Abstract
There is a robust tendency within the contemporary feminist mainstream to argue against and ultimately reject the so-called ‘dualising or dualist philosophy’ (associated historically with the thoughts of Plato and Descartes, though from different perspectives) since it is the supportive paradigm background for any gender discrimination originated from (and it also admits of) the hegemonic sovereignty of masculinity over femininity. In this paper, having dived deeper into the feminist critical depiction of the logical binarist foundation on which the dualising philosophy is said to be well-grounded, I will proceed to portray and examine a sequence of doctrines that feminist philosophers have developed to shed light on the fact that the hegemonic sovereignty of masculinity over femininity has been theoretically initiated from the logical disjunction 'p or not p' (p v ~ p) to masculinity essentialism. Finally, I will end by pointing to a tension between underlying assumptions of the feminist sequentialist approach and what feminists themselves claim to adhere to as the highest ideal: non-naturalising gender differences.
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Notes
Among miscellaneous kinds of dualism, substance dualism (also known as Platonic-Cartesian dualism and mind/body dualism) takes the highest position since it has paved the way for the ascription of mind/body duality to masculinity/femininity duality. As seems clear from the lines further down in the above text, men are entitled to be mentally oriented whereas women are vulgarised to be physically oriented.
In order to counteract this dualism, some contemporary feminists (including the second-wave radical feminists) have strived upfront to give a hyperbolic significance to what they address as politically penetrated and consequently subordinated body rather than the politically penetrating and ultimately sovereign mind to transform the imbalance of power as well as value between masculinity and femininity into equilibrium and equality (see Lennon 2019). Be that as it may, it seems to me that the hyperbolic tone of some contemporary feminists such as Elizabeth Grosz (1999) in endorsement of materialist significance of the body leads them to pass by the positive potentials of phenomenologically synthesising the two substances, namely mind and body, into a single unitary phenomenon (or existential event) like human personality (or leib vs körper) in a Husserlian, Schelerian or Merleau-Pontian sense (cf. Young 1980 and Coole 2005).
One of the major and common fallacies in such general misogynous claims as ‘women belong (and are completely attached) to the non-human world because what belongs to the human world represents masculine characteristics’ is the Sweeping Generalisation (SG) according to which we have:
SG’s Form of Argument:
It is safe to say that P(1) entails a general rule in itself according to which ● typically –but not always or without any exception- implies ■. Thus, this in-most-cases (but not in-all-cases) implicational relevance between the two (logical) terms makes it fallacious to conclude that ▲ implies ■ unless we show sufficient and proper evidence(s) by adding appropriate adverbs to P(2) and C in this way: a) ▲ is (exactly) an instance of ● –P(2) means that ▲’s whole characteristics are corresponding to ●’s characteristics, and b) ▲ typically –but not always or without any exception- implies ■. According to the above form of argument, we can articulate an example of SG’s misogynous argument as follows:
Apparently, P(1) itself implies a general rule according to which femininity typically –but not always or without any exception- implies subordination, fragility, affectivity, emotionality, and nature-orientedness. Aside from the problem of the validity of culturally linking femininity to such degrading characteristics found in P(1), P(2) says that Margaret Thatcher –as a woman- specifically instantiates femininity. Finally, C puts an end to the argument by making an implicational relevance between Margaret Thatcher and subordination, fragility, affectivity, emotionality, and nature-orientedness. However, this fallacious conclusion stands in obvious contrast to the nickname Captain Yuri Gavrilov gave to her, namely “The Iron Lady” (= Captain Yuri Gavrilov’s intuition)! To undermine this misogynous argument, an efficient strategy is to show that P(1) is deduced from another kind of fallacy, i.e. Hasty Generalisation (see Hurley, 2000: pp. 142–143 to apply the logical form of this fallacy to the above-mentioned misogynous argument). As a result of this double-overgeneralisation (= Sweeping Generalisation + Hasty Generalisation), femininity seems to be devoid of any positive characteristics that masculinity is supposed to represent.
It is possible to formally inscribe a sequence (with an implicational order) as S = {x, y, z … nn (x → implies y and y → implies z → implies … nn)}.
