Women philosophers in the Andocentric Philosophical Tradition of the West.

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It is a truism that women had been oppressed and marginalized in the andocentric (male dominated) traditions of both, the East and the West. There are, of course, a plethora of reasons to lament about this tragic discrimination, but for the moment, let us avoid getting caught up in this deplorable and distressful fate of the womankind and make an effort to trace a few (feminine) silver lines in the male-dominated philosophical history of the west. Women were not considered as capable of philosophizing or theorizing, nor were they regarded as capable of understanding the deep and abstract and abstruse messages embedded in the religious and other philosophies formulated by males. The woman, as most of us know today, was oppressed in slave, feudal, and early capitalist societies (cf. Engles s Working Class Conditions in England), and is oppressed and discriminated even in the so-called liberal contemporary capitalist societies. She was marginalized, if not wholly ill- treated by almost all institutionalized religions since their inceptions, which process is sustained in overt and covert forms by almost all egalitarian religions even today. The woman was identified and characterized right through out in the andocentric history of the East and the West both as, The Second Sex, to use the title of the book by Simone de Beauvoir, the French female philosopher of the early 20th century. . Not just in the sphere of religion, but also in the context of other cultural spheres such as politics, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, landscapedesigning, and ritual performance activities, it was the male who was at the center, and who consequently received recognition, respect, veneration and adoration. The woman found herself at the periphery and fated only to be an obedient spectator, sober viewer, and patient listener at most and at best, and thats all. . Male dominance in religious culture in general and western philosophical tradition in particular. Rig-vedic seers were all males and the subsequent Upanishadic thought too was andocentric. All subsequent Hindu religious authorities were males (Samkara, Ramanuja) Leaders of other major religions too were males; Jainism (Mahaveera ), Buddhism (Siddhartha Gothama); Islam (Mohamed); Christianity ( Jesus Christ ); Confucianism (Confucias). Thus, from time immemorial, due to the religious division of labour and dominant patriarchal ideologies in vogue, the woman had been alienated, deprived of political, sexual and social rights and even legal identity. Last and least of all, the woman was forbidden any access to the cathedral of knowledge, philosophy, by both traditions, eastern and western. Those who have written on the History of Western Philosophy (e.g. Bertrand Russell, Radha Krishnan (History of Philosophy: East and West) and others have only highlighted the contributions made by male philosophers. Thales, Aneximender, Aneximenus , Zeno, Pythogoras, Sophists, (there were female sophists, but not mentioned or highlighted , Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all grand theorists or system builders of the Greek period. The medieval and early modern periods (Al Gazali Thomas Aquinas, Aver roes, Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Montaigne, Montesquieu and the distinguished philosophers of the modern period such as Mill, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Husserl were all males, and they never had any female followers or disciples except Descartes. But Karl Marx was an exception. He attracted women intellectuals, such as Rosa Luxumberg, Krupskaya (Lenins wife) and Raya Dunuveskaya), who had been supporting his revolutionary ideal. And his philosophy was the only philosophy, for obvious socialist reasons of course, which accommodated womens intellectual cerebrum.

