Gender and virtue in Greece and China

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 415-436

  Raphals, Lisa ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949614000     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6253.00091     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Earlier versions of this article have been presented at the History Colloquium, State University of New York-Binghamton (October 2000) and as the 2001 annual lecture (May 2001), Centre for China Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
2. Amartya Sen, "Human Rights and Asian Values: What Lee Kuan Yew and Li Peng Don't Understand about Asia," The New Republic, vol. 14 (July 1997)
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: ou de l' éducation, translated by Barbara Foxley (1911; reprint, London Dent, and New York: Everyman's Library/Dutton, 1974)
4. Quoted in Jean Grimshaw, Feminist Philosophers (Brighton, U.K.: Wheatsheaf Books, 1986), p. 187
5. Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), in Mary Wollstonecraft: Political Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
6. See, for example, Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 33
7. and Roger Ames, "Taoism and the Androgynous Ideal," in Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship, edited by Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen (Youngstown, NY: Philo Press, 1981), p. 21
8. Mawangdui hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu, Mawangdui hanmu boshu, vol. 1/2 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1980), Shiliu jing, p. 79
9. See Lisa A. Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: State University of New Yor Press, 1998), pp. 154-156
10. Mawangdui hanmu boshu, vol. 1/2, Shiliu jing, p. 70
11. Roger Ames has made this argument about the use of the feminine in the Daode jing ("Taoism and the Androgynous Ideal," p. 39). He argues that the ideal political (and presumably strategic) situation is a reconciliation of complementary masculine and feminine qualities
12. Alison Harley Black, "Gender and Cosmology in Chinese Correlative Thinking," in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, edited by Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)
13. and Raphals, Sharing the Light, chapter 6
14. See Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Shocken Books, 1975), chapter 6
15. Aeschylus, Eumenides 657-661, translated by Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Classical Antiquity, p. 65. But these claims surface, not in a sustained consideration of gender roles, but as part of Apollo's defense of Orestes in the trial at the conclusion of the Oresteia
16. Rousseau, Émile, p. 326
17. Plato, Republic 451e-452a. Citations of Greek works are from the Loeb classical library editions (Boston: Harvard University Press)
18. Plato, Rep. 540c
19. cf. Susan Moller Okin, "Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family," in Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 21-23
20. Plato, Apology 35a
21. Plato, Theages 124b-c
22. See, for example, Plato, Phaedo 60a and 117d
23. Plato, Rep. 431b
24. Plato, Gorgias 512d
25. Plato, Cratylus 418b
26. Plato, Alcibiades 1, 127a
27. Plato, Timaeus 90e
28. Plato, Laches 197b
29. Plato, Tim. 18d
30. Plato, Critias 110a
31. Plato, Apol. 41b
32. Plato, Crit. 112d
33. Plato, Phaedrus 235b
34. Plato, Meno 81a
35. Plato, Protagoras 342d
36. Plato, Symposium 109aff. Aristophanes' speech is not disputed elsewhere in the dialogue
37. Plato Rep. 453b-c
38. for discussion, see Nicholas D. Smith, "Plato and Aristotle on the Nature of Women," Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 472
39. and Arlene Saxonhouse, "The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato," Political Theory 4, no. 2 (May 1976): 200, who regards thepassage as comic in intent
40. This essay is also reprinted in Feminist Interpretations of Plato, edited by Nancy Tuana (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)
41. Leo Strauss, "On Plato's Republic," in The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 116-117
42. and Alan Bloom, "Interpretive Essay," in Republic of Plato, translated by Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 382-383
43. Arlene Saxonhouse, "The Philosopher and the Female," passim
44. For other critiques, see Susan Moller Okin, "Philosopher Queens," p. 20
45. and Christine Pierce, "Equality: Republic V," Monist 57, no. 1 (January 1973): 4-5
46. Okin, "Philosopher Queens," especially pp. 27-29
47. Sarah B. Pomeroy, "Feminism in Book V of Plato's Republic," Apeiron 8 (1974): 33
48. Gregory Vlastos, "Was Plato a Feminist?" in Feminist Interpretations of Plato, pp. 12-17. The other rights are: (3) the right to unimpeded social intercourse, (4) legal capacity, (5) the right to sexual choice, (6) the right to own and dispose of property, and (7) political rights. Vlastos also marshals evidence to show that Plato would have been "not only conservative but reactionary" with regard to any emancipation of actual women within his own society