Here I dispense with engaging in the question whether this order is a random one or not, because it has less to do with my main objective which is oriented merely toward the output of the sequence. Instead, I insist that in most cases the meaning of sequentialism veer between two different concepts: strict determinism, and a strategic decision about the most efficient order of actions needed in order to bring about some end. While using the term ‘sequentialism’, I have in mind a blend of two surely completely independent views: Laplacian determinism plus epiphenomenalism about mental events.
In its broader articulation, substanti(v)alism (also antithetical to relationalism) is the metaphysical thesis that, irrespective of the array(s) of states and events, there lie substantial realities (mainly assumed as material entities) behind or beneath all phenomena. These realities raise together the edifice of what happens in the spatiotemporal arrow of the universe. Since I intend to go deeper into sequentialism, I have to leave substanti(v)alism to another occasion.
It, however, does not matter to my purpose in this paper if a person is made of either a single bundle of limitless events and states or a single infinite sequence of bundles of events and states.
Needless to say, some early modern feminists such as (the male feminist) François Poullain de la Barre (1673 [2002]) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1792 [2014]) eagerly received the substance dualism and tried to exalt a few aspects of the (feminine) body instead of indisputably accepting the Cartesian dualism per se. For them, attaining the highest level of human rationality was not entirely a matter of physical abilities and differences because, as Poullain puts it, “the mind has no sex [and physiological nature]” (1673 [2002: p. 82]).
This division is based entirely on the so-called Excluded Middle Law, namely U = {(p v ~ p) = [(x) (Px v ~ Px)]}.
In personal correspondence, Ofelia Schutte made this sort of clarification.
This claim does obviously lean to the Platonic theory of bringing chaos into order (by Demiurges) so as to both contrive and maintain the physical universe. Inspired somehow by Pythagorean geometricism, Plato meticulously fleshes out his theory of cosmogony in Timaeus.
As a result of its reciprocative motion, the (erected) phallus comes, while largely unconsciously, at the centre of sexual hermeneutic. By moving as swift as possible in and out of the vagina, the phallus actualises its own essence as that central element which can continuously go forward and come backward or leave home (toward destination) and return home. Metaphorically seen, it always stands identical with itself while moving in and out of the vagina.
My hint is made here to call for attention toward the fact that there should be another alternative to put forward a reversal narration of what happens in the universe: one can exposit the whole universe from the standpoint of ~ p to overthrow the imbalanced power of p over ~ p. (However, a reasonable conclusion might be that this illustrates the fact that oppression, misogyny etc. have absolutely nothing to do with logic!) This alternative can even be more robust and effective if one insists on the necessity of going beyond or eradicating the binarist division of the universe into p and ~ p by proposing, for example, a ternary (or more fluid) specification of the universe.
A promising strategy for those feminists who have invested their efforts in criticising the universalism on the basis of which p always acts (or operates) is to show that dualist thinking is brought forth within “a particular and historical construct rather than a universal” one (Barker, 1998). Thus, p’s reductionism is local not universal because it belongs to a peculiar (or perhaps concrete) location (or locus) from which the rest of the universe is overlooked.
Because ~ p stands alongside nature as representing nonhuman properties (and qualities) (all taken as Otherly properties and qualities). Clearly, the same also holds for femininity as it represents nature-oriented properties.
This claim is a bedrock for holding the strict position that allows for the personification of p to be ontologically a matter of maintaining that there is an essence (and not a construction) of humanness. Thus, this position adheres to essentialism rather than (social) constructionism.
Now, I can easily add one more duality to the list of dualist divisions: identification/otherisation.
In a very broad and positive sense, this law –also viewed by Leibniz as one of the most radical laws of (human) thinking per se- conveys that x and y are identically the same iff they portion (or at least represent) the same and solely the same properties.
To be more precise, meaning is treated as a result of the interactional nexus that relevant differences and identities have (among themselves and) with each other.
It can be worthy of note that my suggestion for using the term ‘p-centred perspectivism’ compels me to raise a few general points that need to be ironed out immediately. First of all, perspectivism differs in some important respects from perspectivalism: perspectivism authenticates perspective qua perspective alone, and prioritises perspective over its potential or actual consequences while perspectivalism gives authentication only to what is perspectival qua perspectival, and recognises the potential or actual consequences a perspective yields as having the highest priority. Another point to consider is that perspectivism disapproves of any kind of objective, let alone objectificatory, account of metaphysics by maintaining that human knowledge does change in terms of numerous possible perspectives that can be matriculated in due course.
