recent work in feminist philosophy; feminism and philosophy.; what can she know?; feminist ethics.;...

Scots Philosophical AssociationUniversity of St. Andrews

Recent Work in Feminist PhilosophyFeminism and Philosophy. by Moira Gatens; What Can She Know? by Lorraine Code; FeministEthics. by Claudia Card; Patterns of Dissonance. by Rosi BraidottiReview by: Susan MendusThe Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 173, Special Issue: Philosophers and Philosophies(Oct., 1993), pp. 513-519Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Association and theUniversity of St. AndrewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2219992 .

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CRITICAL NOTICES 513

RECENT WORK IN FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY

Feminism and Philosophy. By MOIRA GATENS. (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1991. Pp. 158. Price ?35.00 h/b, ?9.95 p/b.)

What Can She Know?BY LORRAINE CODE. (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1991. Pp. xiv + 349. Price $42.50 h/b, $14.95 p/b.)

Feminist Ethics. EDITED BY CLAUDIA CARD. (Kansas City: Kansas UP, 1991. Pp. 300. Price $29.95 h/b, $14.95 p/b.)

Patterns of Dissonance. BY Rosi BRAIDOTTI. (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1991. Pp. 316. Price ?39.50 h/b, ? 12.95 p/b.)

It is a commonplace that many of the great dead philosophers took an exceedingly dim view of women's intellectual capacities in general and their philosophical ability in particular. There is not much on which Aristotle, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant and Nietzsche could all agree, but they were all agreed on this: that women are unsuited for philosophical reflection and are 'naturally' fitted to be an adornment, a 'help-meet' to (intellectual) men, and a general provider of emotional and domestic comforts. Some of this unanimity can doubtless be attributed to the fact that philosophers, like everyone else, are children of their time, schooled in the same mores as lesser mortals and vulnerable to the same social prejudices. But there is the rub: while historians, social scientists, psychologists can all (perhaps) be forgiven their local prejudices, philosophers have historically aspired to transcend the merely local in pursuit of a timeless Truth. If the timeless Truth which they deliver includes an assertion of the inferiority of women, then we may wonder whether what appear to be the prejudices of philosophers are, in fact, prejudices of philosophy itself.

Each of these four books finds philosophy guilty as charged. Some philosophers (Hegel) are indeed overtly misogynistic, but even those (John Stuart Mill) who protest that some of their best friends are women simultaneously advocate policies which are sexist and subscribe to a conception of philosophy which is deeply gendered. Thus the central argument of Moira Gatens' book is that 'metaphysics, theories of human nature and epistemology . . . provide the theoretical underpinning for the biases which become visible at the socio-political level'. Similarly, Lorraine Code insists that 'philosophy oppresses women in ways which feminists are still learning to understand'. And Rosi Braidotti urges that 'sexist domination is a structural necessity internal to philosophical discourse'. In different ways each of these writers insists on the gendered and oppressive nature of the discipline itself, and each comments on the dilemma which this poses for feminist philosophers, who are faced with an unappetising choice between complicity and exclusion. For if philosophy itself is oppressive, how can feminists do philosophy whilst also, and at the same time, remaining critical of it? As feminist philosophers, the authors of these books therefore have a two-fold task: they must justify their negative claim that traditional philosophy is not neutral but gendered, and they must also provide positive recommendations for the construction of a non- oppressive form of philosophy. ? The editors of The Philosophical Quarterlv, 1993.



514 SUSAN MENDUS

Moira Gatens' book is the most lucid of the four, both in its explanation of the problem and in its recognition of the difficulties inherent in providing a solution. Indeed, it is so clearly written that it can confidently be recommended to students with no previous background in either philosophy or feminism. It is not, however, simplistic, and although Gatens begins with some familiar and, by now, well-worn lines of attack on the feminists' arch-enemy, Rousseau, it soon becomes clear that she is really stalking an entirely different prey: Rousseau is invoked, not as an example of the unjustified prejudices held by a long-dead philosopher, but as a proponent of a tradition of thought which has always been, and remains, structurally misogynistic. Moreover, and this is the real force of Gatens' argument, many modern feminists have failed to recognize the extent to which the central terms of Enlightenment philosophy (rationality, individuality, freedom, progress) are themselves 'inherently masculine'. They have concentrated on the singer not the song, and in consequence have been lulled into the belief that 'freedom' and 'rationality' are sex-neutral terms which may easily be extended to include women. Gatens will have none of this. Even when sympathetically deployed, she says, the 'extension theory' offers women a chance to become truly human only on condition that they 'become men'. In this respect,John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir are no better than Rousseau, since they too associate women with the body and imply that in order to achieve authenticity a woman must overcome or transcend her biology. No comparable choice is forced upon men and, in consequence, the possibility of humanity for women just is the possibility of denying biology and 'becoming a man'.

