NAAR EEN WITSGERIGE SEXUOLOGIE

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SUMMARY The present article is an estimation of the character and the value of the famous aristotelean theory on sex. After a rapid survey of the three groups of theories which prevailed before Aristotle's time, represented by Democritus, Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and after an explanation of the mythological and social background of Greek Philosophy, the author submits the aristotelean teaching to a detailed analysis. While reconstructing the essential features of this teaching he shows how Aristotle applied the philosophical dualism of action and passion, of matter and form as an hypothesis to the biological and psychological questions of sex. From his statements on the social and cultural inferiority of women a whole system results which, founded on their biological inferiority — which originally an hypothesis he gradually transforms into a philosophical thesis — has a bearing on all sectors of nature and culture. In spite of the sound and just objections raised by Galen which were known e.g. to Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus, this doctrine nevertheless strongly affected aristotelean and scholastic tradition even though slight changes have been introduced in the Middle Ages through christian influence esp. of Thomas Aquinas. A critical discussion can't but reject this timehonoured theory of the history of sex-science as scientifically unfounded and philosophically unsatisfactory, based as it is on the apriorism of female inferiority. It is therefore left to modern scholastic thought to elaborate a new doctrine in regard to this chapter of metaphysical anthropolgy.