I was appalled by Kenji Hosakawa's column "On Women and Philosophy" [March 26, 1996]. He says he has yet to "encounter a woman with an intriguing philosophical insight." Has he bothered to communicate with any women at Dartmouth? He claims that a smaller percentage of women than men are philosophical intellectuals based on the fact that women go through pregnancy and rear children. How profound. Yet again, women's reproductive cycles are the root of their inferiority.
Hosokawa predictably based his argument upon an age old stereotype. If we're going to stereotype, let's do this equally. He claims that only men can give him the answers to "the essential questions that have tormented mankind". The topics I generally hear discussed and debated by men on campus are: men on beer, men on sports, men on women, etc. etc. This may be a crude stereotype of my esteemed male colleagues at Dartmouth, but it's no more offensive than the sexist claims made by Hosokawa.
First of all, I fail to see the connection between women continuing their careers and women as philosophical intellectuals. Does philosophical meditation require a career? Weren't the great philosophers Hosokawa refers to all essentially unemployed? It is likely that great women philosophers would be quite capable of managing a high powered career, but the two actions are not dependent upon one another, nor are they mutually exclusive. The two are simply unrelated. Furthermore, I do not understand how pregnancy hinders intellectual thought. Once they receive the test results, do expecting mothers think "I'm pregnant, can't concentrate on anything but naming the baby and decorating the nursery?" Does it not make sense to assume that pregnant women meditate and think about philosophical issues more so than non-pregnant persons? While carrying a child, a pregnant mother thinks seriously and intently about the world her child will be entering and what its role will be in that world. Procreation necessitates philosophical thought. Without future generations to consider, what use is philosophy?
Hosokawa does sympathize with these unfortunate mothers -- they do, after all, have to depend upon their husbands during their uncomfortable pregnancies. Dependence upon a man it seems, turns off the woman's thinking process. Important issues are left for the man to ponder. What about single mothers? Do they also turn off their brains in hopes that some Locke or Rousseau will come charging up on his white steed to philosophize for them? I'd venture to guess that single mothers can do plenty of philosophizing on the topics of strength, depression, liberty and courage.
Of course, if Hosokawa is after all correct in his assumption that great philosophical thought requires a career and time away from children, women are not necessarily the ones who have to suffer. In Sweden, fathers can take paternity leave while the moms go back to work. Fathers sit in the sandboxes with their business cellular phones while they build castles with their children. This seems a more rational compromise than exploring the Huxleyan techniques advocated by Hosokawa. He proposes to reproduce humans outside of the womb in an effort to finally liberate women from their oppressive childbearing role. Maybe if the Swedish system becomes a trend and travels across the Atlantic we'll see a direct relation in increased philosophical insight of women in America.
According to Hosokawa, we women at Dartmouth have about 30 more years to go before we're fully liberated from our hormones and biological clocks so that we can utilize our brains for philosophical thought. Of course, we all know that testosterone was the back bone behind every rational decision made by a man.
