While we may legitimately expect great thinkers to swim against the currents of their times, we can hardly expect them to swim up waterfalls. This metaphor fits the great thirteenth-century thinker Thomas Aquinas on the thirteenth-century's "obvious truth" that women are inferior to men. We can hardly expect his doctrine of woman to hold other than what it holds: Woman is the imperfectus sexus1 and morally inferior to man.2 In these claims, Thomas agrees with his contemporaries, and with the two most influential predecessors of the thirteenth-century intellectual milieu, Augustine and Aristotle.

    But if Thomas's doctrine of woman holds that woman is metaphysically and morally inferior to man, his path to the idea of woman's inferiority differs significantly from the paths of Augustine and Aristotle as well as his contemporaries. Thomas's view of woman is neither a restatement of Aristotelian philosophy nor, as Boerresen maintains, "to be found in the reflections of Augustine, from whom he differs little on this subject."3 I will show, even if briefly, the difference between Thomas and Augustine on woman and note the pivotal importance of thirteenth-century biology for Thomas's treatment of woman. His dependence on close empirical observations as the foundation of his thoughts, while leading him to conclusions we find unacceptable, announces a new method-

Thomas and the Augustinian Heritage

    Thomas's philosophical anthropology differs so dramatically from Augustine's that Thomas cannot but help to have a different doctrine of woman. For Thomas, a human being is not a rational soul using an earthly and mortal body, but a hoc aliquid of body and soul, a body and soul unity. Thomas asserts that the soul is a forma materiae, a form of matter, not a forma in materia, a form in matter.4 The body and soul are intimately joined; the soul does not use the body as a tool. The soul is neither the mover in the moved,5 nor does it exist as a sailor in a ship.6 A human being is not two different kinds of things mixed together somehow. In maintaining that the rational soul is immediately and intimately united to the body, Thomas feels he has protected the unity of being human. But in protecting the unity of a human being Thomas has done something more: he has advanced a position quite different from anything Augustine's philosophical anthropology holds.

    Augustine's celebrated definition of a human being holds that a human being is a rationalis anima utens corpore, a "rational soul using a body. "7 If a human being is a rational soul using a mortal and earthly body, then the soul and body do not seem to be a hoc aliquid, a "one object," and the soul and

    Augustine's remarks in book twelve of The Trinity reveals his position that the body does not bear upon human spirituality and spirituality is sexless. Of Ephesians 4:238 and Colossians 3:109 Augustine says that

not according to the body, nor according to every part of the soul, but according to the rational mind, where the love of God is able to be, is a person made to the image of the one who created the person.10

The body has no bearing on a person's status as an image of God. Augustine is most adamant about the non-corporeal character of human spirituality: "Not only is it shown by truest reason, but also the authority of the Apostle declares, that not according to the body is a person made to the image of God, but according to the rational mind."11

    Augustine adds later that where a person is renewed to the image of God, "there a person is made to the image of God, where no sex is."12 As images of God and spiritual creatures, being human admits of no sexual distinction. Conversely, we must realize that for Augustine, sexuality is wholly corporeal. The distance he thinks exists between the

    Thomas thinks differently. If the soul is a form of matter, not a form in matter, the body will bear upon the quality of the soul and the soul will reflect the body. That the body has an impact upon the quality of the soul is itself a product of the fundamental Thomistic principle that a form can be received only to the extent that the matter allows its reception: "in matter better disposed, the form more nobly participates."14 Thomas says of being human that "by as much as the body will have been better composed, it receives a more noble soul."15 In Thomas's philosophical anthropology, the body is a limiting factor in being human. While souls are of the same species and are the same form, they can exist and operate only to the extent that the body enables them to exist and operate.

