Thomas Aquinas — "For a woman is an imperfect man."
For a woman is an imperfect man.
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More from Thomas Aquinas
"It is lawful to kill an enemy in a just war."
"The female is a misbegotten male."
"The natural order among men is that women should be subject to men."
"The proper good of a thing is its perfection."
"Concupiscence is a disorder of the appetite."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Women are inherently lesser versions of men — defined by what they lack rather than what they are. In modern terms, this frames femaleness as a biological defect or deficiency relative to a male standard. It treats maleness as the complete, normative form of humanity and womanhood as a falling-short of that ideal, rooted in Aristotelian biology that Aquinas absorbed into his theology.
Relevance to Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas built his theology on Aristotelian natural philosophy, which held that females result from a defect in generation. His Summa Theologica directly incorporates this claim. Yet Aquinas simultaneously insisted women possess immortal souls equal to men's before God — a stark tension between his Aristotelian naturalism and Christian personhood doctrine that runs throughout his work on gender, reproduction, and human hierarchy.
The era
Medieval Europe operated under strict Church-sanctioned hierarchies backed by newly rediscovered Aristotelian texts arriving via Arabic translations. Women had minimal legal standing, were barred from universities, and theology reinforced their subordination as natural order. The Scholastic project — harmonizing Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine — meant Aristotle's biological errors gained theological weight, embedding ancient misogyny into canonical Church teaching for centuries.
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