Socrates, Plato, Sartre, and Young

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Question 1

Sartre argued that freedom cannot be limited.

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Question 2

Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.

Sartre believe all human born free and freedom is not about the number of our choices. You are human you are free.

Question 3

Plato argued that knowledge of the sensible realm is impossible.

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Question 4

Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.

Question 5

Aquinas argued that you do not need faith or belief, but only reason, to come to the truth that God exists.

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Question 6

Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.

Question 7

After questioning others who appeared to be wise, Socrates realizes that he is in fact the wisest because he knows that he does not know everything.

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Question 8

Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.

Question 9

Young would agree with Sartre that for humans, existence precedes essence.

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Question 10

Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.



Answer each of the following questions as clearly and concisely as you can. Aim to demonstrate your understanding of the central concept. Your answer should aim to be no more than 125 words (but you will not be penalized for going over or under).

Question 11

What, according to Plato, is so special about math?

Question 12

Throughout the semester we have come across the notion of 'essence' multiple times. What is the meaning and the significance of the concept of 'essence' for each Socrates, Plato, Sartre, and Young?

Question 13

Sartre claims that "in wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours" (pg 48). What could this 'dependence' mean given that Sartre argues that each individual is radically free and thus entirely responsible for him/herself?

[You need to go think with Sartre in the reading to be able to answer this question well.]

Question 14

In "Throwing Like a Girl" Young claims that feminine bodily behaviors have their source not in some 'feminine essence' but rather in "the particular situation of women" in a sexist society (Young, 152). Why are these behaviors rooted in 'situation' (and not essence) and why is this 'situation', according to Young, oppressive?

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Answer the following question in a short essay that should be no more than 300 words each (you will not be penalized for going over or under). Your aim should be to demonstrate both understanding of concepts, your capacity to analyze claims, and your capacity to synthesize (connect) ideas.

Question 15

One of the problematic fields we mapped out during the course of the semester is that of 'caring for truth': both how to care for truth and why we should care for truth. In what ways do you see this problem at work in each of the philosophies/philosophers we engaged this semester? (Socrates, Sophists, Plato, Aquinas, Sartre, Young)





Question 16 extra

(100 words) In the last reading of the semester, "The Culture Industry," Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that "culture now impresses the same stamp on everything" (pg 1), and that when culture becomes produced according to the logic of industry, "the result is the constant reproduction of the same thing" (pg 4). The result, they argue, is that we consume the same formulas over and over again (in movies, TV shows, music, etc) because cultural objects are made according to the logic of profit (low risk, repeat what works, target demographics). Thus we tend to see the same images of how we ought to live, who we ought to want to be, repeated over and over, in very formulaic depictions. The consequence, they argue, of the mass production of entertainment for a profit, is the following:

"Pleasure [to be entertained] always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as it is asserted, flight from a

