| Title | : | The Metaphysics of Gender (Studies in Feminist Philosophy) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0199740410 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780199740413 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 168 |
| Publication | : | First published September 23, 2011 |
chapters introduce the ingredients for a theory of gender essentialism about individuals, called uniessentialism . Gender uniessentialism claims that a social individual's gender is uniessential to that individual. It is modeled on Aristotle's essentialism in which the form or essence of an individual is the principle of unity of that individual. For example, the form or essence of an artifact, like a house, is what unifies the material parts of the house into a new individual (over and above a sum of parts). Since an individual's gender is a social role (or set of social norms), the kind of unity in question is not the unity of material parts, as it is in the artifact example. Instead, the central claim of gender uniessentialism is that an individual's gender provides that individual with a principle of normative unity-a principle that orders and organizes all of that individual's other social roles. An important ingredient in gender uniessentialism concerns exactly which individuals
are at issue-human organisms, persons, or social individuals?
The Metaphysics of Gender (Studies in Feminist Philosophy) Reviews
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Witt presents an interesting theory for explaining the interrelation of biological sex, gender, the person, and the self. Though her theory (seeing gender as uniessential to social individuals) is interesting and worth interacting with, her style of writing is a bit dizzying. Also, there are a lot of "moving parts" in her theory, making for a complicated theory in which it is hard to tell whether we should talk about the person, or the self, or the social individual, or the human organism (the person is composed of each of these essential parts which are united by gender, which is a biologically-socially-functionally defined social role bringing with it a certain number of social norms).
So, though a bit complicated, it is definitely worth reading and interacting with! -
So many unanswered ?s. Also approaches TERF territory
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While I disagree with a number of Witt's conclusion and applications, the clarity of thought in this volume was exceedingly helpful. Her thesis is that gender is a unifying social role which is fundamental to the self in a social world such as ours.
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