This discrimination or the denigration of the woman, in fact, should not have happened at all, as both sexes are equal and, therefore, the woman too should have had access to all disciplines of the cultural sphere. But it did not happen in the east nor did it happen in the so- called egalitarian west. The male intellectuals and power-holders of both cultures, consciously and deliberately, denigrated the woman. Even the early Greek never saw the woman as a rational-being; hence they formulated the misconception The slave and the woman lack reason. One of the great intellectuals of the modern west, Rousseau unleashed his venomous aversion against women in his famous book Emile. The search for abstract and speculative truths all that tends to wide generalizations, is beyond a womans grasp. womens business is to apply the principles discovered by menwoman has more wit, man more genius: woman observes, man reasons. (Emile) Rousseau was carried away by the existing anti-women ideology. If the brain is human, it is human, and gender factor never plays any decisive role in respect of the physical constitution of the brain as the gender difference, of course, lies elsewhere in the bodies of men and women. The famous French sociologist Auguste Comte too had directly contributed to the ideology of discrimination of women from intellectual discourses. Referring to women Comte says; Women have been forbidden access to the philosophic realm; rightly understood this is something positive. (my emphasis) and we do not demand access to it. This discourse is riddled with masculine values, and women should not be concerned with it; They must seek their specificity, their own discourse, instead of wanting to share masculine privileges (my emphasis) The present writer has nothing to do with this idea of feminism of difference of Comte. However, Comte, in the writers view is more a reactionary in every sense of the word than mere an anti-women propagandist. Even Gorge Hegel, the Goliath of German Philosophy, denigrated women, and let me quote him. Women may have ideas, taste, culture and elegance but they cannot attain the ideal. The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants; Men are animals. Women are plants: Women regulate their actions by emotions, men by reason (Hegel Philosophy of Right). When reading Hegel s above statement any reader would to suspect of his intellectual calibre, as no philosopher could be as harsh, inelegant and acrimonious on women as Hegel. . Let alone philosophy, this exactly is what most/ if not all, institutionalized religions too upheld for many centuries. But Hegel 's discriminatory writing against women in the late 18th century, in particular is unimaginable, which shows nothing else but his admiration of the male by degrading or depreciating the woman. How Hegel can say that only men could reason out but not women? This is sheer gibberish. However, the history refutes Comte and Hegel, as there were women who could reason out and who did, in fact, engage in deep theoretical discussions and who immersed in writing on philosophical themes. (2) While admitting the fact that women in general (in general because there were a few privileged royal and upper class women in both the east and the west who enjoyed all luxuries at their will), had been alienated

and marginalized in almost all social spheres and not provided them with opportunities to study philosophy, or engage in theoretical and intellectual debates. This happened so due to the economic division of labour and the power the males exerted on their biological counterpart, the female. Therefore, they were assigned the task and responsibility only of bearing and rearing of children, as Mary Warnock (probably the most famous 20th century British female philosopher) observes in her book What Philosophers Think? (2003). There were, however, a few (very few) women in the pre-Christian era who had been interested in philosophical themes though their engagements and contributions, from the point of view of male philosophers, were not as erudite or pedantic as theirs. Consequently, the female thinkers were not able to stamp a lasting impact on the subject philosophy nor they were fortunate enough to earn a name of their own within the dominant masculine philosophical tradition of the west from the Greek period to the present, saving the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Like Mary Magdelines blood line was buried by the Christian Church, as Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) and Lynn Picknett (Mary Magdelene) demonstrate, the dominant andocentric ideology debarred surfacing the female point of view of the world or their weltangshaung. The males thus underplayed womans intellectual role and practically wrote her out their philosophical canons. Even if a handful of women have had an access to philosophy, it too happened via a mediation of a male philosopher, the practice, which made the woman a dependant of the philosophic male. Aristoclea (6th c. B.C), for example, was the earliest female intellectual in the recorded history of the west. She served as the priestess of the famous Delphi temple and was the tutor of the distinguished mathematician Pythagoras. Arite of Cyrene, another female intellectual lived in 5th century B.C. taught natural and moral philosophy and had written approximately 40 books, but, as some specialists on ancient