Schopenhauer’s critique on the advent of Simping

It would unfortunately be a surprise to many considering themselves traditional Catholics that the origin of Simping is one close to home. I suppose that first, it would be telling of our current predicament and it’s location should they not believe in the first place that the exaltation of women and the virtual idolatry of them is cause for concern. Nevertheless, for those that are already in line with sound reason, it’s still a long battle, and one which is by in no means less present in Catholic society. To begin with, we have to trace back certain epochal shifts until we arrive to the present. Almost every single civilization on earth had either sumptuary laws or customary traditions which can be dated and studied that would align with the universal claims by the likes of all the ancient and medieval philosophers. Somewhere along the line there was a revolution on the principles held that engendered the societal, cultural and legal treatment of women as such. From prohibitions of land ownership to being called as a witness in court, these were all based on fundamental tenets which were slowly questioned and disintegrated as we near the end of the medieval period.¹ So the question is, where and why were these beliefs done away with? Was there a sort of meticulous argumentation levied against the ancients somewhere near the latter part of the feudal age?

To Schopenhauer, the answer is Christian docility² and false notions of virtue. This is precisely an angle which while being hostile to us, still point out some interesting aspects which we might have some blame for. I understand that many would spurn my invocation of the German Philosophers, but I use Schopenhauer as a way to appeal in a more direct way, to the issue present. And it should be clear practice of ours that we may draw truth from whatever source has discovered or expressed it. “All truth, no matter by whom spoken,” as the early Fathers of the Church used to say, “is of the Holy Spirit.”³ If we take what he says and give him credit in what aligns with the Ancients and Catholic philosophy, it allows us to examine ourselves with the scrutiny of a physician. Should I have the great liberty and ability to appeal to the ancients directly, I would certainly do so. However, I find great issue today with a pervasive trance of historicism in which nobody today is free from. It seems particularly difficult to find a living man that would take Aristotle as seriously as St. Thomas Aquinas did, and this is really telling of our ominous predicament. Thus, I’ll certainly be using those that are helpful in our predicament, without of course, failing to consider the necessary and what is required of Catholic probity in the matter.⁴

“In the West, the woman, that is to say the “lady,” finds herself in a fausse position; for woman, rightly named by the ancients sexus sequior, is by no means fit to be the object of our honour and veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and to have the same rights as he. The consequences of this fausse position are sufficiently clear. Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if this Number Two of the human race in Europe were assigned her natural position, and the lady-grievance got rid of, which is not only ridiculed by the whole of Asia⁵, but would have been equally ridiculed by Greece and Rome. The result of this would be that the condition of our social, civil, and political affairs would be incalculably improved. The Salic law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous truism. The European lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such; and they should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated and submissive. It is exactly because there are ladies in Europe that women of a lower standing, that is to say, the greater majority of the sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East.”

The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer Studies in Pessimism:
On Women.
by Arthur Schopenhauer

In this passage, Schopenhauer calls back to the ancients and universal claims from different countries and cultures. In this, there is an appeal to realism, to an existential fact of nature which cannot be refuted. In this we see the particular benefit of German thought on the crisis of atheistic philosophy. We are able to appreciate a critique from atheists which is somehow resonating with the truth of our religion. How could it be that St. Paul in the Epistles was simply recommending instead of teaching.⁶ How could it be that his admonition for women to be subject to men as a whole is without conjunction in reason?⁷ Herein lies the problem. Schopenhauer believed that there was enough legitimate material to circumvent the insanity of modern scientific belief on the differences between the sexes. Well, I digress, this was to show that Schopenhauer has a sort of keen eye, to avoid falling into the historicist pit, a sort of hindsight from the outside which we might otherwise not be able to notice.

So what exactly is Schopenhauer on about in blaming Christian derived society or customs? It isn’t particularly detailed but it’s certainly safe to assume that he means the epochal change from ancient times to late feudalism which was exemplified by shifts in legislation and treatment of women in society at large. We get the abolishment of primogeniture as a maxim, the incorporation of females in dynastic rule, the gradual increase legal rights such as property ownership, self-responsibility for monetary transactions and the like.⁸ Of course, this was all very slow, and it wasn’t methodical either. We have accounts of women even purposely calling upon these historical precedents when it favored them. It’s something that was a gradual increase, however exponential and insatiable it turned out to be. The why this happened is of course a question of it’s own which deserves careful consideration. However, we know for a fact that we have a drastic paradigm shift from ancient to modern, and I’m considering the early part of the middle ages as ancient here. How is it that such a fundamental and natural fact of life such as the inequality between the sexes was entirely dismantled by the 20th century? I don’t want to create a web of tangents but the very issue perceived by Nietzsche is applicable here. If there was a self evident movement that necessarily put away or turned a blind eye to the principles of the ancients, what was the cause? How was it that everyone universally put these principles away almost as if they had converted to a new religion? For the Pessimist, it is a culmination of suffering and time, for the nihilist, the sacrificing of God for the nothing. As Christians, it’s the abandonment of our principles, the casting away of our teachers which anxiously wait for us to return to them. If we are able to localize the issue, to find why we created this monster that is the unnatural “Lady” as the ideal then we might be able to return to the principles of the ancients. And this is precisely why the Pessimistic and atheist philosophy fails to truly comprehend the issue at hand. Where we have religion, they have only themselves. We know truth is immutable from our religion, we know the teachers of it have authority the same way. Here we find solace, in the Church Fathers and the Scholastics and even Aristotle and Plato. Where we can return, they cannot. This is precisely why Schopenhauer appeals to Polygamy as a solution for the rampant and universal feminism.

