QuestionsWho am I, really?Not weak by nature, but brought up to be
Who am I, really?A self to build

Not weak by nature, but brought up to be

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 · 1797Women share the same reason: educate them accordingly.
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What it claims

Women's apparent weakness does not prove that their reason is inferior by nature. To know, one would first have to let them develop their faculties, and only then judge.

Why

Girls are raised to please rather than to reason, and men raised the same way show the same faults.

In short

"Not weak by nature, but brought up to be" is an argument by Mary Wollstonecraft (Rights of Woman, ch. 2-4) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: a self to build). Its claim: Women's apparent weakness does not prove that their reason is inferior by nature. To know, one would first have to let them develop their faculties, and only then judge. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Rights of Woman, ch. 2-4
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1792 almost everyone, great philosophers included, held that women have less reason than men: just look at how they behave. Wollstonecraft accepts the observation but disputes the conclusion. What is taken for women's nature is the product of their education. Note: she does not claim the two sexes are identical. She grants men bodily strength and does not rule out a difference of degree; she only says nothing can be concluded while education is so different.

P1Human character is formed by education and by each person's occupations: faculties that are not exercised stay dull.
P2Yet girls are brought up to please, not to reason: from childhood they are taught that beauty is their sceptre.
P3Men brought up the same way, like army officers sent into the world without solid instruction, show exactly the same faults: vanity, the wish to please, a shallow mind.
P4 · implicit premiseWhen education is enough to explain a weakness, and men brought up the same way share it, that weakness does not prove a natural inferiority.
Therefore women's apparent weakness does not prove that their reason is inferior by nature. To know, one would first have to let them develop their faculties, and only then judge.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a situation where everything is true (character comes from education, girls are raised to please, officers have the same faults) and the weakness still proves a natural inferiority: for instance if two causes added up, education and nature.
Valid with P4, the principle linking "education explains the weakness" to "the weakness proves nothing about nature". Wollstonecraft applies it throughout without stating it as a general rule. The argument is cautious: its conclusion is not "women are equal by nature" but "one has no right to say they are inferior by nature". To reject it, one must deny P1 (character comes mainly from nature) or P3 (the comparison with officers does not hold).
Analogy. Two plants of the same species: one grows in the sun, the other in a cellar. The cellar one is pale and frail. Nobody concludes it belongs to a weaker species: you put it in the sun, and then you look.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Rousseau (Emile, Book V) 1762 · attacks premise 1

Girls' tastes appear before any education: from childhood boys want noise and movement, girls want mirrors, finery and above all dolls. The doll shows their natural bent towards their destiny. Education must follow this inclination, not fight it.

Wollstonecraft replies
Wollstonecraft
A little girl made to sit for hours beside a mother at her toilet will imitate what she sees: nothing more natural, but it is example at work, not instinct. Left free, she runs and plays. Boys and girls would play together without trouble if the distinction of sex were not imposed on them long before nature makes any difference.
Rousseau (Emile, Book V) 1762 · attacks the conclusion

Women blame us for raising them to be coquettes. But who stops mothers from raising them as they like? Then educate them like men: the more they resemble men, the less they will govern them, and then men will be masters indeed. Women have everything to lose.

Wollstonecraft replies
Wollstonecraft
They would then be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason. This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.
The debate goes on (our summary) The first part of the objection gets no direct answer here: Rousseau points out that mothers raise girls. The circle (poorly taught mothers raising poorly taught daughters) breaks only if society changes education itself; that is why Wollstonecraft asks in chapter 12 that boys and girls be taught together, in public schools.
D
Defenders of a natural difference attacks premise 4

Even if education explains a lot, it may not explain everything. Average differences between the sexes (strength, tastes, interests) could be partly natural. Then the observed weakness would come from both education and nature.

Wollstonecraft replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Wollstonecraft
I will allow that bodily strength seems to give man a natural superiority over woman; and this is the only solid basis on which the superiority of the sex can be built. But I still insist that not only the virtue but the knowledge of the two sexes should be the same in nature, if not in degree.
The debate goes on (our summary) So she grants a possible difference of degree, not of kind, and asks that women's faculties first be allowed to develop before judging. Since girls and boys have attended the same schools, girls do on average as well or better in most countries, which supports Wollstonecraft on reason. The debate goes on over average differences in tastes and career choices, whose natural and social shares are still disputed.