The Moral Skeptic (Studies in Feminist Philosophy)

Standards of Rationality and the Challenge of the Moral Skeptic

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Some might prefer to define feminism in terms of a normative claim alone: Of course this qualification might be and is used for various purposes, but one persistent usage seems to follow the qualification with some claim that is hard to distinguish from claims that feminists are wont to make.

Or one might be willing to acknowledge in a very general way that equality for women is a good thing, without being committed to interpreting particular everyday situations as unjust especially if is unclear how far these interpretations would have to extend. Feminists, however, at least according to popular discourse, are ready to both adopt a broad account of what justice for women would require and interpret everyday situations as unjust by the standards of that account. Those who explicitly cancel their commitment to feminism may then be happy to endorse some part of the view but are unwilling to endorse what they find to be a problematic package.

As mentioned above, there is considerable debate within feminism concerning the normative question: What is the nature of the wrong that feminism seeks to address? For example, is the wrong that women have been deprived equal rights? Is it that women have been denied equal respect for their differences? Is it all of the above and more? What framework should we employ to identify and address the issues? Feminist philosophers in particular have asked: Do the standard philosophical accounts of justice and morality provide us adequate resources to theorize male domination, or do we need distinctively feminist accounts?

Note, however, that by phrasing the task as one of identifying the wrongs women suffer and have suffered , there is an implicit suggestion that women as a group can be usefully compared against men as a group with respect to their standing or position in society; and this seems to suggest that women as a group are treated in the same way, or that they all suffer the same injustices, and men as a group all reap the same advantages.

But of course this is not the case, or at least not straightforwardly so. As bell hooks so vividly pointed out, in when Betty Friedan urged women to reconsider the role of housewife and demanded greater opportunities for women to enter the workforce Friedan , Friedan was not speaking for working class women or most women of color hooks Neither was she speaking for lesbians.

Women as a group experience many different forms of injustice, and the sexism they encounter interacts in complex ways with other systems of oppression. In contemporary terms, this is known as the problem of intersectionality Crenshaw , Botts But given more recent work on trans issues such a gender-specific term would today raise many more problems than it would solve.

Very broadly, then, one might characterize the goal of feminism to be ending the oppression of women. But if we also acknowledge that women are oppressed not just by sexism, but in many ways, e. And some feminists have adopted this interpretation e. Note, however, that not all agree with such an expansive definition of feminism. One might agree that feminists ought to work to end all forms of oppression—oppression is unjust and feminists, like everyone else, have a moral obligation to fight injustice—without maintaining that it is the mission of feminism to end all oppression.

In other words, opposing oppression in its many forms may be instrumental to, even a necessary means to, feminism, but not intrinsic to it. For example, bell hooks argues:. Feminism, as liberation struggle, must exist apart from and as a part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms. We must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact.

This knowledge should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and practice. Unlike many feminist comrades, I believe women and men must share a common understanding—a basic knowledge of what feminism is—if it is ever to be a powerful mass-based political movement. For example, feminists who themselves remain racists will not be able to fully appreciate the broad impact of sexism on the lives of women of color—nor the interconnections between racism and sexism.

Furthermore because sexist institutions are also, e. This move shifts the burden of our inquiry from a characterization of what feminism is to a characterization of what sexism, or sexist oppression, is. So, for example, although sexism restricts the opportunities available to—and so unquestionably harms—both men and women and considering some pairwise comparisons may even have a greater negative impact on a man than a woman , overall, women as a group unjustly suffer the greater harm.

It is a crucial feature of contemporary accounts, however, that one cannot assume that members of the privileged group have intentionally designed or maintained the system for their benefit. The oppressive structure may be the result of an historical process whose originators are long gone, or it may be the unintended result of complex cooperative strategies gone wrong. Leaving aside at least for the moment further details in the account of oppression, the question remains: What makes a particular form of oppression sexist?

If we just say that a form of oppression counts as sexist oppression if it harms women, or even primarily harms women, this is not enough to distinguish it from other forms of oppression. Virtually all forms of oppression harm women, and arguably some besides sexism harm women primarily though not exclusively , e.

What makes a particular form of oppression sexist seems to be not just that it harms women, but that someone is subject to this form of oppression specifically because she is or at least appears to be a woman. The suggestion that sexist oppression consists in oppression to which one is subject by virtue of being or appearing to be a woman provides us at least the beginnings of an analytical tool for distinguishing subordinating structures that happen to affect some or even all women from those that are more specifically sexist Haslanger But problems and unclarities remain. For example, is the idea that there is a particular form of oppression that is specific to women?

