In philosophy, we often stress that the questions we pose are more important than the answers we may find. We tend to think that, while answers may not last, questions remain essential. Or, to put it differently, if we are able to ask the right questions, i.e., if the questions are appropriate, pertinent and relevant, as the philosopher Celia Amorós would say, sooner or later we will arrive at good answers that are valuable for humanity’s adventure, so that we may move forward.

This book, Ethics for Celia, emerged from several questions that have struck me deeply. How is it possible that, up until now, as far as I know, no book like this had been written? Not at least a book with a title such as this. Not a book that starts from the simple, clear and distinct idea that a mother philosopher or a philosopher mother will have something to say to her descendants about the meaning of life and about what it means to live a good life. Didn’t the great philosopher Aristotle write a book of ethics for his son, the young Nicomachus? Thousands of years have gone by since the Nicomachean Ethics was written and yet, I ask again, is it possible that during that time no female philosophers have managed to find a moment of reflection and rest to teach their daughters about what they have learned in life? To whisper in their ear some of the experience and wisdom they have acquired over several decades on planet earth?

Let us take this question seriously. What would be a satisfactory answer? Perhaps we could begin by supposing that women philosophers are modest people and, therefore, although they have been entrusted with the task of caring, guiding and educating their daughters and sons from the moment they took their first steps, they do not feel qualified to write down their knowledge. As if they didn’t have something important to say and were unable to say it in a straightforward and affectionate manner, to the youth and the human community. Another possibility is that women philosophers, having as they do first-hand knowledge about their daughters and sons, know better than to think the young will pay any kind of attention to what they have to say. They tell themselves, “What is the point of writing anything? If they don’t listen to me at home, they are even less likely to do so through a book…” Well, could be. But there is something about these answers that does not begin to convince me. There are many female philosophers in the world today and many of them are mothers too. Why have they not followed the path of the Stagirite, the great philosopher Aristotle? Of the man who did not allow himself to be daunted by the task of classifying and organizing everything there is in existence, and still found the time to devote to his son and write about the meaning of life. I regularly receive philosophy catalogues from big publishers, and I never cease to be surprised by the infinite variety of topics being addressed by female philosophers. From Antigone to algorithms, there is more than enough bibliography. And yet, no trace of ethics for our daughters?

The answer that convinces me the most is the one I have myself encountered when I began to write Ethics for Celia. Our world has been built upon a double truth that runs through everything, that gnaws at it and undermines it. It is a world in which we see that prodigious scientific, technological, and artistic progress was not accompanied by moral progress. This double truth that permeates everything is the very radical and ontological inequality between women and men, which has further generated double standards and meanings of life. The meaning of a man’s life, of which our dear Aristotle speaks to his young Nichomacus, had an underlying necessary condition: that the meaning of women’s existence was “to make his life easy and pleasant,” to speak with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Or we may also use the words of the great anthropologist Lévi-Strauss: “woman is the most valuable gift.” Or, according to the no less brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche: “woman is the most dangerous toy.” I resort to the words of these geniuses because they manage to express a lot in a succinct manner. Would it be possible for us to reciprocate the words of these philosophers, whose work is essential to us? “Boys, dear Celia, are the most dangerous toys, be careful when coming back home alone at night…” No, no, and no. 

Philosophy, art, and science have gone very far, but they have done so with men standing on the shoulders of women, who were prevented from focusing on anything else besides sustaining and caring for the reproduction of human life, the most demanding and cyclical of tasks. There have indeed been two different meanings of life which make up a double truth in our beloved Western tradition. Such truths are neither reciprocal nor complementary.

Naïve as I am, I strived to write abstractly as if there was none but one only truth that I could explain, and which had the same meaning for both my daughter and my son. I soon realized that this was simply impossible. I could no longer tell them: “Read the Odyssey, you’ll see how beautiful is the journey of Ulysses….” I would now have to tell them, “Ulysses would not exist without a Penelope who spent her days doing nothing.” It is no longer acceptable to present Penelope’s case as a noteworthy example of a meaningful life: a woman who is told to shut up and go back to the gynoecium by her own son. I can no longer tell them to relate to the western tradition we have inherited as if it had not brought along disastrous consequences for the world—a world in which women have been confined to silence, reduced to almost nothing. The mark of this tradition persists in today’s world. One day I realized I had forgotten to talk to my children, my daughter and my son, about the meaning of life and what had led me, despite everything, to decide that bringing new beings into this world was worth it. That, against Schopenhauer and all his patriarchal wits, the woman philosopher does not opt for the suicide of humanity, i.e., for putting an end to what this celebrated German philosopher considered to be perpetuating the irrational chain of pain which is human life.

