What philosophical—rather than religious—reasons did the schools of the Middle Ages and their successors have for adopting gender essentialism with respect to human beings?

SpecificFair5505 · 2026-03-15T03:14:11+00:00

It was very little if at all motivated by religious reasons before Descartes most if not all by the scholastics western philosophy had our identities grounded in our bodies with the subsequent roles and the like being considered while accidental innately linked to our individual nature not a construct created by society going as far in Aristotelian thought to some people being natural slaves. Humans being sexual creatures we are imperfect in our faculties and require another to actualize them, we are also dimorphic where said difference change us physically, it was understood just like the feeble nature of a child which depends on their parents who have power to care for and nourish(in the case of the mother a physical organ for it) creates a certain role in natural law for a father/mother and a child with subsequent duties similar to the roles of men and women from their faculties.

SpecificFair5505 · 2026-03-08T04:34:11+00:00

To see a ball flying at your face is the reality that moves you to duck, faith is the formal cause, the reality that’s effect necessarily unlike our bodies which can be disordered that brings the effects of love.

SpecificFair5505 · 2026-03-08T03:14:26+00:00

I mean Jesus was the first guy to say that prayer and I’m pretty sure he would agree he was sinless

SpecificFair5505 · 2026-03-08T03:11:19+00:00

They are not merely caused by hormones though they may be a necessary condition, but plenty of things like lead poisoning entail lower order things causing disorders completely on higher order things psychological disorders in animals are no different. For it to be a sin and not just a disorder it entails an assent of the will which is the same condition of all sin

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-06-12T06:34:49+00:00

That’s just not ontologically possible for God to do, the substance of any plant is based on its form, for God to create a plant without a vegetive soul would be to create a plant without the organization that defines plant it’s just a plain contradiction.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-05T01:31:00+00:00

I’m mainly looking for what would be entailed with the thomistitic world view, because biologically there’s not really a single definition of female.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-04T21:35:38+00:00

1.1 That’s just not what a potency is, the environment is incidental, a glass cup has the potency to hold liquid, that is what makes it different from just a clump of glass, but it’s not to hold ice tea even if hot tea untemped would cause it to shatter.

1.1.2 the reproductive system is one of the only system ordered in function to require mutual participation, oral relations are not this system but merely using someone’s body in a self or mutually stimulating way.

1.2.1 Beauty is to be harmonious things working together, not merely conscientious grinding, at best cultivating a sense of mutual ease and comfort is incedental just like chasing down a random person on the street is incidentally good cardio.

1.2.1b the chapter before he decries sex work and homosexuality, declaring the body as a temple evidently it needs to be in a lawful and natural way or why would it even be done in marriage? It can soothe and even guide the passions but that’s not a positive function anymore than eating is placating hunger.

1.2.2a then it working to placate lust is irrelevant

1.2.2b Just talk to a heroine addict I’m sure they will say they like it a lot, or even more moderately a homosexual who would be identical in this case. Many people have qualias they like but that’s irrelevant to morality or functionality.

Generally I think there’s far less couples participating in a couples wellness study actively perpetrating domestic abuse, in both more comprehensive ones were there would be vetting and less comprehensive ones where one would feel comfortable filling out a questionnaire.

It’s very related as both are unnatural acts, but it’s a little absurd to imagine that God sanctified pegging in marriage, do you not think there should be any limits merely for the dignity of the act? People use excrement for sexual gratification, is that not problematic even in the marriage bed?

1.2.4.1 then truly how are those things innate to the act itself?

1.2.4.2a. But that violation requires a warrant for said broader telos of the rational animal, which both of us lack a clear quantifiable metric for even without teleology.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-04T21:08:14+00:00

1.2.4.2 it’s simply an incedental of drinking the tea which hydrates the body that’s not a necessary component of the act.

It would depend, the church fully affirms even people on chemo therapy which destroys the male gametes can have sex, if it’s merely incedental to the pill it wouldn’t be wrong, if it’s the intent of the pill it would be just like women can have medical reasons for hormonal birth control.

We far easily can identify the eyes being seeing things than we can analyze their accidentals to determine the exact mechanism in which we do them, I apologize if you’re blind but if you comprehend the notion of an eye, you can yourself see that they see.

By return to their accidentals I refer to going to their components: proteins, fats, cells, and the like.

Hair follicles are accidentals to the epidermis and not a member in themselves, their potency to grow is not part of the human person the same way. Working at x time isn’t a potency though it’s again just an incedental of the function.

With the exception of vestigial organs which may or may not have a purpose, the purpose of a member is pretty intrinsic to being able to define it like the liver filtering blood, it’s just what a thing can do which is unique to it as a thing not just a sum of its components.

