The Eumenides: Cultural Divide Between Men And Women

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Biology and genetics set the basic parameters for human behavior, but Homo sapiens ability to create “imagined realities” (which came about after the cognitive revolution) allows us to change our behavior without mutations to our DNA. According to evolutionary psychology, many of our present-day social and psychological characteristics were shaped during the 2,990,000 years before the agricultural revolution (Harari, 2015). Because we are a sexually dimorphic species, men and women on average have different traits and behaviors. For example, men generally have more muscle mass than women. These differences (among others) lead to the division of labor in early nomadic societies to be segregated by gender; in hunter-gatherer societies, the men …show more content…

Historically speaking, in most cultures, women were seen as inferior in some respect and were not given the same rights and status as their male counterparts. The play The Eumenides demonstrates the cultural divide between men and women in ancient Greece. In the story, Orestes is considered not guilty for crimes of matricide because only the male has parental status; in other words, mothers are not related to their children by blood (women are only incubators of embryos, according to the general Greek scientific consensus), so therefore he did not technically kill a family member. Clytemnestra (his mother) was punished for murdering out of revenge, but Orestes was set free for a similar crime, just because he murdered a woman and not a man. During the French Revolution in 1791, Marie Gouze wrote The Declaration of Rights of Woman, which advocated for “natural, inalienable, and sacred” rights for women. She wanted women to have freedom of speech, liberty, be able to own property, and have fair marriage contracts. …show more content…

This method is extremely limiting because the knowledge is only based off what is known - and if the previous knowledge is erroneous or the individual is biased, then the conclusions will be incorrect. Aristotle believed that heavy objects fell faster than lighter objects through sophistical reasoning. Although his theory was plausible, and made sense with what was known at the time, he was wrong. Empirical learning is using experimentation and observation to come to conclusions. Unfortunately, the aim of these type of reasoning was often to support theories that already existed and the procedures of such experiments were faulty. An example of this is observing bees to figure out their hierarchies – another piece of the world Aristotle tried to understand but failed. Superstitious learning is basing knowledge on “infallible” religious texts or ideology. It usually falls into circular reasoning – a text is proven to be true because it says it is true, according to those who adhere to this way of learning. Faith to an ideology supersedes the pursuit of objective truth. In fact, Aristotle used this reasoning as well – he believed that the universe had no beginning and that it can never end due to his Christian faith. Induction learning is a combination of empirical and sophistical learning, which is the foundation of the scientific method. The sophistical

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