After more than two hundred years of constant struggle to conquer a place for us in the human community (“that very exclusive club which is humanity,” in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre), women are about to take another step and transform the self-awareness of humanity. Or did anyone think that women were going to turn into 21st century Ulysses and go on a trip around the world without a need to radically transform the way we organize ourselves, to transform the very concept of what a human being is and the future dreams of humanity?

From our recently conquered position as human beings, we now see the extent to which we must rebuild our common home. The first thing we must do is perhaps become aware of the double truth that constitutes us and how it presupposes the destruction of moral philosophy, of the categorical imperative, and of our very ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes. Men must be able to place themselves in women’s positions, something they have consistently failed to do throughout history. Who would want to be Penelope, the one who seems to be destined to nothing besides watching time go by? Women, in turn, must stop putting themselves in the place of everyone around them and ask themselves who they are, what they want, and what direction they seek for both their lives and humanity. Women must stay focused and not allow others to subordinate them, to heterodesginate them, and to once again tell them, with modern words, what a woman is and what she must do. It is time for us to speak up and for humanity to listen. There is a lot at stake, dear Celia.

In what follows, you will find a selection of texts from Ethics for Celia: Against the Double Truth (“Ética para Celia: contra la doble verdade,” Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2021). The first texts belong to the introduction of the book, from which the rest of the reflections on the good life are derived from—I won’t say more geometrico, but they are based on those texts. I start from some axioms such as “Human beings are born to be cared for” because if you are not cared for, and quite a lot, when you are born, you will not reach the age of reason. It is not optional: without care, there is no humanity. From there follows the radical question of how we are going to distribute this responsibility for care among all, women and men, and our conclusion will mark a new stage for humanity. Men will have to come down from the shoulders of women, from where they have risen to reach higher, further and stronger. They will return to a more realistic size: that of grounded beings who are aware of the absorbing and demanding human need for care. Women, freed from the unbearable heaviness of being the almost exclusive caregivers of humanity, will be able to expand and recover their formerly truncated wings to fly and dream about our common future. We sorely need that women start defining, from their own point of view, what is good and valuable for all humanity.

The second text focuses on the good life and recognition. Can there be rational criteria to resolve this endless philosophical dispute? Although perhaps we cannot find it through theoretical means, women seem to have found it in action. Faced with analyses that refer to a liquid society, a runaway and aimless world, women do appear to have some solid, clear and distinct ideas about the new direction that we should set for our human community to bequeath a planet, a world and a life with meaning for those that will come after us. This is what has led them to start a long journey that began more than two hundred years ago—the journey towards their positioning as fully-fledged human beings. Grounded human beings have no need to collect all kinds of objects and people to set up their life projects. They need recognition and to be able to live without fear.

Finally, I’ve selected a text that addresses some contemporary issues related to sexuality and where I identify the enormous limitations of androcentric moral philosophy. The question from which I begin is simple: why have moral philosophers determined that ethics should not reflect on sex? That sex should be left out of moral reflection? Why leave rape, sexual harassment, incest, and paedophilia out of the domain of moral reflection? What is really at stake in the type of relationships that are featured in the top ten most viewed videos on pornography websites?

We, women, are impatient to find answers to these new questions. The new generation of young women has this exciting path ahead of them, which involves redesigning the adventure of humanity and celebrating a new social contract between women and men. This will be, as a matter of fact, the first social contract they actually endorse since in all others, whether fictitious or real, women have always been absent. This will furthermore be our last chance to preserve the beautiful planet we currently inhabit.

I. Introduction

Ethics for Celia, an ethics for girls?

This is an unconventional book on ethics, which collects the reflections that a woman philosopher, in the prime of her life and carrying the wisdom provided by calm study and lived experience, wants to share with her devoted and wayward daughter.

Riiiiing, riiiiing, riiiiing!!!

“Wait a second, Celia, the cell phone is ringing. Please be quiet, I’m talking. What are you saying? How interesting and timely it is, to be writing a book on ethics for girls, now that feminism is trendy—a book on feminist ethics…Wait, I can’t hear anything, let me finish clearing the table and I’ll write you.”

Letter from the author:

Allow me to ask you a question: have you ever wondered whether the Nicomachean Ethics, the book that the great philosopher Aristotle dedicated to his son, was a book for boys? Have you wondered how interesting and timely it would be to publish an ethics book for boys? It would certainly serve these two thousand-plus years of patriarchy…

Let me tell you that if you have never thought of the Nicomachean Ethics as an ethics for boys, I don’t know why you shouldn’t conceive of a book titled Ethics for Celia under the same light. A book of ethics for human beings.

Ethics for Celia is a book for girls if and only if the Nicomachean Ethics is a book for boys. Because I am a philosopher and this is a book that I dedicate to my daughter.

