Women and Wisdom

Mary Rosera Joyce

When I was a college and university student of philosophy, all the philosophers we studied were men. I knew that their objective, definitional, logical, and scientific kind of wisdom was important for understanding Western civilization. But something was always missing, and I was trying to see what it was. Years later, after learning that scientists were discovering male and female differences in the organization of the brain, it became still more evident why I was not fully satisfied with the object-oriented way in which men think.

Beings in the world, including a baby in a woman's arms, are not just objects of the mind. They are other subjects. We know them intuitively and immediately.
Men recognize this intuitive way of knowing, but generally are more interested in objects, projects, and the reasoning process. This mental orientation affects men's view of wisdom, and fosters the development of philosophy as the science of ultimate causes.

There is, however, another kind of wisdom. It is primarily intuitive and secondarily rational. It is an actively receptive, or contemplative, way of "turning up the light" and seeing in the clearing what we previously see in the shadows. In other words, we intuitively know so much more than we consc iously, or rationally, know that we know. And we need to stay within this intuitive immediacy with reality while we are pondering and clarifying the gradual disclosure of its meaning.

As long as women fail to develop their own unique approach to wisdom, they tend to think like men. Furthermore, they tend to radicalize the objective mentality into its reductionist mode. Radical feminists, for example, think that men and women are basically neuter, and are different only in their reproductive anatomy. Intuitively, however, we know that human sexuality is soul-deep. But we do not have the kind of philosophy that is adequate for explaining this intuition. So, women need to become lovers of wisdom who think like women, not like men.

If we would develop our minds and hearts in wisdom's way as women, we could have, finally, the leavening influence in Western civilization for which it has long been waiting.

Brain Differences

Feminists who think women and men are different only in their reproductive biology are up against the sexually different biology of the human brain. According to scientific evidence, the female brain has more connective tissue between its left and right lobes. The implication seems to be that the female brain is more endowed than the male brain for integrative thinking. The male brain, having less connective wiring between its two sides, is more oriented toward differentiative and analytic thinking. While the male is more interested in the parts of a whole, the female is predominately interested in the whole and its context.

The mind of every person is both intuitive and rational, but is emphasized oppositely in women and men. This is true, also, when they develop their thinking philosophically. The difference is significant for their mutual recovery from the alienation they caused in the beginning.

When Eve abandoned her special gift of active receptivity, she fell into passivity. And that is where we, her daughters, largely remain in our intellectual life. Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, was actively receptive without any passivity at all. We, by growing in a woman's kind of wisdom, can become actively receptive, as well as expressive, in relation to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Active Receptivity

For the philosophers of both East and West, receptivity has meant passivity. And this passivity has functioned like the pull of gravity on the human mind. It has prevented the "eagle within us" from raising its wings. That is why the union of faith and reason, that was developed in the Middle Ages, fel apart so quickly in the culture, and has not been regained. Today, as a consequence, we are seeing the Christian faith shoved into the culture's closet, and reason all but buried alive.

The weakness in the actively receptive bond between faith and reason is not in divine revelation, but in the heavily object-oriented manner of reasoning about it, and in the ancient and still-persistent interpretation of receptivity as passivity. If we could discover and recover the intuitive depths of the intellect in its active receptivity, faith and reason would be able to unite "once again," this time more securely. Then the two wings noted by Pope John Paul II in Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) would be able to empower the eagle within us to fly without collapsing.

Intuitive wisdom, like an open hand receiving a gfit, actively receives the being-as-being of all that is. Rational wisdom is more like a closing hand that grasps something about a subject as an object. Intuitive wisdom is transcendental; it reaches, as Solomon says in Wisdom 8:1 "from end to end mightily and orders all things gently." Far from being passive, its receptivity for the true, good, and beautiful is "More active than all active things." (Wisdom 7:24)

Intuitive wisdom is actively receptive before, through, and beyond reason. It receives the heart withhin the mind, and the mind within the heart, and is deeply integrative. Intuitive wisdom is the warming light and the luminous warmth that does not always need to grasp and define. And when grasping and defining in the mode of reasoning, it stays with the subject and does not leave it for the sake of developing, for instance, the kind of technology that does not know when to quit its invasion of nature, such as human embryonic manipulation and destruction.

Women who are interested in faith and family have a mission for wisdom. Our calling comes from both the supenatural gift of the Holy Spirit and the natural gift of our being as women. We can grow by studying the way men think; that is their special and much needed gift for the good of the human family. Basically, however, we become who we are as women by receiving the gift of our own unique power for loving wisdom, and for wisdom about love.

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Mary Rosera Joyce is the author of twelve books and numerous articles. Her latest publication (about the meaing of active receptivity) is The Future of Adam and Eve: Finding the Lost Gift (LifeCom 2009). Her webiste is Lifemeaning.com.

Printed by permission of the author.