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
Her kind of rationality renders her unsuited to the elaboration of
theories; and she is too fond of the concrete and of details to become
seriously interested in general ideas; which excludes her from all high
professional functions and from those requiring serious study.
Her place is therefore at the fireside to make man better, to sustain
him, to care for him, to procure him the joys of paternity, and to fill
the place of a good housewife.
Such are your conclusions: here are mine, admitting as a hypothesis, what
I affirm with you of woman.
V.
1. Woman carrying into Philosophy and Science her subtleness of
observation, her love of the concrete, will correct the exaggerated
tendency of man for abstract reasoning, and demonstrate the falsity of
theories constructed, _à priori_, on a few facts alone. Then only will
ontology disappear, then will it be recognized that a hypothesis is
merely an interrogation point; that truth is always intelligible in its
nature, however unknown it may be; we shall generalize nothing but known
facts, we shall carefully avoid erecting simple generalities into laws,
and we shall thus have veritable philosophy, and true human science,
because they will bear the imprint of both sexes.
2. Woman carrying her peculiar faculties into the arts and manufactures,
will increasingly introduce therein art, perfection in details.
Cultivated in the direction of her aptitudes, she will find ingenious
methods of application of scientific discoveries.
3. Patient, gentle, good, more moral than man, she is the born educator
of childhood, the moralizer of the grown man; the majority of the
educational functions revert to her of right, and she has her assigned
place in special instruction.
4. By her quick intuition and her acuteness of observation, woman alone
can discover the therapeutics of nervous affections; her dexterity will
render her valuable in all delicate surgical operations. On her should
devolve the care of treating the diseases of women and children, because
she alone is capable of fully comprehending them; she has her especial
place in hospitals, not only for the cure of disease, but also for the
execution and surveillance of the details of management and the care of
the patients.
5. The presence of woman in judicial functions, as juror and arbiter,
will be a guarantee of veritable human justice to all; that is, of
equity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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