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The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer Reading Questions: • What happens when all cultural products are produced according to the logic of industry? o What happens to culture itself? o What happens to individuals as ‘consumers’ of these ‘products’? Excerpts: The sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of pre-capitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or specialization, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part… Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer so interested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce…The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger… It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system…The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it…the claim that this is done to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than hot air… Marked differentiations such as those of A and B films, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges [or the difference between indexed goods within a brand, i.e. Toyota Avalon, Camry, Corolla--KF], depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type. Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda. How formalized the procedure is can be seen when the mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the end. That the difference between the Chrysler range and General Motors products is basically illusory strikes every child with a keen interest in varieties. What connoisseurs discuss as good or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semblance of competition and range of choice. The same applies to the Warner Brothers and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions. But even the differences between the more expensive and cheaper models put out by the same firm steadily diminish: for automobiles, there are such differences as the number of cylinders, cubic capacity, details of patented gadgets; and for films there are the number of stars, the extravagant use of technology, labor, and equipment, and the introduction of the latest psychological formulas. The universal criterion of merit is the amount of “conspicuous production,” of blatant cash investment. The varying budgets in the culture industry do not bear the slightest relation to factual values, to the meaning of the products themselves. The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him…but industry robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him…There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for him…Not only are the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change. The details are interchangeable. The short interval sequence which was effective in a hit song, the hero’s momentary fall from grace (which he accepts as good sport), the rough treatment which the beloved gets from the male star, the latter’s rugged defiance of the spoilt heiress, are, like all the other details, ready-made clichés to be slotted in anywhere; they never do anything more than fulfill the purpose allotted them in the overall plan. Their whole raison d’être is to confirm it by being its constituent parts. As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does come … Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality. The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves, especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound film. They are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts. Even though the effort required for his response is semi-automatic, no scope is left for the imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the world of the movie—by its images, gestures, and words—that they are unable to supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular points of its mechanics during a screening. All the other films and products of the entertainment industry which they have seen have taught them what to expect; they react automatically. The might of industrial society is lodged in men’s minds…The culture industry as a whole has molded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in every product. The constant pressure to produce new effects (which must conform to the old pattern) serves merely as another rule to increase the power of the conventions when any single effect threatens to slip through the net. Every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight… Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capitalism. Realistic dissidence is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in business… Not to conform means to be rendered powerless, economically and therefore spiritually—to be “self-employed.” When the outsider is excluded from the concern, he can only too easily be accused of incompetence… As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them… The result is a constant reproduction of the same thing. A constant sameness governs the relationship to the past as well. What is new about the phase of mass culture compared with the late liberal stage is the exclusion of the new. The machine rotates on the same spot. While determining consumption it excludes the untried as a risk. The movie-makers distrust any manuscript which is not reassuringly backed by a bestseller. Yet for this very reason there is never-ending talk of ideas, novelty, and surprise, of what is taken for granted but has never existed… Business is their ideology. It is quite correct that the power of the culture industry resides in its identification with a manufactured need, and not in simple contrast to it, even if this contrast were one of complete power and complete powerlessness. Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanized work process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the same time mechanization has such power over a man’s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself. The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardized operations. What happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by approximation to it in one’s leisure time [i.e. you are fried from having worked a mindless job all day, so you just want to watch TV to turn your mind off—KF]. All amusement suffers from this incurable malady. Pleasure hardens into boredom because, if it is to remain pleasure, it must not demand any effort and therefore moves rigorously in the worn grooves of association [i.e. you don’t want to have to ‘work’ at your entertainment—KF]. No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly avoided. As far as possible, developments must follow from the immediately preceding situation and never from the idea of the whole. For the attentive movie-goer any individual scene will give him the whole thing… Often the plot is maliciously deprived of the development demanded by characters and matter according to the old pattern. Instead, the next step is what the script writer takes to be the most striking effect in the particular situation… The stronger the positions of the culture industry become, the more summarily it can deal with consumers’ needs, producing them, controlling them, disciplining them, and even withdrawing amusement: no limits are set to cultural progress of this kind. But the tendency is immanent in the principle of amusement itself, which is enlightened in a bourgeois sense. If the need for amusement was in large measure the creation of industry, which used the subject as a means of recommending the work to the masses…amusement always reveals the influence of business, the sales talk, the quack’s spiel. But the original affinity of business and amusement is shown in the latter’s specific significance: to defend society. To be pleased means to say Yes. It is possible only by insulation from the totality of the social process, by desensitization and, from the first, by senselessly sacrificing the inescapable claim of every work, however inane, within its limits to reflect the whole. Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance. The liberation which amusement promises is freedom from thought and from negation. The effrontery of the rhetorical question, “What do people want?” lies in the fact that it is addressed—as if to reflective individuals—to those very people who are deliberately to be deprived of this individuality. Even when the public does—exceptionally—rebel against the pleasure industry, all it can muster is that feeble resistance which that very industry has inculcated in it. Nevertheless, it has become increasingly difficult to keep people in this condition. The rate at which they are reduced to stupidity must not fall behind the rate at which their intelligence is increasing. In this age of statistics the masses are too sharp to identify themselves with the millionaire on the screen, and too slow-witted to ignore the law of the largest number. Ideology conceals itself in the calculation of probabilities. Not everyone will be lucky one day—but the person who draws the winning ticket, or rather the one who is marked out to do so by a higher power—usually by the pleasure industry itself, which is represented as unceasingly in search of talent. Those discovered by talent scouts and then publicized on a vast scale by the studio are ideal types of the new dependent average. Of course, the starlet is meant to symbolize the typist in such a way that the splendid evening dress seems meant for the actress as distinct from the real girl….Now the lucky actors on the screen are copies of the same category as every member of the public, but such equality only demonstrates the insurmountable separation of the human elements. The perfect similarity is the absolute difference…Now any person signifies only those attributes by which he can replace everybody else: he is interchangeable, a copy. As an individual he is completely expendable and utterly insignificant, and this is just what he finds out when time deprives him of this similarity. The less the culture industry has to promise, the less it can offer a meaningful explanation of life, and the emptier is the ideology it disseminates. Even the abstract ideals of the harmony and beneficence of society are too concrete in this age of universal publicity. We have even learned how to identify abstract concepts as sales propaganda. Language based entirely on truth simply arouses impatience to get on with the business deal it is probably advancing. The words that are not means appear senseless; the others seem to be fiction, untrue. Value judgments are taken either as advertising or as empty talk. Accordingly ideology has been made vague and noncommittal, and thus neither clearer nor weaker. Its very vagueness, its almost scientific aversion from committing itself to anything which cannot be verified, acts as an instrument of domination. It becomes a vigorous and prearranged promulgation of the status quo… Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality Author(s): Iris Marion Young Source: Human Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Apr., 1980), pp. 137-156 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20008753 Accessed: 30/12/2009 20:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. 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Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Human Studies. http://www.jstor.org HUMAN STUDIES 3, 137-156 (1980) Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology off Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality* Iris Marion Young of Philosophy, Miami Department University In discussing the fundamental significance of lateral space, which is one of the unique spatial dimensions generated by the human upright posture, Erwin Straus (1966) pauses at "the remarkable difference in the manner of throwing of the two sexes"1 [p. 157]. Citing a study and photographs of young boys and as the he describes difference follows: (Straus, 1966) girls, any use of lateral space. She does not stretch her arm girl of five does not make she does not twist her trunk; she does not move her legs, which remain side by is to lift her right arm forward she does in preparation for throwing to the in a pronate position_The and to bend the forearm backward horizontal ball is released The sideward; side. All force, speed, or accurate his right arm sideward aim_A to throw, boy of the same age, when preparing and backward; the forearm; twists, turns and supinates bends his trunk; and moves his right foot backward. From this stance, he can support his ball leaves the hand throwing almost with the full strength of his total motorium_The itmoves with considerable toward its goal in a long flat curve [p. 157-158].2 acceleration; without stretches This paper was first presented at a meeting ofthe mid-west division ofthe Society forWomen in October in Philosophy 1977. Versions ofthe paper were subsequently at a (SWIP) presented session sponsored Division of the American by SWIP at the Western meetings Philosophical Circle meeting, 1978; and at the Third Annual Merleau-Ponty April Duquesne at those meetings 1978. Many people in discussions contributed University, September gratifying to Professors I am particularly and helpful Sandra Bartky, Claudia Card, responses. grateful J. Davidson and William McBride for their criticisms and Simons, Alexander, Margaret Association, suggestions. Endowment Final revisions of for the Humanities were the paper Fellowship complete in Residence while I was for College a fellow Teachers in the National program at the of Chicago. W. Straus, The Upright Posture, in Phenomenological Psychology (New York: Basic to particular in the text. Books, 1966), pp. 137-165. References pages are indicated to be performed which arrive at similar observations. 