral psychology and, 166–67
on natural rule of men over women, 175–76, 178
on phronêsis, 217–18
on rationality and persuasion, 171–72
on reciprocal equality, 198
on shared moral perceptions, 194
on thumos, 236–37, 240
on whole-part relationship between fathers and children, 182
Nielsen, Karen, 61–62, 141
nutritive soul
capacity of, 107
the embryo and, 96–97, 101, 107
heart and, 80
heat and, 74–75
katamênia and, 41, 71, 74–75, 90, 91, 92–94, 95–96, 97–98, 101–2, 107, 110–11, 117, 144–45,
148–49
semen and, 90, 93–94, 95–96
sensitive soul and, 90, 143–44
sexual difference and, 60, 212
wind-eggs and, 71–72, 74–75, 93–94, 96–97, 100–1
virtue
children and, 170
comprehension (sunesis) and, 184–85
the household and, 172
men and, 11, 57–59, 169, 172, 173–74
mildness, 241
natural rulers and, 200–2
natural slaves and, 57–58, 170–71, 181–82, 200, 244
natural subjects and, 169, 183–84
obedience and, 169
phronêsis and, 168–69, 170, 172, 183–84
rationality and, 171–72
sexual difference and, 195–200
thumos and, 239–43
women and, 7, 11, 57–59, 166–69, 170, 172–74, 183–84, 200, 204, 237