One kind of feminist exploration in this book involves the examination of what Aristotle has to say on women and the feminine. In these studies, an author looks mainly at particular specific texts and examines their doctrines so as to assess their significance and internal consistency, and their ultimate implications from a feminist perspective on similar issues. This is perhaps the most traditional approach to critical feminist history of philosophy, and it is also typical of many of the other essays on Aristotle that feminists have written. Those essays here most exemplary of this method are those by Luce Irigaray, Marguerite Deslauriers, and Deborah Modrak, focusing, respectively, on Aristotle's physics, biology, and theory of knowledge.

Luce Irigaray's essay "Place, Interval: A Reading of Aristotle, Physics IV" meditates upon the repression of the feminine in Aristotle's treatment of place. Irigaray seeks to consider whether Aristotle's physics, or at least his definition of place in Physics IV, is "male" and what it might mean to assert this. Irigaray's style of writing and of historical exegesis is far from traditional. But her theme here, as in her earlier writings, for example about Plato's cave (his ³hystera²) in Speculum of the other Woman4, concerns how the western tradition of philosophy has been constituted as a male discourse. As such it exemplifyies certain biases or is bound by certain preconceptions, even im a quite abstract sphere such as theorizing about the definition of place.

Irigaray, following Heidegger, regards place as a mode of human subjectivity, not simply something external that can be "objectively" studied and described. Heidegger saw that we move through space or locate ourselves emotionally and psychologically in spaces, but Irigaray uses her meditations on Aristotle to move beyond this so as to reflect on the spaces of our own bodies. She suggests that Aristotelian place is that of hard, objective bodies viewed from the outside, rather than of soft, open bodies experienced from within, as having gaps, fissures, and as issuing the flows of sexual secretions. Feminists more familiar with some of Irigaray¹s earlier essays, such as "This Sex Which Is Not One,"5 will be perhaps surprised to find her departing in this essay from that earlier more restricted female sphere of two lips, autoereotically self-touching. Here instead we find Irigaray exploring the broader sphere of communion and interactions between differently sexed bodies.

Marguerite Deslauriers, in "Sex and Essence in Aristotle's Metaphysics and Biology," is also interested in how a scientific conception can be related to, or can ground, broader social and political viewpoints and systems. She asks at the start of her essay, "Are women perceived to be different from men because women are economically, socially and politically subordinate to men, or are women subordinate to men in these ways because they exhibit certain anatomical and physiological (or psychological) differences from men?" Obviously, questions about nature vs. nurture continue to haunt us today. Feminists aremain very concerned about how to answer questions about the relations between sexual difference, human nature, and essence.

Deslauriers¹ essay explores the tensions in Aristotle's accounts of sex and essence in his biology and Metaphysics. She shows that there is a contradiction between Aristotle¹s metaphysical analysis of sex in relation to essence and his political claims about women¹s inferiority. That is, in metaphysics, men and women (or males and females generally) cannot be said to differ in essence. And yet Aristotle assumes in his biology and politics that emales are inferior. Deslauriers points out that this is just an assumption, not a claim he argues for. The only way out of this problem is for Aristotle to invoke matter to account for this difference between the sexes; males and females differ in matter but not essence. Such claims about the female¹s link to matter are not easily removable from Aristotle¹s overall metaphysical approach. Thus Aristotle¹s Metaphysics may get things "right" so to speak about the fact that women are fully human, but his biological works, like his ethical and political works, seeks to deny this through the implicit assumptions of the normative links between maleness and form, and femaleness and (inferior) matter.

Deborah Modrak, in "Aristotle's Theory of Knowledge and Feminist Epistemology," applies insights from feminist epistemology to the analysis of Aristotle's general scientific method, as set out in his Posterior Analytics, and as exemplified in various theoretical sciences. Modrak looks at general themes in Aristotle's theory of knowledge, focusing on the paradigm of scientific knowledge. She aims to consider how well his epistemological framework stands up to some of the key criticisms made in recent feminist epistemology. Such criticisms, as raised for example by Lorraine Code, are typically aimed at a post-Cartesian conception of scientific knowledge, and so it is interesting to see whether they are equally applicable to an ancient empiricist method like Aristotle's.

More specifically, Modrak explores whether "Aristotle¹s conception of demonstrative science embodies the same ideals of objectivity, impartiality and universality that Code¹s finds in recent epistemology." In addition to this initial question, she also asks whether in Aristotle's system the knower or community of knowers is gendered. And third, she considers the claim made, variously, by Mary Daly, Luce Irigaray, and Simone de Beauvoir, that male-authored texts in the traditional canon deprive women of knowledge by erasing the feminine. Certainly, as Deslauriers' article shows, Aristotle did seem guilty of a kind of erasure in his account of how the feminine somehow falls short of its supposed human essence. Modrak considers possible defenses of Aristotle against these three lines of feminist criticism, but ultimately she concludes that they are left standing.

