UAB
philosophy
iIn Ethical Issues for the 21st
Century, ed. Frederick Adams, special issue of the Journal of
Philosophical Research, 2005, pp. 213-225.
There
are at least two models of what it is to be a feminist ethicist or moral
philosopher. One model requires that
one accept a distinctively feminist ethical
theory. I will argue against this
model by arguing that since the concept of a feminist ethical theory is highly
unclear, any claim that ethicists who are feminist need one is also unclear and
inadequately defended. I will advocate
what I call a ‘minimal model’ of feminist ethics, arguing that it is
philosophically and practically sufficient to meet feminist goals.
1. ‘Minimal’
and ‘Extended’ Models of Feminist Ethics
On
the ‘minimal model’, to be a feminist ethicist one must meet only two
conditions. First, one must have
certain substantive moral beliefs regarding the treatment of and attitudes
toward women and girls; second, one must believe that any moral theory that implies
that these beliefs are false is ipso
facto defective.[1]
According to this model, some moral beliefs that one
must hold to be a feminist ethicist include the beliefs that at least some[2]
‘women are [and have been] victims of wrongdoing,’ that some have been (and
still are) ‘oppressed,’ and that ‘much of society’s treatment of women is
wrong’ (Brennan, p. 860; Jaggar 1991, p. 95).
Many other seemingly correct moral judgments like these could easily be
voiced at all levels of particularity and generality.
Whether these beliefs are arrived at by intuitively
‘seeing’ their truth or by way of extended reasoning and argument does not seem
to matter for this model: it is neutral between foundationalist or intuitionist
and coherentist or reflective equilibrium-based moral epistemologists, and even
externalist theories of justification as well.
However, what does matter is that the core of these beliefs are thought
to be exceedingly well justified and reasonable, so much so that any abstract
theorizing that implies that these beliefs are false is subject to, at least,
serious doubt and scrutiny, or, more likely, immediate rejection.
Also worthy of rejection are theories that support the
judgments that moral claims like these are generally true but give obviously faulty reasons for why this is
so. Here we might also imagine a
possible view about the treatment of women that is analogous to Kant’s
treatment of animals: men shouldn’t harm women because when they do so they invariably wind up harming other
men. Surely, even if it were true that
men who harm women also (even necessarily) eventually harm men, this doesn’t
approach anything like the best reasons why men shouldn’t harm women. To use a fitting sports metaphor, interactions
with women are not a ‘warm up’ for the moral ‘ball game’ that is played only by
men. This view misses the obvious truth
that women’s interests matter in their own right, just as Kant missed the fact
that beings who have interests but are not autonomous, rational agents (such as
many non-human animals and babies, mentally challenged and senile humans)
deserve to have their interests directly taken into account.
While this Kant-inspired view is obviously flawed
(both for women and, in its intended version, for animals), philosopher who accept
the ‘minimal model of feminist ethics’ might still accept other traditional
ethical theories, such as other Kantian-like ‘golden rule’ or respect-based
rights theories, various deontologies and pluralistic consequentialisms, or
virtue ethics (or, perhaps, some consistent combination of these views).[3] For feminists who seek insight into the basic nature of right and wrong, a
traditional ethical theory is an option.
Some ethicists who are feminists take this option. Allison Jaggar reports that, ‘Not all
feminists are convinced that western ethical theory is deeply flawed . . ; on
the contrary, some propose that one or another existing theory - perhaps with a
little fine tuning - is entirely adequate to address feminist ethical concerns’
(2000b, 348). She characterizes this
position as ‘a matter of adding women and stirring them into existing theory,’
and thereby ‘us[ing] the philosophical resources of [the] times to challenge at
least some aspects of women’s subordination to men’ (1991, p. 82; 2000a, p.
