Overview
- Argues that, had Aristotle been faithful to his best insights, he would have been a feminist
- Presents a new version of the feminist that can help address significant social issues
- Offers the first substantive appropriation of Aristotle’s metaphysics for feminist purposes
Part of the book series: Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action (HSNA, volume 1)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book articulates the theoretical outlines of a feminism developed from Aristotle’s metaphysics, making a new contribution to feminist theory. Readers will discover why Aristotle was not a feminist and how he might have become one, through an investigation of Aristotle and Aristotelian tradition. The author shows how Aristotle’s metaphysics can be used to articulate a particularly subtle and theoretically powerful understanding of gender that may offer a highly useful tool for distinctively feminist arguments.
This work builds on Martha Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’ in a more explicitly and thoroughly hylomorphist way. The author shows how Aristotle’s hylomorphic model, developed to run between the extremes of Platonic dualism and Democritean atomism, can similarly be used today to articulate a view of gender that takes bodily differences seriously without reducing gender to biological determinations.
Although written for theorists, this scholarly yet accessiblebook can be used to address more practical issues and the final chapter explores women in universities as one example. This book will appeal to both feminists with limited familiarity with Aristotle’s philosophy, and scholars of Aristotle with limited familiarity with feminism.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr. Sarah Borden Sharkey, Professor of Philosophy, Wheaton College, earned her Ph.D. from Fordham University. Her interests focus on the relevance of classical and medieval ideas for contemporary discussions. She has written extensively on Edith Stein, including Edith Stein, in the series Outstanding Christian Thinkers (Continuum, 2003) and Thine Own Self: Individuality in Edith Stein’s Later Writings (Catholic University of America Press, 2009), as well as a co-edited volume on Stein’s writings on Teresa of Avila (Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications, 2015).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: An Aristotelian Feminism
Authors: Sarah Borden Sharkey
Series Title: Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29847-4
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-29846-7Published: 11 August 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-80669-3Published: 22 April 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-29847-4Published: 01 August 2016
Series ISSN: 2509-4793
Series E-ISSN: 2509-4807
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 167
Topics: Metaphysics, Gender Studies