49. For a critique of his arguments, see Morag Buchan, Women in Plato's Political Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 143-147
50. Aristotle, Politics 1260a20ff
51. Aristotle, Parts of Animals 737a28, 765b10ff, 766a30ff and passim
52. For Aristotle, the sex distinction arises during ontogeny, when the male principle fails to gain ascendency over the female principle (see Arlene Saxonhouse, "Aristotle: Defective Males, Hierarchy and the Limits of Politics," in Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, pp. 33-35)
53. Aristotle, Poetics 15.4
54. See Saxonhouse, "Aristotle: Defective Males," pp. 35-40
55. Aristotle, Pol. 1254b20-1255a2 and 1288a26-29
56. Aristotle, Pol. 1261a5 and 1264b25-1265a20 (see Saxonhouse, "Aristotle: Defective Males," pp. 42-45 for an excellent discussion of this passage)
57. Smith, "Plato and Aristotle on the Nature of Women," especially pp. 468 and 475-477
58. Aristotle does admit the possibility of exceptions to the order of nature (Pol. 1259b1). The quotation "silence brings order to a woman" (Pol. 1260a30) is from the Ajax. Ajax speaks these words to his wife Tecmessa as she tries to restrain his own madness
59. The year 2000 alone saw both an anthology and a journal issue dedicated to this problem (see Li Chenyang, ed., The Sage and the Second Sex [LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 2000]
60. and Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 2 [June 2000])
61. Lunyu jishi, vol. 2, 16:483
62. Analects 17:25
63. Lunyu jishi, vol. 3, 35:1078
64. It is also open to question whether the passage refers to girls (nüzi) or women (furen): Confucius may be merely suggesting that female education (of girls) presents particular problems, not that it is impossible or undesirable. For more extensive discussion of this issue, see Lisa Raphals, "Gendered Virtue Reconsidered," in The Sage and the Second Sex, pp. 225-226
65. Mengzi 2A:6
66. Analects 6:28 and 7:33
67. In another, he states that only those of the highest wisdom or the lowest stupidity could not be changed (Analects 16:9)
68. Roger Ames offers the innovative explanation that the male-female polarity, nannü, refers to sex, but that in defining human traits, the operative polarity is between "person" (ren) and female (nü) (see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in China and the West [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998], p. 294 n. 18). If so, these Chinese texts use these two polarities in ways that may corerspond to the modern distinction between sex (nannü) and gender (rennü)
69. See, for example, Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998)
70. "Gendered Virtue Reconsidered: Notes from the Warring States and Han," in The Sage and the Second Sex, edited by Chenyang Li (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 2000)
71. "Arguments by Women in Early Chinese Texts," Nan Nü 3.2 (2001): 157-195
72. and "A Woman Who Understood the Rites," in Essays on the Analects of Confucius, edited by Bryan W Van Norden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
73. This caution also applies to "feminist" attacks on "Confucian patriarchy" based on a kinship model that posits family interactions as the only basis for the construction of gender, without reference to social structures outside of kinship (see R. W Connell, "Gender Regimes and Gender Order," in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies [Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1994]
74. and Susan Mann, "Women, Families, and Gender Relations," in Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Early Ch'ing, edited by Willard J. Peterson [Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002])
75. Lienü zhuan jiaozhu, edited by Liang Duan (Taibei: Zhonghua shuju, 1983)
76. Guo yu (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1988)
77. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, edited by Yang Bojun (Gaoxiong: Fuwen tushu chubanshe, 1991)
78. Han shu 20 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962)
79. For commentary, see Liang Yusheng, Renbiao kao, in Guoxue jiben congshu, vol. 352 (Taiwan: Shangwu, 1968). The table was completed by Ban Zhao (d. circa 125 C.E.). It presents a ninefold moral classification of 1,955 individuals from legendary times to the Qin dynasty. It consists of four named and five unnamed categories, with "Sage Persons" (Sheng ren), "Benevolent Persons" (Ren ren), and "Wise Persons" (Zhi ren) at the top, and "Stupid (or 'morally retarded') Persons" (Yu ren) at the bottom
80. For further discussion, see Derk Bodde, "Types of Chinese Categorical Thinking," in Essays on Chinese Civilization by Derk Bodde, edited by Charles Le Blanc and Dorothy Borei (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)
81. and Lisa Raphals, "Gendered Virtue Reconsidered."