The second approach taken by some of the essays in this volume moves away from the study of specific texts and their implications for our understanding of women and the feminine to assume a broader perspective that situates Aristotle in his foundational role for subsequent developments in the western tradition. So the focus moves away from single texts in the Aristotelian corpus onto the ways in which his works influenced much of the rest of western European philosophy. Although in principle this sort of work could be done for almost any one part of the Aristotelian overall theory, here the essays on his logic and aesthetic theory by Marjorie Hass and Angela Curran are most illustrative of this kind of approach.

Marjorie Hass situates her article, "On Logic and Abstraction: Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic," within current controversies over the value of feminist attacks on the alleged "maleness" of logic. These run the risk of perpetuating sexist stereotypes about ³irrational² and intuitive women. More specifically, Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's book Words of power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic.6 Hass show that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is targeted in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by over-zealous "abstraction." But Hass argues against this that abstraction is not problematic; in fact abstraction is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. It is relevant to consider these issues in relation to Aristotle because he was the inventor of logic as a formal system of evaluating arguments in the abstract by studying their form.

Although she rejects Nye¹s form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more worthwhile in the alternative criticisms of logic by Luce Irigaray and Val Plumwood. Interestingly, these thinkers call for alternatives that are echoed in other contemporary criticisms of what has come to be standard deductive logic, from other standpoints like intuitionist or entailment logics. These suggest something like what Irigaray and Plumwood call for, more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyze reality and diverse experiences. In Aristotle's case this is in part due to the fact that his conception of negation is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary standard formal systems.

Also looking more broadly at Aristotle's role in relation to feminist criticism of canonical standards and values, Angela Curran in "Feminism and the Narrative Structures of the Poetics" argues that there are deep and radical problems with the traditional aesthetic theory grounded in Aristotle's Poetics. Not only is there an initial difficulty in understanding how Aristotle's own account of tragedy might apply to many of the most famous Greek tragic heroines -- Iphigenia, Hecuba, Antigone -- but there is a much deeper problem which concerns his fundamental analysis of tragic response and katharsis. Using Brecht and more recent, Brechtian, feminist theater critics, Curran argues that Aristotle's theory of katharsis itself is something feminists ought to regard with suspicion -- that his very justification of tragic art rests upon a problematic approach to art's social role. On Aristotle's moralistic view of tragedy, an audience cannot be prompted to respond to tragedy with an intellectual political critique--even if the prevailing order is hierarchical, racist, sexist, and generally oppressive.

So far I have described feminist approaches that focus on "the Philosopher's" views of women and the feminine or his importance for a subsequent traditon. But a third sort of feminist approach in this volume involves using an essay on Aristotle as the occasion to bring into focus some aspects on feminism itself. Here, the authors' aim may be less to see how feminists can challenge Aristotle, than to see how Aristotle can challenge feminism. This represents a newer approach within feminist critical studies of the history of philosophy. The essays here by Charlotte Witt, Ruth Groenhout, Linda Hirshman, and Martha Nussbaum each find that certain of Aristotle's views challenge some standardly accepted contemporary feminist views --‹ about the relation of the scientist to nature, about the ethics of care, or about the links between traditional liberal politics and feminism.

Charlotte Witt¹s paper, "Form, Normativity, and Gender in Aristotle: A Feminist Perspective." problematizes objectivity in feminist theories of science and metaphysics. She notes that many feminist critical analyses of scientific method criticize the alleged, but dubious, objectivity of an inquirer who is in fact culturally situated and enmeshed in cultural assumptions of value. But these feminist criticisms often share a standard assumption of modernist science about the value-neutrality of nature. Witt writes, "Perhaps the value-neutrality of the objective scientist and his disinterested relationship to inert quantitative nature are all of a piece, and part of the task for feminists is to re-conceive a richer image of the objects of theory to go along with the richer descrition of the theorizer and their relationship." This means that an "objective" account might precisely be a value-laden account. Such an approach might begin from new views about the relationship of the observer or practicing scientist to an organic, holistic nature.

Or rather, this "new" view might be an "old" view reconsidered. To examine this sort of approach more closely, Witt reviews the details of Aristotle¹s hypomorphism, his metaphysical theory about the primacy of form and about the presence of teleological ends within nature and reality. Witt also looks at the relevant gender associations between form and maleness and matter and femaleness. She finds that Aristotle attached the norms of his culture to his hylomorphism, but she does not think it is clear that his assumption of cultural norms preceded or somehow caused his views about metaphysical norms.

