ENSAIO MODELO - Nº03
“for the soul by nature contains a part that rules and a part that is ruled, to which we assign different virtues, that is, the virtue of the rational and that of the irrational. It is clear then that the case is the same also with the other instances of ruler and ruled. Hence there are by nature various classes of rulers and ruled. For the free rules the slave, the male the female, and the man the child in a different way. And all possess the various parts of the soul, but possess them in different ways; for the slave has not got the deliberative part at all, and the female has it, but without full authority, while the child has it, but in an undeveloped form.” - Aristotle, Politics.
In the excerpt, Aristotle claims that the soul has a part that rules, which is rational, and a part that is ruled, which is irrational. He then proceeds to apply this logic to social relations, such as man-woman, master-slave, adult-child. From this, he concludes that the case is the same from the soul, one is ruled, while the other rules. The cause for this phenomenon, Aristotle claims, resides in the distinct degree of the rational element of the soul each group possess. All possess the different parts of the soul, he says, but naturally in different ways. He claims that the slave lacks the deliberative part at all, while the woman has it without full authority and the child has it undeveloped. The implications of Aristotle’s argument are extremely negative, as they naturalize oppressive power relations, by claiming that one is ruled for lacking certain natural aspect. His analysis of social relations is empirically correct: there is, in fact, an observable relation of power and dominance between those agents. However, I disagree on the justification he attributes for such phenomenon.
Thus, in this essay, I will defend the thesis that the existence of these oppressive power relations can be justified by social factors, as I believe the justification does not concern the soul, but the social structure in which they reside. I shall first address why Aristotle’s analysis falls short on comprehending the structural social aspect of the observed power relations, by further analyzing the parts of the soul and their relation of subordination. To defend my thesis, as the justification I’ll defend concerns social factors, I’ll first investigate at what point of human society history these oppressive relations started, to later on address what are the ways they have become more relevant, divisive and are perpetuated throughout society. Therefore, my line of argumentation shall start with an investigation of what was the primal cause of oppressive power relations, making use of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Discourse on the origin of inequality” to then address what are the ways they are perpetuated: I’ll utilize Michel Foucault’s concept of normalizing power to evidentiate how the perpetuation of the observed relations work in subtle ways along the social structure. Then, I’ll detail how the suppression or denial of the knowledge necessary for social position awareness and the relation between recognition, as in the work of Charles Taylor, and speech also work for the perpetuation of oppressive power relations, impeding individuals to end such relations.
It is important to note that the era Aristotle lived in was much different from today (in terms of society progress on equality). Women, for example, were not allowed to vote, nor own or inherit land. Also slavery was a common practice and many of these oppressive relations were seen as natural. However, that does not clear his analysis from being incorrect. I accept the claim that the soul has a rational and an irrational part, and one rules the other. The rational part concerns the faculty of reason humans possess, as, for example, being capable of recognizing the reasons for what something is theoretically true. The irrational part corresponds to passions. Aristotle described passions as anger, fear, hate, desire and feelings accompanied by pleasure or pain in general. Scholar Aryeh Kosman observed that the items on the list are mostly passive verbs: “in thinking of fear or anger, Aristotle is thinking of being frightened, being angered. When I am afraid, something is frightening me; when I am angry, something is angering me. When in general I am experiencing an emotion or feeling of the sort which Aristotle would call a pathos, something is affecting me; I am being acted upon in some way.” In other words, it is not something we do, but something that happens to us. Thus, the irrational part is subordinated to the rational part in two ways: 1) that, when opposed to reason, we can act in nonconformity with our desires; 2) in the sense that we can desire things because that are reasons that tell us are good. Notwithstanding, different individuals do not possess the different parts naturally in different ways: some of them are deprived of fully exercising them. They are subject to certain experiences that allow them to develop and exercise it’s rational element of the soul to a larger or smaller extent. For example, the abysmal socioeconomic gap between factory workers in Bangladesh who work approximately 100+ hours a week for £25 versus an european white male who has the opportunities and free time to dedicate himself to an academic career. In a superficial analysis, one can say that the european has the faculty of reason naturally more developed, as he probably would have more cultural capital and might have some cognitive functions more developed, due to the experiences he has been subjected to. As we saw earlier, women in ancient Greece were also submitted to limiting conditions, and so were slaves. Therefore, I believe the same mistake was made by Aristotle. To have a larger accumulation of cultural capital or some cognitive functions more developed due to having the opportunities to do so is not equivalent to having the rational part of the soul naturally more developed. In my analysis of the argument, Aristotle’s mistake is in assuming that these differences can be justified as natural, and not as a result of social structures that subject individuals to those positions.
On his paper “Discourse on the origin of inequality”, Rousseau aims to find at what point in history inequality between humans emerged. He argues that, from the establishment of agriculture, necessarily followed division of land and properties. With the land divided and owned by someone, followed the need to have workers to cultivate the land and so were formed relations of subordination, situations of social inequality between humans. What Rousseau’s analysis shows us is that the origin of inequality emerged from the establishment of a social organizational practice, and it contributes to my thesis, in the sense that: if relations of inequality emerged from the implantation of a social practice, the cause in incompatible with Aristotle’s soul argument, as these relations would be anterior to the agricultural revolution. (...)
