Women in the Ancient Athenian Context: From an Ecofeminist Perspective

Introduction

Domination is rooted in a common ideology based on the control of reason over nature, and on the separation of our being into soul and body. Theoretical work brings to consciousness the past as basic to knowing the present (Eaton, 2005: 61). Dualisms correspond to gender, class, race, and nature. They result in unhealthy relationships within our own selves, with other human beings, with the rest of creation, and with God. In this article, I address the eco-social problem, as a split within our own being as mind/soul, and suggest a way out of ‘split selves’ towards ‘whole, socio-ecological selves’ (Sahinidou, 2014).

Ecofeminist Reflections on Dualisms

Plato defines the primal dualism of reality: its division into the invisible eternal, primal, original realm of thought, and the visible and temporal realm of corporeality. According to Ruether (1994: 24–26), the messages of the Platonic creation story (Πλάτων, Τίμαιος, 1992: 59–98, 231–34) are several: reality is divided between mind and body; the soul is primal, eternal, and good, while the body is a source of evil; the natural sensations must be mastered by the immortal, godlike mind. The world was created alive with soul and mind. Humans share in the divine nature by having minds, and the soul’s home is the eternal star-world (Πλάτων, Τίμαιος, 1992: 67, 235). In contrast, the body is the source of mortality. The hierarchy of mind over body is reflected in the hierarchy of male over female, of human over animal, and in the class hierarchy of rulers over workers. Ιn Plato’s Republic, the ordered society corresponds to the hierarchy of the well-ordered self, with the mind in control and the will lead by reason. Similarly, hierarchy occurs with the social castes of first the philosophers-rulers, then the guardian-warriors, and, at the bottom, manual workers or slaves (Πλάτων, Πολιτεία, 1992: 176–81). Women are inferior members of all castes. Physically, a woman could do any job, but she is in all things weaker than men (Πλάτων, Πολιτεία, 1992: 44–53). For Plato, male domination, class hierarchy, and inferiorization of nature were parts of the social order, showing the primal division of reality into soul over body. Ruling-class males, at the top of the hierarchy, mirrored the world of eternal ideas, with gods sharing in the animating principle of the cosmic soul. The body is the ‘prison’ of the soul; earth is the collective prison of incarnated souls that must move out of this fallen state to their true home in the stars (Ruether, 1994: 24–26).

In my view, feminists need to retrieve the idea of soul which appears in Homer, where there is no master-concept of soul, and they should dissociate the anthropological LXX ¹ use of ‘soul’ from the Platonic dualism. Instead, they should consider the biblical tradition where humans are seen as related to their own selves, an idea found in the Old Testament (OT) usage of nepes. Feminists must retrieve the New Testament (NT) meaning of the soul as a person’s relationship to God and the other. The connection between ψυχὴν ζῶσαν-living being and εἰκόνα-image of God leads to a relational account of creation connected to the Creator who breathes into the human nostrils the breath of life.

Gender as a Hermeneutical Tool against Dualisms

The interrelatedness and interdependence of all cosmic and earthly beings with everything else that exists, exposes the dualism: namely, soul/body, which creates a theological anthropology that becomes the reality of all. A critical feminist hermeneutics of liberation develops a dialectical mode of exegesis that asserts that all forms of dominion are sinful. This hermeneutics gives justice to women’s experiences of life, as a source of empowerment in our struggle for liberation (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1995: xiii). Schüssler Fiorenza discusses the challenge of feminist exegesis that claims the right of women to interpret experience from their own perspective. She emphasizes the feminist struggle for the discipleship of equals in the Bible (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1995: 178–79).

We become aware of our self and its enlargement through connectivity, just as the cosmos is interconnected at the inner being level of its members. We experience the tendency ‘to extend one’s own self’ (Clarke, 2002: 113, 142, 69, 155). ‘I’, and any cosmic being, depend on the entire cosmos in space/time. The God of the Bible, thought to exist outside the physical dimension of bodies, was an idea fused with the Greek philosophical dualism of spirit/matter that became the identity myth of the Western ruling-male class. Feminist theology breaks open the conceptual cage of dualisms, and provides a critical grounding for ecofeminist theology to address the dualism made between human and non-human creation (Plumwood, 1993: 55, 190, 194). Feminist theology’s analysis shows that many forms see ‘the other’ as both inferior and separate (Eaton, 2005: 59).

