Binary opposition as an ordering principle of (male?) human thought

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

pp. 173-194

in: Linda Fisher, Lester Embree (eds), Feminist phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstract

Contemporary feminist philosophers have consistently decried the binary oppositions of Western philosophy and Western culture, perhaps most notably the oppositions: mind/body, reason/emotion, (or rational/irrational), and culture/nature. They attribute these oppositions to male ways of thinking. They have furthermore decried the uneven valorizations attaching to the oppositions and lay these too at the feet—or rather, heads—of males. Of course, binary oppositions and uneven valorizations inform the thinking and practices of other cultures as well, these oppositions being in some cases different from the predominant ones of Western culture—tame/wild, sky/earth, and right/left, for example.