Study On Gender Differences From The Perspective Of Marxist Philosophy

Luce Irigaray,the great contemporary feminist theorist,once pointed out that gender differences is one of,if not commonly-concerned,the key philosophical problems.According to Martin Heidegger,for each era,there exists only one philosophical question worth thorough contemplation,and gender difference would be that one.If we human being could consider it completely,we are to be spared.For a long time,gender difference has been research focus due to the concern over gender equality.Aristotle stated that justice lies in the fact that conger will be put on an equal footing.Since then on,human being had been arguing over the gender difference in terms of its nature,extent and even its existence.In 1874,Victor Hugo,in his 93 Years,expressed his understanding on gender difference and equality via the main character image who argued that what he said is equality rather than similarity.Schopenhauer,Nietzsche,Byron and Shakespeare expressed their conceptions on gender difference as well.The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has taken gender equality as her basic national policy by emphasizing to improve women's social status and protect women and children's legal rights.Hence,gender difference has been a hot topic currently.Seen from the perspective of Marxist philosophy,human beings have the difference of gender,which is the basic human feature.However,with the later growth in society,the natural gender difference is becoming less and less.Just like what Marx has pointed out that human being creates environment and at the same time his living setting creates human being,which means in the long social practice,human being makes progress in self-change and evolution by way of setting up a set of social-cultural mechanism leading to the gender difference and eventually the gender inequality.In the different historical background and developing stage,the nature,extent and connotation of human social gender gap is various.In Marxist three-form developing theory,the female living style and situation differs greatly.In the first two forms,that is,dependence on human and material,due to the lack of free and overall development,the gender gap has the feature of alienation,while in the third form,that is,free character,human finally becomes the master of himself and society,which naturally becomes the master of nature in which the gender gap is present in its real state.Therefore,only by surpassing the limitation of female perspective and binary opposition and changing the confusing situation,should the study of gender difference be improved.That is the reason why the present author chooses to focus on his research from the perspective of Marxist philosophy with the aim to seek out a true and effective way to solve the problem of gender difference.Chapter One tries to reveal the fact that gender equality is nurtured rather than natured by discussing the double connotations of gender differences with the guidance of Marxist philosophy.The discussion of natural gender difference mainly focuses on its ontological origin,value commitment and cognitive pattern,while the discussion of social gender difference mainly probes its social construction,cultural cultivation,and subjective selectivity.In addition,this part also elaborates gender inequality from the aspects of economic status,social and political status,social and cultural status,and family roles.Chapter Two analyzes the theoretical deficiency and deviation of western feminist thoughts.First,there exists a confusion in term definition and ideology,which is illustrated in the following three misreadings of relationship:gender difference and gender inequality,physiological sex and social gender,female liberation and human liberation.Second,feminism follows the western thought pattern of binary opposition which is a part of rationalism,which leads to the following results:female rationalism vs male rationalism,female view vs male view,female right vs male right.In addition,feminist thought has a feature of being intact and inefficient,which is embodied by lack of independent thought,theoretical basis and humanism.Chapter Three aims to analyze the reasons leading to gender inequality with the guidance of Marxist philosophy.The social production reasons attribute to the separation of "two types of production" as well as the separation of production relation and family relation.The social cultural reasons lie in the opposite thought of western rational culture,the gender inequality in western philosophical ideology,and the alienation of capital culture.The social political reasons include the politicised sex relations,politics for capital service and the protection of caption from male power.Chapter Four deals with the methods to eradicate gender inequality.The first method is to remould the capital production including humanization of social production,refounding of family and reform of capital production relations.The second is to innovate western cultural rationalism including the change from rational opposite thinking to harmonious overall thinking,and cultivating harmonious culture for sex relations.The third way is to evoke the liberty embedded in the two genders,which means arousing the recognition of the nature of life to show the social ideal and social development.Chapter Five focuses on the designation of a ideal pattern for future gender relations.First and for the most,the two genders should harbor the same "sub-life",which means the two genders should possess the same life being,life value,and social ideal.Secondly,the two genders should have the free development with different life features including complementary and unified development.Lastly,the two genders should help each other in the process of living and developing,which implies that the two genders should help with each other in the so called two kinds of production,compensate for each other on the way of living as well as the melting of two genders in family life.In concluding part,the present author points out that gender difference is a most important topic for nowadays philosophical and gender studies,which cannot be spared in realizing gender equality and female liberation.However,due to some deficiency of the feminist study,feminists cannot solve the problem.It is only from the perspective of Marxist philosophy and breaking through the limit of female view that the real gender equality which means that they love each other,help each other,integrate,unify and develop together could be eventually fulfilled.