82. Han shu 20:863-924. The others are: the Three Sages (Fu Xi, Shen Nong, and Huang Di); the Five Emperors (Shao Hao, Zhuan Xu, Di Ku, Yao, and Shun); and Kings Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu, and the Duke of Zhou
83. The unnamed fourth category is the "Masters" category of the Han shu bibliography. The Wei dynasty commentator, Zhang Yan, specifically mentions two such omissions: Laozi, who, "is not among the sages but is a great sage nonetheless" (bu zai sheng yao wei da sheng), and the Mother of Wenbo, who was discerning in ritual and canon, acted according to the precepts of the sages, and whose words served as models for later generations (Liang 1:14)
84. Han shu 20:864-907. Examples include the sons, fathers, teachers, or ministers of Huang Di, Zhuan Xu, Di Ku, King Tang, the Shang king Wu Ding, and exemplary figures such as Bo Yi, Shu Qi, and Guan Zhong
85. These include Fu Xi's sister, Nil Wa, and the wives or consorts of Shen Nong, Huang Di (and his descendants), Di Ku, Yao, Shun, Hou Ji, Yu, King Tang, and the founders of the Zhou dynasty. Bodde's translation of the "Table of Ancient and Modern Men" gives no hint of the several dozen women in its preeminent categories of virtue
86. The two are Shao Hao (one of the five emperors) and Confucius himself! The woman is the mother of Jin Shuxiang, who interprets the portent when her son sights and kills a two-headed snake, and correctly predicts the course of his political career. The Lieniü zhuan classifies her among the "Benevolent and Wise" (renzhi, Han shu 20:923
87. Liang 2:84; Lienü zhuan, story 3.5)
88. Ji Shou was the younger sister of Shun (Han shu 20:878; Liang 2:106)
89. Yi Jiang and Tai Ji were the consorts of King Wu (Han shu 20:92-93; Liang 2:107-118). The wife of Zhao Shuai puts impartiality above self-interest. She urges her husband to welcome a previous wife from the Di tribe and to advance her talented stepson above her own. Her admonition is domestic in context, but the impartiality and recognition of merit that define her virtuous conduct are also the hallmarks of a virtuous official. She appears in the Zuo zhuan and is classified under "Sage Intelligence" (Shenming) in the Lienü zhuan (Han shu 20:913; Liang 3:122; Zuo zhuan Xi 23 and 24; Lienü zhuan story 2.8). In a similar but less verifiable story, the mother of Jie Zitui withdraws from the world with her son when his merit is unrecognized (Han shu 20:913; Liang 4:123; Zuo zhuan Xi 24)
90. Richard W. L. Guisso, "Thunder over the Lake: The Five Classics and the Perception of Woman in Early China," in Women in China
91. Raphals, Sharing the Light, chapters 2 and 4. Lienü zhuan 1 contains accounts of the two consorts of Shun, the mothers of Hou Ji, Xie, and Qi, the consort of Tang, and the three "mothers of the Zhou," which emphasize their intellectual skills and moral judgment. Collective biographies of the wives of emperors in official histories also portray these women as responsible for the flourishing of their respective states
92. Han shu 20:897
93. Liang 4:160
94. Lienü zhuan story 3.1
95. Han shu 20:911
96. Liang 4:166
97. Lienü zhuan story 2.4. Her half brother Hui, who had fled Jin in the wake of a palace coup, regained power as a client of her husband, Duke Mu. Later he turned against Duke Mu, who invaded Jin and took him prisoner. She intervened on her half brother's behalf. By threatening to kill herself and her children (including the heir apparent), she forces her husband to pardon her half brother and restore the alliance (see also Lienü zhuan story 7.7 and Zuo zhuan Xi 15.4, pp. 358-359). The Zuo zhuan version elaborates and justifies Duke Mu's reasons for the antagonism
98. Han shu 20:913
99. Liang 4:168
100. Zuo zhuan Xi 23.4-6, pp. 402-411
101. Guo yu 10.2 (Jin 4), pp. 340-342
102. Lienü zhuan story 2.3
103. Guo yu 5.10-17 (Lu 2), p. 208
104. Liang 1:14 and 4:196-297, Lienü zhuan story 1.9. The Lienü zhuan contains five distinct narrative elements, in some cases, of several parts each
105. For a detailed study of the nature of this reputation, see Lisa Raphals, "A Woman Who Understood the Rites," in Essays on the Analects of Confucius, edited by Bryan W. Van Norden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