2Studies continue See, for example, M. Joanne Safrit, and Thomas W. Roberts, Lolas E. Kalverson, Effect of Mary Ann Robertson, University ^rwin Guided Practice Vol. on Overhand 48, No. 2, May than girls. greater velocities See also F. J. J. Buytendijk's Quarterly, Throw Ball Velocities 1977, pp. 311-318. The of Kindergarten Research Children, found that boys had significantly study remarks inWoman: A Contemporary View (New York: Newman In raising the example of throwing, Buytendijk to stress, is concerned Press, 1968), pp. 144-115. as am 1 in this paper, that the important is not the strictly physical thing to investigate but rather the manner in which each sex projects her or his Being-in-the-world phenomena, through movement. 137 138 YOUNG he does not stop to trouble himself with the problem for long, Though a few remarks in the attempt to explain this "remarkable Straus makes is observed at such an early age, he says, it difference." Since the difference seems to be "the manifestation of a biological, not an acquired, difference" [p. to specify the source of the at a loss, however, is somewhat 157]. He difference. Since the feminine style of throwing is observed in young children, of the breast. Straus (1966) provides it cannot result from the development further evidence against the breast by pointing out that "it seems certain" that who cut off their right breast, "threw a ball just like our Betty's, the Amazons, thus dismissed Susan's" the breast, Straus and Mary's [p. 158]. Having the weaker muscle of the considers power of the girl as an explanation that the girl should be expected to compensate for difference, but concludes of reaching around and such relative weakness with the added preparation in style of throwing by referring to a back. Straus explains the difference "feminine attitude" in relation to the world and to space. The difference for him is biologically based, but he denies that it is specifically anatomical. Girls throw in a way different from boys because girls are "feminine." is the fact that a than this "explanation" is even more amazing What as definitive for movement takes and which body comportment perspective of human lived experience devotes no more than the structure and meaning an incidental page to such a "remarkable difference" between masculine and For throwing is by no and style of movement. feminine body comportment means the only activity inwhich such a difference can be observed. If there are then and movement, indeed typically "feminine" styles of body comportment a concern to specify this should generate for the existential phenomenologist of the lived body. Yet Straus is by no of the modalities such a differentiation to describe means the modalities, in his failure and alone meaning, and "feminine" body of the difference between "masculine" implications and movement. comportment A virtue of Straus' account of the typical difference of the sexes in throwing is that he does not explain this difference on the basis of physical attributes. that the early age at which the difference is convinced, Straus however, appears shows that it is not an acquired difference, and thus he is forced back feminine essence in order to explain it. The feminist denial onto a mysterious in behavior and psychology between men and woman that the real differences to some natural and eternal "feminine essence" is perhaps expressed by de Beauvoir. Every human thoroughly and systematically the particular existence of the female is defined by its situation; existence person is no less defined by the historical, cultural, social, and economic limits ifwe of her situation. We reduce women's condition simply to unintelligibility some essence. to In feminine natural and ahistorical "explain" it by appeal we not a into that fall should feminine essence, however, such denying in the behavior the real differences and which denies "nominalism" can be attributed most 139 THROWING LIKE A GIRL of men and women. Even though there is no eternal feminine experiences essence, there is (de Beauvoir, 1974) "a common basis which underlies every in the present state of education and custom."3 individual female existence set of circumstances, The situation of women within a given socio-historical in each woman's the variation individual experience, opportunities, despite has a unity which can be described and made intelligible. It and possibilities, should be emphasized, however, that this unity is specific to a particular social formation during a particular historical epoch. De Beauvoir (1974) proceeds to give such an account of the situation of women with remarkable depth, clarity, and ingenuity. Yet she also to a large extent, fails to give a place to the status and orientation ofthe woman's body as relating to its surroundings in living action. When de Beauvoir does talk to her the woman's about relation bodily being and her physical on to more a the she tends focus facts of evident woman's surroundings, She discusses how women experience the body as a burden, how physiology. at puberty, the hormonal and physiological changes the body undergoes are to felt and fearful menstruation be and and pregnancy, during mysterious, claims that these phenomena weigh down the woman's existence by tying her to nature, immanence, and the requirements of the species at the expense of her own individuality.4 By largely ignoring the situatedness of the woman's to its surroundings and itsworld, de actual bodily movement and orientation tends to create the impression that it is woman's Beauvoir anatomy and are as at in such which least of her unfree determinative part physiology status.5 paper seeks to begin to fill a gap that thus exists both in existential and feminist theory. It traces in a provisional way some of phenomenology the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relation in space. It brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable in our society typically comport and rather ordinary ways in which women themselves and move differently from the ways that men do. In accordance concern with the situatedness of human experience, with the existentialist I make no claim to the universality of this typicality ofthe bodily comportment of women and the phenonemological based on it. The account description here claims only to describe the modalities of feminine bodily developed This Sex 3Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Books, (New York: Vintage 1974), p. xxxv. Cf. pp. 275-276. Buytendijk, 4See Chapter of Biology. I, The Date account served as the basis of her own thesis that the 5Firestone claims that de Beauvoir's is rooted in nature, and thus requires the transcendence of women of nature itself to oppression be overcome. claim such. That perhaps See The Dialectic that Firestone Firestone de Beauvoir is guilty would Books, of Sex (New York: Bantom 1970). De Beauvoir would of desituating woman's situation by pinning a source on nature as find inspiration for her thesis in de Beauvoir, indicates that however, has not steered away from causes in "nature" as much as is desirable. 140 YOUNG situated in contemporary advanced existence for women industrial, urban, and commercial society. Elements of the account developed here may or may in other societies and other epoch, but it not apply to the situation of woman to which, if any, other social is not the concern of this paper to determine this account applies. circumstances with which I am concerned The scope of bodily existence and movement here is also limited. I concentrate primarily on those sorts of bodily activities or orientation of the body as a whole, which relate to the comportment or which require the enlistment of strength and the entail gross movement, of the body's capacities and possibilities with the resistance and confrontation I am concerned with is of malleability things. Primarily the kind of movement of a definite movement in which the body aims at the accomplishment purpose or task. There are thus many aspects of feminine bodily existence which I leave out of account here. Most notable of these is the body in its sexual being. Another aspect of bodily existence, among others, which I leave is structured body movement which does not have a particular unconsidered which reasons of space, this limitation of dancing. Besides example, on the derived is based conviction, primarily from Merleau-Ponty, subject of the body as a whole toward that it is the ordinary purposive orientation the relation of a subject to defines which and its environment initially things its world. Thus focus upon ways in which the feminine body frequently or or movement itself in such comportment conducts may be typically revelatory of the structures of feminine existence.6 particularly I mean I should clarify what here by the analysis, Before entering I take "feminine" existence. In accordance with de Beauvoir's understanding, or women a essence not all to designate which mysterious quality "femininity" female. It is, rather, a set of have by virtue of their being biologically the typical situation of being a which delimit structures and conditions as as well in this a which situation woman the in particular society, typical way as not it is women Defined themselves. the is lived by such, necessary that any not that it is there be distinctive women be "feminine"?that necessary is, situation of women.7 This the of structures and behavior typical aim?for 6In his discussion those on focuses precisely of feminine of the "dynamics existence," Buytendijk these kinds of expressive which are aimless. He claims that it is through not through action aimed at the for the sake of walking?and walking sorts of motions movements?e.g., is or feminine existence that the pure image of masculine of particular purposes, accomplishment the basic existentialist contradicts manifest however, assumption (pp. 278-9). Such an approach, structure one's and goals which in projecting consists that Being-in-the-world purposes to be learned from reflecting there is certainly While situatedness. upon feminine something tasks is basic to the structure of in noninstrumental movement activity, given that accomplishing As I of feminine motility. it serves as a better starting point for investigation existence, must take account a of feminine existence full this out at of the end paper, phenomenology point movement. of this noninstrumental to in at least some respects, according for men to be "feminine" 7It is not impossible, moreover, human the above definition. 141 THROWING LIKE A GIRL it possible to say that some of "feminine" existence makes understanding women escape or transcend the typical situation and definition of women in this primarily to indicate that the various degrees and respects. I mention of feminine bodily existence is not to be account offered here ofthe modalities to whom aspects of the falsified by referring to some individual women account do not apply, or even to some individual men to whom they do. The account developed here combines the insights ofthe theory ofthe lived and the theory of the situation of body as expressed by Merleau-Ponty women as developed by de Beauvoir (1974). I assume that at the most basic account of the relation ofthe lived body to level, Merleau-Ponty's descriptive in the Phenomenology its world, as developed (1962), applies to of Perception a more a At in human existence any general way. specific level, however, there is typical of feminine which is a particular style of bodily comportment of consists ofthe structures and and this modalities existence, style particular in the the world.8 of existence conditions body's I rely on de Beauvoir's for developing these modalities, As a framework in patriarchal account of woman's existence society as defined by a basic tension between immanence and transcendence.9 The culture and society in which the female person dwells defines woman as Other, as the inessential is thereby both correlate to man, as mere object and immanence. Woman the and and creativity denied by socially culturally subjectivity, autonomy, which are definitive of being human and which in patriarchal society are the man. At the same time, however because she is a human accorded is a subjectivity and transcendence the female person necessarily existence, and she knows herself to be. The female person who enacts the existence of women as human in patriarchal society must therefore live a contradiction: in transcendence, she is a free subject who participates but her situation as a woman denies her that subjectivity and transcendence. My suggestion is that the modalities of feminine bodily comportment, and spatiality motility, exhibit this same tension between transcendence and immanence, between subjectivity and being a mere object. I offers some specific observations Section about bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks, and bodily self-image, which I find typical of feminine existence. Section II account of the modalities of feminine gives a general phenomenological III develops Section and motility. these modalities bodily comportment further in terms of the spatiality generated by them. Finally, in Section IV, I draw out some of the implications of this account for an understanding ofthe HDn inasmuch this there also exist particular specificity more is a particular style of movement be concerned with those