Greek philosophy have observed none of the books was traceable for reasons unknown, This is still a mystery, but, I believe the reader will find the answer to this if he or she reads the previous paragraph with care. The woman, who philosophizes, however, (perhaps for strategic reasons,) has not always or necessarily been seen as a monster. She had been granted permission to engage in philosophical exercises but under the tutelage of a male philosopher. This permissiveness is a cunning form of prohibition. Indeed this is what one makes suspicious, as permissiveness often signifying more brutal exclusion and discrimination. For example, Diogenes Laertius (a male philosopher- 2nd B.C) gives a portrayal of Hipparchia (a female follower of him-340 B.C.), which betrays some esteem for her. Certainly it seemed to him quite a feat a woman should calmly adopt the cynics way of life (contemptuous attitude towards worldly things as taught by the cynic school) but no trace of mockery sullies his chapter on her. In the eyes of Diogenes, it is not femininity that Hipparchia renounced, but the loss of self implied in the female condition. Hipparchia was a member of the Cynic school and later married to Crates, the cynic Philosopher, whom she admired immensely and with whom she constantly discussed philosophical themes. She had been an extremely intelligent woman who engaged in philosophical writing, but her works too are yet to be unearthed if they are not destroyed completely. The participants or the characters of Platos dialogue The Symposium had all been men, but as Socrates confesses, he learnt more from female participant Diotima of Mantenea, a very learned and a bright woman, more than he learnt from men (thanks to Professor Merlyn Pieris for reminding me of the intellectual role of Diotimas in The Symposium). During the period from 1st century A.D. to the 16th century, it was the voice of the male that was reverberating right across Europe. Suddenly and surprisingly a woman appears on the male dominated philosophical platform. Her name was Heloise. She was a scholar of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and had earned a reputation of insight, or as a woman of wisdom. She had a love affair with the famous French philosopher Peter Abelard, through whom he entered the field, and who assisted her to develop her philosophical insights. Cristina Pizan (14th century) another brave woman with academic calibre and was a fervent writer and a sharp analyst of philosophical concepts. When male theologians and philosophers were in support of

theology and religion Pizan fearlessly and rigorously challenged Clerical Ideology (The most part of her analysis is also lost mysteriously) Rene Descartes too had a woman admirer who used to describe Descartes as the man who knows, the one who knows etc. His relationship with her, however, seemed to have gone beyond philosophical interests. The relationship of Descartes to Elizabeth was didactic but, as Michele Le Doeuff convincingly states, while being didactic, it also developed into an erotic and amorous relationship. Whatever the relationship they had, erotic or didactic, it was a relationship that was cemented by the mutual interest they developed in philosophical themes. Descartes's dedication of his book The Passion of the Soul to her says it all. At this point a brief explanation would help the reader to understand the nature of the womans position within the andocentric philosophical world. The Greeks, at least, occasionally tolerated women engaging in theoretical discourses and learning and teaching philosophy and abstract sciences, such as mathematics. The permissiveness shown to those few women who did (then again, how and to what extent is not clear) approach philosophy highlights a significant point. That is, although they lived in very different times, these women had one thing in common: They all experienced great passions and their relationship to philosophy passed through their love for a man, a particular philosopher. (e.g. Hipparchia to Crates; Heloise to Abelard, and Descartes to Elizabeth. This may appear bad in the eyes of puritans, but this was the modus operandi at the time and probably even today. Nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, witness emerging a number of independent women philosophers, and I will brief their ideas in my next piece. (3) It was since the 17th century that women were trained not to study philosophy and instead to give them attractive wit, train them to master pleasant conversation and to teach them Italian and singing. During this period the sexual division of education and instruction has been well established. Explaining the plight of young women at the time Frederick Engels wrote: Girls would learn only to spin, weave and sew, and most to read and write. (Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State). Imposing limits on the culture of women is quite sufficient to bar them from philosophical and the theoretical education. Male dominance in the intellectual sphere could be seen continued in the 20th century too. But the male thinkers in this century, unlike in the Greek and the medieval periods, influenced a quite good number of females. For example, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, moulded three female intellectuals, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, and Melani Kliene.The British