But if extension theory will not do, neither will 'woman-centred' theories. Gatens' attack on Mary Daly and Dale Spender (two of the most famous proponents ofwoman-centredness) is positively vitriolic. She rightly takes Daly to task for the 'morally abhorrent' suggestion that the root of all genocide is gynocide and also issues a timely warning against the danger of assuming that 'those who suffer have moral purity, simply by virtue of their suffering'. More generally, Gatens suspects that the proponents ofwoman-centredness embrace precisely the essentialism which they found so objectionable in male philosophers: by favouring feminism over philosophy they imply commitment to a doctrine of the 'True Self', which lies beyond (or beneath) history, culture and language. But the doctrine of the 'True Self' has been a major contributory factor in the oppression of women by philosophy, and in any case it is not clear what would give these woman-centred views their 'authentic' or 'real' status.

The dilemma which Gatens identifies is both real and acute: favouring philosophy over feminism consigns women to a choice between exclusion and complicity. But favouring feminism over philosophy risks simply replicating the most objectionably essentialist features of the original masculine paradigm. What, then, can be done? It is in answering this question that Gatens is at her least persuasive; and, in general, all four books are far less satisfactory in their positive proposals than they are in their critiques of the discipline. Both Gatens and Code end with the depressing conclusion that the prospects of conceptualizing alternative arrangements seem remote, and although Braidotti is more bullish, she too is forced to concede that there can be no celebration until feminism has proved ? The editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 1993.




its constructive nature. There is, however, very little in any of the writers by way of a suggestion as to what that constructive nature could consist in. All are persuaded that something must be done, but all are comparatively silent about precisely what that thing could be.

This criticism may seem over-harsh. It is always easier to say what is wrong with the arguments of others than it is to present plausible arguments of one's own, and in the case of feminist theory, where the complaint against philosophy is precisely that it presupposes male paradigms, that difficulty is no accident. Nevertheless, there is a real danger that in their anxiety to display the masculine bias inherent in Enlightenment thinking, feminists will be too ready to ally themselves with any and every critic of the Enlightenment. This danger is particularly apparent in the enthusiasm for contextualization which runs through both Gatens and Code.

Gatens' suggestion is that the inadequacies of both extension theory and woman- centredness spring from essentialism and a concomitant failure to contextualize philosophical thinking. What masquerades as universality in moral and political philosophy is, in fact, merely the universalization of the interests of a small subgroup of educated, middle-class white males. What is needed, she concludes, is a recognition of the importance of contextualizing actions and their meanings 'to acknowledge that ethics has historically been the product of whichever group has monopolized political right: Greek (male) citizens or the liberal (male) individual'. In What Does She Know? Lorraine Code draws similar conclusions. Although her book is ostensibly a work on feminist epistemology, it in fact ranges wider than that, and Code concurs with Gatens' general diagnosis of the crisis in philosophy. She also concurs with Gatens' identification of the dilemma for feminism, arguing that 'even ifandrocentricity could be decentred to make space for gynocentric concerns, it is not obvious that a feminist epistemology would be the most desirable result. A feminist epistemology would seem to require a basis in assumptions about the essence of women and of knowledge. Hence it would risk replicating the exclusionary, hegemonic structures of the masculinist epistemology, in its various manifestations, that has claimed absolute sovereignty over the epistemic terrain.'

The quotation displays something of the style as well as the content of Code's book: in common with many modern feminists, she employs jargon in a way which can be both confused and confusing. More worryingly, her tendency to couch everything in such language sometimes serves to give her conclusions an air of authority which, on inspection, they do not fully deserve. For example, her discussion of Carol Gilligan's contention that, in moral matters, male and female agents speak in different voices, is both subtle and insightful. Like Gatens, Code is alert to the dangers inherent in a simple celebration of'female values'. She points out that such a celebration is suspect because the values are ones which arise out of oppression, and she is also acutely aware that advocating an ethics of care rather than an ethics of justice itself perpetuates precisely the dichotomies of Enlightenment thinking (between duty and inclination, public and private, reason and emotion) which feminists have found so questionable. But in responding to these difficulties, Code has a tendency to take shelter behind jargon and to pass off as 'solutions' what may be merely restatements of the initial difficulty. Thus, in an attempt to defend the importance of care while remaining sceptical about the value of an ethics of

?) The editors of The Philosophical Quarlerly, 1993.



