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Can a Woman be Good in the Same Way as a Man?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1971

Christine Garside
Affiliation:
Sir George Williams University, Montreal

Extract

Many philosophers would claim that sexual differentiation is irrelevant to philosophy. They would say that the philosopher is trying to understand the world and himself qua human being, not qua man or qua woman. While this may have been the intent, in ethics some curious results concerning women have occurred. In some cases, when one compares the analysis of what a philosopher considers to constitute a good person with what he says about the nature of woman, we must conclude that a woman cannot ultimately be good. In this paper I propose to show how two philosophers of widely differing traditions, namely Aristotle and Kierkegaard, have both maintained this.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971

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References

1 Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross, 1140b 1–5.

2 Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Anchor Books, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.; 1959, Vol. I., p. 426. Hereafter E/O.

3 Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way, Schocken Books, New York: 1967, p. 61. Hereafter Stages.

4 Kierkegaard, Soren, The Point of View for my Work as an Author, Harper Torchbooks, New York: 1962, p. 5Google Scholar.

5 Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 506-7.

6 Ibid. p. 283.

7 Page references are to The Works of Love, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1962; Hereafter WL.

8 Kierkegaard, Soren, The Last Tears (Journals, 1853–55), The Fontana Library, 1968, p. 69. Hereafter J.Google Scholar