This book is for everyone. What’s more, I would add that it is, above all, a book for boys and grown men like yourself. So that, once and for all, men can finally access a different moral standing, which has been occupied by women. It is particularly hard to accept this challenge because philosophy itself has provided the grounding that justifies us in not putting ourselves in the position of others. Such justifications are derived from its inherent androcentrism, the resource by which men identify with the neutral human being and see women as a peripheral part of humanity. That is why there are no books on the history of men but there are books on the history of women. The history of men overlaps with the history of humanity.

This identification is almost an a priori category of the understanding in that it is the starting point of everything we know and perceive. This book explores the consequences of living under this double truth: one for women and another for men. 

Let me tell you one thing, Celia: enough is enough! Today, we know that our friends, the philosophers, did not write for us, women. They wrote to legitimize the idea that we should be able to read and write only to the extent that it would make their lives easy and pleasant. This is what Rousseau wrote: “The education of women must be subordinated to that of men. To make life sweet and pleasant for them: these are the duties of women at all times and places, and for which girls must be educated from infancy.” We are not going to hold a grudge against them for we cannot change the past. But knowing this has changed our lives and our self-awareness. It is now necessary to create awareness in the whole of society so that both women and men have a chance to build a new and meaningful life together. This is what ethics is all about.

The double truth, one for women and another for men

Ethics deals with the fundamental issue of your life—no, it is not about sex, where on earth did you read that?—which is to give it meaning, to understand what a good life is and to make sure that one day, in your old age, you may get to say “I have been happy. I have been happy in my own way.” It is also concerned with the fact that, on such a day, there will be someone around you who wants to listen to your beautiful words—that means that you will have another person, whomever she or he might be, by your side.

Since you do not live alone, ethics has a B-side, which simultaneously deals with another fundamental question: the kind of limits you’ll impose on yourself when it comes to giving meaning to your life and seeking your happiness. Listen to me. Setting limits is not an option. There is no room for questions such as: “Why should I do anything for others or impose limits on my dreams?.” I’m sorry but, if you don’t want to accept it, you can go on and live in a cave or a deserted island, or even lock yourself alone at home with wi-fi. No one prevents you from doing so, but ethics deals with the limits that you place on yourself in the task of giving meaning to your life in relation to others. No one should accept that some people put their lives at the service of other people’s projects, just as no one should give meaning to his or her life at the expense of other people.

Let me tell you something very serious: philosophy and ethics have built a double truth about the meaning of life and about the limits that we must impose on ourselves. Philosophy and ethics have established and legitimized a different and often opposite meaning of life for men and for women, where there are some norms of what is valuable and good for women, and other norms for men.

This book, my adored Celia, is going to focus in-depth on revealing this double truth and explaining how it essentially corrupts any form of behaviour that we could truly call “moral” and animated by universality. You must act in such a way that the maxim that presides over your actions becomes universal: what is good for women should be good for men, and vice-versa.

Ethics has consecrated a double truth and such mandate has hindered and continues to hinder the real possibilities of moral progress of our human community. The double truth really is a fountainhead of inequality and domination, designed so that we forget human beings aren’t originally born sociable, they are born to be cared for.

To challenge this double truth, it is not enough to suggest that we simply consider ourselves included in one truth: “Welcome to public life,” and that is it. It is not enough because the problem impacts the very foundations of the definitions of “good” and “valuable,” and we women have our own ideas on the matter. “I think I have been a good father,” says a venerable man who abandoned his very young daughters because he heard the calling of love and partying. Had the mother been such a good mother as he was a “good father” their two daughters might as well be considered orphans.

We must arm ourselves with a method that can serve as a guide because the rules of method are girls’ best friends. The hermeneutics of suspicion will be our first and main rule: we will be suspicious of any truth that is addressed only to women or only to men. We are going to be demanding. I am speaking about “truth” as it refers to beliefs, norms and values that guide us in our quest for the meaning of life.

Women have never been moral subjects: moral judgements are not for them!

Philosophers have devoted much of their time to explaining why women are not capable of making moral judgments. This statement might surprise you because it contradicts a familiar discourse according to which women are “better” than men, i.e., less selfish, more virtuous, with a greater sense of sacrifice and devotion.

However, if you think about it carefully, you have probably also heard the opposite discourse, one that presents women as “worse” than men. According to this view, we women are said to be more twisted, less transparent, and are to blame for everything men do wrong. Men, on the other hand, even if slightly brute, are still seen as noble and brave, as eternal children.