Or can we be pluralists about what sexist oppression consists in without fragmenting the notion beyond usefulness? Two strategies for explicating sexist oppression have proven to be problematic. The first is to maintain that there is a form of oppression common to all women. Although MacKinnon allows that sexual subordination can happen in a myriad of ways, her account is monistic in its attempt to unite the different forms of sexist oppression around a single core account that makes sexual objectification the focus.

A second problematic strategy has been to consider as paradigms those who are oppressed only as women, with the thought that complex cases bringing in additional forms of oppression will obscure what is distinctive of sexist oppression. This approach is not only flawed in its exclusion of all but the most elite women in its paradigm, but it assumes that privilege in other areas does not affect the phenomenon under consideration.

As Elizabeth Spelman makes the point:.

In a world in which a woman might be subject to racism, classism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, if she is not so subject it is because of her race, class, religion, sexual orientation. So it can never be the case that the treatment of a woman has only to do with her gender and nothing to do with her class or race. Other accounts of oppression are designed to allow that oppression takes many forms, and refuse to identify one form as more basic or fundamental than the rest. Plausibly others should be added to the list. Sexist or racist oppression, for example, will manifest itself in different ways in different contexts, e.

Acknowledging this does not go quite far enough, however, for monistic theorists such as MacKinnon could grant this much. However, if we pursue a pluralist strategy in understanding sexist oppression, what unifies all the instances as instances of sexism? After all, we cannot assume that the oppression in question takes the same form in different contexts, and we cannot assume that there is an underlying explanation of the different ways it manifests itself.

Different groups work to combat different forms of oppression; some groups take oppression against women as women as a primary concern. If there is a basis for cooperation between some subset of these groups in a given context, then finding that basis is an accomplishment, but should not be taken for granted.

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An alternative, however, would be to grant that in practice unity among feminists cannot be taken for granted, but to begin with a theoretical common ground among feminist views that does not assume that sexism appears in the same form or for the same reasons in all contexts. We saw above that one promising strategy for distinguishing sexism from racism, classism, and other forms of injustice is to focus on the idea that if an individual is suffering sexist oppression, then an important part of the explanation why she is subject to the injustice is that she is or appears to be a woman.

This includes cases in which women as a group are explicitly targeted by a policy or a practice, but also includes cases where the policy or practice affects women due to a history of sexism, even if they are not explicitly targeted. The commonality among the cases is to be found in the role of gender in the explanation of the injustice rather than the specific form the injustice takes. Building on this we could unify a broad range of feminist views by seeing them as committed to the very abstract claims that:. Continuing with this intentional openness in the exact nature of the wrong, the question still remains what it means to say that women are subjected to injustice because they are women.

On one hand, the claim that someone is oppressed because she is a woman suggests that the best causal explanation of the subordination in question will make reference to her sex: Note, however, that in both sorts of cases the fact that one is or appears to be a woman need not be the only factor relevant in explaining the injustice. But if the injustice takes a form that, e. For example, the practice of raping Bosnian women was an intersectional injustice: Of course, these two understandings of being oppressed because you are a woman are not incompatible; in fact they typically support one another.

In other words, the causal mechanism for sexism often passes through problematic representations of women and gender roles.

In each of the cases of being oppressed as a woman mentioned above, Paula suffers injustice, but a crucial factor in explaining the injustice is that Paula is a member of a particular group, viz. This, we think, is crucial in understanding why sexism and racism, and other -isms are most often understood as kinds of oppression. Oppression is injustice that, first and foremost, concerns groups; individuals are oppressed just in case they are subjected to injustice because of their group membership.

On this view, to claim that women as women suffer injustice is to claim that women are oppressed. Where does this leave us? There are disagreements among feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist efforts.

Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice against women as women. Feminism brings many things to philosophy including not only a variety of particular moral and political claims, but ways of asking and answering questions, constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods, and new topics of inquiry. Feminist philosophers work within all the major traditions of philosophical scholarship including analytic philosophy, American pragmatist philosophy, and Continental philosophy.

In short, they are philosophical topics that arise within feminism. Approaches to feminist philosophy are almost as varied as approaches to philosophy itself, reflecting a variety of beliefs about what kinds of philosophy are both fruitful and meaningful. To spell out such differences, this section of the SEP provides overviews of the following dominant at least in more developed societies approaches to feminist philosophy.

