Aristotle defines man as a rational animal. The first of the modern political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes, took this definition and expanded on it, creating a tradition of political philosophy that continues on, in modified form, to the present day.

Hobbes was the first to introduce the concept of the state as a social contract between individuals. He begins with a definition of human nature: men (he left out women) are rational, and self-interested. With no state or sovereign over men, in a state of nature as he calls it, each man will do all he can for his own survival. This includes brutalizing all the others, when he is put into competition with them for limited resources. According to Hobbes, he has every right to do so. And so the state of nature is a state of anarchy (or war, as he calls it), in which life is "nasty, brutish, and short." The solution is to get all the men to lay down their right to brutalize one another. Each man is self-interested and rational, and each will see it is to his advantage to lay down his right to harm others, in exchange for their laying down their right to harm him. This is in his own self-interest, and if he is rational (which all men are), he will do so. This is the social contract of the state.

This philosophy has come to be known as political Liberalism. Its basic tenets are the definition of man as having rational self-interest, and the state as a rational social contract between men, in which each lays down his right to harm others, in exchange for their laying down their right to harm him. Thus with a state over men, personal self-interest and common self-interest are to a degree united: all are moving toward the common self-interest. What is called Conservatism in the popular dialogue is really a particular branch of political Liberalism, in which political rights are emphasized, especially the right to keep all capital that is gotten by legal and ethical means. The basic conception of human nature, and the state as a social contract, are preserved in this form.

The feminists saw a problem with this. Early on, they saw that men did not see them as quite rational, and the men had certain evidence for this. After all, in the 19^th century into the early 20^th century, women were generally not involved in intellectual institutions, scientific advancements, university positions, positions of political or legal power, and other rational pursuits. The men who oppressed them said that they were by nature less rational, and so were being protected. The feminists replied with a philosophy called Liberal Feminism.

Liberal Feminism says, in part, that there is no biologically determined psychological difference between men and women, only a biologically determined physical one. Gender is defined as psychological; sex is physical. Gender is socially constructed, while sex does not determine psychology. All is nurture, nothing is nature. Thus, the reason women weren’t involved in the intellectual community was their oppression and socialization: they were socialized from birth to do nothing but bear children and do housework, and until recent times they were only rarely educated in the intellectual disciplines. One can see why the feminists must be so strict when they say gender is completely socially constructed: if the psychology of women is different from men by nature, this suggests the oppression of women developed naturally out of nature: women were simply less fit for intellectual pursuits. Thus the paternalism of their oppressors is justified unless the feminists claim gender is all due to socialization.

This is a rough outline of Liberal Feminism. It goes beyond simply liberating women to do intellectual work. It stands up for the very humanity of women: if a man is a rational animal, and a woman is less rational than a man, a woman becomes something less than human, something more like an animal in human form, and she is therefore not deserving of all the rights of man. The view of women as irrational, and its consequence according to Liberalism that they are less than human, and not properly participants in the social contract of the state, sheds light on the fact that women were denied the vote in this country until 1920. Liberal Feminism, however, is not the only school of feminist philosophy; but has been very popular in the past, and is the only school relevant to the present essay.

Does the schizophrenic have any reply to political Liberalism such that Liberal Feminism has? It seems, on the surface, that he has certainly lost his reason. If he has, he is not a rational animal; and if man is a rational animal, he is an animal in human form, for he certainly cannot be called rational.

Certainly this view of the schizophrenic as irrational does not explain all the oppression of the schizophrenic, such as oppression in Marxist states—which reject this view of human nature quite explicitly—and schizophrenics have had an especially hard time in Cuba. But political Liberalism, with its emphasis of self-interest and reason as the essence of what it is to be human, can somewhat be blamed for the treatment of schizophrenics in the past, and the paternalism of some psychiatrists in the present. Only 8 states presently (2002) have no restrictions on the right to vote having to do with mental impairment, some state constitutions specifically denying this right to "the insane".

Is there any way to defend the humanity of the schizophrenic, in the face of a definition of a human being as a "rational animal"? Do we need to redefine human nature, or schizophrenia itself? The rest of this essay will grapple with that question, and the explanation of human nature presented will be the key to understanding psychosis.