Saints Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas Vilified Women in Their Writings

You can find other disparaging remarks about women throughout the history of philosophy. Consider what seminal Catholic thinkers like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas had to say about women:

  • “Woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition…”
    Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, q. 92 a. 1
  • “Good order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves. So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates.”
    Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, q.92 a.1 reply 2
  • “I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?”
    Source: St. Augustine, Genesi Ad Litteram, 9, 5-9

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