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On Masculinity

Unless you have been living under a rock—which might in fact be quite an enviable place to live, these days—I should not need to point out that masculinity has been a controversial topic over the past decade.  I could argue here against the various claims that have been made against something like a “traditional” concept of masculinity, but I would rather not stick my toes into the cesspool of such thoughts.  I could also take up the various claims for a “traditional” concept of masculinity—claims, of course, not very traditional at all, but which instead laud the abuses of pre-modern relations between men and women as though they were the norm.  Rather, I want simply to talk about what masculinity is, without any qualifying adjectives.

Meaning of “Masculine”

To do this, let us ask: what do we typically mean in using the word “masculine”?  Derived from the Latin masculus, it is usually used as an adjective meaning “male”.  We also often transform this concrete descriptor into an abstract noun; that is, we use “masculine” to describe individuals, but we talk about “masculinity” as an object[1] in its own right.  Clearly, such an abstractly signified object is not a thing in itself: you cannot go out and poke masculinity in the ribs, or slap it in the face (no matter how much some people would seemingly love to), because it is not something which exists apart from the individuals in which it exists, and yet, at the same time, it does not reduce to any or even all of those individuals.

In other words, what we signify by the word “masculinity” is a pattern of possibilities which is only ever partially realized in actuality, in individuals.  There are infinite degrees of possible masculinity, though not infinite ways in which one can be masculine, for there is an essential configuration of this pattern, and without that essential configuration—no matter how many other realizations of the pattern one manifests—one cannot be masculine.

Naturally, we need therefore to identify the essential configuration of the pattern of masculinity.  Because of recent postgender ideology, many defenders of masculinity have focused on the biological aspect.  The distinctive male physiology is, of course, very important.  But there is a trap in thinking exclusively or primarily about masculinity from the biological perspective: namely, that it often leads to reductionism.  That is, if we look for the cause of the distinction of masculine from feminine solely in terms of genes and hormones, we are missing the bigger picture, and often implicitly accept ourselves a reductionistic and materialistic causal framework which is ultimately self-defeating.  Yes, to be sure, testosterone is important to masculinity.  So is the SRY protein.  So is the Y-chromosome.  But no quantity of testosterone makes a male human being “masculine” in the humanly-meaningful sense.  While someone cannot truly be masculine without these biological components—that is, we can describe a woman as being rather “masculine” in the sense that she possesses many incidental traits of masculinity, but she is not and cannot be essentially masculine—the requisite biology alone does not make someone masculine.

Nor, for that matter, can the masculine (or the feminine) be truly explained by evolutionary psychology.  One finds so-called “hypermasculine” types (the kind who would describe themselves as “alphas”—those who pursue sex, money, power, etc., as the ends of life itself) commonly subscribing to this theory.  Such evolutionary reductionism, however, seeks primarily to excuse immoral behavior by claiming that it stems from an impulse to reproduce, to further one’s genetic line, to have dominion—to “be the alpha”.  But this explanation does nothing to say what it is to be a man.  Rather, it tries to circumvent that question by bald assertion; it avoids the properly human function of questioning and subsequently thinking-through what is questioned by rooting all action in “pre-rational” motives of the given.  It tries to reduce moral action to biological imperatives—and thereby excuse immoral stupidity.

Aristotelian-Thomist Terms

To put the true exposition, by contrast, in Aristotelian-Thomistic causal terms: the form of masculinity, which is a property of the substantial form of being human, requires in any individual that it possess a certain kind of matter, just as the form of humanity requires in any individual that there be bones and flesh and so on (to use Aquinas’ example).  Any masculine individual must have the Y-chromosome and testosterone, from which there will be further consequences enabling the actions befitting a masculine individual, such as greater muscle growth (relative to women), male genitalia, a neurochemical tendency towards responding to situations with aggressiveness, and so on.  But the form of humanity is irreducible to having flesh and bones and organs in the correct disposition and proportion, and so too is the form of masculinity irreducible to having testosterone and muscles and man-parts in the correct disposition and proportion.  That is: the form of humanity consists principally in certain operations, most especially those concerned with virtuous exercise of the faculties which are distinctive to being human: those faculties of the intellect and will, which redound to and thereby elevate the faculties we share in common with other animals. 