analytical philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, D.W.Hamlyn, J.L. Austin, John Searle, Armostrong, G.E.. Moore, C.L. Stevenson. R.M.Hare and a few others have influenced a number of analytical female philosophers. Though they were very few in number their contribution to philosophy was immense and adorable. Mary Warnock, Oxford fellow, and later the mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, was the most famous female philosopher in Britain in the fifties. She was one of the generations of women philosophers for whom the Second World War provided a chance to step out of the shadow of their male peers. By her own reckoning she has been more of an efficient than a star philosopher. She has written a number of books aimed beyond the usual readership of academics and students. The academic community very well received her book Intelligent Persons Guide to Ethics, which has been recommended as a textbook for the students of ethics. She has also published an anthology of writings by women philosophers. Mary Warnock stands out as a highly successful woman philosopher in a field dominated by males (at least at the top level). With the notable exception of Elizabeth Anscombe, most of the work done by women thinkers in the post-war period was in the field of moral philosophy. While their male peers C.L.Stevenson, R.M.Hare, and D.W. Hamlyn were engaged themselves in building meta-theories of

moral behaviour (emotivism, prescriptivism and so forth), the female thinkers focused on the way in which moral values are actually expressed in their practical contexts. Phillipa Foot, renowned female ethicist wrote extensively on the nature of ethics. She also wrote a number of articles on rudeness, which is not the kind of subject that most male philosophers were interested to delve into. Most of these women philosophers in Britain and elsewhere wrote primarily on real life ethical issues such as abortion, divorce, domestic violence, euthanasia and on practical themes pertaining to good and bad. Not only into the field of ethics that women entered but they also intruded into the other philosophical territories dominated by males. Sussan Stebbing, for example, was a logician and wrote, Modern Elementary Logic; Modern Introduction to Logic, and many other works, which established her name very firmly in the field of logic. Mary Hesse, another famous British woman was the professor of philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge and contributed immensely to her specialized field, namely, philosophy of science. While females in Britain contributed to philosophy in their respective chosen fields, ethics, logic and philosophy of science, there were female intellectuals in the continent who focused primarily on themes such as psychoanalysis, language, feminism, deconstruction and post- colonialism. Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Gayathri Spivak stand out among other female thinkers but not excluding Hanna Arendt. Julia Kristeva is one of the most famous proponents of French feminist theory (l ecritique feminin). She was a Bulgarian but moved into Paris in 1966 and became associated with the radical journal Tel Quel. Kristaevas earliest major work was Revolution in Poetic Language published in 1974, in which she set out her basic theories concerning language and its role in the construction of the identity. Kristeva differs from Freud and Lacan in citing the origin of language in the pre-Oedipal phase, where the relationship between mother and child is still intact. This is a major theoretical contribution to the field. She also has made significant and inspirational contribution to Semiotics,(or semiology), the science of signs. Luce Irigaray, another female thinker was the director of Research in Philosophy at the Center National de Recherches Scientifiques and held that prestigious post since 1964. Irigarays work has been challenging and varied, ranging in methodology from the densely psychoanalytic to deconstructive to the visionary, lyrical, and expressive. Speculations of the Other Woman (1974) offers critique of Freudian psychoanalysis and western philosophy from a feminist point of view. Here Irigaray argued that woman as subject is excluded from Western philosophy (her observation is true even with the Eastern tradition), and this mode of thought allows full subjectivity to only one sex: male. Her quest for the feminine voice is demonstrated with her works. The Sex which is Not One (1977, Ethics of Sexual Difference (1984), and Sexes and Geneologies (1984. Gayathri Spivack is a well-known contemporary woman philosopher, who has been variously labeled as feminist, Marxist, deconstructivist and post-colonialist. She became famous when she translated and prefaced Jaques Derridas La Grammatologie into English in 1976 with the English title Of Grammatology. Derridas deconstruction is the theory underlying Spivaks work. She held the post of professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York. Her main works have included In Other Worlds: in Cultural Politics (1987) ; Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988); Outside in the Teaching Machine,(1993). Most of these female thinkers, however, were feminists but Marxist thinkers, male and females, present a different view and we will listen to them in the next and the final article of this series of articles on women philosophers.

