Aristotle, once considered the father of biology, is recognized today as a central figure of Western ancient philosophy. Despite his empirical observations, Aristotle’s false claims and assumptions about women and women’s health create a complex image of the ancient philosopher.
Philosophy professor Mariska Leunissen doesn’t want to excuse or ignore these ideas, but insists on confronting them head-on. Leunissen argues that doing so will help us better understand how similar biases persists, even today.
“If we want to use Aristotle as a sort of paragon – as one of the greatest philosophers – and we want to preserve some of his theories, we ought to reckon with the dark spots as well,” said Leunissen.
Her engagement with Aristotle is not just academic, but reflective of her internal struggles. “I spend all my time trying to understand this guy who thinks that as a foreign woman, I am inferior and cannot be happy, cannot be virtuous.”
This encouraged Leunissen to think about how Aristotle learned about women. This culminated in Leunissen’s third monograph, Aristotle’s Gynecology: Facts, Evidence and Early Medicine, published last year by Oxford University Press.
Aristotle believed that women were inferior by nature and therefore could not become fully virtuous, and though many of his scientific claims and observations about women are empirically correct, his works also include several that are false, some of them obviously so. Often relying...
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