Witt is considering Aristotle's challenges to some standard contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. Ruth Groenhout in "The Virtue of Care: Aristotelian Ethics and Contemporary Ethics of Care" reflects on how Aristotelian ethics could be used to improve upon some increasingly standard approaches within feminist ethics --those known collectively as the "ethics of care" approach. Groenhout begins by noting, as Witt does, the hierarchies implicit in Aristotle¹s metaphysics and their connection with his ethics and politics. This assemblage of views would seem to leave little room for feminists to find a foothold. However, she argues that a synthesis of Aristotelian-based virtue ethics with the feminist ethics of care can preferable to either account on its own.

Groenhout faults Aristotle's ethics for its concentration on the production of an intellectual life, and she faults the ethics of care for lacking a thorough political basis. The inclusion of features drawn from Aristotle¹s sort of virtue ethics can help the ethics of care position meet two standard types of criticism: that it glorifies traits that have traditionally led to women¹s subservience, and that it is unable to produce concern for those outside the "circle of care." This synthetic approach can add to the ethics of care a greater concern for personal excellence and political participation, while balancing Aristotelian ethics so as to make it less hierarchical and oppressive. In the symposium reprinted here from the Texas Law Review, Linda Hirshman and Martha Nussbaum debate the value of Aristotle's politics for reformulation of feminism on a new, or rather perhaps old, classical base of political theory. They consider whether Aristotle's framework for ethics and politics offers a viable alternative to much contemporary feminist politics and legal theory, which emerges from a liberal framework emphasizing liberation and tolerance.

Hirshman's "The Book of 'A'" argues that Aristotle's ethics and politcs offer a significant resource for contemporary feminist jurisprudence, and for addressing such vexed issues as surrogacy and selective service. She highlights three areas in which feminists can draw upon Aristotle. First, Hirshman argues that his ethical theory has elements in common with feminist moral epistemologies. For example, feminists who emphasize consciousness raising "are using two very traditional Aristotelian methods: canvassing the appearances and conversing about justice with people who speak the same langauge about justice as the questioner does." Second, Aristotle's political thought views the human condition as inherently political; and third, Hirshman finds that feminists may usefully draw upon Aristotle's conception of the ideal life for citizens. He offers substantive ansswers about the olitical community in a way that visions of liberal equality do not.

Nussbaum in "Aristotle on Feminism, Flourishing, and Needs for Functioning" agrees in principle with Hirsman's conviction that Aristotle offers resources for feminist political practice, though she disagrees about the details. As Nussbaum sees it, Aristotle's chief strength lies in his insistence on scrutinizing distributions of basic needs for functioning. She argues that to place the emphasis here would correct some deficiencies of modern bourgeois feminism, which fails to recognize that many of the most pressing problems facing the world's women are matters of basic needs--for food, shelter, medical care, and protection from violence. Nussbaum also argues that Aristotle's moral methodology is not as conservative as some claim, "for the allegedly conservative method actually prompts a sweeping and highly critical scrutiny of all existing regimes and their schemes of distribution, as well as of the preferences that result from and support these distributions."

The fourth and final approach I will describe to feminist analysis in the essays in this volume takes feminist reflections upon Aristotle as the occasion for broader reflections about what feminism amounts to in doing the history of philosophy. This methodological question becomes the focus in my own essay, which is prompted by Irigaray's unusual style of revisiting the historical figures in the canon, and it is also central in Carol Poster's reflections about the construction of canons in rhetoric.

My essay, "On Irigaray on Aristotle," begins as an attempt to lay out some of Irigaray's key points about Aristotle in a straightforward fashion, clarifying her often difficult style so as to permit an assessment of her critique of Aristotle‹such as her claim that he has omitted any reference to the permeable spatial identities of pregnant bodies. But to evaluate Irigaray, it became necessary also to provide a study of the provocative method in her essay on Aristotle on place, and so I contrast her idiosyncratic feminist re- reading of canonical figures to those in more traditional history of philosophy.

Traditional history of philosophy follows certain broad principles of interpretation, such as charity and contextualization. It seeks to recapture or reconstruct an author's intentions, construed in the most favorable way for maximum coherence, before evaluating their force, consistency, and impact on subsequent theorists. Irigaray contextualizes philosophical works in an entirely different way, considering for example not how well Aristotle's theory of place anticipates Einsteinian space, but how it illustrates a pervasive male philosophical attitude toward the "emptiness" of the female body. From this point of view, which holds that the western philosophical tradition has been oppresive and has omitted the feminine, we have little reason to be "charitable" in our interpretations. Instead, Irigaray advocates a kind of subjective, critical, and ironic reading of texts. I argue that there is a problematic tension in her methodology between her idiosyncratic, subjective, personal "readings" of texts and her general view that feminists must understand "the" meaning that historical texts have had for the tradiiton.