455). Margaret Walker also reports
that, ‘Some philosophers remain convinced that well-established traditions of
moral thought and their allied epistemologies, in particular those of Kant and
Aristotle, can be effectively recruited to feminist criticism’ (1998a, p. 368).[4]
An ethicist who accepts what I have called the
‘minimal model’ of feminist ethics is someone like Walker and Jaggar
describe. He or she remains convinced
that some ‘traditional’ ethical theory is ‘good enough’ to do the job needed to
meet feminist practical and philosophical goals. She thinks something like a traditional ethical theory is roughly
true and that it provides an adequate, if not the best, explanation for why her
substantive moral beliefs about women are true. And she hasn’t been convinced that the general structure of some
traditional ethical theory or theory for how we ought to reason about moral
theory and problems needs to be replaced.
She also thinks that she has not been presented with a clear and
adequately defended alternative to a traditional theory either.
Who might articulate and defend an alternative to this
‘minimal’ model, which accepts traditional ethical theory? Someone who accepts what I will call an
‘extended’ model of feminist ethics. This
model requires that, to be a genuine feminist ethicist, in addition to meeting
the two constraints of the first model (i.e., holding ‘positive’ moral
judgments regarding women and thinking they are well justified) one must also
accept a distinctly feminist ethical
theory.
Here I will examine a recent attempt to articulate
what a distinctively feminist ethical theory would be like. I will argue that this attempt is, at least,
problematic, and that some other common suggestions on how to distinguish feminist
ethical perspectives are also problematic.
Insofar as it is unclear what a feminist ethical theory would be, it is
unclear what sense can be made of any demand, or even suggestion, that
ethicists who are feminist (or any ethicists) should accept one. Therefore, I argue that, since it is
entirely clear and comprehensible, the ‘minimal model’ is theoretically and
practically adequate to meet feminist goals.
Although the minimal model seems to lack current popularity (since it is
rarely discussed or praised by ethicists who are feminists), I advocate
returning to it. [5]
2. ‘Feminist
Conclusion’ and ‘Women’s Experience’ Requirements
In
her survey on the current status of feminist ethics, Samantha Brennan discusses
a move beyond the minimal model of feminist ethics. Brennan suspects that an ethical theory like utilitarianism does
justify pro-female moral judgments since only rarely would disrespecting women,
treating them unfairly, and harming them in other ways maximizes maximize
overall utility (p. 860). She suspects,
however, that since utilitarianism could require
the subordination of women in some possible (however unlikely)
circumstances, it is probably not a theory that a feminist would want to
accept.
But utilitarianism was only an example. She could have, presumably, picked any
traditional moral theory that is extensionally correct – i.e., has the right
practical implications for women – to make the observation that some moral
philosophers who believe that, from their feminist perspective, that
theoretical option is inadequate. For
example, Kantian perspectives allegedly place too much emphasis on reason, to
the denigration of feeling; rights-based perspectives allegedly see people as
radically individualistic, and not community and family-oriented; contractarian
views allegedly seem people as overly adversarial and non-cooperative, and so
forth.
Brennan notes some ethicists who are feminist sense
that they need to start anew and develop a distinctively feminist ethical theory, a theory that not only gets ‘the right
answers’, but ‘get[s] them in the right way’ (p. 860). This ‘right way’ is, presumably, a feminist way, and, presumably, most or
all, traditional ethical theories, even in their contemporary versions, either
fail to do this or do it inadequately.
Thus, in the first section of her paper she ‘examines the tension
between two criteria which an ethical theory must meet in order to be counted
as feminist’ (p. 859).
According
to Brennan, an ethical theory is a feminist
ethical theory if and only if two
conditions are satisfied. First, it
must aim to ‘achieve a theoretical understanding of women’s oppression with the
purpose of providing a route to ending women’s oppression’; she calls this the ‘feminist
conclusion requirement.’ Second, it
must be an account of morality that is ‘based on women’s moral experience(s)’:
she calls this ‘the women’s experience requirement’ (p. 860). She takes ‘feminist ethical theories to be
those ethical theories which share [these] two central aims’ (p. 860).
