feminist philosophy a discussion of philosophical concerns that refuses to identify the human experience with the male experience. Writing from a variety of perspectives, feminist philosophers challenge several areas of traditional philosophy on the grounds that they fail (1) to take seriously women’s interests, identities, and issues; and (2) to recognize women’s ways of being, thinking, and doing as valuable as those of men. Feminist philosophers fault traditional metaphysics for splitting the self from the other and the mind from the body; for wondering whether ‘other minds’ exist and whether personal identity depends more on memories or on physical characteristics. Because feminist philosophers reject all forms of ontological dualism, they stress the ways in which individuals interpenetrate each other’s psyches through empathy, and the ways in which the mind and body coconstitute each other. Because Western culture has associated rationality with ‘masculinity’ and emotionality with ‘femininity,’ traditional epistemologists have often concluded that women are less human than men. For this reason, feminist philosophers argue that reason and emotion are symbiotically related, coequal sources of knowledge. Feminist philosophers also argue that Cartesian knowledge, for all its certainty and clarity, is very limited. People want to know more than that they exist; they want to know what other people are thinking and feeling.
Feminist philosophers also observe that traditional philosophy of science is not as objective as it claims to be. Whereas traditional philosophers of science often associate scientific success with scientists’ ability to control, rule, and otherwise dominate nature, feminist philosophers of science associate scientific success with scientists’ ability to listen to nature’s self-revelations. Since it willingly yields abstract theory to the testimony of concrete fact, a science that listens to what nature says is probably more objective than one that does not.
Feminist philosophers also criticize traditional ethics and traditional social and political philosophy. Rules and principles have dominated traditional ethics. Whether agents seek to maximize utility for the aggregate or do their duty for the sake of duty, they measure their conduct against a set of universal, abstract, and impersonal norms. Feminist philosophers often call this traditional view of ethics a ‘justice’ perspective, contrasting it with a ‘care’ perspective that stresses responsibilities and relationships rather than rights and rules, and that attends more to a moral situation’s particular features than to its general implications.
Feminist social and political philosophy focus on the political institutions and social practices that perpetuate women’s subordination. The goals of feminist social and political philosophy are (1) to explain why women are suppressed, repressed, and/or oppressed in ways that men are not; and (2) to suggest morally desirable and politically feasible ways to give women the same justice, freedom, and equality that men have. Liberal feminists believe that because women have the same rights as men do, society must provide women with the same educational and occupational opportunities that men have. Marxist feminists believe that women cannot be men’s equals until women enter the work force en masse and domestic work and child care are socialized. Radical feminists believe that the fundamental causes of women’s oppression are sexual. It is women’s reproductive role and/or their sexual role that causes their subordination. Unless women set their own reproductive goals (childlessness is a legitimate alternative to motherhood) and their own sexual agendas (lesbianism, autoeroticism, and celibacy are alternatives to heterosexuality), women will remain less than free. Psychoanalytic feminists believe that women’s subordination is the result of earlychildhood experiences that cause them to overdevelop their abilities to relate to other people on the one hand and to underdevelop their abilities to assert themselves as autonomous agents on the other. Women’s greatest strength, a capacity for deep relationships, may also be their greatest weakness: a tendency to be controlled by the needs and wants of others. Finally, existentialist feminists claim that the ultimate cause of women’s subordination is ontological. Women are the Other; men are the Self. Until women define themselves in terms of themselves, they will continue to be defined in terms of what they are not: men. Recently, socialist feminists have attempted to weave these distinctive strands of feminist social and political thought into a theoretical whole. They argue that women’s condition is overdetermined by the structures of production, reproduction and sexuality, and the socialization of children. Women’s status and function in all of these structures must change if they are to achieve full liberation. Furthermore, women’s psyches must also be transformed. Only then will women be liberated from the kind of patriarchal thoughts that undermine their self-concept and make them always the Other. Interestingly, the socialist feminist effort to establish a specifically feminist standpoint that represents how women see the world has not gone without challenge. Postmodern feminists regard this effort as an instantiation of the kind of typically male thinking that tells only one story about reality, truth, knowledge, ethics, and politics. For postmodern feminists, such a story is neither feasible nor desirable. It is not feasible because women’s experiences differ across class, racial, and cultural lines. It is not desirable because the ‘One’ and the ‘True’ are philosophical myths that traditional philosophy uses to silence the voices of the many. Feminist philosophy must be many and not One because women are many and not One. The more feminist thoughts, the better. By refusing to center, congeal, and cement separate thoughts into a unified and inflexible truth, feminist philosophers can avoid the pitfalls of traditional philosophy. As attractive as the postmodern feminist approach to philosophy may be, some feminist philosophers worry that an overemphasis on difference and a rejection of unity may lead to intellectual as well as political disintegration. If feminist philosophy is to be without any standpoint whatsoever, it becomes difficult to ground claims about what is good for women in particular and for human beings in general. It is a major challenge to contemporary feminist philosophy, therefore, to reconcile the pressures for diversity and difference with those for integration and commonality.
See also ETHICS, EXISTENTIALISM , MARX- ISM , POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY , POSTMODER. R.T.