Liberating Philosophy: Perspectives on Hilde

Liberating Philosophy: Perspectives on Hilde Hein's View Pertaining To Spirituality And Gender

One of the most significant questions that haunt the field of Philosophy is that of the spiritual and the material. For how is it that the world in which we live, reality as a whole, harbors these two dimensions and yet retains some semblance of rationale? Naturally, this is quite a dilemma. However, one philosopher, Hilde Hein, finds that the focus of the issue shouldn't be so much how or whether these two categories are compatible or not, but rather how the treatment of them has left philosophers with an unapproachable dichotomy as well as a monumental constraint on gender distinction and treatment. With this in mind, Hein, in her article Liberating Philosophy: An End to the Dichotomy of Spirit and Matter, defines the problem, how it relates to gender distinction and the evolution of society's treatment of gender as well as an attempt to alleviate tension between warring categories of spirit vs. matter and male vs. female. As such, Hein identifies "four distinct analyses of the association between women and spirituality

." Here we will explore her treatment of this issue as expressed in the four theories and her own perspective on the dichotomy and how it relieves the tension between metaphysical and gender distinction.

First, we find that Hein characterizes the distinction between spirit and matter as not only a problematic dichotomy but one closely related to social distinctions of gender. More specifically, she illustrates the dichotomy of spirit and matter as being like that of male and female, but also as it pertains to positive and negative qualities of say, "light and darkness, permanence and change, finite and infinite, dry and moist, even and odd

" in reference to this, Heine finds that the dichotomy is typically a positive attitude towards the male gender and its association with spirit (or as is popularly thought -- the intellectual, rational and active) and a negative one for what is characterized historically and theoretically in traditional philosophical theories as the feminine. The first analysis of this comes from the Aristotelian and Aristotelian inspired Christian view. This perspective identifies women as being passive, non-rational (or latently rational) counterparts to the active male gender. As such, the male gender is related to the spirit and the female as the nurturing of materiality and natural features of reality and social life. The second analysis places women as Nature and Spirit as immanent. This is primarily a prejudicial scientific enterprise that compares the male to reason and purpose, while the feminine is comparable to the abstraction of Nature and 'feeling as well as the inanimate character of materiality. Thirdly, an analysis which finds its subject of spirituality as domesticated and thus related to the ancient ideals of venerating the female as god-like so as to increase male dominance. And the last analysis is that of a feminist's interpretation where the gender distinction ironically is emphasized so as to demonstrate the feminine, god-like, nurturing, empathetic as superior to the male; thus the former is the positive and the latter the negative

In conclusion, Heine rejects all four analyses in favor of an identification of spirituality not with any gender but with the aspiration of freedom and lack of restraint on human endeavor and striving