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— PRUDENCE ALLEN, RSM Man-Woman Complementarity: The Catholic Inspiration EVERY TIME MAN-WOMAN relations moved out of balance in west- ern thought or practice, someone- -a philosopher and/or a theolo- gian responding to a deep source of Catholic inspiration, sought ways to bring the balance back. What do I mean by "out of balance”? When one of two fundamental principles of gender relation equal dignity and significant difference is missing from the respective identities of man and woman, the balance of a complementarity disappears into either a polarity or unisex theory. Table 1 provides a simple summ nmary of these principles and theories with an asterisk indicating the best option of integral gender complementarity. Table 1. Structure of Theories of Gender Identity EQUAL DIGNITY OF MAN AND WOMAN THEORY Gender unity or unisex Traditional gender polarity yes no man per se superior to woman SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENTIATION OF MAN AND WOMAN no yes LOGOS 9:3 SUMMER 2006 88 Table 1. Structure of Theories of Gender Identity (continued) SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENTIATION OF MAN AND WOMAN yes THEORY Reverse gender polarity Fractional gender complementarity EQUAL DIGNITY OF MAN AND WOMAN no LOGOS woman per se superior to man yes *Integral gender yes complementarity Gender neutrality neutral yes complementary as parts yes complementary as wholes neutral This article is divided into two parts. First, a general summary of the drama of basic theories of gender relation up through post-Enlight- enment philosophy will be given. Second, a more detailed analysis of modern and contemporary Catholic inspirations for man-woman integral complementarity will be provided. For those readers who want evidence to support these summarized claims, endnotes re- ferring to primary and secondary sources are provided. Also dates provided for each philosopher will allow the reader to follow the chronology of the dramatic philosophical developments in the his- tory of man-woman relational identities. Historical Overview of Theories of Gender Identity The unisex position, first articulated by Plato (428–355 B.C.), re- jected significant differentiation while defending the basic equality of man and woman. The polarity position, first articulated by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), rejected fundamental equality while defending the natural superiority of man over woman. Neoplatonic and Aristote- lian positions continued to promote these imbalances respectively until Augustine (354-430), Hildegard of Bingen (1033-1109), and MAN-WOMAN COMPLEMENTARITY Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) attempted, in different ways, to artic- ulate new Christian theological and philosophical foundations for the fundamental equality and significant differentiation of man and woman.¹ While their works did not contain consistent foundations for gender complementarity, they nonetheless moved public dis- course toward a more balanced man-woman complementarity. After the triumphal entry of Aristotelian texts into western Eu- rope in the thirteenth century, the gender polarity position gained new momentum especially in medical, ethical, political, and satiri- cal texts. Eventually, a new kind of Catholic inspiration to defend gender complementarity emerged within Renaissance humanism in the works of Christine de Pizan (1344–1430), Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), Albrecht von Eyb (1420–75), Isotta Nogarola (1418-66), and Laura Cereta (1469-99).2 Here, Italian, French, and German Catholic authors sought to provide multiple founda- tions for the complementarity of women and men in marriage and in broader society. Soon, however, arguments in support of reverse gender polar- ity- a new for of imbalance began to appear in a few authors, such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1536) and Lucrezia Marinelli (1571–1653).³ They defended the position that there are significant differences between the sexes but that woman is natu- rally superior to man. In the same time period, other movements supported new foun- dations for unisex arguments. The infusion of translations of Plato's dialogues into Latin contained a metaphysical argument based on a sexless soul reincarnated into different kinds of bodies. Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), founder of the Florintine Platonic Academy, also supported some fractional complementarity, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) also had a gender-neutral approach. While gender neutrality basically ignored sex and gender differenc- es, unisex theories made direct arguments that differences between men and women were not significant. Another gender-neutral position was provided by René Des- 89 90 LOGOS cartes' (1590-1650) metaphysical argument that the nonextended, sexless mind was entirely distinct from the extended material body, and that a human being was to be more identified with the mind alone, the “I am a thinking thing,” than with the body or with the union of mind and body. The Cartesian approach positively provid- ed a basis from which equal access to education and suffrage for women and men was directly supported by such authors as François Poullain de la Barre (1647—1723), Mary Astell (1688-1731), and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94).ª Cartesian dualism also spawned, especially among Protestants, an Enlightenment form of fractional complementarity, claiming that male and female are significantly different, but each provides only a fraction of one whole person. Woman was thought to provide half of the mind's operations (i.e., intuition, sensation, or particular judgments) and man the other half (i.e., reason or universal judg- ments). These two fractional epistemological operations, if added together, produced only one mind. When the specifics of the engen- dered contributions were identified, these fractional relations often contained stereotypes of a hidden traditional polarity, with the man as superior to the female. Examples of fractional complementar- ity with a hidden polarity can be found in the philosophies of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Ar- thur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Frederick Hegel (1770-1831), and Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55).5 The problem here is that Cartesian dualism separated the mind from the body, so that these Protestant writers had lost a solid metaphysical and ontological foundation based on the integral unity of a human person. Although John Stuart Mill (1806–73) and Harriet Taylor (1807-58) tried to defend complementarity, they also slid into the fractional version because of the lack of an ontological foundation for an adequate (hylomorphic) philosophical anthropology. Any Catholic foundation for an integral gender complementarity was rejected further by atheistic post-Enlightenment philosophers. MAN-WOMAN COMPLEMENTARITY Karl Marx (1818–83) fostered a unisex approach to man-woman relations. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) promoted a traditional po- larity approach. The philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre (1905–80) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908–85) drew from both of these sources to defend an atheistic existentialism that, following sex polarity, de- valued woman in relation to man. Anti-religious secular humanism instead gravitated toward a unisex approach. Finally, postmodern radical feminism vacillated between a reverse gender polarity that exalted woman's nature over man's and a deconstruction of gender differentiation altogether. 6 How would the Catholic inspiration for an integral gender com- plementarity overcome the extreme distortions of post-Enlight- enment theories of man-woman relations? With the imbalance in man-woman relations becoming increasingly extreme in Enlighten- ment and post-Enlightenment philosophies, the Catholic inspira- tion for a new approach to integral gender complementarity came from surprising new sources. Contemporary Catholic Theories of Gender Complementarity Two students of Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenome- nological movement, laid new foundations for an ontological and experiential complementarity of man and woman: Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977) and St. Edith Stein (1891-1942). Stein's conversion to Catholicism from Judaism in 1922 followed von Hil- debrand's conversion from Evangelical Lutheranism in 1914. Yet, as early as 1914 Stein and von Hildebrand had both been members of the Philosophical Society, composed of students studying under Husserl and Scheler in Göttingen.7 By 1930 Stein wrote about her collaboration with von Hildebrand in giving lectures at a confer- ence in Salzburg, Austria. In 1923 von Hildebrand gave a public lecture in Ulm, Germany, which was expanded and published in 1929 as Die Ehe (On Mar- riage). In this text he argued that "it would be incredibly superficial 91