Although
the notion of a ‘feminist ethical theory’ is commonly mentioned in feminist
writings on ethics, Brennan’s discussion is the only one I have found that
attempts to directly characterize the notion. Thus it is worthy of careful
scrutiny. I am to show that both these
conditions are problematic. So, in
absence of other suggestions for how to understand the notion, the suggestion
that feminist should consider a feminist ethical theory is quite unclear.
3. The
‘Feminist Conclusion Requirement’: A Causal, not ‘Normative,’ Condition
If
feminist ethical theories are ethical theories, then they are a subset of
ethical theories in general. If this is
the case, then Brennan’s first condition, that a theory offer ‘a theoretical
understanding of women’s oppression with the purpose of providing a route to
ending women’s oppression’ is misplaced.
This is because any theory or explanation that satisfies this condition
will not be a rival to any traditional ethical theory, such as utilitarianism
or Kantianism. This is because, in
general, ethical theories do not
attempt to provide theoretical understanding of anyone’s oppression with the purpose of providing a route to ending
that oppression.
To understand any oppression with the goal of ending
it is to try to identify the causes for
why some group is oppressed and to strategize about what can be done to
introduce new causes that will
hopefully result in that group’s ceasing to be oppressed. For feminist purposes, identifying these
causes will likely include identifying the moral beliefs that people have held
that resulted in women being oppressed, including their beliefs (if they have
any) about the general nature of
right and wrong, or their ethical
theories.
But, strictly speaking, this is the task for
historical and social-scientific understanding; we might even describe it as
moral psychology, but it is more psychological than what moral philosophers
typically do. People will philosophical
training might do this quite well (and, perhaps, people without philosophical
backgrounds would do it less well[6])
but this project is to answer difficult historical, empirical and causal
questions that are very different in kind from the theoretical questions about
the basic nature of right and wrong
and good and bad that traditional ethical theories attempt to answer. Brennan characterizes the ‘feminist
conclusion requirement’ as a ‘normative’ condition (p. 860), but,
unfortunately, there really is nothing ‘normative’ about it, at least not in
the sense that moral judgments are said to be normative.[7]
So, anything that
answers to this condition isn’t an ethical theory, or, at least, it isn’t an
ethical theory in any traditional sense of the term. So it cannot rival or be incompatible with any traditional ethical
theory that has substantive moral implications that feminists would agree
with. In fact, some set of
proposition’s meetings this condition identifies it as not an ethical theory and ipso
facto not a feminist ethical theory. Accepting a traditional ethical theory
might very well, in fact, motivate one to pursue these kinds of important
historical and causal questions that the condition alludes to, but many adherents of traditional ethical
theories have no quarrel with anything meeting the condition because it simply
addresses issues than ethicists, qua
ethicists, do not address.
Brennan’s
second claim is that an ethical theory is feminist if it develops an account of morality that is ‘based on women’s moral
experience(s).’ Here moral experience
is understood, roughly, as women’s beliefs about morality, how moral issues and
ethical theories ought to be approached and evaluated, and how things seem,
morally, to women (pp. 864-865). To rule
out non- or anti-feminist women’s moral experiences informing what makes a
theory feminist,[8] this
condition should probably read that feminist ethical theories provide (2’) an
account of morality that is based on feminist
women’s moral experience(s).
There are a number of initial difficulties with
(2’). First, as most feminists are
quick to point out, the ‘moral experiences’ of women and feminist women are not
monolithic: although there is much agreement, there is also difference and
disagreement. Some feminists find their
moral experience lending support to egoistic-libertarian views, like Ayn
Rand’s, Jan Narveson’s or Robert Nozick’s, while others find their experience
to support more caring and other-regarding moral views. Provided ‘positive’ moral views about women
are implied by the theories accepted by these feminists, condition (2’) would
seem to imply that almost any account
of morality can be properly feminist, if it gibes with at least one, or some
sufficient number (but what’s the number?), of feminist women’s moral
experiences.[9] If almost any account of morality is
feminist then that certainly does not allow for a distinct position.