The form of masculinity, as differentiated from femininity, does not produce specifically-distinct faculties in the human being and so does not produce distinct operations.  It does, however, modulate the faculties and therefore modifies the right or fitting way for a man to perform certain operations as opposed to the right way for a woman to perform certain operations.  In other words, depending upon one’s biological sex—as the material disposition required by the form of either masculinity or femininity—there are different fitting patterns of operation; and these fitting patterns are what we call gender.  There is something incomplete, I would posit, about someone with masculine biology who does not conduct himself within the fitting patterns of masculine gender, and likewise someone having feminine biology who does not conduct herself within the fitting patterns of feminine gender.

Foregoing any discussion of the feminine, how do we determine whether or not the pattern of one’s operations, however, befits his masculine form?  If our only criterion is whether the operations seem enabled by the biological, we will again miss the point.  We need to look beyond the formal and the material, in other words.  Specifically, here, we need to look also at three further kinds of causes.

Causal Distinctions

First is the objective or specifying cause.  This is a kind of causality unfamiliar to most people—it is not found in the traditional Aristotelian taxonomy but is a development of later scholasticism which has remained buried to most thinkers for centuries.  I have gone into greater detail in other publications.[2]  But to give a succinct presentation, the objective or specifying cause is an extrinsic formal cause, one which determines our cognitive and cathectic faculties by presenting to us objects in specific ways.  This cause differs for men and women insofar as their faculties, as aforementioned, are modulated by their respective masculine and feminine forms.  Put otherwise, nothing differs on the part of the object as it is independently of the person who receives it, but something is indeed different on the part of the recipient.  That such a difference occurs has been demonstrated by a number of studies showing, for instance, different toy preferences in very young children.  Male and female are not differently determined by all objects, or in all ways, but in many and perhaps most objects they likely are—even if only very slightly—but especially if they have grown up and maintained for years a kind of bifurcated environment fitting to their respective forms.  A girl brought up in the company of boys will likely develop more tomboyish attributes and be more alike to boys in the way she is determined by objects, whereas a boy brought up in the company of girls will likely develop more-typically feminine interests and responses.  These are not all wrong in all ways, but if excessive do result almost invariably in some one or another unfitting habituation for each sex with respect to gender, and, following that, with respect also often to sexual orientation.  Moreover, the media to which a mind is regularly attuned will have similar consequences.  The excess of fantasy-universe media attention, for instance, tends to distort our conceptualization insofar as it distorts our habituated patterns of image-creation.

Regardless, the point I am attempting to convey here is that the objects to which we direct our minds (and by which our minds are directed) are both influenced by and influential over the patterning of our gender: either in ways which are fitting to our forms or ways which are unfitting.  A girl may enjoy watching sports without losing her femininity, and a boy may feel great empathy for animals or children without losing his masculinity; but a girl who wishes to be very muscular and strong does lose something of her femininity and a boy who wishes to wear dresses and look pretty loses something quite important to his masculinity.

This brings us to the second kind of cause we cannot afford to here overlook: the internal final cause.  Every living individual has, by virtue of the essential form making it to be the kind of thing that it is, an end or a goal through which that living organism attains its perfection.  Often, this internal final cause results in a series of concatenated relative final causes.  For instance, someone seeking happiness seeks a spouse, and seeking a spouse seeks to make himself attractive, and seeking to make himself attractive, dresses nicely and works out, and so on and so forth.  Getting fit is an end, as is dressing nicely, as is appearing attractive, as is finding a spouse.  Since happiness—in the Aristotelian, eudaimonic sense—is the final cause of all human beings, our question is: how is this pursuit modulated by the form of masculinity?

This is a question every man must contemplate for himself, I believe.  For it is an ethical question, and ethical questions—while they may be understood from and interpreted through some universal laws—always require particular resolutions.  That is, the masculine modulation of virtue will be slightly different for every individual human male, but there are certain commonalities.  The virtue of courage, for instance, as specifically male, skews far closer to recklessness than caution than it does for women, for the most part.  But I think a specific modulation by sex and gender which has often been overlooked regards the virtue of prudence.  The virtue of prudence is the virtue of right reasoning concerning things to be done, i.e., actions to be taken.  Now you might say, “How can right reasoning be distinctively male or female?  Isn’t reasoning common to both men and women?  Are you saying men are more reasonable than women!?”  To answer these questions in reverse: no, men are not more reasonable than women; yes, reasoning is common to both, but it is distinctively male or female insofar as being formally differentiated we very typically, with rare exception, grow up being habituated to reason in different ways: not that we see different intellectual truths, but we do form different phantasms, insofar as we are differently specified by the objects, as mentioned above.

