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Question I have stumbled across the “Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language” in the American Philosophical Association. It recommends changing, “For Aristotle, man is, above all, Political Man." to “Aristotle regarded human beings as inherently political.” Now, I could be convinced that many texts are sexually biased, but is it important to change the formulation of such propositions? In the first quote, "Man" is a metonym, standing for all humanity in a manner similar to how the word "bread" stands for Jesus' flesh when it appears in parts of the New Testament, whereas in the second, the term with the same referent, "human beings" is used. If one were translating a book into English, and it featured a similar use of a metonym, an important question then would be whether to maintain that formulation, even though it contravenes these guidlines, or to change it. Is it important to replace "Man" with "Humanity" even though they have both been used to stand for the same thing for a long time?

Accepted:
March 16, 2006

Comments

This is a question with which I've struggled for some time. The answer depends upon one's interpretation of Aristotle, one's view of the meaning of the relevant terms, and the proper way to approach historical texts. I've come down on the side of the APA on this one, but in a qualified sense. Here's why:

1. While interpreting the conventional use of "man" as a metonymic figure is not wrong, it is incomplete. I've become convinced on both empirical grounds and on my reading through the history of philosophy that the term is something of what Hilda Smith calls "false universals." That is, while it poses as representing humanity and in a sense does, it's burdened with masculinist connotations.

2. Aristotle, of course, doesn't use the term, "man," but rather mostly variations of anthropos. Anthropos, however, is in my view also a false universal; but it's closer to "humanity"--which, by the way, isn't always used in a neutral way, either, but is I think less inflected than "man."

But, given that "anthropos," like "man," is a false universal, shouldn't it be translated as "man"?

I think an argument can be made for doing just that. But here's the decisive bit against the practice:

3. Aristotle's texts bear a normative quality in our culture (that is, they're thought by many to have some sort of authority), and the false universal "man" is both still commonly used and contested. Whatever choice one makes in Aristotle, like it or not, plays into that contest in a certain way. To use "man" in Aristotle in my view both affirms the false universal and presents a less precise translation than "humanity." Better I think to use "humanity" and then (here's my qualification of the APA) in a footnote or some other critical apparatus raise the issue of false universals (again, terms posing as neutral, general terms but actually not so) especially in the case of the meaning of anthropos.