in this paper. as level of there however, ^ee de Beauvoir, Chapter XXI, Woman's Situation modalities or of masculine less typical and Character. of men. motility, I will not, 142 YOUNG of women, as well as raise some further questions which require further investigation. Being-in-the-world oppression about feminine I The basic difference which Straus observes between the way boys and girls throw is that girls do not bring their whole bodies into the motion as much as the boys. They do not reach back, twist, move backward, step, and lean forward. Rather, the girls tend to remain relatively immobile except for their arms, and even the arm is not extended as far as it could be. Throwing is not the only movement in which there is a typical difference in the way men and women use their bodies. Reflection on feminine comportment and body movement in other physical activities reveals that these also are frequently characterized, much as in the throwing case, by a failure to make full use of the body's spatial and lateral potentialities. Even in the most simple body orientations of men and women as they sit, one can a and observe in body style and stand, walk, typical difference are as extension. Women not with as men in their their bodies open generally the masculine stride is longer proportional to a gait and stride. Typically, man's body than is the feminine stride to a woman's. The man typically swings his arms in a more open and loose fashion than does a woman and typically has more up and down rhythm in his step. Though we now wear pants more than we used to, and consequently do not have to restrict our sitting postures because of dress, women still tend to sit with their legs relatively close together and their arms across their bodies. When simply standing or leaning, men tend to keep their feet further apart than do woman, and we also tend more to keep our hands and arms touching or shielding our bodies. A final indicative is the way each carries books or parcels; girls and women most difference often carry books embraced to their chests, while boys and men swing them along their sides. The approach persons of each sex take to the performance of physical tasks that require force, strength, arid muscular coordination is frequently different. There are indeed real physical differences between men and woman in the kind and limit of their physical of the observed strength. Many differences between men and women in the performance of tasks requiring are due not so much coordinated to brute muscular strength, however, sex uses to but the the each in tasks. Women way strength, body approaching often do not perceive themselves as capable of lifting and carrying heavy and shoving with force, pulling, things, pushing significant squeezing, grasping, or twisting with force. When we attempt such tasks, we frequently fail to summon the full possibilities of our muscular coordination, position, tend not to put their whole into bodies poise, and bearing. Women in a physical task with the same ease and naturalness as men. For engagement 143 THROWING LIKE A GIRL to lift something, women more often than men fail to example, in attempting make their thighs bear the greatest proportion of themselves and firmly plant the weight. Instead, we tend to concentrate our effort on those parts of the to the task?the arms and shoulders? connected body most immediately to the of the the at task all. When power rarely bringing legs turning or to we take another concentrate example, twisting something, frequently effort in the hand and wrist, not bringing to the task the power of the is necessary for its efficient performance.10 cited throwing example can be extended to a great deal of athletic activity. Now most men are by no means superior athletes, and their bravado efforts more often display than genuine skill and sporting The relatively untrained man nevertheless coordination. engages in sport more free motion with and reach than does his female open generally a a Not is of there like counterpart. only typical style throwing girl, but there is a more or less typical style of running like a girl, climbing like a girl, swinging like a girl, hitting like a girl. They have in common, first, that the whole body is not put into fluid and directed motion, but rather, in swinging and hitting, shoulder, which The previously for example, is concentrated the motion in one body part; and second, that the woman's motin tends not to reach, extend, lean, stretch, and follow in her the of intention. direction through women as they move in sport, a space surrounds them in we are move not to which free beyond; the space available to our imagination movement is a constricted space. Thus, for example, in softball or volley ball women tend to remain in one place more often than men, neither jumping to reach nor running to approach the ball. Men more often move out toward a ball in flight and confront it with their own countermotion. Women tend to wait for and then react to its approach rather than going forth to meet it.We frequently respond to the motion of a ball coming toward us as though itwere coming at us, and our immediate bodily impulse is to flee, duck, or otherwise do women protect ourselves from its flight. Less often than men, moreover, to self-conscious and their direction motion in give placement sport. Rather than aiming at a certain place where we wish to hit a ball, for example, we tend to hit it in a "general" direction. For many often approach a physical engagement with things with timidity, uncertainty, and hesitancy. Typically, we lack an entire trust in our bodies to carry us to our aims. There is, I suggest, a double hesitation here. On the one that we have the capacity to do what must be hand, we often lack confidence Women 10It should be noted that this is probably in advanced typical only of women of the Bourgeois woman has been extended to most women. societies, where the model not apply to those societies, for example, where most people, including women, observation, physical work. Nor does this particular own society who do heavy physical work. of course, hold industrial It would do true of those women heavy in our 144 YOUNG times I have slowed a hiking party in which the men bounded done. Many across a harmless stream while I stood on the other side warily testing out my branches. Though the footing on various stones, holding on to overhanging others crossed with ease, I do not believe it is easy for me, even though once I in a flash. The other side of this take a committed step I am across a I of tentativeness fear is, suggest, getting hurt, which is greater in women men. Our is in often attention divided between the aim to be realized in than must the that motion and it, while at the same time saving body accomplish our often from We harm. itself bodies as a fragile encumberance, experience rather than the media for the enactment of our aims. We feel as though we must have our attention directed upon our body tomake sure it is doing what we wish it to do, rather than paying attention to what we want to do through our bodies. All the above factors operate to produce inmany women a greater or lesser We have more of a feeling of incapacity, frustration, and self-consciousness. l1 men our to than underestimate tendency greatly bodily capacity. We decide the is task beforehand?usually mistakenly?that beyond us, and thus give it less than our full effort. At such a half-hearted level, of course, we cannot the tasks, become and fulfill our own prophecy. In frustrated, perform we a are task self-conscious about appearing awkward, frequently entering and at the same time do not wish to appear too strong. Both worries to our awkwardness and frustration. If we should finally release contribute ourselves from this spiral and really give a physical task our best effort, we are It has been found greatly surprised indeed at what our bodies can accomplish. that women more often than men underestimate the level of achievement they have reached.12 of the observations which have been made thus far about the way move and comport their bodies applies to all women all of typically some aspect of this typicality do the time. Nor do those women who manifest so in the same degree. There is no inherent, mysterious connection between None women and being a female person. Many of them these sorts of typical comportments result, as will be developed later, from lack of practice in using the body and one can nevertheless tasks. Even given these qualifications, performing a of of feminine and style body comportment sensibly general speak movement. The next section will develop a specific categorical description of the modalities of the comportment and movement. versus actual physical in three enthnic groups, Child Gross, Estimated strength In a test of children at several different ages, at all but the 39 (1968), pp. 283-90. on self-estimates lower than boys and rated themselves girls rated themselves age-level, nSee A. M. Development, youngest of strength, even lower. of strength become and as the girls grow older, their self-estimates of Expressed of A. Cifton and Hope M. Smith, Comparison 12SeeMarguerite Self-Concept Motor Skilled Males and Females and Motor Performance, Perceptual Concerning Highly their level of acheivement underestimated in 16 (1963), pp. 199-201. Women Skills, consistently far more often than men did. skills like running and jumping THROWING LIKE A GIRL 145 II are that feminine movement of feminine motility The three modalities an inhibited intentionality, and a exhibits an ambiguous transcendence, discontinuous unity with its surroundings. A source of these contradictory of feminine comportment, is the bodily self-reference which modalities derives from the woman's experience of her body as a thing at the same time it as a capacity. that she experiences 1. In his Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty (1962) takes as of Perception, structures of existence, which are of the primordial his task the articulation prior to and the ground of all reflective relation to the world. In asking how for a subject, Merleau-Ponty reorients the entire there can be a world or not in mind by locating subjectivity questioning but in the body. Merleau-Ponty gives to the lived body the status which Sartre, as well as "intellectualist" thinkers before ontological as being alone: the status of transcendence him, attribute to consciousness toward and action upon and within for-itself. It is the body in its orientation the initial meaning giving act (p. 121; pp. its surroundings which constitutes as pure presence to the 146-147). The body is the first locus of intentionality, The most primordial world and openness upon its possibilities. intentional act is the motion ofthe body orienting itself with respect to and moving within its surroundings. There is a world for a subject just insofar as the body as its surroundings capacities by which it can approach, grasp, and appropriate tradition of that consciousness, in the direction of its intentions. to the is a transcendence While feminine bodily existence and openness a transcendence which is at the same transcendence, world, it is an ambiguous time laden with immanence. Now once we take the locus of subjectivity and to be the lived body rather than pure consciousness, all transcendence is ambiguous because the body as natural and material is transcendence immanence. But it is not the ever present possibility of any lived body to be passive, to be touched as well as touching, to be grasped as well as grasping, of the which I am referring to here as the ambiguity of the transcendence of the lived body which Merleau lived body. The transcendence feminine is a transcendence which moves out from the body in its Ponty describes in an open and unbroken directedness upon the world in action. immanence is pure fluid action, the continuous The lived body as transcendence calling forth of capacities, which are applied to the world. Rather than simply in immanence, feminine bodily existence remains in immanence, or beginning is better overlaid with immanence, even as itmoves out toward the world in motions of grasping, manipulating, and so on. I3Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanities Press, 1962). All Colin Smith, trans. (New York: Phenomenology of Perception, to this work are noted references in parentheses the text. within 146 YOUNG In the previous section, I observed that a woman typically refrains from a her whole into and rather concentrates motin in one motion, body throwing rest the of the of the alone while remains part body body relatively immobile. moves a a out that of the toward task while the rest remains is, part body, Only I also observed earlier that a woman frequently does rooted in immanence. not trust the capacity of her body to engage itself in physical relation to things. she often lives her body as a burden, which must be dragged Consequently, and prodded along, and at the same time protected. in motility locates intentionality 2. Merleau-Ponty the (pp. 110-112); on are in the world the which mode and limits opened up depend possibilities of the bodily "I can" (p. 137, p. 148). Feminine existence, however, often does not enter bodily relation to possibilities toward its by its own comportment in an unambiguous and confident "I can." For example, as surroundings tend to posit a task which would noted earlier, women be frequently once as their attempted beyond accomplished relatively easily capacities the feminine body underuses its