The following are links to essays in this section:. All these approaches share a set of feminist commitments and an overarching criticism of institutions, presuppositions, and practices that have historically favored men over women. Feminist philosophies of most any philosophical orientation will be much more perspectival, historical, contextual, and focused on lived experience than their non-feminist counterparts. Unlike mainstream philosophers who can seriously consider the philosophical conundrums of brains in a vat, feminist philosophers always start by seeing people as embodied.

Feminists have also argued for the reconfiguration of accepted structures and problematics of philosophy. For example, feminists have not only rejected the privileging of epistemological concerns over moral and political concerns common to much of philosophy, they have argued that these two areas of concern are inextricably intertwined. Part 2 of the entry on analytic feminism lays out other areas of commonality across these various approaches. For one, feminist philosophers generally agree that philosophy is a powerful tool for understanding.

Claims to universality, feminist philosophers have found, are usually made from a very specific and particular point of view, contrary to their manifest claims. Another orientation that feminist philosophers generally share is a commitment to normativity and social change; they are never content to analyze things just as they are but are instead looking for ways to overcome sexist practices and institutions. Such questioning of the problematic of mainstream approaches to philosophy has often led to feminists using methods and approaches from more than one philosophical tradition.

The Moral Skeptic - Hardcover - Anita M. Superson - Oxford University Press

Even with their common and overlapping orientations, the differences between the various philosophical approaches to feminism are significant, especially in terms of styles of writing, influences, and overall expectations about what philosophy can and should achieve. Analytic feminist philosophy tends to value analysis and argumentation, Continental feminist theory values interpretation and deconstruction, and pragmatist feminism values lived experience and exploration.

They tend to share with Nietzsche the view that truth claims often mask power plays. Yet where Continental and pragmatist are generally wary about notions of truth, analytic feminists tend to argue that the way to. These differences and intersections play out in the ways that various feminists engage topics of common concern. One key area of intersection noted by Georgia Warnke is the appropriation of psychoanalytic theory, with Anglo-American feminists generally adopting object-relations theories and Continental feminists drawing more on Lacan and contemporary French psychoanalytic theory, though this is already beginning to change entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism.

Given the importance of psychoanalytic feminism for all three traditions, a separate essay on this approach to feminist theory is included in this section. No topic is more central to feminist philosophy than sex and gender, but even here many variations on the theme flourish. Many will borrow freely from each other and find that other orientations contribute to their own work.

Even the differences over sex and gender add to a larger conversation about the impact of culture and society on bodies, experience, and pathways for change.

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Philosophers who are feminists have, in their work in traditional fields of study, begun to change those very fields. The Encyclopedia includes a range of entries on how feminist philosophies have intervened in conventional areas of philosophical research, areas in which philosophers often tend to argue that they are operating from a neutral, universal point of view notable exceptions are pragmatism, poststructuralism, and some phenomenology. Historically, philosophy has claimed that the norm is universal and the feminine is abnormal, that universality is not gendered, but that all things feminine are not universal.

Not surprisingly, feminists have pointed out how in fact these supposed neutral enterprises are in fact quite gendered, namely, male gendered.

Feminist Philosophy

For example, feminists working on environmental philosophy have uncovered how practices disproportionately affect women, children, and people of color. Liberal feminism has shown how supposed universal truths of liberalism are in fact quite biased and particular. Across the board, in fact, feminist philosophers are uncovering male biases and also pointing to the value of particularity, in general rejecting universality as a norm or goal. Feminist critical attention to philosophical practices has revealed the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes. Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.

Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender, feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked what should count as knowledge.

In some such cases mainstream philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases, alternative proposals have seemed more promising. Resources listed below have been chosen to provide only a springboard into the huge amount of feminist material available on the web. The emphasis here is on general resources useful for doing research in feminist philosophy or interdisciplinary feminist theory, e.

The list is incomplete and will be regularly revised and expanded. Further resources on topics in feminism such as popular culture, reproductive rights, sex work, are available within each sub-entry on that topic. Feminist Philosophy First published Thu Jun 28, Approaches to Feminism 4.

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Interventions in Philosophy 5. Introduction As this entry describes, feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. So, for example, a liberal approach of the kind already mentioned might define feminism rather simplistically here in terms of two claims: Normative Men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.

Descriptive Women are currently disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect, compared with men […in such and such respects and due to such and such conditions…]. In an effort to suggest a schematic account of feminism, Susan James characterizes feminism as follows: For example, bell hooks argues: As Elizabeth Spelman makes the point: Building on this we could unify a broad range of feminist views by seeing them as committed to the very abstract claims that: Approaches to Feminism Feminism brings many things to philosophy including not only a variety of particular moral and political claims, but ways of asking and answering questions, constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods, and new topics of inquiry.