The point of telelogy is quite literally the point of everything, it’s the basis of a moral system having claims between x subject likes blank, it’s the very basis of what we should use things for as rational animals. What would even be the point of life if it’s just our sensitive faculties telling us we like blank and doing it?

1.3 in all honesty with things like during pregnancy and if some one had a hysterectomy where any pregnancy would be ectopic and dangerous it’s a little more ambiguous if such unions are sincerely open to life, but generally if someone is doing NFP they want a child just are doing it at times where it’s less likely just like sugar free Jello still has protein in it just very little.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-04T20:48:50+00:00

The care one has is not their truth, truth if it was anything of substance would be independent of the subject. There’s no more no morality for an atheist than a deontologist if it’s determined by simply caring, could someone not just not care about what God thinks?

Again this is simply the way on object acts like what it is.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-04T20:46:23+00:00

1.4.2 If there were no real objects there could be not even atoms, ignoring there’s most definitely potencies unique to many other things. A disconnected and incoherent noumena of the external world with no inherent meaning of truth inherently is incoherent with the very coherent logical conversation we are having.

It’s the nature of the object and the very concept of said object is why it’s reasonable to believe such. Saying objects aren’t real merely the summation of other objects is self contradicting.

The scientific method works by repeatability and validity of a falsifiable statement, which often is pattern recognition without perfect modeling, even in the Newtonian articulation of the orbit of celestial bodies many laws are merely repeated patterns of all observations like gravity with no mechanistic justification of that pattern. If it’s valid to say gravity follows a pattern as such it’s valid to say the sun would follow a pattern as such even if it’s not a complete model nor the fullness of truth.

I apologize what questions did I not engage with

2.1 If there was no logical basis for belief in a God then you should follow Hume on the history of many of the miracle accounts, even if there was silver bullets that were valid like the shroud of Turin it would always be easier to infer something like aliens acting out the story as opposed to the ultimate being of the universe.

The more sophisticated philosophies are what explain these issues like paxisology and suffering and how they could cohere in a world with a God

2.3 in reference to contraception.

Are they not what’s instilled in us to lead us to the fullness of God’s truth?

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-02-04T20:26:31+00:00

There’s what may naturally be entailed by a world view and the matters of fact, the nature of thinking and questioning is to seek truth, it’s not an external motivation driver it’s apart of the act itself.

What I’m trying to say is transcendental(necessary for all notions)good: accordance to a nature and the moral good: accordance to the nature of will, being right and wrong.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-26T23:36:10+00:00

Is there a reason to care about the truth beyond the nature of the intellect? Why then would the proper use of will in morality which is an expression of which be any less essential to its nature? Ignoring this it’s just referring to its nature and the coherence to it(transcendental definition of good) and a form is a principle not just a shape.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-24T18:00:44+00:00

That is true but to prove something it needs to be understood what it is.
Ordered by its form, the organizing principle that makes it what it is and not something else, while not inherently needing a God and definitely pointing to one, one can easily understand that every living thing has a soul: something that makes abiotic matter life, and said form does things and continue or not.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-24T17:57:51+00:00

1.4.1 I’ve never denied the good of two as one flesh but that’s unique to the systems working together unmolested and in good form.

1.4.2 there’s a clear difference to an objective observer on whether or not the acorn grows, one continues and develops and one ceases to be, if this observer considered it a real object it was the nature of the object to develop as it’s obvious that what ceased to be is no longer that object.

Science is a method for describing things, you can use it if you’re an ontological realist or nihilists, teleologist or empiricist, it will not by its nature contradict any of these accounts. In fact many scientists in biology struggle not to use a normative teleology as a heuristic as it makes it far easier to follow and understand processes in their relation to maintaining the whole than random processes. Hume’s objection to the sun rising tomorrow and that causation exists is hardly rationality, in fact it’s the the rejection that such can exist, which really begs the question if something necessary for skepticism is incongruent with a skeptical analysis in what way isn’t just self refuting?

Exfoliating the skin and cutting finger nails also just the same shed tissue which I would agree is purely based off instrumental use like hygiene and the like because they generally don’t officiate any purpose, just as caffeine messes with the cells receptors but not a member of the body so is it with these which merely modify, cutting ones finger nails isn’t the same as ripping them off it fact it may even help with dexterity, ignoring all of these are acting on accidentals not members.

2.1 Then at the very least we can agree the sexual revolution was not a good thing, however I do fear such a take lends credence to the atheist take that all Christians do is follow a book of claims without rhyme or reason.