516 SUSAN MENDUS

care, she says: 'moralities that derive from marginal, oppressed status are not for that reason alone of questionable political worth: often they work effectively as survival mechanisms. The point of articulating their derivation is to understand the cognitive and evaluative mechanisms that inform them and to develop strategies of social intervention that can permit an intelligent assessment of their potential.'

Well, yes, but what would that involve? Here again, the answer appears to lie in a commitment to contextualization. Code is eager to point out that in moral matters there is no view from nowhere, and all decisions must be made from specific positions, within specific environmental circumstances. She is conscious that this contention will rapidly lead to the charge of vicious relativism, and is sensitive to the seriousness of that charge both in moral philosophy and more generally, but her final claim, that the relativism need not be vicious if only it is coupled with realism, sounds rather like trying to have one's philosophical cake and eat it. And, sadly, it is not enough to defend the position simply by pointing to the inadequacy of 'dichotomous thinking'.

More worryingly, in making their case for contextualization, both Gatens and Code appeal to the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre, and both comment approvingly on his use of narrative as a means of locating knowledge-claims within specific contexts. Following MacIntyre, Code argues that 'the neutral-observer- confronting-neutral-data model must give way to a conception of knowledge seeking as a process specifically located within historical, social and cultural concerns'. And similarly Gatens ends her book with an appeal to the argument of After Virtue in which MacIntyre states that 'moral philosophies, however they may aspire to achieve more than this, always do articulate the morality of some particular social and cultural standpoint'. Only Code, however, recognizes that MacIntyre's argument is of limited use to feminists, and neither seems fully aware of the dark side of the MacIntyrean claim. Limitations on the use of narrative spring from its tendency to degenerate into relativism and thus, in a feminist context, to threaten a denial that there is anything 'real' about women's oppression. Code is certainly alert to this danger, and asserts vigorously that 'the point is not to advocate a reversal of the unity-of-knowledge project, requiring a narrative context before any knowledge claim can be evaluated'. But Gatens is altogether more trusting: concurring with MacIntyre's analysis of the crisis of modernity, she never alludes to his 'solution', which is the abandonment of the Enlightenment project and a largely uncritical return to a world of practice and tradition, however inequitable and oppressive that may be.

It is left, therefore, to some of the contributors to Feminist Ethics to defend at least some aspects of Enlightenment thinking against the ravages of its critics. Card's collection is simply excellent: nearly all the contributors write clearly and accessibly and, on the whole, they avoid the jargon which mars Code's otherwise admirable book. It is a real joy, and a relief, to read work as lucid and perceptive as this. Card's book is divided into three parts: the essays in the first part provide a context for feminist ethics, those in the second part deal with 'character ethics', while the third part contains articles on the ethics of care. The editor ties them all

? The editors of The Philosophical Quarlerly, 1993.




together with an introductory essay on the history of feminist ethics which is both informative and witty.

Several of the contributors to the volume mount a limited defence of Enlightenment thinking: Alison Jaggar, in a piece which is 'simultaneously sympathetic and critical' charts the development of feminist ethics in the United States and urges feminists to be cautious in their rejection of Western ethics. Most importantly, she argues that feminist suspicion of universal reason should not lead to feminist endorsement of 'the parochial conventionalism or conservatism often associated at least with the communitarian tradition of contemporary moral relativism'. The reason for this is quite simply that a denial that there are universal basic moral demands 'seems to preclude feminist moral criticism of the domination of women where this is an accepted social practice'. In other words, if we take too seriously the contention that reason is not universal, but culturally constituted, how can we object to the cultural constitution with which we ourselves are saddled? Of course, the vast majority of feminists are fully aware of this difficulty at a theoretical level, butJaggar presses the point, insisting that it is not good enough to respond with an optimistic reference to the 'marriage' between, for example, the ethics of justice and the ethics of care, since we have no assurance that the two partners are compatible. Her essay is timely and important because it emphasizes that, even if feminists have just cause to doubt the value of universal reason, they should not ally themselves with just any opponent of it. My enemy's enemy is not thereby my friend.

Christine Pierce issues similar warnings, this time against alliances between feminism and post-modernism, and specifically against the contention that feminist theory is a subset of post-modern philosophy. She acknowledges that post- modernists share feminist suspicion of universal reason, but is wary of too close an alliance between the two, arguing that post-modern scepticism is radical, whereas feminist scepticism is (or should be) moderate. Her claim that some of the ideas of the Enlightenment might be worthwhile is, however, under-argued and sometimes puzzling. For example, she claims that 'an ahistorical, disembodied concept of the self would be poor psychology; but just such an abstract self in a concept like the "veil of ignorance" might work well to explain justice. The fact that all concrete particular situatedness disappears may be exactly what is needed in order for people to understand what it is like to live in somebody else's shoes.'

