Aristotle

Women in philosophy have always been seen as inferior to men. People had constructed this image of women as being less perfect and through this image, many philosophy were developed. Aristotle provided the first scientific explanation of women’s imperfection. He claimed that women were biologically inferior to men. Aristotle claimed that this was a factual statement, but he though it deserved “a rational scientific justification for this belief,”(Tuana,p.18).

Aristotle believed that heat was the fundamental issue in the perfection of animals and therefore humans. The more heat a creature produced the more perfect of a being it was. He believed that women were “colder than man,”(p.18) so obviously they were less perfect than him as well. This heat difference is what gave women all of her problems. The less heat of women, therefore lead Aristotle to believe that she had a smaller brain. This lead to her many problems dealing with inferiority.

Aristotle came up with proof for this theory based on his studies of semen and menstrual fluid. Aristotle believed that semen was conceived through blood but because of the heat of man, the semen turned white while being ejaculated. Using this as a basis, he tried to compare semen to menstrual flows, claiming they were the same because the onset of both occurred around the same time in males and females. Aristotle believed that women were colder because she was “unable to ‘cook’ her semen to the point of purity – ‘proof’ of her relative coldness,(p.19).

Aristotle believed that women were not fully human due to their lack of heat. He believed this because he though that in conception, women did not have the ability to conduct heat and become the perfect form, male. Aristotle also claimed that nature always strives to create the perfect being, male, and in not doing so, creating female, it made an imperfection. He therefore thought that “woman was the misbegotten man,”(p.19).

Aristotle’s arguments, however logical they sounded to him, were flawed. Aristotle thought that women gave birth to females either earlier in life or later. He though this happened because the heat in earlier and later times in life was deficient. This claim though could never have been proven. There has never been a “correlation between the age of a pregnant woman and the sex of her offspring,”(p.20). Another flaw in Aristotle’s logic was his belief that men were born more imperfect than females.