The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC-AD 1250

Margaret McGrath was a research librarian at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto.

In describing this work it is as well to begin with the statement of the author, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Montreal’s Concordia University, that it is “the first systematic study of the ways in which the concept of woman itself emerged, developed and influenced western philosophy. Her terminal date is 1255, when the works of Aristotle became required lectures at the new University of Paris and Aristotelian philosophy was established as dominant throughout Europe.

She puts the philosophical questions asked about the concept of woman under four headings (generation, opposites, wisdom, and virtue) and the theories that emerged as three in number (sex unity, sex polarity, and sex complementarity). She places her readings of several major and many minor figures against a schema derived from these factors, using Aristotelian thought as a connecting thread. The weakness of this thread for the centuries from Aristotle’s death to 1000 A.D. is in such admissions that, for instance, Augustinian thought derived nothing from Aristotle.

In her view, sex polarity is intrinsic in the developing Aristotelianism. She finds early exponents of sex complementarity in the double monasteries and such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, until education moved from the monasteries into the university. There, with such giants as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas reviving Aristotle, in her reading, polarity must hold sway.

This is a bold and unequivocal work and with a wide readership could generate much healthy controversy and rebuttal. Unfortunately, the style is less than limpid and frequently confusing. Such statements as those about the validity of the sources for Heloise and Abelard go beyond confusing and reinforce the suspicion that at least sometimes the author’s readings are shaped to her thesis. That being said, the excerpts from primary sources in translation from a great number of early philosophers could form a very useful entry point into “who said what” about female identity prior to 1250, bearing in mind that the interpretation developed here cannot be accepted uncritically. There is a well-executed 18-page selective bibliography.