This, however, ignores the central feminist contention (argued compellingly by Susan Moller Okin in her book Justice, Gender and the Family) that an abstract self is precisely not what is on the other side of the veil of ignorance. Moreover, and simply at the level of 'gut reaction', I am at a loss to know why the removal of concrete particular situatedness would make it remotely more likely that we should understand what it is like to live in somebody else's shoes. On the Rawlsian scheme of things, it would make us ignorant of who we are, but that is quite different from making us more aware of what it is like to be somebody else.

The last of the four books to be considered here is Rosi Braidotti's Patterns of Dissonance. This is a singular text and (be warned) not one for the faint-hearted: the prose is often impenetrable and, if penetrated, contains robust and uncom- promising claims. Braidotti's conception of both feminism and philosophy is




518 SUSAN MENDUS

overtly political and she understands feminist theory as aspiring to 'disclose not only the violent, power-centred character of rationality, but also the sexed nature of this violence'. Her critique of philosophy runs deep, and she is darkly suspicious of the 'typically Anglo-Saxon' concern for the professional profile of feminist philosophers. Thus she does not confine herself simply to scepticism about the role of reason in Enlightenment philosophy, but extends that concern into a more wide- ranging scepticism about the morality of feminists themselves in so far as they show concern for the academic respectability of their work. Braidotti seems to suggest that this concern is tantamount to intellectual prostitution, and although she acknowledges the importance of professional equality and equal opportunities for women, she remains profoundly critical of 'philosophy's call girls', arguing that they have attained positions of 'privilege' only by condoning the patriarchal structures which they ought properly to be rejecting.

However, having launched this scathing attack on reformist feminism, Braidotti goes on to indicate at least one saving grace: its lack of nostalgia. 'Feminist reformist philosophers are', she says, 'totally free from nostalgia: their eyes are firmly fixed in the future and, indeed, they do see women as the future of mankind.' By contrast, she cites Mary Daly as someone who, though officially more radical, in fact advances a theory which is irremediably nostalgic and potentially conservative in its political implications. Like Gatens, Braidotti draws attention to the essentialist implications of Daly's desire to replace the masculine subject by a feminine subject, and, like Jaggar, she warns against a conception of feminism which has no defence against conservative communitarianism. In these respects, reformist feminism wins the day, because it has 'redrawn the face of the discipline'.

This is good news, but it fits ill with the earlier 'casting couch' allegations, and in the end Braidotti appears to be making very much the same point as Gatens and Jaggar. It is simply that she takes longer to make it, and makes it in language which is exasperatingly obscure and sometimes gratuitously snide. (My own exasperation was only increased by her persistent use of'Anglo-Saxon' as a term of abuse, but that probably says more about me than about her.) The crucial point, however, is not that Braidotti is rude about reformists (or about Anglo-Saxons), nor yet that she is forced to modify many of her criticisms in order to take account of the undeniable achievements of reformism. The real point is that, having done her demolition job, she has very little to offer by way of an alternative. Indeed, it is almost a point of pride for her that no alternative is offered. Thus she concludes: 'thought must be put to the service of creation of liberty, against the phantoms of negativity. Therefore philosophy ought to strive to think itself on a higher level of creative activity. This presupposes a resistance to the doctrinaire tendencies implicit in "theory", and the rejection of the hegemonic model of intellection.'

At the risk of sounding naive, I simply want to know what this means, and how it will help. If it is simply a reminder that 'universal reason' is not universal at all, then why not say that? If it is a grander claim to the effect that all the theorizing pretensions of philosophy must be rejected, then it is far from clear why that strategy should provide grounds for optimism amongst feminists. On the contrary, it is precisely the anti-theoretical tendencies of post-modernists and historicists which make them dangerous allies for feminists.





Despite their shortcomings, all these books make significant contributions to the development of feminist philosophy and indeed to philosophy generally. Whether the latter contribution will be recognized remains to be seen. It is the lamentable (but predictable) fate of many feminist works to be largely ignored by 'malestream' philosophers, who continue to believe that their feminist duty is done if only they avoid gendered language and make the occasional eulogistic remark about the importance of feminism. Whatever else they fail to do, these writers show conclusively that that is not enough: the dichotomies which run through philosophical thinking are not the deliverances of universal reason but often, and at best, a reflection of the interests of philosophy's male practitioners. For this reason, these books deserve to be read not only by feminists, but by anyone who purports to have a serious interest in the subject. They are highly recommended to women philosophers, and should be compulsory reading for all men philosophers.

University of York SUSAN MENDUS

? The editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 1993.



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