Christine de Pizan - A Medieval Feminist
The main question which de Pizan asks is ‘why is it that so many men have always been so ready to say and write abominable and hateful things about women and their nature?’
The problematic of the question is that these men are reputable philosophers and writers.
In answering this question de Pizan is approached by three metaphorical figures: reason, rectitude, and justice, who help her in constructing The City of Ladies.
The first step in building this city is dispelling the hateful things said about women. The question asked is the following: do men do this because of their nature, or because of their hatred?
The answer given by reason is that this is not due to nature. Rather, the reasons are diverse:
- Criticizing from good intentions: attacking all women due to a small part of them which men should avoid
- Criticizing out of depravity: men who were frivolous in their youth attack women once they become impotent old men.
- Criticizing out of envy.
Further in the text, reason explains how men who have criticized women did not understand their blessings. F.e. there is a Latin proverb, which attacks women by saying that god made them to weep, talk, and weave.
However, men who use this to slander women do not understand the positive sides of these actions, as was the case, f.e., with the mother of St. Augustine, who made him join Christianity by her tears.
The text ends by giving advice to women on how they should conduct their lives: they should be humble, patient, and defend themselves against those who threaten their honor and chastity.
This advice is given to all women, whether they are aristocrat, bourgeois, or lower class, which de Pizan explicitly states.
Thomas Aquinas
Biographical Data
He was the student of Albert the Great (Albert Magnus).
Member of the Dominican Order and the Regent Master of the University of Paris. In 1277 he was condemned, in 1323 he was canonized as a saint.
Philosophical Context
The five ways of proving the existence of God found in the Summa Theologia provide a good example of St. Thomas’ use of philosophy in his theology. These proofs are not original; each can be traced back to philosophers of antiquity or the middle ages, but in his hands are transformed not into the god of Aristotle, or the Arabic philosophers, but the god of Christianity.
(Prime Mover) The first and the most evident way of proving god’s existence is from motion: it is clear that some things are in motion; now, whatever is moved must be moved by something else. Being in motion is in potency with respect towards which it moves. Whereas a being moves insofar as it is in act. For motion is nothing but the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.
A being cannot be brought from potentiality to actuality except by a being in act, f.e. wood that is potentially hot can be made actually hot only by something actually hot (such as fire). At first sight, the self-movement of living beings seems to be an exception to this rule. But on closer examination, we see that they have parts one of which moves the other. If the cause of motion is itself moved, it must be moved by some other mover, which in turn is moved by another, and so on…
But there cannot be an infinite regress, an infinite series of movers, because then there would be no first mover, and consequently no other movers. → God
(Maurer)
Text
Goodness precedes being only in the way the final cause precedes the efficient cause.
Every being is good insofar as it is a being. But something can be said to be evil insofar as ‘it lacks some existence,’ i.e. by the privation of good (eye can be blind through privation of sight, and thus be ‘bad’, as it would never be bad for a leg to be blind, since sight is not privated of it).