(4) My previous three articles dealt with how women were discriminated and how they were forbidden any access to philosophy or any kind or type of theoretical discourses in the andocentric western world. It was a historical truth that women were alienated, marginalized and deprived of many rights. Though I sympathize with their plight, I do not, emotionally lament, as feminists do, about the ordeal the femalefolk has experienced right throughout the history. What is important is not grieving over the issue but to understand the real causes of discrimination, exploitation and alienation of the woman and take a stern decision to play an active role adhering to the proposed Marxist political program to transcend the causes and consequently enjoy full freedom. While women thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries had been concerned themselves with pure philosophical themes, such as psychoanalysis, linguistics, (Kristeva) deconstruction, (Spivak), subjectivity, bourgeois ethical themes (Philipa Foot) and meta-theories of science (Mary Hesse) and so forth, and labouring to liberate the feminine from masculine philosophical thought, there were other women intellectuals who understood, the role of philosophy in a broader social/socialist perspective under the influence of Karl Marx and Fredric Engels. Rosa Luxumberg, Nadya Krupskaya, and Raya Dunayeskaya stand out among those female thinkers who had been very active during the early decades of the 20th century. To complete our picture of the genre of women philosophers we will cast a glance at these Marxist women too, who, had a penetrative vision about the problems underlying the oppression of both men and women. We will look at Marxist criticism of feminism later in the series, but for now we will turn to these female thinkers and political revolutionaries. . Rosa Luxemberg Rosa Luxemberg was a socialist writer and politician active in Polish, German, and Russian socialist movements. For her, philosophy is not a contemplation of certain specifically chosen concepts or a pure critical engagement of abstract theoretical issues; it is an action geared towards a structural transformation of the barbaric and exploitative capitalist society. Though she was nurtured by Marxs revolutionary ideas she herself was a revolutionary in her own approach to Marxism and launched a number of debates with Marxist giants such as Lenin Trotsky and Stalin. She had been a fervent and a brave critic of revisionism (revisionism is any critical departure from the original interpretation of Marxist theory- the writer). Unfortunately revisionist label has been applied in a pejorative manner to any significant reinterpretation of classical Marxist theory, and in fact, her opponents applied the revisionist label even to Luxemberg herself. Some criticized her for misreading Marx. In fact the extent to which she has been misinterpreted and misunderstood the effort of simple recovery is far from complete says Norman Geras (The Legacy of Luxemberg), a commentator of Luxemberg. She had a very sharp mind and a penetrative perception of political issues of her time. She fearlessly criticized the Bolsheviks after the October revolution and stood for what she thought correct but had to pay the prize for it. She was murdered in January 1919 during the abortive Berlin insurrection. One of her famous expressions demonstrates the antipathy she had towards capitalism No medical herbs can grow in the dirt of capitalist society which can help cure capitalist anarchy (Speech to the Stuttgart Congress 1898). Her works include: Social Reform or Revolution? 1899); Mass Strikes, Part and Trade Unions (1906);The Accumulation of Capital (1913) Nadya Krupskaya

Nadya Krupskaya, another female thinker with Marxist inclination was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and was the wife of the famous revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin. She learnt her basics in left politics when she participated in discussion-circles and sharpened her revolutionary spiritedness when she was introduced to the theories of Karl Marx. She was a very clever woman and grasped Marxist fundamentals without the support of a teacher, though, her husband Lenin occasionally taught and clarified certain issues in their discussions about the socialist program. Unlike her western counterparts, Krupskaya had a very active political life. She became interested in education as a result of her serving as the deputy to Lunacharsky, the Peoples Commissar for Education during Bolshevik regime. The then government accommodated her penetrative analysis and proposals on education and the philosophy of education in Russia at the time was primarily founded on Krupskayas views, which had been based on socialist principles. Her influence made a huge change in the Soviet Library systems. She was at her peak during the time of the Russian revolution and was the author of the biography Reminiscences of Lenin. Raya Dunuayeskaya Raya Duayeskaya was a woman who never developed any interest in engaging in analyzing pure philosophical topics nor did she, being a woman herself, attracted to or contribute in any