As you can see, we can state everything and its opposite about women. You might think this is just proverbial and part of folklore and therefore should not be given much importance. Unfortunately, that is not the case. All of this has been affirmed and explained by the greatest of philosophers and, specifically, by those one must study to finish high school, that is, to prove that you know your culture. Listen to me carefully, Celia. At this point, you may think I have gone mad. You may ponder whether reading all of those feminist books has led me down the road taken by that gentleman from La Mancha. That’s not the case. Allow me to give you a couple of examples.

Ethics investigates how moral judgments are formulated and which features distinguish them from other types of judgment The judgments of practical or moral reason are not formulated in a descriptive way, but rather in a normative way. The sciences assert things such as “Cows are mammals” and E = mc2. A moral judgement would be expressed in another way: “Cows should be mammals.” You can tell it doesn’t make much sense. What makes sense is a sentence such as “You should not make a cow suffer.” Moral philosophy writes about what we should or should not do, and why moral codes uphold judgments such as “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Honour thy mother and father.”

Moral judgments are those that require impartiality and neutrality. They require putting our affections and emotions on hold. For philosophy, women have not been moral subjects because they are incapable of making impartial and neutral judgments: feelings, affections and passions blind us. That women are not neutral beings has been argued by almost all philosophers—this is how they legitimized our exclusion from public life for thousands of years and, until very recently, prevented us from being judges or serving on a jury by arguing that we would prioritize our emotions over the reasonable arguments of both the prosecutor and the defence.

Moral philosophy deals with the choices we make. For other philosophers, women have not been moral subjects because they do not have dilemmas of choice: they do not suffer any kind of agony, struggle or anguish that leads them to debate between good and evil. As Hegel said, “In woman, being and duty coincide.” Does this mean women always wish for what they must wish for? I’m not sure whether this is supposed to make us lucky, but don’t worry—keep reading and we will find out eventually.

If this all sounds a bit too abstract to you, I’ll explain it differently: we could say that girls do not generally feel the urge to have sexual relations with boys who are unconscious or in an alcohol-induced coma, but rather feel the need to help them should they find them in such a situation. If this is the case, we can say that their desire coincides exactly with their duty since morality prescribes that we should not abuse people, especially if they are in a vulnerable state and even less as a group. The consequence is that their behaviour cannot be qualified as strictly “moral.” Likewise, women should take care of the children, but they also want to do it. Indeed, there is nothing they wish for more than counting 4123 elephants before falling into the arms of Morpheus. So, if we conceive of women as beings in which desire and duty coincide, why do they need morality for? Morality, once again, is a man’s issue.

Human beings are givers of meaning. The meaning of women's life is given from the start!

Giving meaning to our life always involves a choice: we choose between one action or another, we choose to study sciences or languages, we choose to stay or to leave. And choosing, dear Celia, is not always pleasant—it can lead to anguish and doubt because deep down we fear being wrong. With regard to this drama of choosing and searching for the meaning of life, let me tell you that men kindly took that freedom away from us so that we wouldn’t have to experience the anguish of having to choose between one path and another. It is so hard to choose! As Spinoza said, “all determination is negation.”

Surely, some philosophers might justly tell us: “Listen up, women, you always had the possibility of choice. Unlike salmons who are determined by default, human beings are radically free.” Well, if by “choosing” one means choosing between killing yourself or being killed, then yes, women always had the option to choose. Achilles, the hero of Troy, could choose between going to war or not, becoming a legend for posterity or not, while a Greek woman of his time could not even choose to attend the Olympics as a spectator. If she attempted to go disguised as a man and happened to be caught, she would be sentenced to death. But, of course, she could still choose to go or not. Bless this radical freedom of ours! Let me tell you what the freedom of a Greek woman consisted of: she could certainly criticize her father, as long as she whispered very quietly within the gynoecium, and even then, she faced the risk that her lips could be read. Bless our ontological freedom! We are not, indeed, like salmons that come with an instruction manual.

You may be thinking that all of this belongs to another era, that I am stuck in the past and that things are not the way they were before—women are also faced with the drama of choosing their life project. Yes, I agree, and that is why I am writing this book. So that women that belong to present times, such as you, will consider the indelible mark that the double truth has left in our societies. Today, you girls find yourselves in a very contradictory situation, having as you do the opportunity to seek out your destiny, but retaining the almost exclusive mandate to care for and support the life projects of those around you. And these two contradictory truths are weighing too heavily on your shoulders. If being objectified wasn’t already bad, women have now become subjects who are made to choose “freely” to objectify themselves. No one can put up with so many contradictory messages:

“Seize your potential, think only of yourself, love yourself, be the woman of your life! Ugh, watch out! No one can put up with you, at this rate you will be left all alone! Be careful, you are getting old! You need to enjoy life more!”

