ABSTRACT
In The Philosophy of Right, Hegel contrasted the ‘happy ideas, taste and elegance’ characteristic of female consciousness with male attainments which demand a ‘universal faculty’. ‘Women are educated-who knows how? —as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by acquiring knowledge. The status of manhood, on the other hand, is attained only by the stress of thought and much technical exertion.’1 These kinds of connection between maleness and achievement are not confined to Hegel. In western thought, maleness has been seen as itself an achievement, attained by breaking away from the more ‘natural’ condition of women. Attitudes to Reason and its bearing on the rest of life have played a major part in this; a development that occurred in the seventeenth century has been particularly crucial.
