II. Gilman’s philosophical work

II. GILMAN’S PHILOSOPHICAL WORK

Gilman’s life philosophy sought the advancement of humanity. She was a believer in social service and hard work. “The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it,” she wrote in her autobiography. “The religion, the philosophy set up so early have seen me through.”10 She critiqued male-bias in philosophy and religion, and advanced a theory of social evolution that incorporated her feminist and socialist politics. Her greatest contribution to socialist feminist theory and social philos-ophy was her critique of domestic industry. Women and Economics, her most famous work, began her career as a philosopher and was translated into French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, and Japanese shortly after its appearance in 1898. Yet it was the subsequent book, Human Work, more difficult to publish, that she was proudest of. “This is the greatest book I have ever done, and the poorest - that is, the least adequately done.”11 Like all of her theoretical books, Human Work was bold in its critique and vision. Her most theoretical, and also amusing work (by her own estimation) was The Home.

The main thesis of Gilman’s social philosophy is that we must guide humanity’s transition from its current ego-androcentric system, with its sexuo-economic relation, to a socio-gynococentric system with advanced- economic relations, much as “in astronomy we had to change from the geo-centric to the solar-centric theory of our planetary system.”12 She develops this philosophy through her critical discussion of androcentric philosophy and religion, social evolution, free labor, social ethics, suicide and euthanasia. 

1. Androcentric Philosophy

Gilman saw the history of philosophy as a massive study in patriarchal philosophy which attempts to function as an “anti-toxin” to the oppres-sion of women that it perpetuates. She summed up the history of philosophy in terms of its corresponding diseased conditions:

The self-torturing savage is the precursor of the Stoic philosopher; the self-indulgent savage, of the Epicurean. The submissive and long- oppressed Oriental produces his philosophy of resistance and progress, crying “Never say die!” and “You can’t keep a good man down!” The morbid woman-hating Schopenhauer gives us a philosophy of grisly pessimism, followed by a worse degree of Nietzsche. In more modem times we have the pragmatic philosophy of William James, and the more esoteric work of Bergson.13

Gilman critiqued the male-biased philosophy of her own time.

Dominant early thinkers being men, and having in their minds as premises the common errors as the nature and power of women, naturally incorporated these errors in their systems of philosophy. When the women thought, is not recorded, any more than the lion has erected a statue to the victor in the hunt.14

Androcentric philosophy or male-biased philosophy is inadequate for affecting the progress of humanity because it is cut off from women’s insights and sensibilities. The emergence of androcentric philosophy was “natural” for humanity:

It was natural enough that the mind of man should evolve a philos-ophy of sex calculated to meet his desires, and as a philosophy, serenely indifferent to the facts.15

Yet, androcentric philosophy is no longer appropriate for humanity because its “woman-hating” posture is destructive for the world. Androcentric philosophy, predicated on sexual difference and male dominance, culminates, for Gilman, in Freudianism, with its “belated revival of phallic worship.” Gilman saw Freud’s “perverted sex-philos-ophy,” “the last effort on the part of man to maintain the misuse of the female.”16 

Gilman preferred human philosophy to androcentric philosophy. A human philosophy and its corresponding free and healthy society, would only exist at a future time when female philosophers were fully recognized. Human philosophy ought to be committed to social service. It is women who excel at caring for others, a capacity integral to collective health and freedom,

Her philosophy will so differ, her religion must so differ, and her conduct, based on natural impulses, justified by philosophy and ennobled by religion will change our social economics at the very root.17

Women’s philosophy must differ, for Gilman, because there is a central difference between the masculine and feminine attitudes toward life, with the feminine superiority adapted toward the development of social consciousness and social service. Human philosophy, shaped largely by women, would assume basic tenents of social evolutionary theory, advancing a theory of social motherhood necessary to preserving and advancing humanity:

A rational and strengthening philosophy of life will come to us through thinking motherhood. It is time.18

A gynocentric social philosophy would promote certain social changes. It would see motherhood not as domestic service but as fundamental to the race, would specialize currently consolidated motherly tasks, advocate educational reform over prison expansion, and emphasize human life and birth over fear of death.

2. Androcentric Religion

Gilman was a deist believing in God as a being “not limited by per-sonality, inescapable, an everacting force to be used”.19 God was gender-neutral, an energy force that one could use for strength and guidance in social service. Through the power of God, humans could advance society. “As to power,” she wrote, “that was God. There is plenty of God. Enough for us all. We have but to help ourselves to that illimitable force.”20 Just as God was impersonal, Gilman privileges the social group over the individual. It was social consciousness and not individual consciousness that would survive. She held no hope for 

personal immortality, nor did she fear death. Rather she saw herself as part of the collective consciousness which was immortal: In her seventies, she wrote,

My life is in Humanity - and that goes on. My contentment is in

God - and That goes on. The Social Consciousness, fully accepted,

automatically eliminates both selfishness and pride.21

Androcentric religion, in contrast to Gilman’s own religious views, privileges the individual over the group, the afterlife over social life, it is full of “baseless dogmas” and morbid anxiety for a belief in personal immortality. Androcentric religion has not promoted human happiness for society. Further, its masculist bias has been preoccupied with fear of death seeing life as a hunt, man as the hunter and fighter, and death as the ultimate crisis.

Androcentric religion further failed to advance humanity by assuming that women were “private servants” and not the rightful mothers of the human race. How different religion would be if women shaped it, Gilman believed, for women are not hunters and fighters, nor do they have a perverse concern with death. It is women’s duty and responsibility to guide religion by expanding motherhood to social service. Social motherhood would maintain and improve humanity.