| Male and Female Consciousness |
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From Men's Sites:
Darren
Posted: May 19 2005, 07:01 PM
The nature of the female
Arthur Schopenhauer
One needs only to see the way she is built to realize that woman is not intended for
great mental or for great physical labor. She expiates the guilt of life not through
activity but through suffering, through the pains of childbirth, caring for the child and
subjection to the man, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.
Great suffering, joy, exertion, is not for her: her life should flow by more quietly,
trivially, gently than the man's without being essentially happier or unhappier.
Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood
precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big
children, their whole lives long: a kind of intermediate stage between the child and
the man, who is the actual human being, ‘man.’ One has only to watch a girl playing
with a child, dancing and singing with it the whole day, and then ask oneself what,
with the best will in the world, a man could do in her place.
Natural weapons
In the girl nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-
effect: it has provided her with superabundant beauty and charm for a few years at
the expense of the whole remainder of her life, so that during these years she may so
capture the imagination of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to support
her honorably in some form or another for the rest of her life, a step he would seem
hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thus nature has equipped
women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing
her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted
with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses its wings after mating, since
they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the
woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the
same reason.
Female truth
The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This
originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it
is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force
but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell
lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with
tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has
equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and
defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in
the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn
in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the
clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an
animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does
so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful
woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is
why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to
attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess,
together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness,
treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is
questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.
Feminine charms
Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-
shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with this drive
that all its beauty is bound up. More fittingly than the fair sex, women could be called
the unaesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the plastic arts do they
possess any real feeling or receptivity: if they affect to do so, it is merely mimicry in
service of their effort to please. This comes from the fact that they are incapable of
taking a purely objective interest in anything whatever, and the reason for this is, I
think, as follows. Man strives in everything for a direct domination over things, either
by comprehending or by subduing them. But woman is everywhere and always
relegated to a merely indirect domination, which is achieved by means of man, who
is consequently the only thing she has to dominate directly. Thus it lies in the nature
of women to regard everything simply as a means of capturing a man, and their
interest in anything else is only simulated, is no more than a detour, i.e. amounts to
coquetry and mimicry.
Absence of genius
Nor can one expect anything else from women if one considers that the most
eminent heads of the entire sex have proved incapable of a single truly great,
genuine and original achievement in art, or indeed of creating anything at all of
lasting value: this strikes one most forcibly in regard to painting, since they are just
as capable of mastering its technique as we are, and indeed paint very busily, yet
cannot point to a single great painting; the reason being precisely that they lack all
objectivity of mind, which is what painting demands above all else. Isolated and
partial exceptions do not alter the case: women, taken as a whole, are and remain
thorough and incurable philistines: so that, with the extremely absurd arrangement by
which they share the rank and title of their husband, they are a continual spur to his
ignoble ambitions. They are sexus sequior, the inferior second sex in every respect:
one should be indulgent toward their weaknesses, but to pay them honour is
ridiculous beyond measure and demeans us even in their eyes.
Insipid women-veneration
This is how the peoples of antiquity and of the Orient have regarded women; they
have recognized what is the proper position for women far better than we have, we
with our Old French gallantry and insipid women-veneration, that highest flower of
Christian-Germanic stupidity which has served only to make women so rude and
arrogant that one is sometimes reminded of the sacred apes of Benares which,
conscious of their own sanctity and inviolability, thought themselves at liberty to do
whatever they pleased.
Monogamy and 'filles de joie'
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and
double one's duties. But when the law conceded women equal rights with men it
should at the same time have endowed them with masculine reasoning powers.
What is actually the case is that the more those rights and privileges the law accords
to women exceed those which are natural to them, the more it reduces the number of
women who actually participate in these benefits; and then the remainder are
deprived of their natural rights by just the amount these few receive in excess of
theirs: for, because of the unnaturally privileged position enjoyed by women as a
consequence of monogamy and the marriage laws accompanying it, which regard
women as entirely equal to men (which they are in no respect), prudent and cautious
men very often hesitate before making so great a sacrifice as is involved in entering
into so inequitable a contract; so that while among polygamous peoples every
woman gets taken care of, among the monogamous the number of married women
is limited and there remains over a quantity of unsupported women who, in the upper
classes, vegetate on as useless old maids, and in the lower are obligated to
undertake laborious work they are constitutionally unfitted for or become filles de
joie, whose lives are as devoid of joie as they are of honour but who, given the
prevailing circumstances, are necessary for the gratification of the male sex and
therefore come to constitute a recognized class, with the specific task of preserving
the virtue of those women more favoured by fate who have found a man to support
them or may reasonably hope to find one. There are 80,000 prostitutes in London
alone: and what are they if not sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? These poor
women are the inevitable counterpart and natural complement to the European lady,
with all her arrogance and pretension. For the female sex viewed as a whole
polygamy is therefore a real benefit; on the other hand there appears no rational
ground why a man whose wife suffers from a chronic illness, or has remained
unfruitful, or has gradually grown too old for him, should not take a second.