Second, feminist understandings of morality (or
ethical theory) are supposed to contrast with non-feminist understanding, which
are said to be typically held by males.
But there is little or no agreement among this set either. Some male philosophers, both past and
present, take a rather Hobbesian view on ethics: they see us all in highly
adversarial relations to each other, and think that, e.g., the only reason why you shouldn’t kill and
eat your neighbor (if you might want to) is, ultimately, that this (probably)
wouldn’t be in your best long-term self-interest.
Many feminists raise compelling objections to this
picture of morality and often seem to take this as an indictment of all of
traditional ethics. But this is a
mistake since many not-explicitly-feminist male and female philosophers from a
wide variety of theoretical perspectives find this picture of morality false
and repugnant; their moral experiences suggests that, among other important
moral truths, other beings with interests really matter in their own right,
morally speaking, and morality sometimes requires that we sometimes promote
their interests, at times even at cost to our own.[10] So these kinds of objections to egoistic
views are not uniquely feminist.
Feminist will likely share much with these moral
philosophers, yet they do all not call themselves ‘feminists’. So here the difference between some feminist
women’s moral experience and non-feminists’ moral experience many not be very
great. This suggests that it is often
difficult, misleading, and unhelpful to conduct this debate in terms of
generalizations of ‘traditional ethics’ (and ‘feminist ethics’). This is unfortunately common and it would be
better to address the weaknesses and strengths of particular, clearly
identified views than make false generalizations about whole traditions or
certain kinds of thinkers.
While it’s difficult to make very strong
generalizations about feminists, women, men, and the history of moral
philosophy, we should concede that some modest,
yet truthful, generalizations can be made.
One of these, as Brennan notes, is that since all mainstream traditional
ethical theories have been developed by men, these theories ‘reflect the
experiences of this group.’ The result
of this, according to Brennan, is that the moral ‘experiences’ of most, or
many, women are left out and/or made ‘impossible to make sense of’ on these
theories or, more generally, these perspectives (p. 861).
In this context, it seems that what it is for a moral
theory to ‘make sense of experience’ is for it to have moral implications for a
particular domain of life that has moral significance, i.e., it implies that
some actions ought to be done or that some response is morally appropriate, and that it is clear what these
implications are.
One kind of women’s experiences that
Brennan mentions is that of being in families.
Although, of course, men and boys are part of families, she regrets that
we have ‘an ethics for the marketplace or public sphere and no ethics for the
family’ (p. 861). Men’s experiences
allegedly pertain to ‘public’ life, so their main concern is with the moral
issues there, in business and government, to the neglect of ‘private’ or
‘domestic’ issues. Jaggar claims, in
fact, that this neglect perhaps has even resulted in, among other bad
consequences, ‘the abuse of women and children, especially girls, [being]
ignored’ (1991, p. 85; 2000b, p. 352).
Some replies here are needed. First, traditional ethical theories surely imply propositions about how one
ought to conduct oneself within the domestic sphere and in family or
interpersonal relationships. Identifying
these propositions and discerning their truth-value might often be difficult,
but is often quite difficult in ‘the marketplace’ or ‘public sphere’ as
well. It’s just often not to see what
ethical theories imply for any domain, including the ‘public’ domain: since
this is the case, I doubt, contrary to Brennan’s claim, that there really is ‘an ethics for the public
sphere.’ People have ideas for how
society should be ordered, the function of government, and how commerce should
proceed; and they sometimes try to rationally defend them. But there is much disagreement. If there really were a ‘public’ ethic, there
would presumably be much less moral disagreement, especially among politicians
and businesspeople.[11]
Furthermore, the concerns Brennan raises only support
the view that traditional ethical theories are often unhelpful, in the sense that believing one won’t, in itself, give
much guidance on how to conduct one’s life.