That is: men’s reasoning concerning things to be done is often focused on attaining results: on implementing plans, on who can do what, how, when, and where; while women’s reasoning concerning things to be done more often focuses upon the persons involved; on how they might or will be effected, are treated well, and so on.  That’s not to say women cannot be good planners or that men cannot be empathetic.  We are looking, rather, at typical and malleable patterns.  But there is good reason that these patterns tend to follow the way that they do: the biological foundations of each tends to conduce to them and each conduces to the other as complementary attributes; each completes the other.

This complementarity leads us into the last of our causes to consider, the external final cause.  We are each of us parts of a whole greater than any one of us.  While there is a unique dignity to the human individual which makes each—as a comprehendor of the universe, in some sense—greater than all the material whole, we are nonetheless still subordinate to a common good.  This unique dignity ties into so many things—many more than I could reasonably talk about here—being a good husband, a good father, a good leader in the community when called upon to do so, a good follower of other leaders when it is their talents that are called upon, and so on.

Conclusion

I suppose in sum, masculinity primarily consists in understanding yourself and how you are related to the things around you.  This self-understanding seems hard for many to grasp today; we live in an age of illusions, where media deeply infects our minds with habits of fantasy found hard to shake, and where the promise of technological mastery suggests that we may realize these fantasies.  Perhaps we may; and in gaining the whole of our desire, lose our souls.


[1] Understood, that is, in the sense of that which is precisely as in relation to a cognitive subject (or at least semiosic agent).  Cf. Deely 2009: Purely Objective Reality, 8-15.

[2] See, for instance, 2022: Introduction to Philosophical Principles.

Ravaisson on the Formation of Second Nature

As soon as the soul arrives at self-consciousness, it is no longer merely the form, the end or even the principle of organization; a world opens within it that increasingly separates and detaches itself from the life of the body, and in which the soul has its own life, its own destiny, and its own end to accomplish. It is this superior life that the incessant progress of life and nature seems – without being able to attain it – to aspire, as if to its perfection, to its good. This higher life, in contrast, has its own good within itself; and it knows this, looks for it, embraces it, at once as its own good and as good itself, as absolute perfection. But pleasure and pain have their grounds in good and evil; they are the sensible signs of good and evil. Here, therefore, in this world of the soul, the truest good is accompanied by the truest form of sensibility; such are the passions of the soul – that is, feeling. Feeling is distinct from the spiritual and moral activity that pursues good and evil, though it gathers their impressions.

Continuity or repetition must therefore gradually weaken feeling, just as it weakens sensation; it gradually extinguishes pleasure and pain in feeling, as it does in sensation. Similarly, it changes into a need the very feeling that it destroys, making its absence more and more unbearable for the soul. At the same time, repetition or continuity makes moral activity easier and more assured. It develops within the soul not only the disposition, but also the inclination and the tendency to act, just as in the organs it develops the inclination for movement. In the end, it gradually brings the pleasure of action to replace the more transient pleasure of passive sensibility.

In this way, as habit destroys the passive emotions of pity, the helpful activity and the inner joys of charity develop more and more int he heart of the one who does good. In this way, love is augmented by its own expressions; in this way, it reanimates with its penetrating flame the impressions that have been extinguished, and at each instant reignites the exhausted sources of passion.

Ultimately, in the activity of the soul, as in that of movement, habit gradually transforms the will proper to action in an involuntary inclination. Mores and morality are formed in this manner. Virtue is first of all an effort and wearisome; it becomes something attractive and a pleasure only through practice, as a desire that forgets itself or that is unaware of itself, and gradually it draws near to the holiness of innocence. Such is the very secret of education: its art consists in attracting someone towards the good by action, thus fixing the inclination for it. In this way a second nature is formed.

Félix Ravaisson 1838: De l’habitude in the English translation by Clare Carlisle and Mark Sinclair, Of Habit, 67-69.

Félix Ravaisson (23 October 1813—1900 May 18) was a French philosopher influential in the latter half of the 19th century, particularly in the school of French Spiritualism and particularly as a “spiritual realist”. He exhibits in Of Habit, his most influential and enduring work, a familiarity with Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition. He is also known for his influence on Henri Bergson, whose theory of the élan vital would likely not have been without Ravaisson.