106. Cf. Guo yu 5.10-17 (Lu 2), pp. 202-212
107. Li ji (Harvard-Yenching) 3, 924b-25b
108. Han Shi waizhuan (Sibu congkan ed.), stories 1.1 and 1.19
109. Zhanguo ce 20 (Zhao 3), pp. 692-699 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1985)
110. Cf. Han shu 20:924
111. Lienü zhuan story 8.3
112. Shi ji 86:2522-2525
113. Zhanguo ce 27 (Han 2), pp. 993-1000
114. Hall and Ames, Thinking from the Han, pp. 81-82
115. As Nancy Chodorow puts it in a psychoanalytic account of the development of perceptions of gender difference, men have defined maleness as human, and defined women as not-men (see "Gender, Relation and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective," in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies, p. 47)
116. Cf. Grimshaw, "The Ideal of a Female Ethic," p. 223
117. For a review of that literature, see Raphals, "Gendered Virtue Reconsidered."
118. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (London: The Women's Press, 1979)
119. Moira Gatens, "The Dangers of a Woman-Centered Philosophy," in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies, and Annette C. Baier, "Hume: The Reflective Woman's Epistemologist?" in A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by Louise Anthony and Charlotte Witt (Boulder, CO, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1992)
120. See, for example, Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)
121. and Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982)
122. See also Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)
123. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 83
124. cf. Li Chenyang, "The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care: A Comparative Study," Hypatia 9, no. 1 (1994): 79-81 and 87
125. and Jean Grimshaw, "The Ideal of a Female Ethic," Philosophy East & West 14, no. 2 (1992): 226-228
126. Cf. Caroline Whitbeck, "A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology," in Beyond Domination, edited by Carol C. Gould (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1983)
127. and Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)
128. See Grimshaw, Feminist Philosophers, pp. 190 and 224
129. Wollstonecraft, Vindication, pp. 86-87
130. See Jean Grimshaw, "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Tensions in Feminist Philosophy," in Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader, edited by Sean Sayers and Peter Osborne (London and New York: Routledge, 1990)
131. These readings stand in interesting contrast to its original reception: outraged rejection for its advocacy of libertinism and amorality. See Grimshaw, "Mary Wollstonecraft."
132. Hu Shi, "Women's Place in Chinese History," in Chinese Women Through Chinese Eyes, edited by Li Yu-Ning (Armonk, NY, and London: East Gate Books, 1992), especially pp. 6-7. Chunyu Yi was born in 216 B.C.E., and is known to have practiced medicine during the early Han. This incident is dated to 167 B.C.E., during the reign of Han Wen Di (r.180-157 B.C.E.), named here as Xiao Wen
133. See Raphals, Sharing the Eight, chapter 4
134. Henry Rosemont, "Classical Confucian and Contemporary Feminist Perspectives on the Self: Some Parallels, and Their Implications," in Culture and Self Philosophical and Religious Perspectives East and West, edited by Douglas Allen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996)
135. Chenyang Li, "The Confucian Concept of Jen," editor's introduction to The Sage and the Second Sex, and most recently, "Confucianism and Feminist Concerns: Overcoming the Confucian 'Gender Complex,' " Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 2 (June 2000). Some of these are discussed in Raphals, "Gendered Virtue Reconsidered."
136. For an exellent critique of this element in the writings of Tu Weiming and Wm. Theodore de Bary, see Anthony Yu, "Enduring Change: Confucianism and the Prospect of Human Rights," Eingnan Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., no. 2 (October 2000): 27-70, especially 53-56
137. See, for example, Zhang, Qianfan, "The Idea of Human Dignity in Classical Confucian Philosophy: A Reconstruction of Confucianism," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 2 (June 2000)