But most traditional ethicists agree with that. For example, even I’m firmly convinced that
utilitarianism (or another ethical theory) is true, that doesn’t give me much
of an idea exactly what I should do
with my life in order to maximize utility.
If I think that, whatever I do, I should try to promote human rights, it’s
still not clear whether this might best be promoted by my shopping at Wal-Mart
and sending my savings to Amnesty, or whether I should buy only from often more
expensive businesses that pledge to support a fair wage and workers’ rights. If I think my actions should be such that I
can always will their maxim to be a universal law, there is still the difficult
question of what the maxim of an action is and (if that can be determined)
which maxims I can will, in light of the various maxims I might will.
In itself, adopting an ethical theory – i.e.,
accepting an explanation for what makes actions permissible and what makes them
impermissible – provides little practical guidance. There is often too much relevant empirical information that we
just don’t know and can’t even reasonably guess. But these difficulties do not give reason to think that some
ethical theory is false, which, I
think is what feminist ethics need to argue if they want to advocate feminist
ethical theories.
But perhaps I’ve been a bit too pessimistic. While traditional ethical theories are often
unhelpful, it seems they sometimes are helpful, even when trying to understand
the moral implications for family life.
We are often able to accurately discern the consequences for all in the
family who will be affected by some decision; sometimes answering the question,
‘How you would like that if someone did that to you?’ can be morally
illuminating. At the least, a
traditional ethical theory can often clearly identify some things not to do. So, it just does not seem true that moral experiences of women are
literally ‘impossible to make sense of’ on traditional moral theories. And if they were, that wouldn’t give reason
to think that traditional theories are false, just that they are unhelpful or
have epistemic defects. But again,
some traditional ethicists recognize this and so advocate various ‘rules of
thumb’ for decision-making, and/or encourage the cultivation of virtuous
character types, and/or advocate ‘multiple tier’ models of ethics.
5. Building an
Ethical Theory Based on Feminist Women’s Moral Experience
In
the remaining discussion of the requirement that a feminist ethical theory be
based on feminist women’s moral experience, Brennan argues convincingly that
this requirement will not allow a feminist ethical theory to be ‘relativistic.’
Feminist ethical theories cannot ‘sanction’ the abuse of women or the dismissal
of women’s moral insights, even if local or near-universal custom dictates
it. Brennan also asks some of the critical
questions I raised earlier about what it is for a moral theory to be based on
moral experience.
But, as far as I can tell, she does
not discuss what a moral theory would look like if it were based on feminist
women’s moral experience, so she does not address the issue she raises. How would this kind of theory be different
from a traditional ethical theory that attempts to provide criteria for and
understanding of right and wrong? What
would it appeal to in order to explain what makes
right actions right and what makes wrong
actions wrong? This is what traditional
ethical theories do, so if feminist ethical theories rival these, they will
have to address this kind of question.
One answer, common in the literature
on feminist ethics, is the ‘ethics of care.’
If this is to rival traditional ethical theories, an ethical theory
based on care will need to be presented as something the hypothesis that that
what makes right acts right is the
fact that they are what a caring person does (or would do) and that wrong acts
are wrong because a caring person
wouldn’t do them.
Perspectives in traditional ethics can, and should,
agree that caring is often good and that doing what the caring person would do
is right: they do not entail that one should be uncaring and mean. However, if there are plausible explanations
for why these are so (and it seems
that there are), this suggests that the ethics of care does not provide the best explanation of the nature of and
the difference between right and wrong.
