POLS 2150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Simone De Beauvoir, A Priori And A Posteriori
8 Feb 2015
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Gender before modernity: classical antiquity (maleness and femaleness) different from modern ideas of gender. Not tied to physicality (biology) as in modernity: simone de beauvoir. Woman negative definer of man: women are not a self as much as an inert being. Woman defined by physical body -bearers of children, objects of beauty, physical labourers: women act through the projects of men- deprived of a self. Gender intricately entwined in philosophical principles: the metaphysical status of gender: gender found in the earliest myths. Two polarities, tendencies create the universe: active male power (light, passive female matter (dark) used to explain and describe creative processes well beyond the human body. Describe the creative process of the universe. What it is to be a self: male active creativity female passive receptivity. Gender and the metaphysical world of forms: rejection of myth and establishment of reason, gender not physical but formal, forming: Forms a priori in unchanging, harmonious order of being.