form to feminism in vogue during her time. She was one time Leon Trotsky's secretary and split with him later and founded her own political organization. Despite Althussers protest in interpreting Marxism as a humanist philosophy, Raya founded the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the U.S.A. She has contributed immensely to themes such as social theory, social revolution, dialectical philosophy, praxis theory and humanism. Marx, Lenin and Luxemberg influenced her to a great extent, and in fact they became her gurus. The newspaper she founded, News and Letters covered womens struggles (not necessarily only the rights of women), liberation of working people of colour, while not separating that coverage from philosophical and theoretical articles. Of Rayas publications Rosa Luxemberg, Womens Liberation and Marxs Philosophy of Revolution and Womens Liberation and the Dialectic of Revolution received tremendous attention and admiration among both intellectual Marxists and workers alike as she cleverly linked the objective of liberation with the practice of revolution and as she never supported or tolerated the feminist call that women alone must fight for their rights, dignity and respect because these notions or ideals, in reality, are bourgeois in their final and authentic definition. As Marx, Engles, Lenin, and Trotsky repeatedly emphasized during their time, and as genuine Marxist-Activists strongly stress today, the womens liberation lies with the total elimination of class society, which is the root cause of all differences including the gender. Oppression of women for most feminists (emotional and philosophical) is rooted in the nature of men because as they (wrongly) opine the subjugation and repression are inherently biological. They are sadly mistaken from the Marxist point of view, as oppression and repression are rooted not anywhere else but society. We will see how Marxists view, or rather criticize, the feminist stance in the next and the last piece of this series of articles on women philosophers. (5) Women Philosophers in the Andocentric Philosophical Tradition of the West (V): Marxists on the Oppression and Marginalization of Women. The writer of the series of articles on the theme women philosophers appeared in The Island (mid-week review Nov to Dec. 2009) regrets of his inability to continue with the series due to unavoidable reasons but is glad that he is able to publish it in this month both as a tribute to Karl Marx at his 127th death anniversary commemorated world-wide on the 14th of March and as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the International Womens day (8th. March 2010). In parts 1 to IV of my articles appeared in The Island mid-week review on the theme Women Philosophers in the Andocentric Philosophical Tradition of the West, I highlighted how the women had been marginalized in all spheres of culture by men yet there were a few women who engaged in serious

logical and philosophical thinking. Their views, however, were either buried completely or were let surfaced only selectively and vaguely until a group of women representing both the analytical (Warnock, Stebbing, Hesse, Phillipia Foot, Spivak, Kristeva, Irrigaray) and Marxist revolutionary traditions (Krupskaya, Dunayevskaya, Luxumburg, Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollantai courageously entered into the male-dominated intellectual world of the west in the 20th century. Most women in the west in the recent past developed a philosophy of their own in order to find an answer to the problem of discrimination of the woman which came to be known as feminist philosophy. Feminism is a way of looking at the world which women occupy from the perspective of women. It has as its central focus the concept of patriarchy, which can be described as a system of male authority which oppresses women through its social, political, religious and philosophical institutions (I mentioned this briefly in my previous articles with particular reference to philosophy ). Well known feminist spokeswomen such as Simone de Bouvere, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Dorathy Smith, Donna Haaraway, Patricia Collins, think that they have challenged traditional ideas of how we know things together with its underlying rationality and have argued that these traditional epistemologies both secular and religious had been based primarily on male assumptions and perspectives ignoring womens voices. Most feminists not only saw the patriarchy as the basis of marginalization and subjugation of women but also emphasized that the best solution to womens oppression would be to treat patriarchy not as a product of capitalism but as a problem in its own right, and, therefore, it is indispensable to eliminate male domination to eradicate womens oppression. Some feminists, having influenced by anthropologists (such as Peter Murdock) and sociologists (such as Talcott Parsons) argue that biological differences between men and women are the basis of the sexual difference of labour. Philosopher-cum-cultural analyst Ann Oakley (1974) strongly rejects this by stating that gender roles are culturally rather