The ethics of care would seem to be another version of an ideal-observer
theory (like the traditional divine command theory or some kinds of
contemporary virtue ethics). These
theories might offer true necessary conditions for acts or persons having some
moral status, they does not explain what it is about some acts or persons that makes them worthy of approval or the
caring response. So, if the ethics of
care is an ethical theory such that it rivals other traditional ethical
theories (that is, it does not merely serve a function that is wholly
consistent with, or even supported by, some traditional ethical theories), it
does not seem to be a particularly good theory. Its association with feminists has nothing whatsoever to do with
why it’s not a good theory, however: it’s not a good theory just because it
does not seem to provide an adequate explanation of what makes anything with a
moral status (acts, persons, intentions, motives, etc.) have the moral status
they do. It might state truths, but
ethical theories do more since they attempt to explain and illuminate.
So, I conclude that
Brennan’s second condition (and my refinements) for a feminist ethical theory,
that it provides an account of morality that is based on feminist women’s moral
experience(s), is problematic. First,
we don’t know which women’s experience are relevant and, second, we do know
that that women’s experiences, i.e., their beliefs and perceptions, wouldn’t make something have its moral status
anyway, so these experiences are not the logical basis of a moral theory. Thus, if one wishes to advocate a feminist
ethical theory, work needs to be done to explain the notion; this needs to be
done also to successfully argue that a moral philosopher who is a feminist
needs one and, perhaps, that non-feminist ethicists should become feminists and
then adopt such a theory.
6. Further
Issues, Briefly Addressed
In
my allotted space, I have made much progress, but my focus has been
limited. To conclude, let me briefly
set out some final issues that could to be addressed. Feminist sometimes claim that it is positions on these issues
below that separate them from non-feminists, but this is not true.
First, Brennan persuasively argues that the notions of
‘rights’ need not presuppose or imply that we are solitary or adversarial
selves. Many traditional ethicists
agree: many think that there are ‘positive’ rights to assistance or aid, not
only ‘negative’ rights to protection or non-interference. Insofar as some feminists object to the
notion of ‘rights,’ Brennan’s response addresses their typical misfiring
objections.
Second, there is the question of the relationship
between ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ in traditional ethics. This debate is best seen in terms of what should influence
ethical decision making and interpersonal moral interaction. Virginia Held writes that that, ‘Caring,
empathy, feeling with others, [and] being sensitive to each other’s feelings
all may be better guides to what morality requires in actual contexts than may
be abstract rules of reason, or rational calculation’ (1990, p. 344; 1998, p.
100). But many within traditional
ethics, at least of its contemporary variety, agree: consequentialists and
virtue theorists would clearly agree, and Kant had a virtue theory and
philosophy of moral education as well.
Many would disagree with Held when she writes that traditional ethicists
generally think that, ‘Emotional attitudes toward moral issues themselves
interfere with rationality and should be disregarded’ (1998, p. 98). This may be true for some, but not for all,
and for those who disagree, they see the issue as much more complicated than
the dichotomy suggested by Held: they argue that emotions can yield epistemic insight, but that they can also reinforce
unjustified prejudices and the difficult challenge is to separate the former
from the latter.
Another issue is whether traditional ethical theories
presuppose or entail any particular picture for what person or moral agents are
like, or whether they ignore empirical differences among persons. For example,
‘The normative subject . . is . . ‘free, white, and twenty-one’ – and a male. This is, ‘the’ moral agent so envisioned is
not (typically) a woman, a child, a person of disadvantaged or despised economic,
educational, racial, caste, ethnic, sexual or religious identity or position,
or a person with temporary, chronic, or progressive disabilities of body, mind,
or spirit’ (1998a, 364).
I do
not think that traditional ethicists assume any picture of a typical ‘normative
subject’ (much less this picture) since most ethical perspectives are sensitive
to empirical differences that affect what one is able to do. Thus,
7. Conclusion:
the Over-Proliferation of Theory
In conclusion, I have argued that the most promising attempt to clarify
the notion of a feminist ethical theory in unsuccessful. Perhaps this lack of success is due to my
having an overly narrow conception of what an ethical theory is. But ethical theories are theories, and
theories are supposed to explain. And
for a feminist ethical theory to be an alternative to non-feminist theories, it
must attempt to explain the same phenomena. But anything meeting Brennan’s
first condition does not do this, and her second condition lacks adequate
precision and anything meeting it would lack explanatory power, compared to the
alternatives.