real capacity, before they begin it. Typically, of its physical size and strength and as the real skills both as the potentiality which are available to it. Feminine bodily existence is an and coordination which simultaneously reaches toward a projected inhibited intentionality, to that end in a its full bodily commitment end with an "I can" and withholds "I cannot."14 self-imposed An uninhibited and intentionality projects the aim to be accomplished toward that end in an unbroken connects the body's motion directedness and unifies the body's activity. The body's capacity and which organizes structure its surroundings and project meaningful motion of possibilities movement forth to enact and action, which in turn call the body's motion is to experience the harmony them (Merleau-Ponty, 1962): "To understand between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the Feminine motion often performance..." [p. 144; see also pp. 101,131-132]. severs In relation between aim and enactment. this mutually conditioning and those motions which when properly performed require the coordination Fisher on various aspects of sex differences in body image of Seymour to here. It is difficult with the phenomenological developed description suggestively use his conclusions as confirmation of that description, because there is something of a however, I shall refer to some of these findings, with aspect to his reasoning. Nevertheless, "speculative" 14Much of the work correlates in mind. that qualification is that women One of his findings have a greater anxiety to the same results. Fisher their legs than men, and he cites as anxiety interprets such leg-anxiety in body conception and body image it is the legs which are the body about motility itself, because in Fantasy and Behavior with motility. See Body Experience (New York: part most associated are accurate, this 1970), p. 537. If his findings and his interpretation Appleton-Century-Crofts, earlier tends studies which to correlate an aspect have with of feminine come the sort of inhibition body comportment. and timidity about about movement which I am claiming is 147 THROWING LIKE A GIRL of the whole body upon some definite end, women frequently directedness move in a contradictory way. Their bodies project an aim to be enacted, but at the same time stiffen against the performance of the task. In performing a physical task the woman's body does carry her toward the intended aim, but often not easily and directly, but rather circuitously, with the wasted motion is a frequent which resulting from the effort of testing and reorientation, of feminine hesitancy. consequence For any lived body, the world appears as the system of possibilities which are correlative to its intentions (p. 131). For any lived body, moreover, the world also appears as populated with opacities and resistances correlative to its own limits and frustrations. For any bodily existence, that is, an "I cannot" may appear to set limits to the "I can." To the extent that feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality, however, the same set of possibilities to its intentions also appears as a system of which appears coorelative frustrations correlative to its hesitancies. By repressing or withholding its own motile energy, feminine bodily existence frequently projects an "I can" and an "I cannot" with respect to the very same end. When the woman enters a task she projects the possibilities with inhibited intentionality, of that task?thus an "I can"?but them merely as the possibilities of projects projects thus projects an "/cannot". "someone," and not truly her possibilities?and 3. Merleau-Ponty gives to the body the unifying and synthesizing function locates in transcendental which Kant an aim By projecting subjectivity. toward which it moves, the body brings unity to and unites itself with its it sets things in through the vectors of its projected possibilities surroundings; relation to one another and to itself. The body's movement and orientation organizes the surrounding space as a continous extension of its ownbeing(p. the same act that the body synthesizes its surroundings, 143). Within it synthesizes itself. The body is immediate moreover, and synthesis "I do not bring together one by one the parts of my body; this primordial. translation and this unification are performed once and for all within me: they are my body itself [p. 150]. The third modality of feminine bodily existence is that it stands in discontinuous I remarked earlier unity with both itself and its surroundings. that inmany motions which require the active engagement and coordination of the body as a whole to be performed properly, women tend to locate their motion in a part of the body only, leaving the rest of the body relatively immobile. Motion such as this is discontinuous with itself. That part of the an is which toward aim in is relative disunity from those body transcending which remain immobile. The undirectedness and wasted motion which is often an aspect of feminine engagement in a task also manifests this lack of body unity. The character of the inhibited intentionality whereby feminine severs the connection motion between aim and enactment, between in the world possibility discontinuous unity. and capacity in the body, itself produces this 148 YOUNG toMerleau-Ponty (1962), for the body to exist as a transcendent According to enactment of intentions, the the world and immediate it cannot presence exist as an object (p. 123). As subject, the body is referred not onto itself, but onto the world's possibilities. "In order that we may be able tomove our body towards an object, the object must first exist for it, our body must not belong to the realm of the 'in-itself" [p. 139]. The three contradictory modalities of feminine inhibited inten? transcendence, bodily existence?ambiguous their and discontinuous in the fact that root, however, unity?have tionality, for feminine existence the body frequently is both subject and object for itself at the same time and in reference to the same act. Feminine bodily existence is to the world (Fisher, not a pure presence it is 1964) because frequently in the world.15 referred onto itself as well as onto possibilities section illustrate this self Several of the observations of the previous reference. It was observed, for example, that women have a tendency to take of an object coming toward them as coming at them. I also up the motion tend to have a latent and sometimes conscious fear of observed that women we which bring to a motion. That is, feminine bodily existence is getting hurt, self-referred in that the woman takes herself as the object ofthe motion rather to the is also self-referred Feminine than its originator. bodily existence extent that a woman is uncertain of her body's capacities and does not feel are entirely under her control. She must divide her attention that its motions between the task to be performed and the body which must be coaxed and it. Finally, into performing feminine bodily existence is self manipulated her as the motion referred to the extent that the feminine subject posits that is looked at. In Section IV, we will explore the implications ofthe motion social existence as the object ofthe gaze of another, basic fact of the woman's which is a major source of her bodily self-reference. In summary, the modalities of feminine bodily existence have their root in the body as a mere the fact that feminine existence does not experience must a which be and into movement, coaxed up picked thing?a fragile thing, as at To exists acted be which looked and lived sure, upon. any body thing exists as a material thing as well as a transcending subject. For feminine the body is often lived as a thing which is other bodily existence, however, than it, a thing like other things in the world. To the extent that feminine lives her body as a thing, she remains rooted in immanence, existence is inhibited, and retains a distance from her body as transcending movement in the world's possibilities. and from engagement in their general body between men and women l5Fisher finds the most striking difference have a significantly higher degree of what he calls "body prominence," image is that women to the body. He cites a number of different studies which have come to of and attention awareness Fisher gives for this finding is that women have a higher degree the same results. The explanation to pay attention to their bodies, to prune and dress because of body awareness they are socialized in See also Sex Differences them, and to worry about how they look to others. Ibid, pp. 524-525. Body Perception, Psychological Monographs, 78 (1964), Number 14. THROWING LIKE A GIRL 149 III between lived space, or For Merleau-Ponty (1962) there is a distinction the uniform and space of geometry and space, space, objective phenomenal science inwhich all positions are external to one another and interchangeable. and lived relations of space are Phenomenal space arises out of motility the motion the of and the intentional relations body's by capacities generated which that motion constitutes. "It is clearly in action that the spatiality of our should body is brought into being and an analysis of one's own movement of it" [p. 102; cf. pp. 148-149, p. enable us to arrive at a better understanding if there are particular modalities of feminine bodily 249]. On this account, are also particular must follow it then that there and comportment motility, existence lives space as enclosed of feminine spatiality. Feminine modalities or confining, as have a dual structure and the feminine existent experiences in herself as positioned 1. There is a famous years ago in which he construct a scene for an space. several study which Erik Erikson (1964) performed to asked several male and female pre-adolescents out some of movie He that found toys. imagined girls typically depicted indoor settings, with high walls and enclosures, while boys scenes. He concluded outdoor that females tend to typically constructed or he what calls enclosed "inner space, while males tend to space," emphasize or a "outer what he calls space," emphasize spatial orientation which is open of these observations is interpretation as "inner the enclosed ofthe space" psychoanalytical: girls depict projection space of their wombs and vaginas; boys depict "outer space" as a projection of the phallus.161 find such an explanation wholly unconvincing. If girls do tend to project an enclosed space and boys to project an open and outwardly directly space, it is far more plausible to regard this as a reflection ofthe way each sex lives and moves their bodies in space. In the first section, I observed that women tend not to open their bodies in their everyday movements, but tend to sit, stand, and walk with their limbs close to or enclosed around them. I also observed that women tend not to reach, stretch, bend, lean, or stride to the full limits of their physical capacities, even when doing so would better accomplish a task or motion. The and outwardly directed. Erikson's available to the feminine body is frequently space, that is, which ^physically of greater radius than the space which she uses and inhabits. Feminine existence appears to posit an existential enclosure between herself and the space surrounding her, in such a way that the space which belongs to her and on Womanhood, I6Erik H. Erikson, Inner and Outer Space: Reflections 3 (1964), Daedelus, of his findings is also sexist. Having Erikson's in his opinion pp. 582-606. interpretation a particular he takes to be space within the discovered that "inner space"?which significance for girls, he goes on to discuss the womanly "nature" as womb and potential mother body?holds with anything else the woman which must be made does. compatible 150 YOUNG to her grasp and manipulation is constricted, is available and the space to her movement.17 A further illustration of this is not available beyond of feminine lived space is the observation confinement already noted that in tend not to move out and meet the motion of a sport, for example, women ball, but rather tend to stay in one place and react to the ball's motion only when it has arrived within the space where she is. The timidity, immobility, and uncertainty which frequently characterize feminine movement project a limited space for the feminine "I can." the body unity of transcending 2. On Merleau-Ponty's (1962) account, an link creates between the body and the outlying immediate performance its whole embraces space, and space. "Each instant of the movement active the first and institutes the link which, initiative, by being particularly In feminine between a here and a yonder... the existence, however, "[p. 140]. severs an a the a of enclosed between "here" and space continuity projection a as is In existence there the of feminine double the space "yonder." spatiality "here" which is distinct from the space of the "yonder. "A distinction between and space which is "yonder" and not linked with my own body possibilities, I inhabit with my bodily is "here," which the enclosed space which is an expression of the discontinuity between aim and capacity to possibilities, of the tentativeness realize the aim which I have articulated as the meaning the inhibited intentionality of feminine and uncertainty which characterizes a in is of the feminine which existence The space space "yonder" motility. in the sense of understanding that "someone" could projects possibilities move within it, but not I. Thus the space of the "yonder" exists for feminine in. existence, but only as that which she is looking into, rather than moving is that feminine existence of feminine spatiality 3. The third modality the body is the in space. For Merleau-Ponty, itself as positioned experiences space; there would be no space without the original subject which constitutes body (pp. 102; 142). As the origin and subject of spatial relations, the body does not occupy a position coequal and interchangeable with the positions occupied by other things (p. 143; pp. 247-249). Because the body as lived is not an object, it cannot be said to exist in space as water is in the glass (pp. 139-140). "The word 'here' applied to my body does not refer to a determinate or to external coordinates, but the in relation to other positions position the anchoring of the active body in an laying down of the first coordinates, in the face of its tasks" [p. 100]. of the body object, the situation insofar as feminine bodily existence is Feminine spatiality is contradictory a and both spatially constituted constituting spatial subject. Insofar as as and intentionality, transcendence the lives the body feminine existence as having a more clearly is that women themselves experience findings from themselves than men. More clearly then men they distinguish from them. See Body Experience in Fantasy and and take a distance their spatial surroundings Behavior, p. 528. 