iwpoe wrote:

Etzelnik wrote:

I really don't know the answer to this, but I can contribute that in the Talmud the discussion is made of the legal properties of the hermaphrodite. The conclusion is that it is "a creation unique unto itself" and bears the stringencies applied to both sexes. That would imply that sex is not some sort of inherent property of the soul, but is rather an accidental property of body.

Why would that entail that the hermaphrodite isn't one in his-her soul?
 

 
Why would it be bound to the stringencies of both sexes? In many cases the stringencies are actually contradictory!

But again, on the classical Jewish conception of the soul as cognizance the very notion of a gendered soul seems silly.

Last edited by Etzelnik (7/26/2015 5:00 am)

Jason Grey wrote:

One's sex is a peculiar property.  Male and female are not sub-species of human being.  But what are they?  Is it like Aristotle when he says "We are neither virtuous or vicious by nature, but by nature we are either virtuous or vicious" ? It seems right to me to say "human nature is such that human beings are either male or female."   One's sex seems like a proper accident, except each human being gets one or the other, which doesn't seem like "capacity for humor" or "memory."  "Female" and "male" certainly seem closer to the human essence than variation in hair characteristics.

I agree with most of this. What follows is elaboration and one possible clarification.

A "human being" is a rational animal, and even the having of a sex doesn't seem to follow from that essence. There's no reason in principle, or so it seems, that a "rational animal" as such must reproduce sexually or, arguably, even at all. As far as we can see, it would be possible for a metaphysically human species to reproduce e.g. by fission, or to be immortal. So I don't think we want to locate our having a sex, our "being either male or female," in our rational animality per se.

However, we (meaning not only metaphysical but biological humans) are not just "animals" in the abstract. We belong to a narrower kind or genus of animality, closely related to that of other hominids, and sexual reproduction does seem to belong to the essence of this genus. So I think we'd be on safe ground in regarding our having a sex as belonging to the essence of this genus as well. It's in this sense that it seems right to me to say, "(biological) human nature is such that human beings are either male or female."

As for individual (biological) humans, I agree that it doesn't seem quite right to regard sex as merely a "proper accident" of such a being. Each individual human being, though, also has its own specific essence, and it seems more plausible to regard its sex as an essential or per se accident, that is, as an "accident" that flows or follows from that specific essence (which, I'm supposing, in some way includes the "specific essence" of its animality). I think that suffices to make our being male/female "closer to the human essence than variation in hair characteristics."

Whether all of that is right or not, though, I certainly agree with John West that on hylemorphic dualism, it would be passing strange for the soul and the body of an individual human "substance" to have different sexes. In fact, if hylemorphic dualism is right, it should be impossible. As John aptly notes, it's not as though the body and soul come off two separate assembly lines and might wind up being mismatched. 

Last edited by Scott (7/26/2015 6:12 pm)