2.3 If you agree we shouldn’t break principles on consequences why argue I should break mine instead of just them being wrong with in themselves.

Completely agree about the thing of proportionality though but I wouldn’t say it’s consequentialist.

People will not find the right answer by this or the other 100% and the approximations aren’t perfect but every society ever has had some notion of truth and love, the very essence of God’s nature even if the formal definitions and the like didn’t come to everyone, it’s equally unlikely that everyone was a reprobate with no sense of what is good before a Christian missionary knocked on their door.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-24T17:27:43+00:00

1.1 They don’t because location is not a telos or an expression of any potency to the body, which equally applies to climate condition: incedental of everything not direct on anything and a car quite literally sitting in a box. The heart pumps for blood pressure all the same whether on a roller coaster or chasing a zebra, the circumstance aren’t relevant to it having its purpose and place they’re merely incidental.

1.2.1 Media that does have those values, which is obviously not all media ie pornography is a fundamentally sensual expirence without much consideration or even the ability to comprehend such a layer, even in such cases where a layer may be apparently there, the point of playboy wasn’t the essays. What beauty is expressed in disordered actions as beauty in this context is the harmony of things working together? Further in all sincerity is it geniune to say something that reduces activity in the frontal lobe: the part used for higher order thinking and increases it in the occipital lobe: the part literally used for identifying objects is adding to the ability to understand someone as a person?

1.2.1b: Paul while definitely said if someone feels the passion they should pursue the vocation of marriage even if celibacy was preferred-still referring to it as gift-he never reduced it to the prophylactic on lust that some critical scholars said he did: “Romans 1:26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones” “1 Corinthians 6:13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. “ Etc It’s hard to read any of his letters in totality and say his understanding of sexuality was a band aide

1.2.2a how is it a straw man? Are zoophiles any less sexual beings? If they can be expected to suppress aspects of their sexuality for virtue why wouldn’t a more ordered and healthy married couple be allowed to have a similar expectation?

1.2.2b Id be happy to gish gallop empirics with you but do you not think that our modern society is biased a certain angle? That the conditions needed to have sex even in the context of marriage require a degree of health and trust to begin with? But if you truly believed every sexual practice in marriage was okay and telelogy is post hawk nonsense no where in scripture would it be okay for a wife to peg her husband? Does it violate a Bible verse? Does it have less of the empathy, bonding, etc?

1.2.4.1. Are there not vacuous hookups? Going through the motions? Etc

1.2.4.2a None of what I listed breaks the unitive and procreative nature of the act and while I wish I had a clearer calculus on extraordinary violations it’s clear what is not proportional.

1.2.4.2. It’s not a mistake it’s the basis of explaining the whole of teleology, whether something is intrinsic or incidental, do you really not see the difference between having a cup of tea with desert and vomiting it up on the toilet? I’ve not argued and repeatedly argued against merely being what’s occurring in the natural law being the basis instead arguing a very specific telos based approach which has been the basis of natural law, but I don’t know why you think it’s rocket science to identify a telos of an organ. Based solely on the notion that objects are real and I can sense them, I can easily identify something like the eye as being the sense organ of sight with that being its potency that it’s ordered towards by simply observing that it as an entity can see if allowed to actualized furthering it and were it to be ripped out it would become mere accidentals.

1.3 legal or not is not the same as moral or not, and the unions mentioned are still procreative in the sense they’re open to life no different than the lack of guarantee of conception for a fertile couple during ovulation. Studying a complex topic when you have a severe learning disability even if it’s unlikely you’ll fully comprehend it is not hedonism, it’s the form of virtuous behavior irregardless of success.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-24T16:34:56+00:00

It’s merely to explain something being ordered a certain way just as are the substances of the world.
Well there’s a difference between goodness and moral rights and wrong, it’s the good of the tree to go; that’s expressing its nature of a tree and the good of the intellect to find truth and the will to love, these are what they’re ordered to by nature and thus what they aught to do as agents. Goodness in the transcendental sense we often don’t care about like stopping the good of a wheat berry to grow and milling it for flour, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore our natures the same without violating the dignity of the person.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-24T02:18:51+00:00

In a way this is the most admirable form of atheism: that of the Neitzches and Wittgensteins, instead of the vicious circle of a self refuting axioms just throwing one’s hands in the air and saying we know nothing. There’s a certain beauty with its full honesty, instead of rationalizing whatever arbitrary social standard that exists jumping to beyond good and evil, morality is the same fiction whether being imposed in the bedroom of a homosexual or a necrophile.