17Another articulated of Fisher's body boudary 151 THROWING LIKE A GIRL body actively constitutes space and is the original coordinate which in accord the unifies spatial field and projects spatial relations and positions to extent the that feminine motility is laden with with its intentions. But immanence and inhibited, the body's space is lived as constituted. To the is self-referred and thus lives extent, that is, that feminine bodily existence as an itself I, I object, the feminine body does exist in space. In Section even our own motions, as observed that women frequently react to motions, we are an motion the object of the which issues from alien intention, though In its immanence and rather than taking ourselves as subject of motion. feminine inhibition, feminine spatial existence ispositioned by a system of coordinates own not have its origin in her which does intentional capacities. The tendency for the feminine body to remain partly immobile in the performance of a task ofthe whole body illustrates this characteristic which requires the movement of feminine bodily existence as rooted inplace. Likewise does the tendency for women to wait for an object to come within our immediate bodily field rather than move out toward it. devotes a great deal of attention to arguing that the diverse Merleau-Ponty senses and activities of the lived body are synthetically related in such a way relation with all the others. In that each stands in a mutually conditioning stand in a relation of reversability; particular, visual perception and motility an impairment in the function in the functioning of one, for example, leads to an impairment of the other (pp. 133-137). If we assume that reversability of the above account of the modalities visual perception and motility, of and the spatiality which arises from them suggests that feminine motility as well. visual space will have its own modalities There have been numerous studies which have reported psychological differences between the sexes in the character of spatial perception. One ofthe most frequently discussed of these conclusions is that females are more often "field independent." That is, it has been claimed that males have a greater for lifting a figure out of its spatial surroundings and viewing capacity relations in space as fluid and interchangeable, whereas females have a greater as embedded to regard figures within and fixed by their tendency surroundings.18 The above account of feminine motility and spatiality gives to these results is enormous. of studies coming See Eleanor E. Maccoby and The Psychology Jacklin, Press, (Stanford of Sex Differences 1974), pp. University 91-98. of years psychologists For a number used the results from tests of spatial ability to in general, and from that to general "analytic" ability. Thus it about field independence generalize I8The number Carol N. was concluded that women have less analytical such ability than men. More recently, however, have been seriously called into question. Julia A. Sherman, See, for example, generalizations Problems in Space Perception and Aspects of Sex Differences of Intellectual Functioning, 74 (1967), pp. 290-99. She notes that while women are consistently found Review, Psychological to be more independence than men dependent women generally perform field in spatial tasks, as well as men. on nonspatial tests measuring field 152 YOUNG some theoretical intelligibility to these findings. If feminine body spatiality is such that the woman experiences herself as rooted and enclosed, then on the it would follow that visual space for feminine reversability assumption existence also has its closures of immobility and fixity. The objects in visual in a fluid of potentially alterable and space do not stand system to the correlative various relations intentions and body's interchangeable projected capacities. in their immanence. Rather, they too have their ownplaces and are anchored IV of feminine bodily comportment, The modalities and spatiality motility, which I have described here are, I claim, common to the existence of women in contemporary society to one degree or another. They have their source, nor physiology, not in a in neither and certainly however, anatomy source their in the "essence." have feminine Rather, they mysterious women as their sexist in of situation conditioned by oppression particular contemporary society. in sexist society are physically handicapped. Women Insofar as we learn to with the definition in accordance live out our existence that patriarchal culture assigns to us, we are physically and inhibited, confined, positioned, transcendences objectified. As lived bodies we are not open and unambiguous which move out to master a world that belongs to us, a world constituted by our own intentions and projections. To be sure, there are actual women in or to not whom the of above all does part contemporary society description are not manifest in or determinative of the these modalities apply. Where in a negative existence of a particular women, however, they are definitive mode?as that which she has escaped, through accident or good fortune, or more often, as that which she has had to overcome. of feminine bodily existence of the sources of the modalities is too to dwell upon at length. For the most part, girls and women are not to use their full bodily capacities in free and open given the opportunity nor are as as boys to with the much world, they encouraged engagement more Girl is often skills.19 and play sedentary develop specific bodily In after the of school and school than activities boys. play girls are enclosing not encouraged to engage in sport, in the controlled use of their bodies in get little practice at "tinkering" goals. Girls, moreover, achieving well-defined One obvious of girls and women active. See Mary 19Nor are girls provided with examples being physically Toward Sex Role Socialization Research Differential Appropriation, Amplitude and for Alliance 48 Education, Health, pp. Recreation), (1977), Physical (American Quarterly for young children revealed that children are thirteen times more 288-292. A survey of textbooks active woman, and three times more active man than a vigorously likely likely to see a vigorously E. Duquin, to see a relatively active man than a relatively active woman. 153 THROWING LIKE A GIRL with things, and thus developing spatial skill. Finally, girls are not asked often to perform tasks demanding physical effort and strength, while as the boys are to asked do so more and more.20 older grow they are not merely privative, of feminine bodily existence The modalities however, and thus their source is not merely in lack of practice, though this is certainly an important element. There is a specific positive style of feminine is learned as the girl comes to which and movement, body comportment that she is a girl. The young girl acquires many subtle habits of understand like a girl, tilting her head like a girl, feminine body comportment?walking a like and girl, gesturing like a girl, and so on. The girl learns standing sitting She is told that she must be careful not to actively to hamper her movements. to not tear not to her clothes, that the things she desires to hurt, get dirty, get do are dangerous for her. Thus she develops a bodily timidity which increases with age. In assuming herself as a girl, she takes herself up as fragile. Studies have found that young children of both sexes categorically assert that girls are more likely to get hurt than boys,21 and that girls ought to remain close to home while boys can roam and explore.22 The more a girl assumes her status as feminine, the more she takes herself to be fragile and immobile, and the more she actively enacts her own body inhibition. When Iwas about thirteen, I spent hours practicing a "feminine" walk which was stiff, closed, and rotated from side to side. of sex differences in spatial perception, Studies which record observations skills have also found that these solving and motor spatial problem tend to increase with age. While differences very young children show no motor in differences movement, skills, etc., virtually spatial perception, seem to appear in elementary school and increase with differences If these findings are accurate, they would seem to support the adolescence. conclusion that it is in the process of growing up as a girl that the modalities of feminine bodily comportment, and motility, make spatiality their appearance.23 There is, however, a further source is perhaps even more existence which I have stated in the those modalities, woman lives her body as object as well 20Sherman, encouraged of the modalities of feminine bodily than these. At the root of profound previous section, is the fact that the as subject. The source of this is that socialization op. cit., argues that it is the differential etc. that accounts to "tinker," explore, for the difference of boys between and girls in being the two in spatial ability. of Children's 21See L. Kolberg, A Cognitive-Developmental Analysis in E. E. Maccoby, Ed., The Development of Sex Differences Press, 1966), p. 101. Attitudes, 22Lenore Perspective J. Weitzman, (Palo Alto, 230p. cit., Maccoby Sex Calif.: Role Socialization, Mayfield Publishing and Jacklin, pp. 93-94. in Freeman, Co., 1975), pp. Sex-Role Concepts (Standford Ed., Woman: 111-112. and University A Feminist 154 YOUNG patriarchal society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and that in sexist society women are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies. An essential part of the situation of being a woman is that of living the ever present possibility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape itself as the potential and flesh that presents object of another subject's intentions and manipulations, rather than as a living manifestation of action and intention.24 The source of this objectified is in the existence bodily attitude of others regarding her, but the woman herself often actively takes up her body as a mere thing. She gazes at it in the mirror, worries about how it looks to others, prunes it, shapes it, molds and decorates it. This objectified bodily existence accounts for the self-consciousness of the feminine relation to her body and resulting distance she takes from her body. As human, she is a transcendence and subjectivity, and cannot live herself as mere bodily object. Thus, to the degree that she does live herself as mere body, she cannot be in unity with herself, but must take a distance from and exist in with her body. The objectifying regard which "keeps her in her discontinuity can account of being positioned for the also and for place" spatial modality women not to move tend their limbs enclosed frequently why openly, keeping around themselves. To open her body in free active and open extension and to invite objectification. is.for a woman bold outward directedness The threat of being seen is, however, not the only threat of objectification lives. She also lives the threat of invasion of her body space. which the woman The most extreme form of such spatial and bodily invasion is the threat of rape. But we are daily subject to the possibility of bodily invasion inmany far more subtle ways as well. It is acceptable, for example, to be for women that it is not acceptable for men to touched in ways and under circumstances men?whom it is not acceptable for them to be touched, and by persons?i.e. touch.251 would suggest that the enclosed space which has been described as a is in part a defense against such invasion. of feminine spatiality modality Women tend to project an existential barrier enclosed around them and with the "over there" in order to keep the other at a distance. discontinuous lives her space as confined and enclosed around her at least in The woman some small area in which she can exist as a free subject. part as projecting are objectified in which women 24The manner is not the same by the gaze of the Other as the objectification is a condition of self-consciousness in by the Other which phenomenon trans. (New York: Philosophical See Being and Nothingness, Sartre's account. Hazel E. Barnes, the basic ontological of being-for-others is an category 1956), Part Three. While Library, are subject to is that of being regarded as a which women see Sandra of sexual particular dynamic objectification, Bartky, in Sharon and Margorie and Ed., Philosophy Bishop Psychological Oppression, Weinzweig, Women Calif: Wadsworth Co., 1979), pp. 33-41. (Belmont, Publishing The Sexual Politics and Jo Freeman, of Interpersonal 25See Nancy in Henley Behavior, for-itself, objectified mere in-itself. On Freeman, op. the objectification the cit., pp. 391-401. 