“It is useless to argue about polygamy, it must be taken as a fact existing everywhere, the mere regulation of which is the problem to be solved. Where are there, then, any real monogamists? We all live, at any rate for a time, and the majority of us always, in polygamy. Consequently, as each man needs many women, nothing is more just than to let him, nay, make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women. By this means woman will be brought back to her proper and natural place as a subordinate being, and the lady, that monster of European civilisation and Christian–Teutonic stupidity, with her ridiculous claim to respect and veneration, will no longer exist; there will still be women, but no unhappy women, of whom Europe is at present full. The Mormons’ standpoint is right.”

In a way there is an appeal to something which can materialize as the end in sight, that being proper subjection of the female sex. But to appeal to these instances without a proper analysis of it’s morality is of course, lacking intellectual probity in the matter. We know for a fact that Polygamy was allowed in the Old Testament from special circumstances, as it’s not contrary to the primary but secondary precepts of the natural law.⁹ Regardless, the ends do not justify the means. His virtual reactionary response to the domination of feminism in post-Christian civilization is novel. While we don’t believe polygamy to be moral, we reject the notions that women deserve this “respect and veneration” as a certain innovation of progressive and liberal thinking. If we look at the Church Fathers and medieval writers, we see consistency on the secondary ranking of women, we see universal epistemological claims and the right ordering of society as per natural hierarchy. How sad is it that the Atheists were too consumed in their wallowing to even pay the Summa a bit of attention on the question of women.

While I don’t want to dabble to far here on the answers of why this might have happened we can briefly look at the basis of these thoughts in contradiction to it’s antithesis. In other words, we can find the principle of inequality of the sexes and compare it with what supplanted it. The origin would start by asking oneself about inequality in general. Are there natural inequalities from birth or are we all born as a blank slate with an equal intellectual capacity? Many, unfortunately, choose to believe the latter, whereas the former is taught not only by the philosophers of the greatest weight but has also been taught in other documentation. And here is the issue. Should we reject the inequality of nature, should we superimpose this false idea that everything is of the same rank, then we can by no means accept what flows. I believe careful analysis and self-critique can help us overcome many aspects which we have grown lax and ultimately unchristian in attitude about. The time will come where the culmination of this debasement ends in the universal acceptance of female clergy, or even the papacy. What a sight it will be when the traditionalists have no response other than arbitrary notions of barbaric tradition (tradition for the sake of tradition) in defense of male only priesthood.

To end I’ll quote the most succinct callback to the ancients one could make on this topic. If even a hostile Atheist could give credence to the Philosopher of the Angelic Doctor, hopefully we realize what a mistake it was to abandon it all for modern science.

“Aristotle explains in the Politics the great disadvantages which the Spartans brought upon themselves by granting too much to their women, by allowing them the right of inheritance and dowry, and a great amount of freedom; and how this contributed greatly to the fall of Sparta. May it not be that the influence of women in France, which has been increasing since Louis XIII.’s time, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the court and government which led to the first Revolution, of which all subsequent disturbances have been the result?”

1. It’s an uncontested fact of history that women were generally prohibited from public life and legal titles up until the latter part of the middle ages. See The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. (2013b). . Oxford University Press. And sources of medieval Canon law such as Decretum Gratiani, c. 19, c. 32, Q. 7, .18. Corpus Juris Canonici, Leipzig 1879-1881; reprint Graz 1955; vol. 1, col. 1145, I. Ulpian (Dig., I, 16, 195) ↩︎
2. In truth it is rather a laxity on Christian principles held by the ancients and proceeded by the Church fathers which led to the so called European “Lady.” ↩︎
3. 1 Cf. the saying of Justin Martyr, Apology, II, 13: ” Whatever has been well said anywhere or by anyone belongs to us Christians.” From W. Norris Clarke, S. J. “Technology and Man: A Christian Vision.” Technology and Culture, vol. 3, no. 4, 1962, pp. 422–42. JSTOR ↩︎
4. I don’t usually admit a Laxism regarding the reading of the atheistic philosophers, generally speaking they only serve to disrupt things. However, there are particular instances in which I have no other recourse but to them on certain questions testing the limits of history. ↩︎
5. My own research has brought me to a similar conclusion. Women have been subjected by every major civilization in the East. Dimitrio, L., & Kimura, Y. (2015). COVERING ONE’S FACE. THE HIDDEN VISAGES OF JAPANESE WOMEN FROM THE HEIAN PERIOD TO THE EDO PERIOD. Gao, X. (2003). Women Existing for Men: Confucianism and Social Injustice against Women in China. Race, Gender & Class, 10(3), 114–125. ↩︎
6. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:12,: “Second, they are forbidden to use authority over the man: a woman, if she have superiority, is contrary to her husband (Sir 25:30). And the Philosopher says that the dominion of women is the death of a family, as tyrants of a commonwealth. Accordingly, he forbids two things against the two things that are suitable to her, namely, to be in silence and to be subject to to the man.” ↩︎
7. What foolishness have people brought themselves into, they have to explain away the interpretation of scripture by the Church Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas to evade the fact that women are by reason alone inferior to man. See Arist. Pol. I, 1. ST. I, Q. 96, A. 4 ↩︎
8. The liberation of women was at first a gradual change but it quickly grew beyond grasp when the 20th century came around. Even the modernist clergy tended to view feminism with dubiousness in their tone, however complacent they were with it in reality. See the bizarre and illogical entry on women in the Catholic Encyclopedia. ↩︎
9. ST. Suppl. Q. 65, A. 2, co. ↩︎