Now, to investigate the ways these relations are perpetuated, I shall make use of Michel Foucault’s concept of normalizing power. Foucault makes a distinction between two kinds of power: repressive and normalizing. The first type can be defined as the exercise of violence, physical or mental, to restrict or change the outcome and options of one’s actions in favor of the will of the powerful. The second kind manipulates, in a subtle way, the beliefs, desires and motivations of individuals. In other words, repressive power makes you do what you don’t want to, and normalizing power shapes your world view and tells you what to want and see as normal in the first place, deceiving you into thinking those are your own desires and beliefs. Normalizing power is exercised and reproduced all throughout the social structure, not necessarily in a hierarchical, monopolized way. Diverse social institutions, such as family, legal systems, school, etc… reproduce ideas that heavily influence on what is viewed as normal in society. For example, legal systems that have no laws against homophobia versus one that has: the second one prevents to certain extent, or at least does not contribute, to the reproduction throughout the social structure of the normalization of homophobia. As another example, there is the fact that schools may offer distinct extracurricular activities for boys and girls: depending on what those activities represent, that social institution (school) might reproduce gender stereotypes. The point here is that, along history, social institutions have played a big role in reinforcing and strengthening oppressive power relations, by reproducing ideals that contribute to the normalization and establishment of such relations through mechanisms like Foucault's normalizing power.
The second factor that perpetuates oppressive relations concerns awareness of your position in the social structure. Being aware that you are in a position of “ruled”, or oppressed, is the first step to ending such state. If a woman is told all her life to accept the fact that men are in any form superior to her, she will tend to accept it as an inconvenient natural fact. The suppression or denial of this type of knowledge (social position awareness) leads to the naturalization of oppression. If the social structure denies individuals to have such knowledge, it turns impossible for oppressive relations to end, as they are seen as natural. It is, therefore, fundamental that a system allows, through accessible education, all individuals to be aware of the positions they occupy in society, as that is a necessary step for more equal relations.
An objection to the latter factor of perpetuation could be made regarding the fact that the kind of knowledge necessary for abolishing the relations does not concern only social position awareness. The fact that a woman knows that she occupies a position of “ruled”, may not motivate her to seek change, because if (as we supposed) she accepted that “men are superior” is an inconvenient natural fact, she may also accept that is only natural that she will occupy a position of subordination. Here we see the negative implications of Aristotle’s argument, as who accepts his conclusion has to accept oppression as natural, and that minorities should occupy a position of subordination. Therefore, the necessary knowledge would be of recognizing the falsity of the claim “men are superior”, and how it was internalized in her. This objection implies that we add another condition to the category of knowledge necessary to end oppressive relations: the recognition that no relation of subordination is natural, but always the result of the social structure they are situated. By recognizing this and being aware of it’s social position of oppressed, there are no obstacles (regarding knowledge) for minorities to seek the end of these oppressive power relations.
The last line of argument I want to address to support my thesis concerns recognition, as in the concept developed by philosopher Charles Taylor’s in his paper “Politics of Recognition”, and its relation to speech. Taylor’s thesis consists on how the way a certain group or individual exists and shapes their identity in a society is partially defined by how that society views or recognize them. That is, if society mirrors them back a demeaning, detrimental view, they are subjected to exist and shape their identity in this distorted, imprisoning mode of being. Thus, some feminists have argued that, in patriarchal societies, women have been induced to adopt a depreciatory image of themselves. This self image of inferiority becomes a potent instrument of oppression, as it acts as a big obstacle in liberation from the patriarchy.
The “ruled” role in these relations is, in fact, existing in a distorted, imprisoning mode of being and I believe that society´s recognition contributes a great part to this phenomenon. The first relation between Taylor’s thesis and the perpetuation of oppressive power relations, is that, when recognized by society in detrimental ways, minorities have their self image subjected to this depreciatory construction. This acts as an obstacle against liberation from the “ruled” position, as they internalize an image of inferiority that may prevent them from seeking liberation. Regarding the relation of Taylor’s thesis to speech, the point is that the way a society recognizes a group or individual is inherently connected to how they talk about them. And this covers all types of speech, being informal conversations, publicity and propaganda, academic works, political speech... If any of those forms of speech provide a detrimental image of certain group, that contributes greatly to how society recognizes their existence. In many countries around the world, hate speech and white supremacist propaganda are on the rise once again. This is the most direct, harmful form of creating a detrimental image of a group. The fact that individuals can be freely allowed to discriminate certain groups through hate speech contributes to a negative, detrimental image of such groups and that leads to the perpetuation of oppressive power relations. Therefore, to prevent social relations to be unjust and oppressive because of these reasons, it is reasonable that we censor discriminatory and hate speech, as they contribute to the existence and, more importantly, the perpetuation of oppressive power relations.
To summarize, I first provided an examination of Aristotle’s argument, showing why there are negative implications to his conclusion and how his analysis fails to point out the structural causes of the relations he observed. Then, I proceeded to investigate for what was the primal cause of situations of inequality and subordination between humans: the agricultural revolution, showing how such relations emerged from a social and historical event, not from natural reasons. Following that, I explained the subtle ways social institutions reinforce and strengthen oppressive relations, through the exercise of normalizing power. Lastly, I argued for what I believe to be the main means of perpetuation of these oppressive relations, which are: the denial of the necessary knowledge to be aware of the position those on the “ruled” role occupy, and, secondly, discriminatory speech that leads to a detrimental recognition of certain groups from society, which imprisons them in a limited, distorted mode of being and induces them to adopt a depreciatory image of themselves.. After analyzing the foundations and means of perpetuation of oppressive power relations, it’s now clear that the justification for the existence of such relations resides, in fact, on the social structure, and are not naturally justifiable.
SINTETIZANDO –
Autor da citação: Aristóteles (384 a.C – 322 a.C)
Obra da citação: Política
Posição em relação ao autor: discordância
Tese do ensaio: Contrapor que as relações de poder se dão devido ao distinto desenvolvimento natural de certas faculdades em diferentes tipos de pessoas e que estas, de fato, podem ser justificadas por meio de fatores sociais.
Autores usados em suporte: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Charles Taylor (1931-), Aryeh Kosman, Michel Foucault (1926-1984).
Bons Estudos!