Why Aquinas's Metaphysics of Gender Is Fundamentally Correct: A Response to John Finley.

The Linacre Quarterly Pub Date : 2020-05-01 Epub Date: 2019-11-25 DOI:10.1177/0024363919884795
William Newton
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

In an important article, John Finley suggests a correction to Aquinas's understanding of gender distinction. Disagreeing with Aquinas, Finley proposes that gender distinction (male and female) stems from the soul rather than from the body. In this essay, I will show that this is not a tenable position because it does not fit with either what we know about the physical development of sex differences or the unity of man and woman as a single human species. I will defend Aquinas's fundamental insights into the root of gender distinction without defending his biological understanding of the process itself. I will argue that there is a single generic generative power in the soul that is determined by the matter to which the soul is united, to be expressed as either male or female. This paradigm, I believe, copes better than the one offered by Finley with phenomena such as intersexed persons and sex reassignment surgery. While I do not accept the idea of a feminine or masculine soul, the paradigm offered here does lead to the notion of the soul being feminized or masculinized on account of the matter that it informs.

为什么阿奎那的性别形而上学是基本正确的:对约翰·芬利的回应。
在一篇重要的文章中,约翰·芬利对阿奎那对性别区分的理解提出了一个修正。芬利不同意阿奎那的观点,他提出性别区分(男性和女性)源于灵魂而不是身体。在这篇文章中,我将表明这是一个站不住脚的立场,因为它既不符合我们所知道的性别差异的身体发育,也不符合男人和女人作为一个单一人类物种的统一性。我将捍卫阿奎那对性别差异根源的基本见解,但不捍卫他对这一过程本身的生物学理解。我认为灵魂中有一种单一的通用的生殖能力,它是由灵魂与之结合的物质决定的,可以表现为男性或女性。我相信,这个范例比芬利提出的范例更适用于阴阳人和变性手术等现象。虽然我不接受女性化或男性化灵魂的观点,但这里提供的范式确实导致了灵魂被女性化或男性化的概念,这取决于它所传达的内容。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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