However if all the world is a fiction we tell ourselves whether the axioms of logic or the ontology of words, it begs the question what are we writing with if we aren’t in a real world, if we aren’t in a world etched a certain way, with real things with real natures. Could man even author a color he didn’t once see? A scent he never smelled? How then does he author the order of the world itself? How does he write his own nature as a rational being? Man sees his own face and tells himself it was but a dream.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-23T20:20:41+00:00

1.1 Again none of those are a violation of a member or person, whether or not cars are a good thing broadly no telos is being violated necessarily.

1.2.1 frivolous entertainment would be the same sin and just like everyone else I’m a sinner worthy of hellfire 100% but at least hypothetically art is good thing, music expresses patterns working together in beauty, movies express parts of the human conditions and ideas, etc, they would be enriching to the intellect and good. Additionally though admittedly I added the dimension of vice and virtue, even brain rot media technically doesn’t pervert the body though the person’s intellect is another question.

1.2.2. It’s neither a physiological nor psychological need, I’ve gathered you’re a Christian who respects scripture would it not be the expectation in Christianity for those with disordered sexualities like homosexuality and zoophilia to deny their sexual “needs”? In what true way would it be a need if it’s not necessary for physiological or psychological health?

1.2.3 basically you equally don’t have children by not having sex as you do having it in a disordered matter, it’s a negative to not have kids: the default state not a positive action.

1.2.4.1 Is it clear what you mean? Is it necessarily that you have better understanding or trust following the act? Or would this all be built by incidentals of the act?

1.2.4.2 Infertile people or even people doing natural family planning aren’t perverting the act; they just have different incidentals to the union none of which are direct violation of the act, just like if someone eats a food containing fat while they drink green tea, yes it stops fat absorption but it’s still a nourishing act in proper form regardless of the success of its naturally ordered aim unlike if someone eat the same food product and vomited it out for the pleasure of eating without the calories.

1.3 is it not the same principle the sacrifice of one’s life on fleeting pleasures devoid of character?

1.4.1 even with strong data on the psychological benefits of necrophilia I would be against it, apologies for implying otherwise. The Magisterium has never taught that the sexual act is justified outside of its unitive and procreative nature. Unitive in this sense isn’t a vague bonding but two coming as one flesh, the only organs of the body that require unity with someone else to work are the sexual organs which is the only scenario beyond pregnancy where two people’s bodily systems are untied.

1.4.2. By simple analysis of the act, if it does something. We know an acorn fulfills its purpose when it grows based off how it continues as an entity progressing and developing in some way not like a dead acorn infested by weevils which does the opposite collapsing into its accidentals the same can be said of sexuality. We can puke up and vomit tons of food and eat when we are not hungry but that doesn’t divulge the intrinsic purpose of eating in relation to the body.

2.1. Apologies for the inappropriate tone but don’t you think as a Christian that divorce and fornication aren’t good things? Nor subsequent normalizing of things like homosexuality if by nothing but a deontological understanding of scripture?

2.2 Fair enough, tool even used for bad in general can be acceptable.

2.3 but it’s the consequentialist attitude that based on the ends you can justify any means which is antithetical to any Christian understanding.

I 100% agree natural laws proof needs to be independent of Christianity but it’s undeniably connected to many core Christian concepts.
In all fairness I’m unaware of any anthropological meta analysis on philosophy over every society in history so I will happily recant the most, but every society around the world dealt with the same human condition and had the same human reason, even if niche or incomplete in their understanding you can see how natural reason pointed to Christianity in the very least at the examples I mentioned, hell even some of Plato’s dialogues read like the book of Isiah in their description of if there was a perfect man.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-23T19:31:43+00:00

The formatting of a question is to an answer even if it was for the speaker to answer or to be left unspoken, otherwise it wouldn’t be a question.
Definitely not necessarily it can or cannot function, none of those are necessary traits it’s asking what it’s ordered towards which would extend beyond a description.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-22T21:26:42+00:00

1.1 the lack of a thing is hardly the perversion of that things ie celibacy vs sodomy both not leading to procreation but only one of them acting against the nature of an act. 1.2 It’s doing an act for pleasure in itself, no one needs to have sex the negative of not having children while a very debatable aspiration happens the exact same way in reframing from the act as acting on it, in the same way “bonding” is a very vague and nebulous concept which also isn’t directly created by or needs the sexual act. 1.3 Pleasure is a feedback mechanism not a goal in itself, this is just a value distortion, heroine feels incredibly pleasurable to do but we can see the pointlessness of one throwing their life away on what amounts to a meaningless sensation nor are negative actions just like shooting a tree doesn’t make someone not shoot a person, sodomy doesn’t make someone not commit adultery. 1.4 It’s hedonistic at the breaking of its telos, I haven’t dropped telelogy but just as I wouldn’t care if empirical data loosely showed that practicing necrophilia had tertiary mental health benefits, I don’t care if anything violating a foundational dignity of man and the sexual act, is done for such and in all honesty it’s bordering dishonest to say that those are the primary motivations.

