A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised.: An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovatorsHéricourt, Madame d'
Philosophy
A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised.: An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovators
Héricourt, Madame d'
Women's rights -- France
4. Man belongs to the _major mode_: he has the ascendency over woman in
intellect, in logic, in the larger manufactures, in friendship; it
belongs to him therefore to create positive science, to connect facts, to
regulate commercial relations, to bind together interests, and to
organize groups and series. To all these things, woman brings her
indispensable aid, but by reason of her aptitudes, her services are only
secondary therein.
5. Woman belongs to the _minor mode_; she has the ascendency over man in
the kind of intellect that applies and adapts, in the intuition that puts
man on the track of the good to which masculine logic should attain; in
the sphere of maternity in which she presides over education, for she
comprehends the means to be employed to ameliorate the species in every
respect better than man; in the sphere of love in which she has the right
and the power to civilize and refine the relations of the sexes; and to
stimulate man to conquest of the intellect, to the amelioration of the
physical conditions of the globe, of industry, of art, of social
relations, etc.
Woman intervenes to a certain point in the major mode, so does man enter
into the minor mode, in which his coöperation is indispensable.
Thus, in general, in man the head predominates, in woman, the heart; but
as both have a heart and a head, man, through his heart, becomes an aid
in the minor mode, and woman, through her head, becomes an aid in the
major mode.
6. There are men who are women both in head and in heart; women who are
men both in heart and in head; in humanity they form the eighth of an
exception. Full liberty and right are granted to them.
7. Each member of the Phalanstery follows his vocation, obeys his
attractions, _for attractions are proportional to destinies_. Therefore
the eighth of an exception in both sexes, having an attraction towards
labors that belong more especially to the other sex, is at liberty to
yield to them.
8. All major men and women have an equal vote.
9. All matters are regulated by chiefs _of both sexes_, chosen by the
free vote of both sexes.
10. All offices, from the presidency of the group to that of the globe,
are filled jointly by men and women, who divide between them the details
of this common function.
11. The mother is the instructress of her children; they belong to her
alone; the father has no rights over them unless the mother chooses to
confer these on him.
Such is the summary of the Fourierist doctrine on the subject of which we
treat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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