The following are links to essays in this section: Analytic Feminism Continental Feminism Pragmatist Feminism Intersections Between Pragmatist and Continental Feminism Intersections Between Analytic and Continental Feminism Psychoanalytic Feminism All these approaches share a set of feminist commitments and an overarching criticism of institutions, presuppositions, and practices that have historically favored men over women. For one, feminist philosophers generally agree that philosophy is a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and our relations to each other, to our communities, and to the state; to appreciate the extent to which we are counted as knowers and moral agents; [and] to uncover the assumptions and methods of various bodies of knowledge.

Yet where Continental and pragmatist are generally wary about notions of truth, analytic feminists tend to argue that the way to counter sexism and androcentrism is through forming a clear conception of and pursuing truth, logical consistency, objectivity, rationality, justice, and the good. Interventions in Philosophy Philosophers who are feminists have, in their work in traditional fields of study, begun to change those very fields.

Entries under the heading of feminist interventions include the following: Topics in Feminism Feminist critical attention to philosophical practices has revealed the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sara, , Queer Phenomenology: Alanen, Lily and Charlotte Witt eds. Race, Gender, and the Self , New York: Jacqui and Lisa Albrecht eds. Feminist Perspectives on Racism , New York: Women of Color Press. Haciendo Caras , San Francisco: Essays on Ethics , Cambridge, MA: Barker, Drucilla and Edith Kuiper eds. Reprinted in in her Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression , New York: Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards, , Manifesta: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Bell, Linda, , Beyond the Margins: Reflections of a Feminist Philosopher , New York: Benhabib, Seyla, , Situating the Self: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 27 4: Men, Women, and Rape , New York: Butler, Judith, , Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , New York: Lesbian and Gay Displacement , Oxford: Ethics , 99 2: Philosophical Reflections , Bloomington, IN: Cimitile, Maria, , Returning to Irigaray: State University of New York Press.

Code, Lorraine, , Ecological Thinking: Stanford Law Review , 43 6: The New Press, xiii—xxxii. Plato is the first Western philosopher to address it extensively in The Republic. In the dialogue, Thrasymachus asserts that justice is the interest of the stronger, which he illustrates with the story of the ring of Gyges.

The ring, when turned a certain way, makes its bearer invisible and thus able to escape detection when acting immorally. Glaucon challenges Socrates to demonstrate that the just life is more advantageous than the unjust life, or, that rationality requires being a moral person.

Hobbes develops his contractarian moral theory in the context of his attempt to defeat a self-interest based skeptic about moral action. Henry Sidgwick, in the late s, argues that there are two equally compelling sets of reasons—moral and prudential—and that there is no way to adjudicate between them such that one always overrides the other.

David Hume believes that most of us have reasons to be moral grounded in the universal sentiment of sympathy or benevolence, but for others, such as the sensible knave, who lacks such feelings, Hume offers self-interested reasons having to do with peace of mind, reputation, and the like, and, if these be rejected, there is nothing more to say.

Since the time when these historical figures tackled the issue of why be moral, it has been largely ignored. Recently, however, the topic of practical skepticism has garnered significant attention since when David Gauthier, in the spirit of Hobbes, proposed a self-interest based contractarian theory with an eye to defeating the skeptic who wants it to be shown that every morally required action is rationally required.

This theory of rational action and choice, known as the expected utility theory, is appealed to heavily by economists and social scientists and is taken by Gauthier to be the parameter within which skepticism needs to be defeated for the reason that self-interested action is seen as action that is most in opposition to moral action.

Hence, if the skeptic is successfully defeated, the moral philosopher will have defeated the worst-case scenario against morality. Other challenges are more indirect, aiming at the expected utility theory, the notion of self-interest as desire satisfaction, and the legitimacy of the desires that rationality dictates the agent to satisfy. An issue related to skepticism is that of the possibility of rational amoralism. The amoralist recognizes that there is a reason to act morally but denies the force of moral reasons, believing that they do not necessarily motivate.

Internalists about reasons and motives, who endorse a position known as motivational internalism, deny that amoralism is a tenable position, while externalists, who deny the necessary connection between reasons and motives, insist that it is. The vast amount of literature on this debate takes the issue of skepticism to a deeper level than merely demonstrating the overridingness of moral reasons. A similar point can be made about the issue of the authority of moral reasons, or whether moral reasons necessarily bind a rational person.

Demonstrating that acting in morally required ways is rationally required addresses the theoretical skeptical challenge, while demonstrating that moral reasons necessarily take on, or grip, rational agents addresses the practical skeptical challenge.

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