Human sexuality from a biological perspective:
Women: can have only relatively few children, and the investment (in resources, energy, time) involved in each child is very high.
Consequently, nature provides women with strong maternal instincts, bond to children.
What about men?
Men can have many children, and the minimum investment in each child can be extremely low (one sperm, a few minutes).
2 models of biological equilibria:
A. Monogamy.
Each man is limited to one marriage throughout his lifetime.
Men's reproductive possibilities become similar to women's, and to each other's.
Equalization of opportunities for reproduction.
Consequently, each household has two parents, who are equally committed to the household's children.
Ideal requirements for this system:
1. Unavailability of sex outside marriage.
2. Pre-marital sex leads to marriage.
3. Divorce difficult, remarriage impossible.
4. Legitimate children are privileged relative to illegitimate.
5. Nuclear family forms a permanent society, with its own "government".
B. Males as free agents.
Each man seeks to have sex with as many young, attractive (and hence, probably fertile) women as possible.
Households consist of mother and children. Minimal involvement of father(s).
Reproductive inequality: some men have many children, many have few or none.
Intense competition between men for access to sex.
Mixed system: polygamy.
Most people engage in monogamy. A few powerful males are allowed to have multiple wives.
Paradox:
If men are absent from the home, they lose the opportunity of being dominant there.
Questions:
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According to the classical tradition, objective value is rooted in human nature, prior to our choices and actions.
We exist within a framework of values and norms that are prior to and independent of our wills.
According to the modern tradition: we enjoy the power or freedom of ethical creativity.
There are no objective norms or values to constrain us, with authority over us.
Case in point: consider Wilson's discussion of sex roles. pp. 132-133.
Wilson admits that the differentiation of humans into distinct male and female roles is adaptive (product of natural selection).
However, he gives this fact no normative weight -- no authority over our choices.
We are still free as a society to decide whether to alter, exaggerate or eliminate these differences.
Freedom of ethical creativity.
Another example: Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works
Genes, natural selection explain everything.
Pinker has chosen not to have children:
"I've told my genes to go jump in the lake."
Question: is it coherent to combine a sociobiological theory of human nature with the freedom of ethical creativity?
Do the mind, the will not have functions?
Are they not biological phenomena, adaptations?
The function of the will is to make choices that further the realizations of other adaptations, including reproductive ones.
If the will rebels against the genes, it is malfunctioning.
If sociobiology is true, there are only two ways of interpreting Wilson & Pinker:
(1) they are deceiving themselves and us: the supposed rebellion or freedom from nature is merely a sophisticated form of control by nature.
(2) they are malfunctioning, suffering from a kind of cognitive disorder, on a par with illogical or irrational thought.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is more consistent:
she clearly affirms the freedom of ethical creativity, but she does so by embracing a radical sort of nature/culture dualism.
Ethical choice transcends the biological and the physical.
Based on a metaphysical theory, in which human consciousness represents something radically new, a complete discontinuity.
Jean-Paul Sartre: dualism of physicality and consciousness, Being and Nothingness.
Consequence: feminity and masculinity in human life are a social construction, having only a contingent relationship to biological categories of sex.
de Beauvoir's goal: an androgynous society. Admits that this has no basis in biology.
Is freedom of ethical creativity a coherent idea?
In classical tradition, not even God has this freedom.
14th. C. philosopher Duns Scotus is first to attribute it to God. Followed by Occam.
Rousseau -- transfers it to human beings.
Aristotelian objection:
1. All decisions depend on a pre-existing scale of values. We always decide for the better.
2. FEC means that all values are created by a prior human decision.
This leads to an infinite regress.
Defender of FEC must believe in the possibility of an absolute, criterionless choice.
A choice of what I shall be, what I shall seek, that depends on no prior conception of value. (e.g., "I choose androgyny, not because it is good, but as a fundamental, ungrounded value")
Aristotle: this is impossible. The human will is not built this way.
Some kind of self-deception must be involved in any attempt to do so.
De Beauvoir borrows a pair of terms of theology, transcendence and immanence to describe the human condition. In theology, God is often described as being both transcendent (beyond the world) and immanent (within the world). De Beauvoir applies these two concepts to human life and its relation to the biological or n natural world.
Certain aspects of human life transcend the biological and natural: the will, free choice, the freedom of ethical creativity, and the contingencies of culture and history. Other aspects are immanent within the biological:: biological and physiological necessities, the body, feelings and innate drives.
De Beauvoir locates the contrast between the masculine and the feminine in the transcendent realm. The two sexes or gender we have are constructed by society: they are not immanent, inevitable consequences of our biological constitution.
