Virginia Held is a well-known philosopher who studies the ethics of care and the role women have historically played in philosophy and religion. Held takes the works of philosophers in the past that seem to favor a male-dominated public realm, and utilizes them to show how some of them may promote the interests of women. In her work Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory, Held critiques the presumed male biases in philosophy and prompts readers to read philosophy in a different light. She argues that philosophy has misread the human condition by assigning terms like “rational” and “human” to a specific gender.
Throughout Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory, Held brings up the idea that the concept of human has always been documented …show more content…
Following that logic, men were seen as rational, reasonable human beings, and women were seen as passionate. In other words, men were not concerned with passion or emotion, and women did not operate with reason and logic. Held observes the use of the word “human” and how it has repeatedly been categorized as a gendered-word; “‘Man’ has been associated with the human, ‘woman’ with the natural” (323). Thus, with the suggestion that men were reasonable and women were without reason, followed by the theory that reason is one of the defining characteristics of being human, there is an indication that women were less than human. The split that exists between reason and emotion is parallel to the split between man and woman – men can assert their dominance in the public realm, and can tame the unruliness that is a woman’s emotions with that assertion of dominance, supposed assumed superiority, and …show more content…
To Hobbes, it did not matter what realm man was in – public or private, man would be living in solitude. Also, in stark contrast to Aristotle, Hobbes believed that being a human did not necessitate participating in politics since everyone was born equal. Whereas Aristotle was more concerned with people finding ways to contribute to the greater good and realizing their “duties”, someone following a Hobbesian way of life would wonder what they could get from the state, instead of what they could give to
Throughout Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory, Held brings up the idea that the concept of human has always been documented …show more content…
Following that logic, men were seen as rational, reasonable human beings, and women were seen as passionate. In other words, men were not concerned with passion or emotion, and women did not operate with reason and logic. Held observes the use of the word “human” and how it has repeatedly been categorized as a gendered-word; “‘Man’ has been associated with the human, ‘woman’ with the natural” (323). Thus, with the suggestion that men were reasonable and women were without reason, followed by the theory that reason is one of the defining characteristics of being human, there is an indication that women were less than human. The split that exists between reason and emotion is parallel to the split between man and woman – men can assert their dominance in the public realm, and can tame the unruliness that is a woman’s emotions with that assertion of dominance, supposed assumed superiority, and …show more content…
To Hobbes, it did not matter what realm man was in – public or private, man would be living in solitude. Also, in stark contrast to Aristotle, Hobbes believed that being a human did not necessitate participating in politics since everyone was born equal. Whereas Aristotle was more concerned with people finding ways to contribute to the greater good and realizing their “duties”, someone following a Hobbesian way of life would wonder what they could get from the state, instead of what they could give to