No argument about polygamy
There can be no argument about polygamy: it is a fact to be met with everywhere and
the only question is how to regulate it. For who is really a monogamist? We all live in
polygamy, at least for a time and usually for good. Since every man needs many
women, there could be nothing more just than that he should be free, indeed obliged,
to support many women. This would also mean the restoration of woman to her
rightful and natural position, the subordinate one, and the abolition from the world of
the lady, with her ridiculous claims to respect and veneration; there would then be
only women, and no longer unhappy women, of which Europe is at present full.
Property and inheritance
In India, no woman is ever independent, but in accordance with the law of Manu, she
stands under the control of her father, her husband, her brother or her son. It is, to be
sure, a revolting thing that a widow should immolate herself upon her husband's
funeral pyre; but it is also revolting that she should spend her husband's money with
her paramours – the money for which he toiled his whole life long, in the consoling
belief that he was providing for his children. Happy are those who have kept the
middle course – medium tenuere beati.
In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the modern world, even amongst the
Hottentots, property is inherited by the male descendants alone; it is only in Europe
that a departure has taken place; but not amongst the nobility, however.
That the property which has cost men long years of toil and effort, and been won with
so much difficulty, should afterwards come into the hands of women, who then, in
their lack of reason, squander it in a short time, or otherwise fool it away, is a
grievance and a wrong as serious as it is common, which should be prevented by
limiting the right of women to inherit. In my opinion, the best arrangement would be
that by which women, whether widows or daughters, should never receive anything
beyond the interest for life on property secured by mortgage, and in no case the
property itself, or the capital, except when there cease to be male descendants. The
people who make money are men, not women; and it follows from this that women
are neither justified in having unconditional possession of it, nor fit persons to be
entrusted with its administration. When wealth, in any true sense of the word, that is
to say, funds, houses or land, is to go to them as an inheritance they should never be
allowed the free disposition of it. In their case a guardian should always be
appointed; and hence they should never be given the free control of their own
children, wherever it can be avoided.
Up to 'Property and inheritance' the translation is by R. J. Hollingdale, from Arthur
Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms (Penguin 1970), then by T. Bailey Saunders
Darren
Posted: May 19 2005, 07:01 PM
The nature of the female
Arthur Schopenhauer
One needs only to see the way she is built to realize that woman is not intended for
great mental or for great physical labor. She expiates the guilt of life not through
activity but through suffering, through the pains of childbirth, caring for the child and
subjection to the man, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.
Great suffering, joy, exertion, is not for her: her life should flow by more quietly,
trivially, gently than the man's without being essentially happier or unhappier.
Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood
precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big
children, their whole lives long: a kind of intermediate stage between the child and
the man, who is the actual human being, ‘man.’ One has only to watch a girl playing
with a child, dancing and singing with it the whole day, and then ask oneself what,
with the best will in the world, a man could do in her place.
Natural weapons
In the girl nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-
effect: it has provided her with superabundant beauty and charm for a few years at
the expense of the whole remainder of her life, so that during these years she may so
capture the imagination of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to support
her honorably in some form or another for the rest of her life, a step he would seem
hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thus nature has equipped
women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing
her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted
with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses its wings after mating, since
they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the
woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the
same reason.
Female truth
The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This
originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it
is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force
but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell
lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with
tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has
equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and
defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in
the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn
in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the
clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an
animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does
so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful
woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is
why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to
attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess,
together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness,
treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is
questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.
Feminine charms
Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-
shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with this drive
that all its beauty is bound up. More fittingly than the fair sex, women could be called
the unaesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the plastic arts do they
possess any real feeling or receptivity: if they affect to do so, it is merely mimicry in
service of their effort to please. This comes from the fact that they are incapable of
taking a purely objective interest in anything whatever, and the reason for this is, I
think, as follows. Man strives in everything for a direct domination over things, either
by comprehending or by subduing them. But woman is everywhere and always
relegated to a merely indirect domination, which is achieved by means of man, who
is consequently the only thing she has to dominate directly. Thus it lies in the nature
of women to regard everything simply as a means of capturing a man, and their
interest in anything else is only simulated, is no more than a detour, i.e. amounts to
coquetry and mimicry.