As having an absolute narrating perspective on (and) in the universe, p is personified in the form of an I (as opposed to the Other) which precludes ~ p from having an original first-person account of being in the universe.
For some feminist scholars like Barker (1998), the first and foremost issue surrounding ‘gender’ conception is that essentialists pay no attention to the fact that even their position is grounded upon a naturally ordained but chosen-to-be construction. However, we have two kinds of, say, gender accounts: essentialist construction and social construction.
Just for excessive clarification, Jordan-Young’s (2010) objection to such contrasting pairings is that in the second of these lists, each term is just as positive (and able to generate its own negative as in not-female, not-body etc.) as the other list. The difference in valence is introduced explicitly, which totally begs the question as to why one should categorise this or that term into the first or second list.
The abiding message from feminist theory, therefore, is to closely examine whether or not this logical equivalence acquires its validity from cultural structures and norms. However, it does not seem quite easy to put an end to this heated debate only by claiming that it is culturally valid to presume all of the above divisions interchangeable because, when it comes to be the case, one might justifiably hold that it is clearly not determinable if human log(ic)ocentrism has not had an impact on the human culture (and her culturality). One could also question to what extent log(ic)ocentrism is rooted in the nature of language (something that would revert the issue back to culture?) And are some languages more log(ic)ocentric than others?
In her endeavour to “overcome dualised identity”, Plumwood (1993a, b a: p. 60) recommends for a radical reconstruction of the relationship between identity and difference by proposing some non-hierarchical (i.e. horizontal sequence of, implicitly though) features of difference-making (as thinking otherwise). More explicitly, Nye, in her article “Frege’s Metaphors” (1992), makes an effort to show that words (as objects of language) are intended to “signify something” when and only when they are uttered in a specific succession given and ordered by natural language. Moreover, Nye’s book entitled Feminism and Modern Philosophy (2004) gives us more reasons for claiming that she stands on sequentialists’ group: she adopts a sequentialist approach when she tries to keep modern philosophical excerpts “in temporal sequence”. After saying “A story without a beginning and an end is no story at all”, she sees a need to assert that events are to be reordered in close relation to “crises and climaxes, initiations and conclusions” (p. 1). She raises a question on behalf of feminist newly-posed sceptical approach(s) to modern philosophy as to what extent there is a central worry about what could “be the sequel to modern philosophy in an age of disillusion and skepticism” (p. 11, emphasis added).
Here what I chase up as sequentialism leaps out from the descriptive realm into the normative one.
While making my concluding remarks in the end of this paper, I’ll deal in detail with a few self-undermining challenges the sequentialist approach may engender for feminist theory.
Here we are back to a factual sense equivalent to determinism.
As its literal translation comports, standpoint refers to the original place S can stand on and then start to φ. When it comes to the case of p, standpoint considers both p’s place in, and initiation of expositing the whole universe as a passive and present-at-hand object of exposition. The binarist function of human understanding is in need of having a single standing place to transcend out/upward the universe. In other words, human understanding proceeds intrinsically to divide the whole universe into two binarist oppositionary qualities/parts in order to find a firm ground to keep standing on its own feet, namely to even go beyond the universe via under(-)standing.
Here I have to keep my paper discussion confined only to ‘masculinity essentialism’ but one can seek for more theoretical content of essentialism as a metaphysical theory in Morgan 1979. Referring to the old Scholastic debates between nominalism and realism on universals, Morgan makes a division between two sorts of properties a given natural kind can have: essential and accidental properties. Essential properties are those without which a thing (or a natural kind) would not be what it is. Conversely, accidental properties are those without which a thing can continue to be itself while being susceptible of different variations and alterations. Ultimately, Morgan draws our attention to the thought that at least a few properties of gender are essential to all human beings. Thanks to Ronald de Sousa for raising this point.
In articulating the above if-thenist (or deductivist) route of argumentation, I am inspired by Yablo (2017). However, I suggest that a radically converting shift should be given to Yablo’s if-thenism so that it can be more adoptable for specific objectives feminist theory seeks to fulfil: if–then-ism (-ism italicised), which in symbolic formulation can be (a → b) → c. Equivalently, a logically imposed sequence of doctrines leads to a –ism (i.e. a rigid school of thought with unchangeable principles).
