The Man of Reason

The Man of Reason ‘What a pleasure to have a new edition of this classic analysis. Lloyd’s powerful arguments raise crucial questions about distortions in the philosophic canon that are the consequences of a cultural obsession with associat- ing ideals of human reason with ideals of masculinity. Continuing shifts in gender relations and the urgency of re-evaluating the purported universality of Western thought have made this book even more relevant to concerns in every discipline about rationality and rela- tivism, not to mention ‘difference’, diversity and embod- iment. Lloyd’s careful, scholarly attention to philosophic texts and her graceful style make this an ideal introduction to feminist philosophic concerns for both scholars and students.’ Sandra Harding, Professor of Philosophy, University of Delaware, USA ‘Lloyd’s pioneer-work on the history of philosophy com- bines in an exemplary manner a rigorous attachment to philosophy as a discipline of thought, with the creative insights of feminist criticism. Through her emphasis on a reasoned critique of reason, Lloyd has paved the way for a new methodological and ethical approach to feminism and philosophy.’ Rosi Braidotti, Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands ‘Lloyd’s new analysis of the interplay of symbol and ii THE MAN OF REASON metaphor within Western ideals of maleness and femaleness, and her rereading of Descartes through a lens of Spinoza’s making, confirm and enhance this book’s sta- tus as a classic of twentieth-century feminist thought.’ Lorraine Code, Professor of Philosophy, York University, Canada This new edition of Genevieve Lloyd’s classic study of the maleness of reason in the history of philosophy con- tains a new preface which considers the explosion of writing that has emerged in the area of feminist philosophy and how well her analysis stands up in light of that explosion. A new bibliographical essay provides a guide to the post-1984 writing on philosophy and gender. IDEAS Series Editor: Jonathan Rée, Middlesex University Original philosophy today is written mainly for advanced academic specialists. Students and the general public make contact with it only through introductions and general guides. The philosophers are drifting away from their public, and the public has no access to its philosophers. The IDEAS series is dedicated to changing this situation. It is committed to the idea of philosophy as a constant challenge to intellectual conformism. It aims to link pri- mary philosophy to non-specialist concerns. And it encourages writing which is both simple and adventur- ous, scrupulous and popular. In these ways it hopes to put contemporary philosophers back in touch with ordi- nary readers. Books in the series include: SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY Hans Fink PHILOSOPHY AND THE NEW PHYSICS Jonathan Powers THE MAN OF REASON Genevieve Lloyd PHILOSOPHICAL TALES Jonathan Rée FREEDOM, TRUTH AND HISTORY Stephen Houlgate iv THE MAN OF REASON Forthcoming BEING IN TIME Genevieve Lloyd The Man of Reason ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy GENEVIEVE LLOYD London First published in 1984 by Methuen & Co. Ltd This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Second edition published in 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE © 1984 Genevieve Lloyd. Preface and Bibliographical Essay to the Second Edition © 1993 Genevieve Lloyd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-203-42324-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-73148-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09681-2 (Print Edition) Contents Preface to the second edition ix Acknowledgements xviii Introduction xix 1 Reason, science and the domination of matter 1 Introduction 1 Femininity and Greek theories of knowledge 2 Francis Bacon: knowledge as the subjugation of Nature 10 2 The divided soul: manliness and effeminacy18 Introduction: Plato on Reason 18 Philo: ‘manly Reason’and the ‘entanglements’ of sense 22 Augustine: spiritual equality and natural subordination 28 Aquinas: ‘the principle of the human race’ and his ‘helpmate’ 34 3 Reason as attainment39 Introduction 39 Descartes’s method 40 Hume on Reason and the passions 51 4 Reason and progress58 Introduction 58 viii THE MAN OF REASON Rousseau: the lost youth of the world 59 Kant: from immaturity to enlightenment 65 Hegel: Reason as the unfolding of Nature 71 5 The public and the private75 Introduction: complementary consciousnesses 75 Hegel: the feminine nether world 81 6 The struggle for transcendence87 Introduction 87 Hegel: self-consciousness as achievement 88 Sartre and de Beauvoir: women and transcendence 94 De Beauvoir on woman as other 97 7 Concluding remarks104 Notes 112 Bibliographical essay 123 Bibliographical essay to the second edition 135 Index 143 Preface to the second edition Since the publication