Of course, today you can “choose,” for we are living in a consent-based patriarchal system. If you didn’t have the right to choose, this book would more likely be called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman or Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. But those books have already been written by Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges, two women of the 18th century who were simultaneously masters of thought and action.

But I want to talk to you about that mark. Doesn’t it seem natural that thousands of years of exploitation and submission would leave a strong imprint on our attitudes and our most basic beliefs?

This is a kind of ethics that reflects about sex

Philosophers continue to rule, and to what an extent! They have the power to create and legitimize intellectual categories: “this is philosophy, this should be left out, this other thing is not the subject of ethics,” and so forth. In particular, they have the power to determine what counts as progressive and what doesn’t, what is conservative and what is “transgressive.” Don’t ask me why, but they love this word: “transgressive.” When they say it, you can feel them levitating a little.

Although philosophers have diverse views among themselves, there are still great consensuses. If they agree on anything, it is that sex should not be the subject of moral philosophy, and everyone seems to agree with them, especially in the artistic and creative areas. Almost no one contradicts them so as not to risk getting attacked. The slogan is: do not moralize sex!

This book, quite to the contrary, maintains that we must think critically about sex. In sex, as in the rest of human relationships, power imbalances, abuse and humiliation can occur and they do in fact occur: from the deep indifference towards the clitoris and female pleasure to sexual harassment and rape. Tell me, my divine Celia, in the name of what consensus have all these abuses been left out of ethics and moral philosophy? Especially when rape implies the annihilation of the moral position: put yourself in another’s place!

At that time, was it impossible to think otherwise?

We are often told that, at that time, it was impossible to think otherwise. For example, it was impossible to think that women were subjects who wanted to have a life of their own. When people say, “at that time,” they mean the 5th century B.C. just as well as the 19th century. How silly of us to believe that philosophers were precisely the kind of people who had the ability to think against the grain of their time.

In our naiveté, we believed that philosophy was a certain way of interrogating reality, that philosophers ask themselves questions that others cannot begin to contemplate. We believed in the beautiful idea that philosophy shakes everything up.

We were told this story about a cave, where the philosopher was the person who realized that reality was very different from how it appeared inside. The philosopher would come out into the light and discover that women were not inferior creatures, dedicated to serving and pleasing men, but rather fully-fledged human beings. He would return, excited by the news. “Hey guys! These women, they are just like us. They also have brains and want to live plainly!.” The rest of the group killed him.

Think, Celia, of the brave people that have defended ideas that were not accepted at their time. Christian women and men faced death for their beliefs. They believed things considered strange at the time: that God had become a man, had died and had resurrected. Others risked their lives defending what was inconceivable: that the Earth moved around the sun and not the other way around. Where everyone held steadfast to their preconceived ideas, the philosopher was committed to truth. Throughout history, there have been thinkers and scientists who were truly audacious. Darwin stated that human beings were not the result of creation but of evolution, and thus challenged the contemporary belief system.

And yet, it did not cross anyone’s mind that women might want to participate in public life, get out of the gynoecium or even attend the Olympics. Listen carefully, Celia: I do not know of a single scientist who challenged the prejudices of his time regarding the inferiority of women. Bizarre, right? But it is the truth, and it has had serious negative consequences for the moral progress of humanity. Perhaps it did not influence scientific and technological progress in the same way, but even in those areas, we should be careful to examine the consequences of women’s exclusion.

Wait, now let us laugh a little together, darling Celia. Don’t let anything take away women’s sense of humour: “At that time, it was impossible to think otherwise.”

Okay, okay, you're right, but don't mess with Nietzsche!

Times are changing, that is a fact. Women have spent more than two hundred years fighting for their recognition as people and philosophy finally, albeit slowly, catching up. But this is a process that takes time. As they say, "Minerva's owl takes flight at dusk,” which means that philosophy tends to only reflect on events after they have already happened. In other words, after some two hundred years of feminist struggles, some nod and say: “Okay then, we must include a woman in the textbooks.”

Today, even male philosophers admit that philosophy has been very patriarchal, and some take this into account in their writings and thinking.

But we all have our limits and I have found that the limit of young students is called Nietzsche. Young students often declare themselves feminists, but they don't quite see what this has to do with questioning the intellectual greatness of Friedrich Nietzsche. They express it very well with this battle phrase: “Don't mess with Nietzsche!”

They ask for respect for the great transgressor, the one who reflected on the icy peaks of thought, the one who said he was writing posthumously since his readers had not yet been born. The one who stated that women were the most dangerous toy. Nietzsche, aka the transmuter of all values.

Of course, we are going to mess with Nietzsche, and rightly so. The trouble with Nietzsche goes well beyond the fact that he has famously recommended to men that they carry a whip when interacting with women. He is just as patriarchal as all the others.