The rise of a global economy that exploits human and natural resources (Merchant, 1980) is linked with the modern, scientific, mechanistic worldview, which is itself based on the ideology of control. Modern patriarchy can be linked with the slave trade, colonial economies, the persecution of women-witches, the emergence of science/technology, and the desire for mastery over nature (Mies, 1986). In analysing domination and its various forms, all share certain features, some of which are:

All forms of dominion are sinful. Some guidelines to considering whether sexist language and framing exists are: Does sexist language create the linguistic invisibility or marginality of women? Does it describe women as dependent on men? Does it characterize women in stereotypical roles (Mies, 1986: 15–20)?

In the Greek myths related to goddess Athena, I discern traces of the idea of domination of the mind over the senses, and that men are deemed superior to women because of their naturally ruling mind. The image of God, in which both men and women are included, offers justice to women, unlike Plato who discriminates on the basis of soul-body (Ruether, 1994: 3, 22–26). To understand human persons as ecologically interrelated persons is to rethink the dualistic philosophy on which our cultures were built (Sahinidou, 2015: 14–19).

Ancient Athens, a Male-centric Democracy

Solon organized Athens as a male-centred society. The medieval view of society was based on an interpretation of Aristotle. The restriction of women to domesticity and the systematization of poetic and philosophical misogynist thought were catastrophic creations of the Greek classic era. The prevailing Athenian, Platonic, androcentric, and hierarchical worldview saw women as physically inferior to men; and the platonic worldview still prevails in many cases.

The citizens of Classical Athens had to study philosophy (Sahinidou, 2015:144–45) and exercise rationality. Yet both the Athenian achievements and the background to Aristotle’s philosophizing, depended on cruel treatment of slaves and on the homemaking of women, who were not considered as citizens (Gorringe, 2002: 147–48). The agora, an open space at the heart of the city, became a political, religious, social and economic focal point, from which slaves, women, and strangers were excluded (Gorringe, 2002: 171). Athenian democracy created a system of discrimination against the poor and among communities of different classes.

In Classical Athens, goddesses were symbols of the source and sustenance of life. Women assumed responsibility for agriculture, pottery and weaving. Involved in these vital processes, they must have held religious and social positions in Neolithic societies (Christ, 1995: 85). Yet Solon organized Athens as a male-centric society. Women were banished to the house in a division of public and private. The free Greek male citizen established his identity by subduing his excluded opposites: the non-Greek, non-male, non-human. Plato and Aristotle’s hierarchical metaphor depicted the female, the alien, and the animal as ‘natural’ inferiors in a ‘chain’ extending from the divine Logos to matter (Πλάτων, 1956: 180–14; Αριστοτέλους, 1939: 55–58). Slavery was the Greek model of all relationships of dominant Greek males to inferior ‘others’. The ruling ‘mind’ is to use other bodies as ‘tools’. Women, slaves, barbarians and animals were viewed as having no rational capacity, and were servile tools of Greek male sovereignty (Ruether, 1994: 184). Femininity is conceived as a natural disability (Αριστοτέλης, 1994: 172–74). Procreative generative power is appropriated as a male capacity. The female is a passive recipient and an incubator of the male seed (Αριστοτέλης, 1994: 98–99). According to Aeschylus (Αριστοτέλης, 1994: 273), proof of this point was found in the birth of Athena from Zeus’ head. On this belief, Ancient Greeks based their view of the relationship between men and women.

