This paper develops a metaphysics of man and woman that fits with Catholic magisterial claims about the sexes, especially the doctrine that only men can be ministerial priests. I first explain what an argument from fittingness is. Then, I consider accounts of differences between man and woman based on procreative functions. While this is a necessary aspect of a metaphysics that fits with Catholic claims, and while procreative functions are the aspects of sexual difference best known to us, I use an argument from fittingness to defend a metaphysics on which manhood and womanhood are modes of personhood. After responding to two objections, I then argue that, in virtue of these modes, men and women intrinsically symbolize divine persons. If only men can be priests, then men as such symbolize the Son of God in a distinct way. If the sexes are equal, then women also must intrinsically symbolize a divine person, though in a different way from men; I present two accounts of how women intrinsically symbolize divine persons.
Since Socrates made the proposal for the co-education of the sexes in Republic V, readers have debated and discussed what Plato understands to be the relationship between men and women. A group of recent interpreters have argued that Plato’s ideal human being is actually a manly soul in a male body, and that he generally sees women as lesser men. This article considers Plato on the sexes by focusing on two paradigms for political rule, the Republic’s ship of state and the Statesman’s weaver, as being informed by the Homeric division of sailing as a masculine activity and weaving as feminine. This focus brings out the importance of two basic virtues for Plato, andreia and sophrosyne, which develop from tendencies respectively more masculine and more feminine. Studying the relationship between andreia and sophrosyne calls into question the claim that Plato’s ideal, whether in philosophy or in politics, is masculine.
The theme of this year’s conference, “Male and Female He Created Them,” relates precisely to Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. John Paul II discussed how persons, as embodied, express their personhood in and through such bodies. John Paul II’s thinking, moreover, provides rich insight into questions of gender. However, his approach, despite its undeniable richness, is theologically grounded, which might thereby limit its audience and approachability. Thus, the following question arises: can we, through philosophical analysis, come to a similar sense of the body as expressive of personhood? This paper will attempt to show philosophically what John Paul II demonstrated in his theology, namely the body as manifesting of the person. I thus hope to articulate a further philosophical foundation for the former pontiff’s seminal notion of the body as manifesting of personhood.
This paper shows the impossibility of woman’s ordination to the priesthood based upon John Paul II’s concepts of original unity and original solitude in his masterful works, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body and Mulieris Dignitatem. After defining some terms, I describe the woman, the “man-woman unity” and the priest in relation to the Catholic Church. With Balthasar, Bouyer and others, I argue that the priest represents Christ and the woman bears the person made in His image. Since the woman cannot both represent Christ and bear Him to the world, priestly ordination is impossible for her. In the “full explication of the dignity bestowed” upon her by God, however, the woman is both a bearer of life and the “privileged place where God can and wishes to be received into the world.” Like Mary, the woman brings Christ to birth in hearts today.
Edith Stein’s sexual anthropology has had a mixed reception among Thomists. On the one hand, she offers an approach to questions on human nature and the sexual difference, which is both philosophical and Christian. On the other hand, her suggestion that there is a “differing type of soul” in women and men seems clearly at odds with Thomas’s understanding of the sexual difference. In this paper, I offer a reading of Stein’s comments on “the soul of woman” which could help reconcile her with Thomistic metaphysics. This involves an appreciation of the different methodologies at work in Stein’s inquiries on woman, making use of Robert Sokolowski’s distinction between a “theology of disclosure” and a “theology of things.”
Whether or not woman is a socially constructed concept, one might have taken for granted that female was not. Yet many philosophers challenge this too, claiming that the two sexes are also social constructs insofar as male and female are vague, arbitrary, and historically unstable concepts. To answer this challenge, I appeal to a four-causal analysis of the two sexes based on Aristotle but informed by contemporary biology. There are formal, material, final, and efficient causes of each individual’s having his sex. This four-causal analysis shows that the two sexes are not arbitrary. Moreover, despite significant changes in our understanding of sex over time, we have retained the same concept of sex. Finally, I consider whether sex can be a biological concept while being vague and admitting borderline cases. I conclude with an argument from the General Resurrection, showing why Catholics should consider sex to be nonvague.
Aristotle’s inconsistent and puzzling account of the natural inferiority of women, slaves, and barbarians in Book 1 of the Politics has given rise to one of the greatest interpretive controversies in all philosophy, with practically the only point of consensus being Aristotle’s failure actually to demonstrate a natural basis for the conventional hierarchies of his society. This paper argues that the inadequacies in Aristotle’s arguments are intentional, revealing to the careful reader that such power structures cannot, after all, be consistently defended on natural grounds. It then addresses an interpretive puzzle not sufficiently treated by commentators—the return of s lavery and other legal inequalities in Book 7’s ideal regime—by suggesting that a city “according to prayer” (i.e., not simply a city in speech) might be precisely that one which does not accord with nature, and is instead meant to tell us something about the slavish character of our own souls.