Absence of genius
Nor can one expect anything else from women if one considers that the most
eminent heads of the entire sex have proved incapable of a single truly great,
genuine and original achievement in art, or indeed of creating anything at all of
lasting value: this strikes one most forcibly in regard to painting, since they are just
as capable of mastering its technique as we are, and indeed paint very busily, yet
cannot point to a single great painting; the reason being precisely that they lack all
objectivity of mind, which is what painting demands above all else. Isolated and
partial exceptions do not alter the case: women, taken as a whole, are and remain
thorough and incurable philistines: so that, with the extremely absurd arrangement by
which they share the rank and title of their husband, they are a continual spur to his
ignoble ambitions. They are sexus sequior, the inferior second sex in every respect:
one should be indulgent toward their weaknesses, but to pay them honour is
ridiculous beyond measure and demeans us even in their eyes.
Insipid women-veneration
This is how the peoples of antiquity and of the Orient have regarded women; they
have recognized what is the proper position for women far better than we have, we
with our Old French gallantry and insipid women-veneration, that highest flower of
Christian-Germanic stupidity which has served only to make women so rude and
arrogant that one is sometimes reminded of the sacred apes of Benares which,
conscious of their own sanctity and inviolability, thought themselves at liberty to do
whatever they pleased.
Monogamy and 'filles de joie'
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and
double one's duties. But when the law conceded women equal rights with men it
should at the same time have endowed them with masculine reasoning powers.
What is actually the case is that the more those rights and privileges the law accords
to women exceed those which are natural to them, the more it reduces the number of
women who actually participate in these benefits; and then the remainder are
deprived of their natural rights by just the amount these few receive in excess of
theirs: for, because of the unnaturally privileged position enjoyed by women as a
consequence of monogamy and the marriage laws accompanying it, which regard
women as entirely equal to men (which they are in no respect), prudent and cautious
men very often hesitate before making so great a sacrifice as is involved in entering
into so inequitable a contract; so that while among polygamous peoples every
woman gets taken care of, among the monogamous the number of married women
is limited and there remains over a quantity of unsupported women who, in the upper
classes, vegetate on as useless old maids, and in the lower are obligated to
undertake laborious work they are constitutionally unfitted for or become filles de
joie, whose lives are as devoid of joie as they are of honour but who, given the
prevailing circumstances, are necessary for the gratification of the male sex and
therefore come to constitute a recognized class, with the specific task of preserving
the virtue of those women more favoured by fate who have found a man to support
them or may reasonably hope to find one. There are 80,000 prostitutes in London
alone: and what are they if not sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? These poor
women are the inevitable counterpart and natural complement to the European lady,
with all her arrogance and pretension. For the female sex viewed as a whole
polygamy is therefore a real benefit; on the other hand there appears no rational
ground why a man whose wife suffers from a chronic illness, or has remained
unfruitful, or has gradually grown too old for him, should not take a second.
No argument about polygamy
There can be no argument about polygamy: it is a fact to be met with everywhere and
the only question is how to regulate it. For who is really a monogamist? We all live in
polygamy, at least for a time and usually for good. Since every man needs many
women, there could be nothing more just than that he should be free, indeed obliged,
to support many women. This would also mean the restoration of woman to her
rightful and natural position, the subordinate one, and the abolition from the world of
the lady, with her ridiculous claims to respect and veneration; there would then be
only women, and no longer unhappy women, of which Europe is at present full.
Property and inheritance
In India, no woman is ever independent, but in accordance with the law of Manu, she
stands under the control of her father, her husband, her brother or her son. It is, to be
sure, a revolting thing that a widow should immolate herself upon her husband's
funeral pyre; but it is also revolting that she should spend her husband's money with
her paramours – the money for which he toiled his whole life long, in the consoling
belief that he was providing for his children. Happy are those who have kept the
middle course – medium tenuere beati.
In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the modern world, even amongst the
Hottentots, property is inherited by the male descendants alone; it is only in Europe
that a departure has taken place; but not amongst the nobility, however.