It is now a common creed in feminist studies that the second wave feminist philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir have taken great pains to argue for human gender-orientedness having been socially constructed. So, it is clear that gender essentialism stands in apparent contrast to the social construction of gender. In construing gender as a social construction, two different but complementary strategies can be distinguished: compliance with given gender differences originates at the same time from (a) the experience of the external socio-cultural world, or (b) the socio-cultural performance of gender roles. The former genesis-process relies upon human lived experiences of socio-cultural expectations from gender(s) whilst the latter one depends only on people’s will to socio-cultural performance of gender(s).
I do not deny that there might be other possible ways of providing an outline of what can be counted the best strategy for feminists to rise up against the dualist philosophy. Neither do I ignore that there might be other possible strategies to object to feminist theory for having vague simplistic route of argumentation against dualising thinking. For instance, one might argue just like what follows:
-
A.
The feminists, I discussed above, at least seem to assume that the widespread dominance of males over females is based upon the prevalence of a logical argument, namely that.
-
1.
Males have certain very valuable properties or capacities, a, b, c, d—(add more as needed, e.g., rationality, power, activity, mentality, etc.).
-
2.
Either someone absolutely has these valuable properties or capacities, or someone absolutely does not.
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3.
Females do not have any of these valuable properties or capacities. Female properties are entirely negative—not rational, not powerful, not active, not mental (but physical instead), etc.
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4.
Thus, reason itself shows that males are more valuable than, i.e., axiologically superior to, females. Because females lack all of the good-making properties or capacities that males exemplify, patriarchal dominance is rationally justified.
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5.
Male dominance over females is rationalised and culturally sustained everywhere by these basic philosophical assumptions, along with a number of peripheral and highly abstract supporting philosophical themes like: identity itself, self-identity through time, mind/body dualism, temporal sequencing, “black or white” thinking, genital structures and functions, etc.
-
6.
Feminist liberation (or better to say, emancipation) requires little or nothing more than that these philosophical assumptions be challenged and overthrown, and all will be well.
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1.
-
B.
It seems that all of these assumptions or premises are too excessively intellectualistic to serve as plausible explanations for the widespread dominance of males over females. Some (but not all) philosophically minded males may think this way, but I am not at all sure how socially widespread these beliefs are. Are these beliefs consciously entertained and appealed to by most males in patriarchal societies? Is this really how they rationalise their domineering propensities? “How widespread?” is an empirical question. Are philosophers really that influential? Are such philosophical beliefs really that widely held and acted upon? Empirically, most males in most societies are not philosophers and do not consciously entertain such abstract beliefs, so one may doubt that widespread patriarchy is in fact grounded upon this set of assumptions. Feminists really need to look elsewhere for viable explanations of culturally widespread patriarchy, and how to overcome it.
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C.
It seems that some things that are much more obvious, elemental, and non-philosophical—like a natural drive to dominance, and the physical strength to make it prevail—provide better explanations for socially widespread masculine domineering. The feminists, I discussed above, seem to pay little attention to this natural drive, or to the pervasive physical strength that enables males to forcibly get what they want. The presence of a natural drive to dominance and the generally superior physical strength of males, have been widely observed and documented in all species of animals, “rational animals” included. I suspect they are much more prevalent than any kind of philosophising.
-
D.
The best strategy to overcome patriarchy and achieve feminist liberation (or emancipation) is to challenge the empirical or factual truth of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (each one by one), then challenge the axiological truth of 4, and the practical efficacy of 6. Thanks to Rem B Edwards for helping me to sketch this alternative outline.
-
A.
Thanks to Ronald de Sousa for raising this point.
In regard to this position, Haslanger (2011) can be mentioned since she holds that all social generics should be bewared even if they are true. It is because they bear in themselves detrimental implications and oppressive prolepses.
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Acknowledgements
My paper was shaped by conversations and helpful comments on earlier drafts. I owe special thanks to Ofelia Schutte, Ronald de Sousa, Hilde Lindemann, Rem B Edwards, Seyed Abbas Zahabi, and Amir Mohajer-Milani. Most importantly, my warmest thanks go to my wife, Marzie Khosravi, who has always been a constant source of strength and inspiration for me. Without her continuous encouragement and support, I would not have been able to complete this paper at all.
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Sayadmansour, A. Feminist Facing up to the Logical Foundation of Dualist Philosophy: A Sequentialist Approach. Axiomathes 32, 173–193 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09519-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09519-2