[Summer 2022] Semiotics: Thought and Contributions of John Deely

Semiotics—toward which human beings took their first explicit steps in the beginning of the Latin Age of philosophy, in the work of St. Augustine of Hippo (350–430AD), an age that culminated in the thinking of John Poinsot (1589–1644)—is that by which we begin in a true postmodernism. This is one of the key and perhaps surprising claims of John Deely (1942–2017). That is, often today what is called “postmodernism” is nothing more, in fact, than an ultramodernism: a fragmentary, distorted view of the world grown out of the errors of modern philosophical thinking, run toward its natural, incoherent conclusions.

Listen to a preview here

Preview – Semiotics as origin of genuine post-modernism.

In contrast, consider this description Deely gives:

In a word, postmodernism is the opening of a passageway from the age of classical modern philosophy to an epoch as distinct from the modern age as the modern age was from Latin times, or Latin times from the ancient Greek period. The opposition of modernity to Latin (and Greek) times eventually took the form of the opposition of idealism to realism in philosophy. Postmodern thought begins, properly speaking, not so much by rejecting this opposition as by transcending it, for in experience integrally taken, mind-dependent and mind-independent being assert themselves equally—not “equally” in the quantitative sense, but “equally” in the sense of components both asserting themselves in different ways at different times and in different proportions throughout the course of human life, both together making up the one fabric of our lives we call “experience”.

What was needed for philosophy to mature [to postmodernism] was not so much a shift as an expansion, an expansion of the notion of reality—and with it, being—to include the whole experience as the prior ground out of which human understanding arises and on which it throughout depends. From the start, being should have been an inclusive, not an exclusive and oppositional notion. Being is not only “that which can only be said in many ways” (Aristotle), but that out of which the division between what is and what is not independent of the mind arises (Aquinas), and not in any finally fixed way, but differently according to the time and circumstances of the one experiencing such a contrast among objects.

Deely 1994: New Beginnings (18–19).

To understand and affect this maturation into postmodernity, we will turn our attention in this seminar to the major contributions to semiotics given by Deely: the proto-semiotic history, an expanded doctrine of causality,  the retrieved and clarified notion of relation, the concept of physiosemiosis, the continuity of culture and nature, the notion of purely objective reality, and the real interdisciplinarity which semiotics fosters. This is an advanced seminar which provides a serious challenge to all participants.

DISCUSSIONS:
July 2—27 August
Saturdays, 3:15-4:15pm ET /
7:15-8:15pm UTC

WHERE:
Lyceum Institute digital platform run on Microsoft Teams

In this seminar, lasting 8 weeks (with a break at the halfway point—see here for more information on all Lyceum Institute seminars), we will discover the enormous contributions to semiotics made by John Deely. The instructor for this seminar is Dr. Brian Kemple, who wrote his dissertation under Dr. Deely, and who is Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Kemple here.

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

One payment covers all 8 weeks.

[2022Su-B] Semiotics: Deely – Participant

Recommended for those who are currently students or with part-time employment.

$80.00

[2022Su-B] Semiotics: Deely – Patron

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy).

$135.00

[2022Su-B] Semiotics: Deely – Benefactor

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more in support of the Lyceum Institute and its mission.

$200.00

[2022 Winter] Semiotics: Cultural World of the Sign

How can semiotics help us to understand culture? Simply put: through understanding the causality of the sign in conjunction with the reality of the specifically-human world. This demands, of course, that we understand what we mean by reality. Is it just those things that exist independently of our minds? Or does it have a broader, more complex, more difficult to ascertain being? Does the sign not merely operate within or alongside the reality of the world–but as constitutive of it? Is this constitutive activity of the sign–presuming it can be identified–limited to cognition-independent signification; or is such fundamentally a misnomer?

This study will focus on the contributions of semioticians—especially Yuri Lotman and John Deely—in establishing and understanding the importance of cultural reality.  We will therefore undertake to understand the Umwelt and Lebenswelt, the Bildendwelt, the influence of the future on the past, diachrony and synchrony, textuality, codes, and the relation between self and culture.

In this seminar, lasting 8 weeks (with a break at the halfway point–see here for more information on all Lyceum Institute seminars), we will discover the world-constituting and world-dependent causality of the sign. The instructor for this seminar is Brian Kemple, PhD, Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Kemple here.

DISCUSSIONS:
January 15–12 March
Saturdays, 10:00-11:00am ET /
3:00-4:00pm UTC

WHERE:
Lyceum Institute digital platform run on Microsoft Teams

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, with discounts for those who are professors and clergy (whose continuing education is not sufficiently prioritized by their institutions) and for students (who are already taxed excessively by the educational system). However, if you are part of the working world and wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the “standard” rate, it is acceptable to sign up at one of these discounted prices. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

Registration is closed.