Abstract

My aim in this paper is to contribute to the substantial body of feminist scholarship on the place of women in Aristotle’s psychic and political hierarchy. Whereas the traditional point of departure for such analyses is more typically Aristotle’s Politics, mine is his hylomorphic or organizational/ecological account of what defines a living thing and its powers in de Anima. My primary claim is that although his de Anima account does offer a more promising view of what defines particular kinds of living things, including human beings qua the power of intellection, it does not ultimately save him from the ambiguity endemic to his account of women’s capacity to deliberate in his Politics. Such a result is significant for feminists who, in seeking nondualistic accounts of embodied human existence, have sometimes turned to Aristotle’s hylomorphism for support, but, I suggest, might be better off to seek such support elsewhere