Epilogue

Α worldview becomes the overall belief system about the world, the values out of which we live, our place and role in the scheme of things, of what is thought as good or moral (Eaton, 2005: 7).Worldviews become consciously or unconsciously the criterion for what we do in our everyday lives. If used uncritically as absolutes they can also mislead us. Rosemary Radford Ruether’s (1994: 173–201) review shows how from cultures of dominion, dualisms, hierarchies supported by sciences, philosophies, and theologies we must move to ones respecting the ‘other’ (Ruether, 1994: 3, 22–26). Plato and Aristotle used a dualistic metaphor for female, as ‘natural’ inferior to male. Metaphors, models, and theories provide an ever-widening context of explanation, where phenomena within or across fields are linked in networks. They are not pictures of reality but paradigm-dependent, partial, needing alternative or complementary models and care against loss of metaphorical tension (McFague, 1982: 102, 194). Sciences do not offer a safe method to show the reality of nature or the nature of reality. They offer metaphors to discuss it (Martin, 1993: 353–56).

A holistic worldview as contemporary understanding of the interrelatedness and interdependence of all that exists has its limits: just as a new finding is not final or absolute. Theoretical work brings to consciousness the past as a way of knowing the present; it makes us aware of the values hidden in worldviews, and the dangers of taking them as true without questioning them. To know patriarchy, domination, and dualism and their interconnections is to open the possibility of dismantling them by denunciation. Worldviews are not closed systems. They change in space-time, sometimes they overlap each other; elements of a new worldview appear in an older one, while older elements are maintained in new ones. In the Ancient Athenian era, the dualistic worldview prevailed. The inferiority of women according to the dualistic worldview was applied to Athena’s life since her father swallowed the female nature of her mother, and since she was born from her father’s head. Male Zeus’ logic- νους was the ruler behind Athena. Ιn this same context, the olive tree becomes the symbol of Athena, a symbol of peace, when she planted an olive tree to claim the Athenian land (Herodoti Historiarum, 1884: 245). Yet, Athena is depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear and shield – symbols of war. From a feminist view, Athena is the symbol of a woman-warrior working for peace via war. Both the dualistic worldview and the holistic one, are mixed up in her person. Traces of the contemporary holistic worldview of interrelatedness are applied to Hestia’s life and symbols.

Revising our worldview in light of scripture is part of the renewal of our own selves. A worldview is a matter of the shared everyday experience of humanity; it could belong to an order of cognition more basic than that of science or theory (Wolters, 1985: 2–9). Evanthia Adamtziloglou is the first Greek theologian who discusses feminist theology and hermeneutics (Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi, 2003: 109). In her book (Αδαμτζίλογλου, 1997) referring to 1 Corinthians 11.3 she analyses the meaning of ‘head’, developing a Christological witness to the equality of both sexes:

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

Christianity knows God the Father and Christ the Son as one God (along with the Holy Spirit as Trinity), equal persons and consubstantial. On this Christological basis rests the dyad of two persons: man and woman must be understood as equal.

Based on 1 Thessalonians 2.7,11,17 and Galations 3.26 she refers to the NT language, influenced by the writers’ patriarchal background as a means of exclusion (Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi, 2003: 109).

So, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galations 3. 26–28).

In her third book (Αδαμτζίλογλου, 1997) she analyses the exegesis of Galations 3.28c in the light of Genesis 1.26–27 in the work of the patristics, both Greek and Latin, and in the late twentieth century (Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi, 2003: 110).

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

In the word ἄνθρωπος (mankind in many English translations) both sexes are originally included. Yet it came to mean ‘man’ in English biblical translations, where the term man represents humankind. Feminists do not want to be merely represented; they want to be included as in the original Greek text. Otherwise the anthropology of women becomes in English translations androcentric. The problem of non-inclusive interpretation becomes Christological when Υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου appears in English translations, as the Son of Man (ESV, KJG, KIV, MRD, NIV etc, Matthew 8.20). In Acts 17.26 (NIV) we read:‘From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth’. In the original Greek text, the phrase: ‘From one man he made all the nations’ appears as ‘ἐποίησέ τε ἐξ ἑνὸς αἵματος πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων- from one blood every human nation was created’. Man is an exclusive concept, as well as an exclusive word, representing women, but not including them. The original words in the Greek text ‘ἐξ ἑνὸς αἵματος’ are inclusive; one blood could be both male and female; one blood includes the entire humanity holistically.