Forced Nature

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the role of the Enlightenment movement regarding feminism. The paper explains that the status of nature in Enlightenment thinking regarding gender was rather unsteady. Nature was used to prop up arguments both for and against feminism, being used to justify both the subservient state of women and the need they had for more liberty and respect. The paper contends that the ultimate contribution of Enlightenment thinking to the status of women, however, was not in its views on gender or on male-female relationships. The contribution for which this era and even its more misogynistic thinkers must be thanked by modern women's rights movements, is that they created the very concept of individual rights and liberties based on the natural reason of mankind. It was the role that Nature played in the understanding of rights and liberties that eventually led to the idea that women, too, had natural rights.

From the Paper:

"The Enlightenment was defined by its focus on rationality. During this era, the mysticism and superstition of the medieval era were abandoned for the idea that the world was an orderly and rational place. God, if He existed, was not an arbitrary and capricious nobodaddy, as he may have been seen in previous years. On the contrary, He (or It) was seen as the great clockmaker, a mechanic who engineered the world according to divine law and order. According to some, natural law was seen as so important that nature and God were found to be one, and a monistic impression of the world suggested that the natural was all of the divine. In many ways, this focus on natural law led to a liberalization of ancient prejudices. The superiority of hereditary rulers was challenged by evidence from nature that all men had equal and inalienable rights to self-determination; the domination of the church was questioned by evidence from science and nature."

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