of this book in 1984 a great deal of philosophy and feminist theory has appeared which bears on its central concerns. Some of that more recent work has directly addressed the ‘maleness’ of reason; some has been concerned more generally with philosophy’s relations with literature and with the rest of cul- ture; and some has addressed broader feminist concerns with questions of sexual equality—of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. Deconstructive reading strategies associated with contemporary French philosophy and feminist theory—especially with the work of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray—are now familiar to many English- speaking philosophers. Translation of the later works of Foucault has heightened awareness of the role of power in the operation of apparently neutral conceptual struc- tures. And Richard Rorty’s work has raised the issue of philosophy’s relations with other kinds of writing. My own thinking about the issues raised in this book has benefited from the critical responses it received and from reflection on the ways in which its central claims have been construed and misconstrued. My current understanding of what was really at stake in the ‘maleness’ of reason has been helped by reflection on the operations of philosophical metaphor, stimulated especially by the work of Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. If I were now to articulate the central claims of the book, I would x THE MAN OF REASON give much more prominence to metaphorical aspects of the male-female distinction as it occurs in philosophical texts. To have presented the maleness of reason as a metaphorical construct would have been, at the time, to risk trivializing the issue—as if what were at stake were nothing more than a quaint, peripheral, literary dimen- sion of philosophical writing. One vein of criticism of the book has in fact centred on its alleged failure to dis- tinguish between serious features of the philosophical articulation of reason and superficial accretions of sexist metaphor drawn from less enlightened cultural contexts than our own. Pure philosophical thought, on this way of looking at the issue, can always be extricated from the unfortunate metaphors through which it has been expressed. I would have more confidence now in presenting the male-female distinction, in its various forms of align- ment with distinctions between reason and its opposites throughout the philosophical tradition, in terms of the operations of philosophical metaphor. The metaphor of maleness is deeply embedded in philosophical articula- tions of ideas and ideals of reason. It had been constitu- tive of ways of thinking of reason which have deep repercussions in ways of thinking of ourselves as male or female. Metaphorical though it may be, maleness has been no mere embellishment of reason. Lack of understanding—on my own part no less than the book’s critics—of the operations of philosophical metaphor, and of the philosophical import of the literary dimensions of philosophical writing, was one obstacle to a fully adequate articulation of the central claims of The Man of Reason. A second obstacle, I believe, arose from the prevailing theoretical framework of English- speaking feminism, with its sharp distinction—in some ways a product, I suspect, of the heritage of Cartesian dualism—between biological ‘sex’ and socially constructed ‘gender’. It is a distinction which some feminist critics have seen as perversely blurred in the book. But the maleness of reason belongs properly neither with sex nor with gender. Its proper subjects are not men and PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi women but concepts and principles. This is a maleness which belongs with the operation of symbols. Useful though the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ has been for understanding some aspects of sexual difference and for formulating ideals of sexual equality, it has, I think, served to obscure what is involved in the ‘symbolic’ maleness of reason. The symbolism of the male-female distinction has had all too real repercussions for the self-images of men and women. But the symbolic content of maleness and femaleness cannot be equated with socially produced masculinity and femininity. This symbolic content inter- acts with socially constructed gender. But, if those interactions are to be properly understood, we must first understand the symbolic aspects of the male-female distinction. This book is not a direct study of gender iden- tity. It seeks rather to contribute to the understanding of how the male-female distinction operates as a symbol in traditional philosophical texts, and of its interactions with explicit philosophical views of reason. Thus The Man of Reason tried to avoid treating the maleness of reason as a ‘mere’ metaphor.

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