    Here we have a rather important point of departure by Thomas from Augustine. Augustine speaks as though the body has no bearing on the spiritual aspects of being human. Thomas's philosophical anthropology holds that the body bears greatly upon the quality of the soul. Thomas even goes so far

Thomas's Understanding of Bodily Imperfection and the Birth of Women

    Thomas thinks that woman is materially deficient with respect to man. When discussing the birth of children in the state of innocence, Thomas explicitly asks 'whether children would have been born with a perfect body regarding strength and stature and sex immediately after birth.'18 Thomas refers here to a person's sex as a perfection of the body and acids that in Paradise, not only was woman bodily imperfect, but that "woman, even with respect to her soul, was less perfect than man.'19 We might wonder why women would even be born in the state of innocence, where no defect of natural operation would have been present20 but Thomas anticipates precisely this question. He explicitly says women would have been born in the state of innocence, meaning that woman is perfect somehow.

    Yet, that Thomas thinks women would have been born in the first state is of small consolation to woman's perfection, for Thomas also thinks woman is somehow occasionata, accidentally born and not fully intended by nature. He says that "although woman is beside the intention of a particular nature, which occurs in semen, intending offspring to follow in perfect likeness to the generator, she is not beside the intention of universal nature because without woman, generation is impossible."21 What Thomas means by this statement is that women are born when the father, the form-inducer,22 fails to produce what the father's reproductive power sets out to produce, namely, male offspring. Women, thinks Thomas, are born when something goes awry.

     Thomas cites Aristotle's The Generation of Animals 4, 1 in showing this. He states that a woman is produced when "the semen of the man is unable to prevail over the matter of the woman as [the semen] sets the matter in its most developed arrangement and brings the matter into the perfect sex."23 This inability on the part of man's semen means that the process of embryonic development, such as Thomas understands it, stops short of the process's ultimate goal, namely, the birth of a member of the perfect sex. Thomas refers to the inability of man' s semen as an impotentia,24 a weakness, with all the connotations "weakness" has.

    Any understanding of the impotentia itself turns on the reproductive biology Thomas commits himself to. In Thomas's account of reproduction, man and woman have completely

The power to produce offspring is not passive in the semen of the man, as we say wood and stones are the house in potency, for in such a way that power is in the menstruum of the woman, but it is an active power, as we say the form of the house in the mind of the maker is the form of the house in potency.25

The man, according to Thomas, contributes to the offspring actively and the woman passively. He says that "in all perfect living things in which there is the distinction of sex, the female is the patient and supplier of matter and the male is the agent and inducer of form, as is said in 15 de Animalibus.'26 In twentieth-century words, the thought is this: the father is the only parent who brings to the offspring anything of genetic importance. In thirteenth-century words, the idea is that only the father passes human nature to offspring.

    Thus, Thomas can maintain, with Aristotle, that "a person is more like the father than the mother, since from the father the person receives the form and from the

Some Consequences of Woman's Bodily Inferiority in Thomas's Thought

    Since Thomas's philosophical anthropology holds that the quality of the body has an impact upon the quality of the soul, and that the soul is subsistent and intellectual, he is led into claiming that women, by nature, are subject to male authority. He says that "because nature is diverse in diverse beings, so according to nature there are diverse beings that rule and are ruled; for in one way a free person rules the slave and a male, the female, and a man, the boy."29 By nature, men are fit to rule women, claims Thomas. This claim is not merely descriptive of the relative perfection of man and woman, but also prescriptive regarding good social order. Thomas says that "good order would have been lacking in the human multitude if some were not governed by others who are wiser. And thus, from such a subjection woman is

    Woman, owing to her material deficiencies, is less wise than man, and should not be priests, says Thomas. Further, Thomas says, on the grounds of woman's lesser wisdom, raising children requires a father more than a mother. When he explains why marriages should last the lifetime of the husband and wife, Thomas says that the task of raising children requires a long time and that 'a woman alone does not suffice, but more is required in the work of the man, in whom there is more perfect reason for instructing and greater strength for punishing."32

    And not only do men have more perfect reason, but men are more capable of acting on the basis of their reason, according to Thomas. Women are easily led about by their passions.33 Thus Thomas agrees with Aristotle that men and women do not have the same ethical standards. Women, they think, are morally weak propter imperfectionem corporalis naturae, on account of the imperfection of their corporal nature.34 Thomas claims not only a metaphysical or constitutional inferiority for woman, but also a moral inferiority attached to that alleged constitutional inferiority. Thomas thinks woman, owing to her allegedly imperfect body, is the imperfectus sexus: she is spiritually and morally man's inferior.