155 THROWING LIKE A GIRL to the study of aspects of women's experience The paper is a prolegamenon and situation which have not received the treatment they warrant. I would like to close with some questions which require further thought and research. its attention upon the sort of physical tasks and This paper has concentrated Further body orientation which involve the whole body in gross movement. at existence would into woman's bodily require looking investigation If we are activities which do not involve the whole body and finer movement. in situation, going to develop an account of the woman's body experience of a woman's experience of her moreover, we must reflect on the modalities body activities, body in its sexual being, as well as upon less task-oriented arises is whether the description which such as dancing. Another question sort to the of well tasks. here would any physical Might apply equally given it is a task or movement which is sex kind of task, and specifically whether of feminine bodily existence? A typed, have some effect on the modalities further question is to what degree we can develop a theoretical account ofthe the modalities of the bodily existence of women and between connection I have an For example, and experience. other aspects of our existence intuition that the general lack of confidence that we frequently have about our cognitive or leadership abilities, is traceable in part to an original doubt in our body's capacity. None of these questions can be dealt with properly, however, the kind of guided observation and data collection without first performing to a large degree, is yet to be performed. that my reading has concluded, REFERENCES In S. Bishop & M. Weinzweig S. Psychological (Eds.), Philosophy Bartky, oppression. 1979. Women. Calif: Wadsworth Co., Belmont, Publishing A Contemporary View. New York: Newman F. J. J. Woman: 1968. Press, Buytendijk, and 1974. S. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage de Beauvoir, Books, of expressed of highly skilled males Clifton, M. A., & Smith, H. M. Comparison self-concept motor performance. and Motor and females concerning Skills, 1963,75,199-201. Perceptual sex role socialization toward amplitude M. E. Differential Research Dunquin, appropriation. 1971, 48, 288-292. Quarterly, on Womanhood. E. H. Inner and outer space: Reflections Daedelus, 1964,5, 582-606. Erikson, S. The Dialectic Firestone, Fisher, S. Sex differences 1970. of Sex. New York: Bantam Books, in body perception. Psychological Monographs, 1964,78, (Whole No. 14). S. Body Fisher, 1970. Experience in Fantasy and Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, versus in three ethnic A. M. Estimated actual Child groups. strength physical 283-290. 1968,39, Development, J. The sexual politics of interpersonal In J. Freeman behavior. (Ed.), Henley, N., & Freeman, Palo Alto, Calif: Mayfield A Feminist Woman: 1975. Co., Perspective. Publishing L. E., Robertson, M. A., Safrit, M. J., & Roberts, T. W. Effect of guided practice on Kalverson, Gross, overhand May, throw ball velocities 1977,311-318. of kindergarten children. Research Quarterly, (Vol. 48). No. 2, 156 YOUNG sex-role concepts L. A cognitive-developmental analysis of children's Kolberg, E. E. Maccoby Stanford, of Sex Differences. (Ed.), The Development 1966. Press, University Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. 1974. Press, The Psychology of Sex Differences. and attitudes. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Calif.: Stanford University M. Merleau-Ponty, 1962. Press, Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith (trans.), New York: Humanities H. B. Barnes (trans.), New York: Philosophical Sartre, J. P. Being and Nothingness. 1956. (Part Three). in space perception and aspects of of sex differences J. A. Problems Sherman, Review, 1967, 74, 290-299. Psychological functioning. E. W. Strauss, 1966. The upright posture. Phenomenological In J. Freeman L. J. Sex role socialization. Weitzman, 1975. Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield Co., Publishing Psychology, (Ed.), Woman: New York: A Feminist Library, intellectual Basic Books, Perspective. In Copyright © 1997 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 1 1 1  8 9 10 11 For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P. O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Jacket design by Chris Hammill Paul Text design by Dan Kirklin Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plato. [Works. English. 1997] Complete works/Plato; edited, with introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper; associate editor, D. S. Hutchinson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87220-349-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Socrates. I. Cooper, John M. (John Madison). II. Hutchinson, D. S. III. Title. B358.C3 1997 184—dc21 96-53280 CIP ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-349-5 (cloth) !DOBE 0$& E BOOK )3".      Theaetetus 167 SOCRATES: No, it doesn’t. But there is also an unlawful and unscientific practice of bringing men and women together, which we call procuring; and because of that the midwives—a most august body of women—are very reluctant to undertake even lawful matchmaking. They are afraid that if they practice this, they may be suspected of the other. And yet, I suppose, reliable matchmaking is a matter for no one but the true midwife. THEAETETUS: Apparently. SOCRATES: So the work of the midwives is a highly important one; but it is not so important as my own performance. And for this reason, that there is not in midwifery the further complication, that the patients are sometimes delivered of phantoms and sometimes of realities, and that the two are hard to distinguish. If there were, then the midwife’s greatest and noblest function would be to distinguish the true from the false offspring— don’t you agree? THEAETETUS: Yes, I do. SOCRATES: Now my art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom. The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough. And the reason of it is this, that God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbidden me to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim as the child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom. But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make progress— a progress which is amazing both to other people and to themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring. And a proof of this may be seen in the many cases where people who did not realize this fact took all the credit to themselves and thought that I was no good. They have then proceeded to leave me sooner than they should, either of their own accord or through the influence of others. And after they have gone away from me they have resorted to harmful company, with the result that what remained within them has miscarried; while they have neglected the children I helped them to bring forth, and lost them, because they set more value upon lies and phantoms than upon the truth; finally they have been set down for ignorant fools, both by themselves and by everybody else. One of these people was 150 b c d e 151 168 b c d e Theaetetus Aristides the son of Lysimachus;4 and there have been very many others. Sometimes they come back, wanting my company again, and ready to move heaven and earth to get it. When that happens, in some cases the divine sign that visits me forbids me to associate with them; in others, it permits me, and then they begin again to make progress. There is another point also in which those who associate with me are like women in child-birth. They suffer the pains of labor, and are filled day and night with distress; indeed they suffer far more than women. And this pain my art is able to bring on, and also to allay. Well, that’s what happens to them; but at times, Theaetetus, I come across people who do not seem to me somehow to be pregnant. Then I realize that they have no need of me, and with the best will in the world I undertake the business of match-making; and I think I am good enough— God willing—at guessing with whom they might profitably keep company. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus;5 and a great number also to other wise and inspired persons. Well, my dear lad, this has been a long yarn; but the reason was that I have a suspicion that you (as you think yourself) are pregnant and in labor. So I want you to come to me as to one who is both the son of a midwife and himself skilled in the art; and try to answer the questions I shall ask you as well as you can. And when I examine what you say, I may perhaps think it is a phantom and not truth, and proceed to take it quietly from you and abandon it. Now if this happens, you mustn’t get savage with me, like a mother over her first-born child. Do you know, people have often before now got into such a state with me as to be literally ready to bite when I take away some nonsense or other from them. They never believe that I am doing this in all goodwill; they are so far from realizing that no God can wish evil to man, and that even I don’t do this kind of thing out of malice, but because it is not permitted to me to accept a lie and put away truth. So begin again, Theaetetus, and try to say what knowledge is. And don’t on any account tell me that you can’t. For if God is willing, and you play the man, you can. THEAETETUS: Well, Socrates, after such encouragement from you, it would hardly be decent for anyone not to try his hardest to say what he has in him. Very well then. It seems to me that a man who knows something perceives what he knows, and the way it appears at present, at any rate, is that knowledge is simply perception. SOCRATES: There’s a good frank answer, my son. That’s the way to speak one’s mind. But come now, let us look at this thing together, and see whether what we have here is really fertile or a mere wind-egg. You hold that knowledge is perception? 4. Aristides is one of the two young men whose education Socrates discusses in Laches (see 178a–179b). 5. A famous Sophist. See Protagoras 315d, 337a–c, 340e–341c, 358a–b. 169 Theaetetus THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: But look here, this is no ordinary account of knowledge you’ve come out with: it’s what Protagoras used to maintain. He said the very same thing, only he put it in rather a different way. For he says, you know, that ‘Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not.’ You have read this, of course? THEAETETUS: Yes, often. SOCRATES: Then you know that he puts it something like this, that as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you—you and I each being a man? THEAETETUS: Yes, that is what he says. SOCRATES: Well, it is not likely that a wise man would talk nonsense. So let us follow him up. Now doesn’t it sometimes happen that when the same wind is blowing, one of us feels cold and the other not? Or that one of us feels rather cold and the other very cold? THEAETETUS: That certainly does happen. SOCRATES: Well then, in that case are we going to say that the wind itself, by itself, is cold or not cold? Or shall we listen to Protagoras, and say it is cold for the one who feels cold, and for the other, not cold? THEAETETUS: It looks as if we must say that. SOCRATES: And this is how it appears to each of us? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: But this expression ‘it appears’ means ‘he perceives it’? THEAETETUS: Yes, it does. SOCRATES: The appearing of things, then, is the same as perception, in the case of hot and things like that. So it results, apparently, that things are for the individual such as he perceives them. THEAETETUS: Yes, that seems all right. SOCRATES: Perception, then, is always of what is, and unerring—as befits knowledge. THEAETETUS: So it appears. SOCRATES: But, I say, look here. Was Protagoras one of those omniscient people? Did he perhaps put this out as a riddle for the common crowd of us, while he revealed the Truth6 as a secret doctrine to his own pupils? THEAETETUS: What do you mean by that, Socrates? SOCRATES: I’ll tell you; and this, now, is certainly no ordinary theory— I mean the theory that there is nothing which in itself is just one thing: nothing which you could rightly call anything or any kind of thing. If you call a thing large, it will reveal itself as small, and if you call it heavy, it is liable to appear as light, and so on with everything, because nothing is one or anything or any kind of thing. What is really true, is this: the things of which we naturally say that they ’are’, are in process of coming to be, 6. Protagoras of Abdera was a fifth century to have been the title of his book. B.C. philosopher and sophist; this appears 152 b c d e 794 c d e 449 b Gorgias CHAEREPHON: Now then, since he’s knowledgeable in a craft, what is it, and what would be the correct thing to call him? POLUS: Many among men are the crafts experientially devised by experience, Chaerephon. Yes, it is experience that causes our times to march along the way of craft, whereas inexperience causes them to march along the way of chance. Of these various crafts various men partake in various ways, the best men partaking of the best of them. Our Gorgias is indeed in this group; he partakes of the most admirable of the crafts. SOCRATES: Polus certainly appears to have prepared himself admirably for giving speeches, Gorgias. But he’s not doing what he promised Chaerephon. GORGIAS: How exactly isn’t he, Socrates? SOCRATES: He hardly seems to me to be answering the question. GORGIAS: Why don’t you question him then, if you like? SOCRATES: No, I won’t, not as long as you yourself may want to answer. I’d much rather ask you. It’s clear to me, especially from what he has said, that Polus has devoted himself more to what is called oratory than to discussion. POLUS: Why do you say that, Socrates? SOCRATES: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asks you what craft Gorgias is knowledgeable in, you sing its praises as though someone were discrediting it. But you haven’t answered what it is. POLUS: Didn’t I answer that it was the most admirable one? SOCRATES: Very much so. No one, however, asked you what Gorgias’ craft is like, but what craft it is, and what one ought to call Gorgias. So, just as when Chaerephon put his earlier questions to you and you answered him in such an admirably brief way, tell us now in that way, too, what his craft is, and what we’re supposed to call Gorgias. Or rather, Gorgias, why don’t you tell us yourself what the craft you’re knowledgeable in is, and hence what we’re supposed to call you? GORGIAS: It’s oratory, Socrates. SOCRATES: So we’re supposed to call you an orator? GORGIAS: Yes, and a good one, Socrates, if you really want to call me “what I boast myself to be,” as Homer puts it.3 SOCRATES: Of course I do. GORGIAS: Call me that then. SOCRATES: Aren’t we to say that you’re capable of making others orators too? GORGIAS: That’s exactly the claim I make. Not only here, but elsewhere, too. SOCRATES: Well now, Gorgias, would you be willing to complete the discussion in the way we’re having it right now, that of alternately asking questions and answering them, and to put aside for another 3. Iliad vi.211. Gorgias 795 time this long style of speechmaking like the one Polus began with? Please don’t go back on your promise, but be willing to give a brief answer to what you’re asked. GORGIAS: There are some answers, Socrates, that must be given by way of long speeches. Even so, I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This, too, in fact, is one of my claims. There’s no one who can say the same things more briefly than I. SOCRATES: That’s what we need, Gorgias! Do give me a presentation of this very thing, the short style of speech, and leave the long style for some other time. GORGIAS: Very well, I’ll do that. You’ll say you’ve never heard anyone make shorter speeches. SOCRATES: Come then. You claim to be knowledgeable in the craft of oratory and to be able to make someone else an orator, too. With which of the things there are is oratory concerned? Weaving, for example, is concerned with the production of clothes, isn’t it? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And so, too, music is concerned with the composition of tunes? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: By Hera, Gorgias, I do like your answers. They couldn’t be shorter! GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, I daresay I’m doing it quite nicely. SOCRATES: And so you are. Come and answer me then that way about oratory, too. About which, of the things there are, is it knowledge? GORGIAS: About speeches. SOCRATES: What sort of speeches, Gorgias? Those that explain how sick people should be treated to get well? GORGIAS: No. SOCRATES: So oratory isn’t concerned with all speeches. GORGIAS: Oh, no. SOCRATES: But it does make people capable of speaking. GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And also to be wise in what they’re speaking about? GORGIAS: Of course. SOCRATES: Now does the medical craft, the one we were talking about just now, make people able both to have wisdom about and to speak about the sick? GORGIAS: Necessarily. SOCRATES: This craft, then, is evidently concerned with speeches too. GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: Speeches about diseases, that is? GORGIAS: Exactly. SOCRATES: Isn’t physical training also concerned with speeches, speeches about good and bad physical condition? GORGIAS: Yes, it is. c d e 450 796 b c d e 451 b Gorgias SOCRATES: In fact, Gorgias, the same is true of the other crafts, too. Each of them is concerned with those speeches that are about the object of the particular craft. GORGIAS: Apparently. SOCRATES: Then why don’t you call the other crafts oratory, since you call any craft whatever that’s concerned with speeches oratory? They’re concerned with speeches, too! GORGIAS: The reason, Socrates, is that in the case of the other crafts the knowledge consists almost completely in working with your hands and activities of that sort. In the case of oratory, on the other hand, there isn’t any such manual work. Its activity and influence depend entirely on speeches. That’s the reason I consider the craft of oratory to be concerned with speeches. And I say that I’m right about this. SOCRATES: I’m not sure I understand what sort of craft you want to call it. I’ll soon know more clearly. Tell me this. There are crafts for us to practice, aren’t there? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: Of all the crafts there are, I take it that there are those that consist for the most part of making things and that call for little speech, and some that call for none at all, ones whose task could be done even silently. Take painting, for instance, or sculpture, or many others. When you say that oratory has nothing to do with other crafts, it’s crafts of this sort I think you’re referring to. Or aren’t you? GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates. You take my meaning very well. SOCRATES: And then there are other crafts, the ones that perform their whole task by means of speeches and that call for practically no physical work besides, or very little of it. Take arithmetic or computation or geometry, even checkers and many other crafts. Some of these involve speeches to just about the same degree as they do activity, while many involve speeches more. All their activity and influence depend entirely on speeches. I think you mean that oratory is a craft of this sort. GORGIAS: True. SOCRATES: But you certainly don’t want to call any of these crafts oratory, do you, even though, as you phrase it, oratory is the craft that exercises its influence through speech. Somebody might take you up, if he wanted to make a fuss in argument, and say, “So you’re saying that arithmetic is oratory, are you, Gorgias?” I’m sure, however, that you’re not saying that either arithmetic or geometry is oratory. GORGIAS: Yes, you’re quite correct, Socrates. You take my meaning rightly. SOCRATES: Come on, then. Please complete your answer in the terms of my question. Since oratory is one of those crafts which mostly uses speech, and since there are also others of that sort, try to say what it is that oratory, which exercises its influence through speeches, is about. Imagine someone asking me about any of the crafts I mentioned just now, “Socrates, what is the craft of arithmetic?” I’d tell him, just as you told me, that it’s one of Gorgias 797 those that exercise their influence by means of speech. And if he continued, “What are they crafts about?” I’d say that they’re about even and odd, however many of each there might be. If he then asked, “What is the craft you call computation?” I’d say that this one, too, is one of those that exercise their influence entirely by speech. And if he then continued, “What is it about?” I’d answer in the style of those who draw up motions in the Assembly that in other respects computation is like arithmetic—for it’s about the same thing, even and odd—yet it differs from arithmetic insofar as computation examines the quantity of odd and even, both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other. And if someone asked about astronomy and I replied that it, too, exercises its influence by means of speech, then if he asked, “What are the speeches of astronomy about, Socrates?” I’d say that they’re about the motions of the stars, the sun and the moon, and their relative velocities. GORGIAS: And you’d be quite right to say so, Socrates. SOCRATES: Come, Gorgias, you take your turn. For oratory is in fact one of those crafts that carry out and exercise their influence entirely by speech, isn’t it? GORGIAS: That’s right. SOCRATES: Tell us then: what are they crafts about? Of the things there are, which is the one that these speeches used by oratory are concerned with? GORGIAS: The greatest of human concerns, Socrates, and the best. SOCRATES: But that statement, too, is debatable, Gorgias. It isn’t at all clear yet, either. I’m sure that you’ve heard people at drinking parties singing that song in which they count out as they sing that “to enjoy good health is the best thing; second is to have turned out good looking; and third”—so the writer of the song puts it—“is to be honestly rich.” GORGIAS: Yes, I’ve heard it. Why do you mention it? SOCRATES: Suppose that the producers of the things the songwriter praised were here with you right now: a doctor, a physical trainer, and a financial expert. Suppose that first the doctor said, “Socrates, Gorgias is telling you a lie. It isn’t his craft that is concerned with the greatest good for humankind, but mine.” If I then asked him, “What are you, to say that?” I suppose he’d say that he’s a doctor. “What’s this you’re saying? Is the product of your craft really the greatest good?” “Of course, Socrates,” I suppose he’d say, “seeing that its product is health. What greater good for humankind is there than health?” And suppose that next in his turn the trainer said, “I too would be amazed, Socrates, if Gorgias could present you with a greater good derived from his craft than the one I could provide from mine.” I’d ask this man, too, “What are you, sir, and what’s your product?” “I’m a physical trainer,” he’d say, “and my product is making people physically good-looking and strong.” And following the trainer the financial expert would say, I’m sure with an air of considerable scorn for all, “Do consider, Socrates, whether you know of any good, Gorgias’ or anyone else’s, that’s a greater good than wealth.” We’d say to him, “Really? Is that what you produce?” He’d say yes. “As what?” “As a c d e 452 b c 798 d e 453 b c d Gorgias financial expert.” “Well,” we’ll say, “is wealth in your judgment the greatest good for humankind?” “Of course,” he’ll say. “Ah, but Gorgias here disputes that. He claims that his craft is the source of a good that’s greater than yours,” we’d say. And it’s obvious what question he’d ask next. “And what is this good, please? Let Gorgias answer me that!” So come on, Gorgias. Consider yourself questioned by both these men and myself, and give us your answer. What is this thing that you claim is the greatest good for humankind, a thing you claim to be a producer of? GORGIAS: The thing that is in actual fact the greatest good, Socrates. It is the source of freedom for humankind itself and at the same time it is for each person the source of rule over others in one’s own city. SOCRATES: And what is this thing you’re referring to? GORGIAS: I’m referring to the ability to persuade by speeches judges in a law court, councillors in a council meeting, and assemblymen in an assembly or in any other political gathering that might take place. In point of fact, with this ability you’ll have the doctor for your slave, and the physical trainer, too. As for this financial expert of yours, he’ll turn out to be making more money for somebody else instead of himself; for you, in fact, if you’ve got the ability to speak...
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Question 1
Sartre argued that freedom cannot be limited.
True
Question 2
Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.
It is true that one cannot be limited from Sartre freedom as that is something that it built in them.
Therefore it is more sensible that no one can prevent someone else from doing or indulging in
what they are made of.
Question 3
Plato argued that knowledge of the sensible realm is impossible.
False
Question 4
in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.
The statement is false as the religious and scientific perspective point out to an origin that is
sensible and one that can be depended on. For instance, religion argues on the basis of scriptures,
tradition and faith whereas science argues based on objectivity, observation, experiment and
reproducibility.
Question 5

Aquinas argued that you do not need faith or belief, but only reason, to come to the truth that
God
Exists.
True
Question 6
Briefly explain, in 1-2 sentences, why the previous statement is either true or false.
In the application of our daily lives as human beings, in and out of religion it is evident that there
is a super being that is in control of everything in the universe. At some point scientific
knowledge points out to existence of such a supreme being who is God.
Question 7
After questioning others who appeared to be wise, Socrates realizes that he is in fact the wisest
because he knows that he does ...


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