According to existentialists like de Beauvoir, the essence of self-deception or "bad faith" consists in treating what is really transcendent as though it were immanent. For example, it is a matter of bad faith to act as though the traditional feminine role is determined by nature, instead of being chosen by us as a way of structuring our common life.
De Beauvoir would cite someone like Rousseau as an example of such bad faith. Rousseau believed, like de Beauvoir, that humans are both transcendent and immanent, and that our transcendence involves a kind of freedom of ethical creativity. However, Rousseau tried to limit this transcendent dimension to male human beings. He believed that women were destined by nature to play a feminine and maternal role. This contrast can be seen clearly by comparing Rousseau's two works on education: Emile, on the education of a boy, and Heloise, on the education of a girl. Rousseau recommends shielding Emile as much as possible from the artificial restrictions of society, but he insists that Heloise be socialized at an early age to accept the burdens of conventional womanhood.
De Beauvoir advocates a society in which there is absolute equality between the sexes. She argues that it is primarily the nuclear family, with its special bond between mother and children, that is the primary obstacle to establishing an androgynous society. In seeking reproduction, women face a choice between two unacceptable options: traditional marriage, with its inherent patriarchy and special burdening of mothers, and single parenthood, in which the burdens of motherhood are still greater. According to de Beauvoir, the solution lies in socializing the process of child care. The community must provide all child care, from birth until maturity, so women will be free to pursue vocations and other public matters without comparative disadvantage.
What is the basis for de Beauvoir's advocacy of such radical reform? De Beauvoir appeals to the ideal of justice: traditional society is unjust to women, and justice demands androgyny. This appeal raises a further question: is justice located within the transcendent or the immanent realm? If de Beauvoir answers that justice is transcendent, then each society and each individual must be free to invent his or her own conception of justice. Justice would fall within the scope of each person's freedom of ethical creativity. Consequently, no notion of justice can have authority over us: no one can appeal to justice as a reason why we must do something, regardless of whether we want to. If justice is in the realm of transcendence, then de Beauvoir cannot argue that her conception of justice is right and that those who favor a patriarchal conception of justice are wrong.
Alternatively, if de Beauvoir answers that justice is immanent, then once again justice has no authority over us as humans. Human destiny is one of escape from immanence. Consequently, in either case, appeals to justice would seem to carry no weight. From de Beauvoir's perspective, it makes no sense to exhort people to pursue justice. Such exhortation is nothing but de Beauvoir's attempt to push her own choices upon us, under the cover of a kind of moral necessity. In other words, de Beauvoir seems to be guilty of trying to entice us to commit an act of bad faith, of accepting as a necessity what is really a matter of personal choice.
From a classical, Aristotelian veiwpoint, the virtue of justice is rooted in human nature, as our the virtues associated with marriage, parenthood and the family, such as chastity, parental responsibility and filial loyalty. C. S. Lewis would classify de Beauvoir as an "Innovator", one who takes part of the Tao (justice, equality), magnifies it beyond all proportion, and uses it to oppose the remainder of the Tao, in this case, the part of the Tao concerned with the traditional family and the distinctive duties of men and women.
However, it is possible to distinguish between higher and lower values within the Tao. Even from the Aristotelian perspective, it would be accurate to say that justice stands higher than so-called family values, since we have supra-biological ends, including the need for philosophical wisdom, in relation to which men and women are absolutely equal. Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), proposed such an Aristotelian version of feminism in the 18th century. As human beings, we have purposes that are higher than the roles we play within marriage and the family, purposes that concern our eternal life. In preparation for these higher purposes, it is essential that every human being be given the opportunity for the full development of his or her intellectual and moral virtues. Wollstonecraft attacked the corrupt values of conventional feminity from this perspective, in particular, the over-emphasis on beauty, charm, and other superficialities.
Thus, an Aristotelian can take the pursuit of equality between the sexes very seriously. However, unlike de Beauvoir, an Aristotelian would not accept any demand of justice that would bring about the annihilation of the nuclear family. Justice is a higher value, but if the higher value is taken in such a way as to require the utter destruction of a lower value, this should be taken as a proof that we have misinterpreted or misapplied the higher value. Higher values never destroy lower values: instead, they complete and perfect them. True equality between the sexes would not destroy marriage and the nuclear family: rather, it would enable the nuclear family to realize its own proper essence.
There are two possible errors here: to pursue equality to the point of destroying the nuclear family, and to defend the integrity of the family to the point of denying the equality of justice. The two errors are not equal: since justice is a higher value, the second error is worse than the first. However, both are errors, and the correct course is a proper accomodation between the two levels.
Mary Wollstonecraft: a semi-classical feminist (1759-1797).
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