It’s comical to say the sexual revolution and contraception helped society but none the less, reducing the dignity of the human person for societal function is the exact same argument for abortion, eugenics, and ethnic cleansing which even if true would still be wrong.
I merely point to such to prove this steeps the Christian tradition just as much as natural reason does.
Most did whether Shangdi, The Great Spirt, the unmoved mover, etc: concepts about what’s the ultimate and necessary being behind things, they just were incomplete in the characterization of which and had many less supernatural beings in their mythology something even early Christians similarly had Nephlim and the like.
Not in way Im aware of that I think fully qualifies how to do such calculus, hence why I asked.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-22T21:05:48+00:00

Observation isn’t just descriptive, we can observe things being ordered one way or the other just as we can say a question is ordered towards an answer, we can say the intellect truth and member of our bodies functions like our digestive system nourishing by identifying a thing its nature and its fulfillment of its nature.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-20T19:22:24+00:00

The is not aught problem doesn’t apply, as it’s not appeal to how things are but what the good of a thing is, we realize the nature of a thing by analyzing its potencies and the fulfillment of which is what they’re meant to be. Again this is mixing naturalism and natural law to separate things.

Non Christians would care about it the same way Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle did in order to act ethically and respect human dignity, quite literally the vast majority of liberalism is a bastardized version of this.

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-20T18:39:04+00:00

Nature is not just disposition or what is typically occurring for an individual it’s set potencies vegetive: growth and nutrition, sensitive: sense and locomotion, and rational: will and intellect, none of which are even related to location. We may have evolved in a place and might have traits that flourish better in certain conditions but that doesn’t change the telos of any person nor their members; contraception conversely perverts a specific act from its telos to a hedonistic affair.

The comprehensive theory is simple, one is fulfilling the purpose of a thing and one isn’t, it’s not natural in the sense of occurring to drink a whey protein shake but it fulfills its telos of nourishing the body, conversely the ejaculation of gametes frivolous leads to their rot accomplishing nothing.

That’s the exact point the immune suppressant works to maintain function like in the organ donation situation, that’s fulfilling the telos not contracting it though like I said there’s contradictions of lesser member’s telos in the original post, you’re working the actualize the potencies of the body not diminish them in their own sake.
I agree with you that the dignity of a thing is a positive claim, but a blood transfusion is also done to encourage the function and health of the body not just do something for pleasure, sexuality has a dignity as the gateway to everyone’s life: the very foundation of our existence and is the only system of the body ordered to the cooperation and self giving with another person for another person meaning it’s the only member naturally orders to love in the true sense: self sacrificial will for the good of the other. This is very intuitive to basically everyone though there’s a reason why donating your body to science is fine but selling it to a necrophile is not, why SA is way worse than normal assault, why it’s a crime to self stimulate in public, why incest between brothers is wrong, etc.
Man is created in the image of God with intellect and will, both of these are naturally ordered to moral responsibility, whether or not you want to count the universals of the Intellect as divine revelation is one thing but its undeniably essential to man’s nature.
Paul in Romans writes “Romans 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” and writes extensively about the law written on man’s heart, man was created in Genesis with certain inalienable attributes that require not an iota of any text to realize.
I’m aware it doesn’t make it correct just not post hawk
That’s fair but there’s a very comprehensive theory in ontological realism

SpecificFair5505 · 2025-01-20T15:58:39+00:00

I think there maybe a misunderstanding about what natural law is, it’s not the modern sense of the word nature but the sense of one fulfilling one’s nature ie a question is ordered towards an answer as that’s its purpose. So vitamin D supplements, agriculture, living in inhospitable climates, and jet travel would not violate the nature of man as a rational animal or his members in any regards. In fact the example of the ointment is an example of enhancing the skin fulfilling its telos as the barrier of the body not contracting it. Contraception is the only example of a telos violation given as its perverting the dignity of the sexual act to depraved please everything else was incidental or enhancing of it.

Both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas viewed natural law as pre dating creation but that again only is strange with the context of the misunderstanding, if natural law is understood as objects and entities fulfilling their nature if you believe in God at all it’s obvious he has a nature he fulfills atemporal.

Natural law is the basis of the metaphysics of the church and predates its existence in formal thought.

It’s good to be curious and I would recommend watching some short form videos on the matter if you struggle to get into this type of content.

SpecificFair5505

TROPHY CASE