Weibliches Leiden - Männliche Leidenschaften. Zum Geschlecht in Älteren Affektenlehren

Abstract

The association of femininity with emotionality and masculinity with rationality which has pervaded our culture up to the present day was shaped in a decisive way by 19th century ideologies of gender, as has been convincingly shown by recent historians. But what of the centuries before? Were emotions gendered in any significant way prior to the late 18th century and if so, how? The paper addresses these questions by searching the classical philosophical theories of the emotions or «passions« for explicit and implicit gender-markers. It shows that the findings are inconsistent: the »passions« seem to be just as masculine as feminine, women are not on the whole conceived as being more emotional than men. The belief, however, that women are less rational or less capable of using reason, appears to run through the history of thought from Plato to the present.