That the property which has cost men long years of toil and effort, and been won with
so much difficulty, should afterwards come into the hands of women, who then, in
their lack of reason, squander it in a short time, or otherwise fool it away, is a
grievance and a wrong as serious as it is common, which should be prevented by
limiting the right of women to inherit. In my opinion, the best arrangement would be
that by which women, whether widows or daughters, should never receive anything
beyond the interest for life on property secured by mortgage, and in no case the
property itself, or the capital, except when there cease to be male descendants. The
people who make money are men, not women; and it follows from this that women
are neither justified in having unconditional possession of it, nor fit persons to be
entrusted with its administration. When wealth, in any true sense of the word, that is
to say, funds, houses or land, is to go to them as an inheritance they should never be
allowed the free disposition of it. In their case a guardian should always be
appointed; and hence they should never be given the free control of their own
children, wherever it can be avoided.
Up to 'Property and inheritance' the translation is by R. J. Hollingdale, from Arthur
Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms (Penguin 1970), then by T. Bailey Saunders
Male and Female Consciousness
" . . . It is necessary to coin a name for those minds to which the duality of
element and character becomes appreciable at no stage in the process. I
propose for phychical data at the earliest stage of their existence the word
Henid (from the Greek, because in them it is impossible to distinguish
perception and sensation as two analytically separable factors, and because,
therefore, there is no trace of duality in them).
Naturally the "henid" is an abstract conception and may not occur in the
absolute form. How often psychical data in human beings actually stand at the
absolute extreme of undifferent- iation is uncertain and unimportant; but the
theory does not need to concern itself with the possibility of such an
extreme. A common example from what has happened to all of us may serve to
illustrate what a henid is. I may have a definite wish to say something
particular, and then something distracts me, and the "it" I wanted to say or
think has gone. Later on, by some process of association, the "it" is quite
suddenly reproduced, and I know at once that it was what was on my tongue,
but, so to speak, in a more perfect stage of development.
I fear lest some one may expect me to describe exactly what I mean by "henid."
The wish can come only from a misconception. The very idea of a henid forbids
its description; it is merely a something. . . . One cannot describe
particular henids; one can only be conscious of their existence.
None the less henids are things as vital as elements and characters. Each
henid is an individual and can be distinguished from other henids. Later on I
shall show that probably the mental data of early childhood (certainly of the
first fourteen months) are all henids, although perhaps not in the absolute
sense. Throughout childhood these data do not reach far from the henid stage;
in adults there is always a certain process of development going on. Probably
the perceptions of some plants and animals are henids. In the case of mankind
the development from the henid to the completely differentiated perception and
idea is always possible, although such an ideal condition may seldom be
attained. . . .
Now what is the relation between the investigation I have been making and the
psychology of the sexes? What is the distinction between the male and the
female (and to reach this has been the object of my digression) in the process
of clarification?
Here is my answer:
The male has the same psychical data as the female, but in a more articulated
form; where she thinks more or less in henids, he thinks in more or less clear
and detailed presentations in which the elements are distinct from the tones
of feeling. With the woman, thinking and feeling are identical, for man they
are in opposition. The woman has many of her mental experiences as henids,
whilst in man these have passed through a process of clarification. Woman is
sentimental, and knows emotion but not mental excitement.
. . . It is certainly the case that whilst we are still near the henid stage
we know much more certainly what a thing is not than what it is. Instinctive
experience depends on henids. Naturally that condition implies uncertainty and
indecision in judgment. Judgment comes towards the end of the process of
clarification; the act of judgment is in itself a departure from the henid
stage.
The most decisive proof for the correctness of the view that attributes henids
to woman and differentiated thoughts to man, and that sees in this a
fundamental sexual distinction, lies in the fact that wherever a new judgment
is to be made, (not merely something already settled to be put into proverbial
form) it is always the case that the female expects from man the clarification
of her data, the interpretation of her henids. It is almost a tertiary sexual
character of the male, and certainly it acts on the female as such, that she
expects from him the interpretation and illumination of her thoughts. It is
from this reason that so many girls say that they could only marry, or, at
least, only love a man who was cleverer than themselves; that they would be
repelled by a man who said that all they thought was right, and did not know
better than they did. In short, the woman makes it a criterion of manliness
that the man should be superior to herself mentally, that she should be
influenced and dominated by the man; and this in itself is enough to ridicule
all ideas of sexual equality.
The male lives consciously, the female lives unconsciously. This is certainly
the necessary conclusion for the extreme cases. The woman receives her
consciousness from the man; the function to bring into consciousness what was
outside it is a sexual function of the typical man with regard to the typical
woman, and is a necessary part of his ideal completeness. . . . "