ABSTRACT
Some feminist readers of Aristotle have argued that Aristotle’s hylomorphism entails a normative hierarchy that privileges form over matter. To the extent that Aristotle associates form with male and matter with female, this hierarchy reflects and perpetuates gender inequality. After laying out this case, I defend a reading of the relation of form to matter in Aristotle’s account specifically of how semen works in generation to resist this normative view. I argue that the normative view of hylomorphism follows from an artifice model of nature; I offer an alternative framing that resists the notion that form imposes itself on matter and masters it and argues for a more profound unity and interdependence of form and matter which I illustrate through my reading of Aristotle’s account of how semen works in generation.
