Prompt Two

Rachel Johnson

AP English 11

August 12, 2013

Mrs. Wilhelmus

                                                Gender in Philosophy

            My reaction to Aristotle’s views wasn’t too much of a shock. I wasn’t that

surprised because for centuries women have always been looked down upon.  It

is no new concept that women always get the negative characteristics such as

being the weaker sex, less dominant, and the need to be submissive to male

figure. I was not pleased with his views on women however.

            Throughout the novel and all of the philosophers we learned about it is safe

to conclude that most of the philosophers in Sophie’s World had very little respect

for women and gave them miniscule amounts of credit for being anything other than

a way to keep the population growing. The philosopher that gave the best answers

to the gender discrimination was Plato. He believed that for a society to be able to

go about properly there needed to be women and that they played a role in

every day life. By no means was he saying that they were just as equal to men. Plato

saw women in the role he thought best suited them and that was caretakers and

being maternal. Giving women any credit during that time era was almost unheard

of.

            With all of this being said it’s not a shock to realized that most of the

philosophers were men in that time period. Women were looked at as property of

the husband and basically had no rights. If they had no rights there was no way men

would care what they had to say or thought about.