Thus, I have argued
that feminist perspectives on ethics should not be characterized in terms of
feminist ethical theories: feminist ethicists do not need a ‘feminist ethical
theory.’ My suggestion, which the
‘minimal model’ captures, is that they should be characterized in terms of
their substantive moral commitments towards women and girls. On this model, feminist ethics is an ‘ethics
of care’: feminist ethicists are characterized in terms of what they believe
about women, and also what they care about,
what they find important and worthy to write about, discussion, teach and,
perhaps, act on.
In this feminist
ethicists are similar to philosophers who work on ethical issues concerning
non-human animals. Some philosophers
understand who what happens to animals at human hands argue that, given the
empirical facts, a wide variety of ethical theories and perspectives imply that
the treatment of animals is seriously wrong.
They care enough to do write, teach and even act on these issues. Like many feminists, they are disappointed
that other philosophers (and people in general), do not seem to care. They might even sense that many philosophers
are ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ in the sense that there are much more important
contributions they could, and should,
be making to bettering the world than by attempting to solve highly abstract
and unworldly philosophical, even ethical,
puzzles; thus, they think that many ‘traditional’ philosophers’ cares are
misplaced or poorly ranked. Some
philosophers of a more ‘activist’ leaning consult with historical and social
science research, and their armchair empirical knowledge, to attempt to,
analogous to Brennan’s first condition, ‘achieve a theoretical understanding of
animals oppression with the purpose of providing a route to ending that
oppression.’ So there is a parallel.
But this is all done
without an ‘animalist’ ethical theory.
And analogous thought and action is done about the moral conditions of
homosexuals, children, various racial, ethnic and religious groups, (some?)
fetuses, and other groups, all without a corresponding type-specific ethical
theory. The notion of a feminist
ethical theory seems to suggest the proliferation of theories: a different
ethical theory for every ethical problem or to address every group’s moral
issues, that for each ‘Φ ethics’
there should be a Φ ethical theory. I have argued that, at least for feminist
ethics, the sense that there is an analogous ethical theory is
unjustified. I suspect that analogous
arguments could be developed to respond to suggestions that ethical theories
exist, or should be developed, uniquely for other groups as well.
If traditional
ethical theories are inadequate, we need adequate theory simpliciter. And a theory
will be adequate only if it has the correct implications for these groups and
for the right reasons. Hopefully, we
all might agree on this and ask these questions of a particular ethical theory directly, rather than attempt to
unfruitful discern whether it is feminist or not.[12]
REFERENCES
Brennan, Samantha. (1999). ‘Recent Work in Feminist Ethics.’ Ethics, 109, 858-893.
Baier, Annette (1987). ‘The Need for
More than Justice.’ In Science, Morality and Feminist Theory,
eds. Marsha Hanen and Kai Nielson.
Held,
_____. (1993). Feminist Morality: Tranforming Culture, Society, and Politics.
_____. (1998). ‘Feminist
Reconceptualizations in Ethics.’ In Philosophy
in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, ed. Janet Kourany,
92-115. Princeton:
_____. (1999). ‘Feminist Ethics.’ In Proceedings
of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Vol. 1, Ethics, ed. Klaus Brinkmann, 41-49.
Jaggar, Allison. (1991). ‘Feminist Ethics: Projects, Problems,
Prospects.’ In Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia
Card, 78-106.
_____. (2000b). ‘Feminist Ethics.’ In The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. Hugh LaFollette,
348-374.
Nelson, Hilde Lindemann. (2000).
‘Feminist Bioethics: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going.’ In ‘Symposium
on Feminist Ethics,’ Metaphilosophy
31, 492-508.
