Kayee Bettag
Mrs. Wilhelmus
AP English Lang.
2 August, 2013
It
thoroughly amazes me that some of the most clever, innovative people of all
time could be so closed-minded. My
assumption was that philosophers were supposed to be open-minded people who
knew that they knew nothing, yet Aristotle seemed so sure that he knew women
are of lesser value than men. In Sophie's
World, it is mentioned that Aristotle’s views on women were not nearly as
uplifting as Plato’s. Aristotle believed
that in some unseen way, women were unfinished or incomplete. In his mind, a female was a male, but lacked
features and abilities that men possessed, and to him, that made women of
lesser value. As stated in the novel,
Aristotle says that in reproduction women are passive and receptive while men
are active and productive. In other
words, Aristotle is saying that the child will only receive the male’s
characteristics. To Aristotle, the woman
was the soil who received and birthed the seed, while the man was the producer.
As a woman, I strongly disagree with his
assumption for many reasons. One reason
being that, there are many women today that have created and discovered life
saving things that society would otherwise be lost without. It is sad to me that because of ignorant
views such as Aristotle’s, the progress of the world was slowed down immensely
due to the unequal treatment of women.
Today we have many women such as Gertrude Belle Ellion, who have made
such a positive impact on society with their knowledge and discoveries all
because they were given just as good of a chance as men.
The two major thinkers, Aristotle
and Plato, had more than just a few differences in the way they viewed the
world and everything in it. Sadly,
gender was one of the areas they did not agree on. Plato saw women more equal than Aristotle,
but still not enough. Most men during
that time and many years to come, succumbed to Aristotle’s ignorant views of
women. I believe that one of the reasons
that men agreed with Aristotle was because during his time and even still today
he is very highly respected and known to be one of the smartest men of all
time. Another reason of why I think
Aristotle saw women as such lesser humans was because in the book of Genesis it
states that in order to create Eve, God had to take one of Adam’s ribs to make
her whole. This makes it seem as though
without Adam, Eve was not “complete”. I
am very sure that Aristotle probably used this area of the Bible to his
advantage when explaining to his many followers why women were inferior to men.
While reading Sophie’s World, it quickly
came to my attention that many of the thinkers, or philosophers were men. To me this was expected because the time
Alberto Knox was speaking of was when men were supposed to do and run
everything. Although I expected this it
still bothers me. To me it seemed that
not only the women of that time but also Sophie, did not seemed surprised or
bothered that women were seen as inferior.
I feel as though men such as Aristotle, Plato, and all the other
respected male figures of this time are to blame. It kills me to think that in that time
Plato’s view of women was considered ‘good’, because to me even his perspective
was very corrupted.
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