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Passive and Deformed? Did Aristotle Really Say This?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
Belief in the passivity of the female survives few honeymoons, and would appear to be largely confined to people of celibate life and retiring disposition who do not visit supermarkets and have little opportunity to note the skilled use of what the French appositely call un chariot. Aristotle was not long married — happily, it would seem — when he wrote his biological works, and if he says that in the act of reproduction ‘the male is the active partner and the female qua female is the passive one’, he goes on to remark more discreetly that ‘that which acts, is acted upon in return’. Indeed, ‘sometimes the extent to which it gets acted upon is greater than that to which it acts’. Quite so. Horresco referens, the male may on occasion be ‘mastered’ and then a female is born, one, to boot, taking after her mother. All of which suggests that Aristotle’s beliefs are not to be summarised in the simple schema: ‘female passive, male active’. The seemingly absolute assertion is attenuated when set in context.
The same applies to the much-cited statement ‘the female is as it were a deformed male’. One can appreciate the anger this phrase can cause when it is taken to encapsulate Aristotle’s metaphysical and ethical understanding of Woman. Phrases, however, have contexts, and this phrase occurs in a work on biology. A little reading of this biology shows that Aristotle also says that that elegant and beautiful creature, the seal, is ‘deformed’.
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- Copyright © 1995 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 GA l, 20, 729a27.
The following abbreviations are used:
GA de Generatione Animalium.
HA Historia Animalium.
PA de Paitibus Animalium.
PrA de Progressu Animalium.
2 GA 4, 3, 768 bl7.
3 GA 4,3,768a22. The Greek is krateisthai, which Peck translates as ‘mastered’.
4 GA 4,3,768a35.
5 GA 2,3,737a25. LPeck, A., Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1942Google Scholar, repr.1990, gives ‘deformed’, and A.Piatt in the Oxford translation gives 'mutilated.
6 PA 2,12,657a24. Both Peck and Piatt give ‘deformed’.
7 HA 1, l,487b24.
8 GA 5,2,781b23.
9 de Animalibus XVI.
10 Summa Theologiae 1, 92, 1, ad 1.
11 Aristoteles Latinus, XVII 2.v., ed. HJ. Drossaart Lulofs, Bruges–Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1966.
12 GA l,2,716a5.
13 GA 1,2, 716 al0.
14 A remark made in his Agnes Cuming Lectures in University College Dublin in 1978.
15 Francis Thompson in The Kingdom of God.
16 PA l, l, 639b20.
17 ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.’ Pensées, iii, 206.
18 ‘The teacher of those who understand.’ Inferno, 4, l31.
19 “The love that moves the sun and the other stars' Paradiso, 33,145.
20 PA l,5, 645 al0.
21 GA l,5, 717b30.
22 The use of one of its arms (legs) to funnel sperm.
23 GA 1.18,724 a5.
24 Cf. Hutt, F. B. and Rasmussen, B. J., Animal Genetics, 2nd ed., Wiley, New York, 1982, p.514Google Scholar.
25 Ranke–Heinemann, U., Eunuchs for Heaven, trans. Brownjohn, J., Deutsch, London, 1990, p. 165Google Scholar.
26 Cf. Ferguson, M.W.J. and Joanen, T., 'Temperature–dependent sex determination in Alligator mississippiensis', in Journal of Zoology (London), 1983, 200, pp.143–177Google Scholar.
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28 PA l,5, 645a24.
29 GA 2,6, 743a20.
30 GA 2,6,743b23.
31 GA 2,6,743a37.
32 GA 2,6, 744b 16.
33 GA 2,5, 741 bS.
34 GA 2,4, 739b20.
35 GA 5,8, 788b20.
36 PA l, l, 639b20.
37 F.H.A. Marshall in the Foreword to A. L. Peck, De partibus animalium, Loeb Classical Library, p.3.
38 PA 3, l, 662a30.
39 GA 2, l, 734bl0.Cf.GA 2,5, 741bl0.
40 GA 1, 4, 717al5.
41 GA 2, 1, 73 lb20.
42 Peck, o.c, p. xliii, where he cites no fewer than nine instances of this.
43 GA 3, 4, 755a25.
44 PA 4, 1 l, 692a5.
45 GA 2, l, 731b20.
46 GA 1, l, 715a5.
47 O.c., p.xxxviii.
48 PA 4, 10, 687al0.
49 GA 1, 1, 715a 10.
50 O.c., p.v.
51 His de Animalibus.
52 E.g., Sumrna Theologiae, l, 99, 2, adl.
53 HA 7, 1, 588b24.
54 GA l, l, 715a25, GA l,18,724bl0.
55 GA 3, 5, 755b23.
56 GA 3.10, 759a8.
57 GA 3, 10, 760b30.
58 GA l, l, 715b20.
59 GA l, l, 715bl5.
60 Summa Theologiae, 1, 92, l,c.
61 Ethica Nicomachea, 8, 12, 1162a20.
62 Summa Theologiae, l, 92, 3, c.
63 Summa Contra Gentiles, 3,123.
64 GA 4, 3, 769al.
65 GA 1, 2,7l6a20.
66 GA 1, 2, 716a32.
67 Ibid.
68 GA l, 2, 716al4.
69 GA 3, 2, 753b20.
70 GA 2, 4, 739al0.
71 GA 2, 3, 737a25.
72 In Sentoiltas 3,3,5, 1.
73 GA 2, 4, 739bl9.
74 GA l, 21, 729bl9.
75 GA 2, l, 734bl0. Cf. GA 2,5,741bl0.
76 J. Needham, A History cf Embryology, 2nd ed, Cambridge, 1959, p.51.
77 GA 2, 4, 738b25.
78 GA 1, 1, 715a10.
79 GA 2, 4, 740a25.
80 GA 2, 6, 743a3 et seq.
81 GA 2,5,741al0.
82 GA 2, 3, 737a1.
83 GA 2, 3, 736b5.
84 GA 2, 3, 736b28.
85 GA 4, 3.768b35.
86 GA 4, 3, 768al5, note a.
87 GA 4, 3, 768bl5.
88 GA 4, 3, 768bl5.
89 GA 4, 3, 768b25.
90 GA 4, 6, 775a 16.
91 GA 4, 3, 767b9.
92 GA 1, 1, 715a10.
93 GA 2, l, 731b24.
94 Summa The ologiae, l, 92, l, adl.
95 GA 2, 1.732a5.
96 PA 2, 2, 648a15.
97 HA 1, 6, 491a23.
98 HA 2, 1, 498a33.
99 PA 2, 12, 657a24.
100 PA 2, 12, 657a15.
101 GA 5, 2, 78lb24.
102 PA 2, 17, 660b26.
103 PA 4, 8, 684a31.
104 PrA 17, 714a6.
105 PrA 8, 710b.
106 GA l, 18, 725b5.
107 GA 1, 2, 716a20.
108 Cf. Liddell and Scott's Greek–English Lexicon s.v.
109 GA 4, 3, 769bl0.
110 Cf. M. V. Barrow, A Brief History of Teratology to the Early 20lh Century, Teratology, 4,119–130. Pp. 119–122 have interesting comments on Aristotle.
111 GA 4, 4, 770b22.
112 Cf. C. Starr and R. Taggart, Biology, Wadsworth, Belmont, 4th ed, 1987, p.525.