Introduction: Aristotle and the History of Sex
Introduction: Aristotle and the History of Sex
The Introduction considers how Aristotle’s normative view of form and matter, associated with male and female, makes for a metaphysics of gender that construes the male as what has meaning and definition and the female as what is in need of such definition. The one- and two-sex models in the history of thinking of sexual difference are explained to show how Aristotle seems to fit in both and neither by construing matter as what is not form on the one-sex model but also considering form and matter separate and distinct causes. This framing points to the problem that matter has posed to the history of philosophy—matter is posited to fill a role that it seems only capable of fulfilling by having no power of its own—and offers the Möbius strip as a model for thinking matter’s relation to form.
Keywords: One-sex, two-sex, form, matter, male, female, Möbius strip
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