I like to mess with Nietzsche because I consider myself his disciple. In my own way, of course, with a certain freedom, as I have learned from the master. The subtitle of one of his works has always inspired me especially: The twilight of the gods or how to philosophize with a Hammer.  Shall we, Celia, philosophize with our own hammers too?

Nietzsche was indeed a disruptive philosopher, with a taste for insult, and I like to think these are characteristics I have also inherited from him. That is why, even if it costs me a bit, I draw strength from his example when he insulted and cursed Socrates, Christianity and socialism, and I say out loud: “Nietzsche is kind of foolish!” I like to think he would be proud of me, and not of those who, without understanding the true spirit of his philosophy, cry out: “Don't mess with Nietzsche!”

Go where the heart takes you? No way, use your head!

There is a debate in contemporary ethics about the role played by reason and emotion in human action. In that context, it is possible to identify a small consensus that contends that the fact that we have placed reason on a pedestal has generated monsters and that we should therefore limit the scope of its application. However, we must also ask ourselves if our emotions and impulses always lead to good decisions.

In ethics and moral philosophy, the importance of cultivating a moral sensitivity, i.e., of “putting ourselves in the place of others,” is often put forward as the fundamental moral position. In these pages, you will realize that women have done nothing but put themselves in the place of others, both symbolically and materially, both in books and in everyday life. What we need now is to put ourselves in our place for once, to gain awareness of our position and to combat the nefarious effects of the double truth that persists in our society.

That is why I urge you to think before you act, and not to let yourself be carried away by your heart.

There is a sentence that we all like very much: Primum vivere deinde philosophare. It means that we must first live and then reflect on what we have lived. But the person telling you this is already explaining to you how to live your life, and they do it through thinking. You should do the same: think about how you want to live your life before you act. And do it even if, by thinking, you come to conclude that you must act more and think less.

Think about the pandemic we are living through. Don’t you think we should think before acting? It makes no sense to follow our hearts if it leads us the wrong way. Reason and emotion should walk hand in hand. Reason minimizes our prejudices, confusion and dispersion, where inequality thrives. Equality, on the other hand, is a friend of clear, distinct, Cartesian ideas. “Two plus two equals four.” “This job is rubbish, and the salary and conditions are exploitative.” These are clear and distinct ideas.

Acting with the head does not mean we don’t have a heart. On the contrary, a good head enlarges the heart. You need the heart to be able to always put yourself in the place of others. You need a heart so as not to judge others without knowing where they came from. But, above all, you need the head to know that you can learn a lot from our history, from the adventure of humanity. Read and you will see that, in this exciting story, roles have rarely been assigned based on merit. You appear in the script as the daughter, the mother, the lover, the friend, and the prostitute. Allow me to ask a provocative question: wasn’t that exactly where the heart of these women had led them? Didn’t their emotions contribute to the fact that they have been defined in relation to others? Today we know that it wasn’t simply their hearts that led them to believe that was their place in society—it was patriarchy.

It is very easy for your heart to take you quickly and directly to the heart of the patriarchy. Use your head and you will return to your heart. In the meantime, you will have contributed to changing this world so that others will live better. You won’t be here by then, but you will have given meaning to your life.

II. On the private and public spheres, and the conditions of the good life. What the hell do women want?

At this point, we are immersed in the double truth that philosophy has offered us regarding values and the meaning of life. The public and private spheres have always been and still are two spaces with different values and purposes. Two spaces with very different meanings of life and promises of happiness.

The domestic sphere, which is the space of the private, was established as the sphere of necessity, associated with the repetitive cycles of nature. Think about the monotony of rain hitting the windows. Being born and growing up and then dying, home version 2.0: cooking, eating and then washing up, and doing it at least four times a day for 365 days a year. Supported by the domestic sphere, the public sphere became the place where the dreams of humanity—meaning, those of men—took shape. This is how the sphere of culture, science and freedom was created. Just as all inventions, conspiracies, books and cafes, wars and revolutions were possible. I do not mean to romanticize what has been and continues to be minework or, for that matter, office work. Nor do I mean to glamorize what it was to be a young soldier in the trenches of the First World War. It doesn't sound like a good life; it certainly doesn't sound like something to be envious of. But it is the space for which women have fought so hard, in search of a meaningful life.

Think about it for a moment: would it be better to have been the mother of the soldier in the trenches? In what way? If those mothers had had some power, would they have sent their sons to war?

Philosophy today tends to assert that there are no criteria to define what makes up a good life; therefore, it would seem that there are no criteria to discern what is better: to dedicate one’s life entirely to caring for others or to participate in any other activity in the public sphere. This is a difficult question to answer from a mere theoretical lens since philosophy cannot state that one life is more valuable than another. All lives are equally valuable. But those who fought and are fighting in the streets do have a clear idea of the objective conditions of a good life.