Walker, Margaret Urban. (1996a). ‘Feminist Skepticism, Authority, and
Transparency.’ In Moral Knowledge? New readings in Moral Epistemology, eds. Walter
Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, 267-292.
_____. (1998a). ‘Moral Epistemology.’ In A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, eds.
Allison Jaggar and Iris Marion Young, 363-371.
_____. (1998b). Moral
Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics.
[1] I assume that feminists would not find non-cognitive meta-ethical options attractive since non-cognitivisms have a very difficult time making sense of moral objectivity. Feminists certainly would not accept relativisms or subjectivisms – cognitivist views that make the truth values of moral sentence depend on individual or collective approvals – since nothing in those kinds of views necessarily precludes the exploitation of women and the degradation of their moral status from being morally justified.
[2] I don’t know if a feminist ethicist needs be committed to the view that all women, present and past, have been victims, oppressed, treated wrongly, etc., so I restrict myself to the safer quantifiers ‘some,’ or, perhaps, ‘most.’
[3] I do not advocate various Hobbesian and egoistic ethical theories as recommended ‘traditional’ theories. Even many who do not explicitly identify themselves as feminists find these theories false and morally repugnant since they portray us all as ruggedly individualist and adversarial. Feminist writers (e.g., Jaggar 2000b, p. 354; Annette Baier 1987, p. 55 [quoted in Jaggar 2000b]) seem to take contractarianisms to be representative of ‘traditional’ ethical theories, which is a factual mistake.
[4] Hilde Lindamann Nelson (2000) makes similar observations.
[5] Something like the minimal model is mentioned in many writings on feminist ethics, but little attention is given to it. Some are said to hold it but their names tend to not be mentioned. One can easily get the impression that it is not a ‘live’ option.
[6]
Some philosophers (e.g., Richard Fumerton in his Metaepistemology and Skepticism [
[7] It might be said to be normative in the sense that it pertains to what ought to be done, given a certain perspective and goals. But then any instrumental reasoning and strategizing is ‘normative’ so, e.g., deciding how to bake a cake, how to best train for a marathon, etc. are normative issues. People can use the term ‘normative’ however they like, but these senses are clearly different from those typically associated with ethics.
[8] I presume that all or most feminists concede that there are or could be non- or anti-feminist women and that their experiences don’t ‘count’ for the purposes of theory building from a feminist perspective. These women might be called (dis?)‘honorary men,’ as some feminist men are called ‘honorary women’?
[9] This suggests: (2’’) ‘. . an account of morality that is based on some feminist woman’s moral experience(s)’ and (2’’’) ‘. . an account . . that is based a sufficient number or percent of feminist women’s moral experience(s).’
[10] Jaggar (2000b, pp. 354-355) seems to objects to moral theories that supposedly entail that we should have a ‘readiness to sacrifice those we love to abstract principles and absent strangers.’ It’s not clear that any theory entails that we should have a ‘readiness’ or enthusiasm to do this. And is it that we should never do something because we think an “abstract moral principle” requires it, if doing so would result in some ‘sacrifice’ of a loved one (in what sense of ‘sacrifice’)? Is it that we are never obligated to provide assistance to absent strangers so that, for example, we could never be obligated to provide famine or disaster aid assistance? Jaggar’s claims are not precisely clear and it seems easy to interpret in a way that is suggestive of some kind of egoism. Objections to ‘impartiality’ (for both ethical theories and moral decision-making procedures) are difficult to evaluate unless the constraints and limits to partiality are also identified in a principled way (which they, unfortunately, typically are not).
[11] This would also caste doubt on Margaret
Walker’s (1998b) claim that traditional ethics tests theory by appealing to ‘our intuitions’ since there is no such
thing as our intuitions. Non-feminist ethicists disagree about many
important things.
[12] A version of this paper was presented at the Society for Analytical Feminism, Central APA 2002. I thank Samantha Brennan for comments.