FeminismandPhilosophy

FeminismandPhilosophy

byHerlindePauerStuder

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3/1986,pages:391394,onwww.ceeol.com.

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FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Herlinde Struder Discovering Reality is a highly stimulating and important collection of essays, since it brings new aspects to the feminist discussion of philosophy and science and extends this discussion in some significant respects. The essays develop a feminist criticism of philosophical areas which were up to now hardly subject to investigation from a feminist point of view: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, methodology, and philosophy of science. Feminists concerned with philosophy have so far drawn attention to the fact that most of the great figures in the history of philosophy, when they came to talk about women were plainly sexist, in conformity with the patriarchal ideology of their times, and that their intellectual efforts regarding women didnt consist in much more that supplying justification for the usual domination and suppression of women. Through this sort of investigation we are now acquainted with the sexist views of Aristotle, Plato and Hegel, and we are aware that for the most part modern political philosophy denied women the rights and status it granted men. Though these feminist inquiries are extremely valuable, in some respects they are also unsatisfactory. First, they have to face the objection that philosophers considerations on women are just side-remarks which shouldnt be taken too seriously and which dont affect a philosophers main theses. Second, these criticisms though interesting and telling remain in a way isolated; they do not add up to a specific feminist perspective on philosophical issues. The merit of the essays in Discovering Reality is that, in addition to criticizing particular philosophers, they also indicate a tentative direction in which certain philosophical assumptions and ideas should be developed such as to lead to a philosophy free from sex-bias which also does justice to female experiences. As the editors note in the Introduction, the contributors pursue two complementary projects: the deconstructive one where they identify how distinctively masculine perspectives on masculine experience have shaped the most fundamental and most formal aspects of systematic thought in philosophy and in the social and natural sciences, and a reconstructive project where they attempt to show what is required in social practice and in scientific inquiry to make womens experience into a foundation for a more adequate and truly human epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science (X,XI).
* Review of Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, Eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Holland/Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1983). References are given in the text in parantheses.

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The collection starts with two essays on Aristotle (L. Lange, Woman is not a rational animal: on Aristotles biology of reproduction; E.V. Spelman, Aristotle and the politicization of the soul). Lange elucidates the close connection between Aristotles biology and his political philosophy; she explains how Aristotles opinion that woman, being a privation of man, is inferior to and should be dominated by man rests on Aristotles theories of generation and sex distinction. Spelman investigates closely Aristotles argument for the domination of women by men which rests on his theory of the soul. She shows that the argument is circular. She also raises the more general question whether metaphysical positions are politically innocent (17). J. Hicks Stiehms article, The unit of political analysis: our Aristotelian hangover, points out the political and social analysts, instead of thinking in terms of individuals, groups or classes, mainly still think in terms of families and treat women as members of households (as either wives or daughters), thereby giving, a distorted picture of social reality. This is followed by two articles on natural science, especially biological and evolutionary theory, R. Hubbard: Have only men evolved?; M. Gross and M. Beth Averill: Evolution and Patriarchal Myths of Scarcity and Competition. Hubbard argues that Darwins evolutionary theory is androcentric and sexist since it has wide areas of congruence with the social and political ideology of nineteenth-century Britain, and with Victorian precepts of morality, particularly as regards the relationships between the sexes (45). She maintains that the same objection can be raised against sociobiological theories today. A4. Gross and M. Beth Averill show how evolutionary theory as well as contemporary biological thinking is beset by patriarchal notions (e.g., the role played by the concepts scarcity and competition) and suggest an alternative way of understanding nature, namely in terms of plenitude and cooperation (71). A. Palmeri in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: forerunner of a Feminist Social Science indicates by means of an exposition of the views of Ch. Perkins Gilman what a feminist social science would look like: it would have to give up the fact-value distinction and incorporate feminist values and moral principles. In her paper The trivialization of the notion of equality L. Marcil-Lacoste deals with the charge that feminist writings dont present any novel insights that they are either repeating the writings of men or else dont say anything of significance and shows this argument to be untenable. M.B. Hintikka and J. Hintikka (How can language be sexist?) suggest that certain semantical theories are sex-biased, and J. Moulton, Paradigm of philosophy: the adversary method, criticizes a common method in philosophy: to criticize or defend a philosophical position by developing counter-examples which either refute or dont invalidate the position. K. Pyne Addelson (The man of professional wisdom) argues that a feminist criticism of science has to take into account the metaphysical commitments underlying scientific research as well as the social status, the power relations, and specific cognitive authority of scientists. In her essay, Gender and Science, E. Fox Keller advocates the thesis that our notions of science and objectivity are determined by certain myths of masculinity and drawing on psychoanalytic object relations theory, she argues that this

Praxis International Vol 6 No 3 A Philsophical Journal October 1986 redigitized by Central and Eastern European Online Library - www.ceeol.com