Philosophy has debated a lot about what makes up a good life and has concluded that it is better not to assert anything definitive on the subject. This is because you have to deal with two seemingly incompatible beliefs: that all lives are equally valuable and that some forms of life are more valuable than others. All lives are equally valuable because they all have the same human and ontological value. But it is also easy to realize that not everything is equally valuable in life. There is always the underlying concept that some things are better than others, even in the most apparently anti-system positions. The leader of the band The Slits, Viv Albertine, once wrote: “Punk was self-righteous, dictating what was right and what was not.” There is always a form of normativism or crypto-normativism. Values may depend on each community and each historical moment, but it is also clear that revolutions and riots come to be due to the concrete aspiration for a better life, the desire to enjoy equal living conditions and to ultimately decide what makes a good life.

The question of what a happy life specifically consists of has never led to an agreement. John Stuart Mill, for instance, claimed that self-awareness was already in itself a good way of life. That is the context in which he proffered that famous sentence: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Today he would most likely be accused of swinophobia or elitism, as has already happened. But his words make a lot of sense.

Imagine that your son asserts resolutely that he is only happy playing video games. That, simply put, is what makes him happy. How to convince him that there are more things in life and that he should try to find out about them? Imagine his response: “Mom, I'm not stupid, I understand what you're saying, but I'm not interested. If you respect me, let me be free, be myself. Go away, please, and let me continue playing. Plus, you spend the day working on the computer, reading, watching documentaries, and complaining about everything. Look at me, I'm not complaining. Maybe you should be like me. Play with me, I have a controller for you.”  (Note: Virgin of Guadalupe! I had never noticed that word up until now as I saw it written, a “controller”). “Yes, my dear son”—you would probably reply—“I would like to use the controller, but you forget a small detail—that in addition to being the provider for this household, I am also moonlighting as a domestic helper. Who prepares the full-time gamer’s dinner?”

The good life is not just a question of individual preference but one of social justice. It is not possible to separate these two dimensions of moral life since, by doing so, we forget that individual success may be achieved at the cost of other people’s lives.

The history of the struggle of women for changing the course of their lives may shed some light on this thorny subject, which theory alone cannot solve. More than providing arguments, I am going to resort to history. Two hundred years ago, women rose to make a clear statement to the human community that they did not want to continue living enclosed in the private sphere. They demanded society stopped talking about the excellence of women and pay empty tributes to a supposed essence of femininity and claimed back their agency. Women have fought for the right to vote, for paid work, for being soldiers and civil guards, and even for being miners. Notice how men never fought to have what we had. There is no record of protests with slogans such as “We want to do what women do. We want to live like them, sacrificing and caring for the projects of others. Let them fight and work, and give us their homes to look after and their children.”

Men did not want to abandon their way of life. As a matter of fact, they still heroically resist abandoning it, however much women have drastically changed theirs. They seem not to want to give up and continue enjoying what is, in principle, incompatible: the Apollonian and the Dionysian in caring for others. But, of course, why would someone want to renounce such an astounding situation in which someone freely decides (cof cof) to put their life at your service—to subordinate their life project to yours? “My love, you can be a scientist, a football player, a conductor, or a truck driver, and I will take care of your house. We will follow you around the world, we will go to Andorra with you. Or we can wait for you here, so the children can be more stable.” And remember, someone will also have to care for our elders—those who have survived the pandemic. This is what we call the ontological offering of half of humanity.

This, dear Celia, is what has led millions of women around the world to say, “Enough is enough” and “We can’t take it anymore.” We have been carrying this message for two hundred years.

III. How is it possible that rapes exist? The annihilation of sex as recognition

Moral philosophy addresses violence, but rarely the theme of sexual violence. Why is that? Isn't it perhaps profoundly revealing of the human condition that some resort to violence against the people they have right by their side, even a breath away? This is a direct question to a unique and exclusively masculine behaviour: how is it possible that rapes exist? How is this behaviour tolerated among men? How is it possible—we ask you—that a young person or several people feel sexual pleasure by abusing a paralyzed young woman, in a state of shock, who screams and pleads?

Philosophers, those specialists in thinking, owe us an explanation of why they have barely even thought about this. We are waiting for an answer.

There is a very popular answer in society which is the theory of the psychopath. According to this theory, a rapist is not a normal person, but a sick one. Normal men don't rape and so contend that we should not generalize and put them all in the same bag. They accuse feminists of viewing every man as a potential rapist. But this isn’t true, and those who claim it should sit down and read a book or two about rape culture. That which we call rape culture has to do with the fact that our culture has always downplayed and even romanticized rape, all the while blaming women for putting themselves at risk: for walking alone at night, for dressing to provoke men, for accepting an invitation to have dinner, to dance, or to go to their homes, for having a certain body or a certain hairstyle and, definitely, for existing.

