Class 17 - Gender and the art of argument

Welcome back!

Welcome back. In this session, and the next two, we’re going to explore gender in relation to the arts of argument. If democracy is the public exercise of reason, as suggested in Sen’s paper, throughout history, women have been excluded from this democratic process. In the next few sessions, we’re going to explore the ways in which women have intervened in debate and argument, breaking with the traditionally male monopoly on public reason.

In this class, we’re going to be looking at a very detailed paper by Lisa Raphals, where she takes a wide range of examples of women engaging in philosophical debate in early China.

Writing exercise

We’re going to start with a writing exercise.

Is argument gendered? If so, how?

Now let’s talk through the following in the large group:

1. Is argument gendered? If so, how?
2. In the societies of which you are a part, in what ways are women, or those who identify as non-male, excluded from collective argument and debate, or from what Rawls calls “the exercise of public reason”?
3. What ideas and concepts underpin this exclusion?

Discussion

What did you make of the paper? Here are some questions to get you started?

1. Raphals begins by saying the Chinese thought, unlike Western thought, does not distinguish between “philosophy” and “persuasion”. What is the significance of this?
2. What are the four “common features” of the Chinese arts of argument that Raphals identifies.
3. What is the distinction between “rhetorical persuasion” and “instructive argument”?
4. What implications did the limited social roles available to women in ancient China have for the ways in which women could intervene in philosophical or political debate?

Break

Second half: Exploring the arguments in more detail

There are a number of stories that Raphals discusses in considerable detail in this text, all of which involve several arguments:

• The story of the wife of the bow-maker of Jin
• The story of Xuwu of Qi
• The story of Ti Ying
• The story of Jin Jiang
• The story of Meng Mu

I’m going to divide you into several different groups. In each group, I want you to explore the story — and accompanying arguments — that you have been assigned. You should start at the end of the essay with the summaries of the arguments. Then you should go back to the texts, and read them out in your groups, before talking through.

I want each group to feed back to the class as a whole:

1. What the story is about. (Who the main characters are? What happens?)
2. What the major arguments are.
3. What the strengths and shortcomings of the arguments are.
4. How, in each case, the women involved intervene in these debates or arguments.
5. What conclusions we can draw about the role of women in the public sphere in Ancient China?

Homework

For your homework, I want you to read a contemporary paper about women and argumentation. The paper is Feminist Alternatives to Traditional Argumentation. In: J. Ritola (Ed.), Argument Cultures: Proceedings of OSSA 09, Windsor, ON: OSSA. The paper is shared on Canvas. We’ll talk about this next week.