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distorted conception of science to a great extent has its roots in early childhood, i.e. in how girls and boys individuate themselves. The paper by E. Fox Keller and Ch. R. Grontkowski on The Minds Eye investigates the status of the visual metaphor in the philosophy of Plato, Newton and Descartes; the authors discuss whether recent feminist criticism that the visual is a typical phallic sense is justified. The next essay (N. Scheman: Individualism and the objects of psychology) is devoted to a critical examination of an assumption in philosophy of mind. Scheman argues that the thesis that complex objects of psychology like emotions, beliefs and intentions are individual, i.e., particular states that I am in, is deeply useful in the maintenance of capitalist and patriarchal society and deeply embedded in our notions of liberation, freedom, and equality (226). J. Flax, in Political philosophy and the patriarchal unconscious: A psychoanalytic perspective on epistemology and metaphysics, develops a general criticism of philosophy and some main philosophical theories (Plato, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau) from the point of view of psychoanalysis and formulates in ten theses the outlines of a feminist epistemology. N.C.M. Hartsock (The feminist standpoint: developing the grounds for a specifically feminist historical materialism) deals with the issue of working out a feminist historical materialism, while S. Harding, in Why has the sex/gender system become visible only now? examines the reasons why we have now become aware of the sex/gender system and what implications this might have for epistemology. One problem I had in reading these essays was that it remained unclear why the criticisms formulated in some of them deserved to be called feminist. I will mention just two examples. J. Moulton criticizes a mode of philosophical reasoning we are all familiar with and which is probably most characteristic of analytic philosophy: to examine the validity of a philosophical position by seeing whether it can be refuted by counterexamples, and the attempt to justify a philosophical position by convincing an (imaginary) opponent. The picture of philosophy corresponding to this mode of arguing is that of an unimpassioned debate between adversaries (153). Other forms of reasoning like figuring something out for oneself, to discuss something with like-minded thinkers, to convince the indifferent or the uncommitted (159) are thereby excluded. Moultons criticism of the adversary paradigm seems to me fully justified. It points to a problem with the way a large part of philosophy today is done: a considerable amount of philosophical literature seems to be not more than an argumentation-game, often overlooking or not really relevant to substantial issues. The problem with Moultons criticism is that it does not appear to be a specifically feminist one. Moulton begins the essay with remarks on aggression where she notes that aggressive behavior is thought to be a good thing for men to exhibit and bad for women; this then suggests that the adversary paradigm, as an aggressive mode of reasoning, is typically male. Now these observations on aggression, which also put forward a problematic view of role-stereotypes, are hardly sufficient to establish Moultons objections against the adversary method as a specifically feminist criticism. The same objection applies to M.B. and J. Hintikkas article. They criticize certain semantical theories and ontologies as being sex-biased, because specific

Praxis International Vol 6 No 3 A Philsophical Journal October 1986 redigitized by Central and Eastern European Online Library - www.ceeol.com

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principles of individuation and identification underlying them favour ontologies that postulate a given fixed supply of discrete individuals, individuated by their intrinsic or essential (non-relational) properties. (146). The authors base their criticism on the results of psychological investigations which claim to have shown that women are generally more sensitive to, and likely to assign more importance to, relational characteristics (e.g. interdependencies) than males, and less likely to think in terms of independent discrete units whereas males generally prefer what is separable and manipulatable (146). This essay presupposes a rather naive notion of what a feminist criticism of philosophical theories is or could be. How else could the authors conclude that the male-biased understanding of philosophical ontology which they outline explains why J. Hintikkas interpretation of cross-world-identification hasnt been recognized widely by the philosophical community? The authors rest their criticism on psychological studies which only speak about tendencies of different cognitive styles among men and women. The question remains open how these observations by the authors even if correct are ground enough for a feminist critique, since it is hard to see that anything like a discrimination of women is connected with the allegedly sex-biased theories of philosophical semantics and ontology. The essays by J. Moulton and M.B. and J. Hintikka raise a more fundamental question: Can certain methods of reasoning or theories in philosophy of language be said to be sexist at all? The same point holds for epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of science. In which way can these areas be subject to feminist criticism? When we term certain views and conceptions sexist, it is because they (explicitly or implicitly) dont regard women as equal to men. This means that a feminist criticism can only be focused on views or theories which disadvantage women, regard them as inferior to men, support patriarchal thinking, etc. But then it follows that hardly any theories in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind or philosophy of science per se are open to feminist objections; it is their use for the justification of sexist views which is objectionable. Of course there is room for a feminist critique of all philosophical areas since a lot of masculine ideology still surrounds them, and even abstract philosophical theories are often used to justify sexist theories (as the example of Aristotle who bases his political sexism on his metaphysical theories shows). Yet in a feminist criticism of areas like epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophical methodology, to avoid misunderstandings one should be careful in stating what exactly one is addressing. This is all the more necessary since often the whole conceptual framework of certain theories which brings them close to patriarchal ideologies is the subject of criticism. It would have been desirable if in the Introduction to the volume the editors had discussed the problem as to what can be regarded as a specific feminist approach to philosophical theories and science, since in the various essays quite distinct feminist perspectives on philosophy and science are formulated. Nevertheless, Discovering Reality is a stimulating book for the future development of the issue of feminism and philosophy.

Praxis International Vol 6 No 3 A Philsophical Journal October 1986 redigitized by Central and Eastern European Online Library - www.ceeol.com