The United States, that oh-so-advanced democratic nation, has recognized the existence of a domestic problem related to rapes on university campuses. Barack Obama himself, the father of two daughters and the first black president of the United States, made a heartfelt appeal to society: “It is on us to stop this.” There are no psychopaths on university campuses in the criminal sense of the term—there are rites of passage and college students’ traditions. One of them consists of young men coming together, waiting for the girls to drink until they become unconscious and then raping them. Such cases came to light many years ago because some students became pregnant and did not know why. Obama's speech is from the year 2014. The ruling against one of these rapist kids became famous a while later.

Once upon a time, a young man walked around the university campus when he found an unconscious girl on the ground, approached her, pulled down his pants and raped her. Some Swedish kids who were walking by saw it and, instead of waiting for their turn, denounced him. While waiting for trial, the father of the alleged rapist wrote a heartfelt letter to the court. He stated that his son was not violent and that he could end up paying a very high price for a twenty-minute action. He invited the jury members to put themselves in his place as a parent and the judge expressed his concern for what could happen to the young man in prison. But what about the girl—did anyone care about her? Was there nobody who could put themselves in her place? As tends to happen in these cases, it seemed like she was invisible. That was until she decided to write an open letter: “You don't know me, but you've been inside me.” The male student at the elitist University of Stanford was in jail for only three months. He was released earlier due to good behaviour.

Who has never been young and stupid?

At that time, the #MeToo movement had not yet begun to give voice to the revolt of women against the impunity of men who had sexually abused them, many of whom hid behind the excuse of consent.

Rape culture continues to spread its tentacles. The world of arts and entertainment has contributed, too often, to idealize both prostitution and rape. Now it focuses on normalizing it via pornography. It is a world that does not tolerate criticism or limits. It takes refuge in several slogans: “This is just fiction”; “We are witnessing a new puritanism”; “They want to censor us.”  Through pornography and prostitution, they contribute to immunising and socialising boys to never be able to put themselves in women’s positions. There is a video game called Rape Day and there are films that present rape in a comic manner or as an expression of profound love for women in a coma and for wives who are doped with sleeping pills. Another type of desensitization is learnt with prostitution. The reasoning seems to be: “If sex is something you can buy for fifteen euros, then it shouldn’t be so bad to get it for free.”

Reflection upon these themes shouldn’t have you thinking about how to fit rape into your life, i.e., whether you should let anger dominate you or whether you should instead get up, shake off your skirt and say “well, it is the price to pay for my freedom.” Frankly, I don't think you should have to pay for your freedom, let alone with sex. If sex is just sex, how is it possible that one of the parties involved is so frequently subjected to violence, abuse and humiliation?

Remember, dear Celia, when we began talking about sex, we did so under the epigraph: Sex, another form of recognition. And now we come to the conclusion that rape is the annihilation of recognition. What interests us most is to understand how a few good guys can actually come to do it. What is the process by which they stop recognizing a human being and start seeing a girl at their service? Another question: is sex being used to de-individualize girls? “The best woman is the one below” and similar expressions reveal the erasure of all traces of humanity. Is sex as we conceive it simply a means of male domination over women? “What you need is a good fuck, a good cock in the face,” I just heard this in a Spanish romantic comedy. For goodness’ sake!

We, women, cannot come to understand rape because we simply cannot put ourselves in the place of the rapist. We are unable to understand what the desire to rape may consist of, to see a terrified boy under our force as an object of desire. There is a complete rupture here because, when a girl imagines a rape, she is only able to put herself in the place of the person being raped.

Celia, what I’m saying should not be taken as a discourse against boys or sex, so much as against a culture that is stealing sexuality from girls, undermining relationships based on reciprocity and pleasure. As long as boys are trained by our society to exclusively think of sexuality as that which belongs to them, and while education centres remain private businesses, something will always fail.

If I am writing this, it is because I am an optimist and know we have overcome similar or worse situations in the past. If history has taught us anything, it is that change is always possible. Mind you, in the days of slavery, even the great moral philosophers accepted rape as normal. Just as they agreed to treat women as property.

Change is possible and the future awaits you. But we cannot mask the stench of our origins without really knowing them. Pudenda origo (Note: Here’s Nietzsche again, how wonderful!). Erasing our origins is ultimately an impossible task. Better to open that “Pandoro” box and let all the mess and patriarchal evil in our relationship with sex come out in the open once and for all.