than biologically produced. She does not accept the view that there is any natural or inevitable division of labour or allocation of social roles on the basis of sex but her pure cultural argument does not seemed to have provided an adequate explanation to the historical dynamics of the discrimination and oppression of the woman which for Marxists have been caused mainly by the mode of economic production and the social division of labour. Some anthropologists (Marcus and Fisher (1986 Anthropology as a Cultural Critique) and James Clifford (1986 Writing Culture) dismiss feminist theory on the ground that it has little to teach that anthropology has not already known. They construe feminism as little more than the expression of womens dissatisfactions with a sinister patriarchy. But their criticisms seemed to me to have been based on pure anthropology or on anthropological present rather than tracing and studying in depth the historical dynamics of the issue and thereby creating an opposition between anthropology and history (i.e. the past) as has been demonstrated by Maurice Godelier and Raymond Firth in Marxist Analysis and Social Anthropology (1975). Therefore, James Clifford and Marcus Fisher have not been able to propose any permanent remedy to the feminist problem. Marxist Explanation As Engels stressed in his work The origin of the Family, Private Property and the State the oppression of women and the family inequalities developed in a socio-economic milieu.(Stephanie Coontz/Peta Henderson).As one Marxist writer elaborated it; The development of agriculture is the basis for the emergence of patriarchal family, private property of tools and land owned and controlled by males including womens sexuality. They were thus able to exercise dominance within the household and the society in general, which resulted in the world historical defeat of the female sex and women were reduced to servitude and an instrument for the production of children (file://J:/. htm 2001).The Capitalist mode of production, though promised justice for all continued with the same discriminatory process

while encouraging oppressed women to form organizations of their own to fight against the male ghost but not against the real generator of womens plight, the capitalism itself. (This strategic move on the part of the capitalists is quite understandable). For feminists, womens oppression is rooted in the biological constitution of men themselves and hence tracing it in the socio-economic conditions at its best is ideological and not realistic. But Marxists argue that this inclusive-exclusive logic, could probably be theoretically productive in other contexts such as ethnic and political, but its role is unproductive in the context of women oppression. To view oppression in masculinity terms, as Marxists argue, is not only an easy option but it is also an entirely static, unscientific and an un-dialectical conception of the human society. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that there is something inherent in men (say like a selfishgene to borrow the title of the book by Richard Dawkins) which causes men to oppress women, it is difficult to see how the present plight of women will ever be remedied. If feminists study the socio-economic history with due attentiveness and, more importantly, without prejudice, they would see the real root cause of their plight. The root cause of all forms of oppression including womens consists in the division of society into classes. The abolition of womens oppression, therefore, is dependent on the abolition of classes by a socialist revolution which will create social conditions for the establishment of real human relations between men and women But as Alan Woods rightly observes no genuine emancipation of women is possible unless and until the proletariat overthrows capitalism and lays the conditions for the achievement of a classless society (2009). The dismantling of capitalism therefore is a sine-qua-non for the liberation of the oppressed women. When women were oppressed in the past there was no progressive humanistic theory for them to depend on in understating the causes of their marginalization and fighting against the oppression. As a result they were fated to suffer until they developed feminist philosophies of all sorts during the mid 20th century. I sympathise with some of their grievances and also accept some of their observations and arguments. But today they have Marxism, a more progressive and humanistic theory to understand their awful oppressive situation and overcome it. I wind up this article series on Women Philosophers in the hope that all oppressed women all over the world will march out of the andocentric world with the Marxist slogan and work with commitment to build a just and free society for all.

Prof. Desmond Mallikarachchi B.A. Hons in Philosophy (Cey); M.A. (Pdn); Ph.d (London.) Award Holder (Commonwealth Vice Chancellor CP) Dean Science. Scholarship Holder (UC.London) Honorary Research Fellow (UC. London) Fellow Wenner- Gren Foundation (New York) Former Head/Philosophy and Psychology University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

The