Arthur Schopenhauer, acclaimed philosophical curmudgeon, was rumoured to be quite the ladies’ man. One wonders how, given the views espoused in the infamous essay On Women:
[N]ature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses it’s wings after mating, since they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the same reason …
After a lonely decade in his mountaintop cave, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra descends from the clouds to reveal the fruits of his meditations to the intellectually impoverished masses. In the section ‘On Little Old and Young Women’ he shares his insights on females:
“Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—that is pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
“A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly …
The following excerpt from ‘Of National Characteristics’ finds Kant in something of a quandary. He recognises merit in the sexist bigotry of a “Negro carpenter,” but can’t bring himself to overlook the fact that the fellow “was quite black from head to foot” …
In his 1783 essay On the Immortality of the Soul, David Hume presents the following, somewhat unexpected, argument:
On the theory of the soul’s mortality, the inferiority of women’s capacity is easily accounted for. Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body …
According to Immanuel Kant, it is better for a woman to die resisting rape than suffer the ‘dishonour’ of submitting to her attacker:
No matter what torments I have to suffer, I can live morally. I must suffer them all, including the torments of death, rather than commit a disgraceful action. The moment I can no longer live in honour but become unworthy of life by such an action, I can no longer live at all. Thus it is far better to die honoured and respected than to prolong one’s life … by a disgraceful act …
The lengthy and expansive discourse Timaeus is Plato’s account of the formation of the universe out of chaos by the Demiurge. Towards the end, he discusses the origin of women:
A brief mention may be made of the generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits of brevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a due proportion. On the subject of animals, then, the following remarks may be offered. Of the men who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation …
G.W. F. Hegel had very clear ideas on the educational and intellectual abilities of women. Observe:
Women can, of course, be educated, but their minds are not adapted to the higher sciences, philosophy, or certain of the arts. Women may have happy inspirations, taste, elegance, but they have not the ideal. The difference between man and woman is the same as between animal and plant. The animal corresponds more closely to the character of the man, the plant to that of the woman …
In response to a recent scandal over the racist and misogynistic comments of a white American talk-show host, respected gender theorist Snoog Dogg (Doggystyle, The Doggfather) dismissed claims that his own philosophical position bears some similarity to the now retired (and disgraced) DJ. Dogg, known for thoughtful ruminations on gender issues For All My Niggaz and Bitches, Bitch Please and I Miss That Bitch, made the following subtle distinctions to MTV in an apparently impassioned phone-in …