Carol Poster broadens the perspective to consider how a text like Aristotle's Rhetoric becomes canonical within a discipline. Briefly reviewing the history of rhetoric, she argues that feminists should reject the recent elevation of Aristotle's Rhetoric to the canon in this field, as it exemplifies a bias against pedagogy which in turn is anti-woman.

Poster argues that Aristotle's Rhetoric was never a significant text in the history of rhetoric, which was dominated instead by manuals which emphasized methods of teaching. Only in recent times when a need was felt for originary, canonical works of theory, has this text been elevated so as to lend authority to a discipline of study that lacks status. The status problem arises in part precisely because of the pedagoical focus that continues in rhetoric and its associated field of composition studies. These fields also lack status, Poster argues, because of the prevalence of women within them. Thus she concludes not only that we must reconsider the construction of the canon, we must also reconsider the status hierarchies of the academy itself. She considers, and rejects, Richard Rorty's evaluation of four diverse methods of doing the history of philosophy. Whereas Rorty denigrates "doxography," the "who said what when" approach, Poster argues that this approach may be pedagocially sound and appropriate for many students. It is in fact dominant within introductory composition courses at most institutions in the contemporary world--institutions that are lower than the elite realm occupied by Rorty himself, but where the majority of professors and students live, study, and teach today.

Footnotes (incomplete)

1Begun, notably, in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (London/Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel, 1983). For further sources, see the Bibliography.

2Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies 14: no. 3 (Fall 1988), p. 592.

3"Woman is Not a Ratonal Animal,"² in Discovering Reality, p. 14.

4Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, Cornell .

5Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which Is Not One,"

6Andrea Nye, .

Contributors

Angela Curran currently teaches at Bucknell University. Her areas of interest are ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics and metaphysics. She has written on Aristotle's metaphysics and biology and is currently working on topics in aesthetics and a project on feminist aesthetics and Greek tragedy.

Marguerite Deslauriers is an associate professor of Philosophy at McGill University, and a member of the Centre for Research and Teaching on Women there. She has published on Aristotle's moral philosophy and his logic, and is at work on a book about his theory of definition. She was educated at McGill and the University of Toronto.

Cynthia Freeland is professor of philosophy and associate dean in Humanities, Fine Arts, and Commnication at the University of Houston. Her philosophical interests include ancient philosophy, feminist theory, and aesthetics. She is co-editor of Philosophy and Film, (with Thomas Wartenberg, 1995), and her articles on Aristotle have appeared in numerous journals and collections, including Essays on Aristotle's Physics, Essays on Aristotle¹s De Anima, and Engendering Origins.

Ruth Groenhout is assistant professor of philosophy at Southwest Missouri State University, and the author of "Theoretical Approaches to Medical Ethics: Virtue and Its Critics" (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1993).

Marjorie Hass is assistant professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Her teaching and research focus on issues in philosophy of logic and feminist philosophy. She received her Ph.D in 1993 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writing a dissertation entitled "Interpreting Negation: A Semantic Theory of Negation for Standard and Non-Standard Logics."

Barbara Koziak is assistant professor of political science at the American University. Her book Retrieving Political Emotion is forthcoming from Penn State Press.

Deborah K. W. Modrak is professor of philosophy at the University of Rochester. Her areas of interest include Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophy of mind and feminist philosophy. She is the author of Aristotle:. The Power of Perception (Chicago, 1987). She has published numerous articles on Aristotle's philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, and political theory in journals and collections. She is currently at work on a book entitled Aristotle: Language, Truth and Reality.

Martha Nussbaum is professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Fragility of Goodness (1986), Love's Knowledge (1990), The Therapy of Desire (1994), and Poetic Justice (1996), and the editor of several collections, including Wmen, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities (with Jonathan Glover, 1996). In 1996 she was an Amnesty Lecturer in Oxford in the Series, "Women's Voices, Women's Lives." She is currently the Chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the American Philosophical Association.

Carol Poster is an assistant professor of English at University of Montana. Her articles have appeared in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Pre/text, College English, and Victorian Newsletter. She translated Plautus' Stichus for Plautus IV (Johns Hopkins UP) and is translating Aristophanes' Clouds for the University of Pennsylvania Complete Greek Drama series. She co-edits Disputatio: An International Transdisciplinary Journal of the Late Middle Ages (Northwestern UP).

Charlotte Witt is professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches in the Women's Studies Program. She is the author of Substance and Essence in Aristotle (Corness University Press 1989) and co-editor of A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Westview Press 1992)