>The question is wrong -- it implies that there exists some sort of
>essence of womanhood to be understood. There is not, any more than there
>is an essence of "man" or of "humans" to be understood.
>
>Carrol
>
>VI. Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the _human_ essence.
>But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
>individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Carrol,
I don't know whom you're quoting here (I guess I haven't been up on some
thread or other), but there seems to be a logical problem built into this
"VI" above.  The idea of an abstract human essence seems simply to
be transferred from an individual essence to an ensemble essence.
This is just a beside-the-point aside.
==Dan

Dan Pearlman's home page:
http://pages.zdnet.com/danpearl/danpearlman/

My new fiction collection, THE BEST-KNOWN MAN IN THE WORLD AND OTHER
MISFITS, may be ordered online at http://www.aardwolfpress.com/
"Perfectly-crafted gems": Jack Dann, Nebula & World Fantasy Award winner

Director, Council for the Literature of the Fantastic:
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/

OFFICE:
Department of English
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
Tel.: 401 874-4659
Fax: (253) 681-8518
email: [log in to unmask]