Thomas's Doctrine of Woman and Thirteenth-Century Thought

    In that Thomas's doctrine of woman holds that woman is imperfect with respect to man, his thought in this area is quite ordinary for the thirteenth century. In its conclusions about woman, Thomas's thought hardly stands out from Aristotle's and Augustine's. In many ways, his doctrine of woman represents the typical, somewhat unenlightened, patriarchal point of view. Yet, Thomas's doctrine of woman represents a divergence from thirteenth-century traditions while at the same disclosing what the thirteenth century mind must have thought.

    The idea that the soul is a material form reflecting the body is an Aristotelian thought. The idea that the soul is spiritual and subsistent is an Augustinian thought. What Thomas managed to do in his heavily Augustinian environment was to fashion a philosophical anthropology that holds that the soul is a material form, but subsistent and spiritual, too. In holding this, he enables his doctrine of woman to part company with Augustine's and Aristotle's doctrines. In holding that the soul is a material form yet subsistent, Thomas gives great impetus to understanding the body as a means to understanding what it means to be human. Biological knowledge is pivotal in understanding man and woman not merely in their corporeal aspects, but in their spiritual aspects as well. Sexuality, in short, can not be put exclusively in terms of the body and, paradoxically, biological knowledge becomes more important in understanding human beings. Thomas's emphasis on biological

    Thomas solves the problem of gaining biological knowledge by assenting to a reproductive theory in which man and woman have wholly different roles. Thomas's doctrine of woman shows this as well as showing how heavily Aristotelian that biology is. While Thomas constantly refers us to something which Aristotle says, he does not rely on Aristotle's writing for a foundation of biological knowledge. Instead, he turns to Aristotle for corroboration of biological truths. Thomas seems to accept a body of knowledge independent of Aristotle's work, asserting that these facts are so and that that is why Aristotle makes the claims he makes.35 May we conclude that Aristotle's biology was the accepted biology of the thirteenth-century thinkers, but that Thomas and others are unaware of the source of that biology? I am satisfied that that is indeed the case, though that thesis demands more thorough investigation.

    And what are we to make of the ostensibly extraordinary woman, the one who is equal or superior to man? Does Thomas and do others overlook these women in formulating a doctrine of woman that states woman's imperfection? If Thomas does this, his doctrine of woman is, at best an a priori construct by an educated intelligent man. Furthermore, if Thomas does this, he would be contradicting his own system's demand to understand the body by empirical observation. In fact, Thomas does not overlook the evidence of "strong and brave women,"36 women who

    Finally, I wish to conclude with what I consider to be the most important, and, by now, obvious point about Thomas's doctrine of woman as well as thirteenth-century thought. We must concede that medieval thought treats woman as imperfect and inferior. But we do not have to concede that Thomas's thought on woman or the thought of the Middle Ages is a product of hysteria, bias, or prejudice. Thomas's doctrine of woman is a doctrine formulated rationally upon the limited information available to him. Contemporary thinkers, especially feminists, among whom I number myself, have a tendency to treat too harshly any person who espouses a position at odds with accepted contemporary thought.

    Doctrines like Thomas's are labeled misogynous and dismissed. However, if we take the time to investigate a doctrine of woman like Thomas's, we would find that such a doctrine, while wrong in many ways, can still be admired for the way it is put together. As contemporary thinkers, we should reserve judgment on the person and qualify the

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