charles moyer wrote: > > ---------- > > Could someone > offer an example of a writer from the period who had "a profound > understanding of women"? > 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. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled: 1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment [_Gemut_] as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract -- _isolated_ -- human individual. 2. The human essence, therefore, can with him be comprehended only as a "genus," as an internal, dumb generality which merely _naturally_ unites the many individuals. K.M. _Theses on Feuerbach_