Feminist transformations of moral theory

"Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory," Virginia Hel

d

In the following reading Virginia Held outlines how current feminist ethical philosophy has react ed to and attempted to rethink the history of ethicalthought. Held contrasts the male- centric history of Western ethical philosophy with female- centric principles on which a new radical ethic mightemerge. Held is a professor of philosophy a t Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Guided Reading Questions As you read the following text from Held, use these questions to guide your reading.

1. What does Held say about the history of ethical philosophy? How has that history exclud ed women and minority voices?

2. Feminism not only focuses on the rights and ideas of women, but also promotes other mi nority voices that have been subjugated. What are somesuch voices and what social cond itions led to their subjugation?

3. Women have historically been viewed as close to nature and volatile, whereas men have historically been viewed as rational and measured. Inyour opinion, why have these ideas tended to permeate so many societies? How does Held propose that we break away from these forms ofthinking? Do you think humans will ever be able to think outside of gender ? Why or why not?

FEMINIST TRANSFORMATIONS OF MORAL THEORY

The history of philosophy, including the history of ethics, has been constructed from mal e points of view, and has been built on assumptions andconcepts that are by no means ge nder- neutral. Feminists characteristically begin with different concerns and give different emp hases to the issueswe consider than do non- feminist approaches. And, as Lorraine Code expresses it, "starting points and focal points shape the impact oftheoretical discussion." Within philosophy, feminists often start with, and focus on, quite different issues than those found in standard philosophyand ethics, h owever "standard" is understood. Far from providing mere additional insights which can be incorporated into traditional theory,feminist explorations often require radical transf ormations of existing fields of inquiry and theory. From a feminist point of view, moral th

eoryalong with almost all theory will have to be transformed to take adequate account of the experience of women.

I shall in this paper begin with a brief examination of how various fundamental aspects o f the history of ethics have not been gender- neutral. AndI shall discuss three issues where feminist rethinking is transforming moral concepts and theories.

THE HISTORY OF ETHICS

Consider the ideals embodied in the phrase "the man of reason." As Genevieve Lloyd has told the story, what has been taken to characterize theman of reason may have changed f rom historical period to historical period, but in each, the character ideal of the man of re ason has beenconstructed in conjunction with a rejection of whatever has been taken to be characteristic of the feminine. "Rationality" Lloyd writes, "has beenconceived as trans cendence of the ‘feminine,' and the ‘feminine' itself has been partly constituted by its occ urrence within this structure."

This has of course fundamentally affected the history of philosophy and of ethics. The spl it between reason and emotion is one of the mostfamiliar of philosophical conceptions. A nd the advocacy of reason "controlling" unruly emotion, of rationality, guiding responsibl e human actionagainst the blindness of passion, has a long and highly influential, history, almost as familiar to non- philosophers as to philosophers. We shouldcertainly now be alert to the ways in which r eason has been associated with male endeavor, emotion with female weakness, and the ways inwhich this is of course not an accidental association. As Lloyd writes, "From the b eginnings of philosophical thought, femaleness wassymbolically associated with what Re ason supposedly left behind— the dark powers of the earth goddesses, immersion in unknown forcesassociated with m ysterious female powers. The early Greeks saw women's capacity to conceive as connecti ng them with the fertility of Nature.As Plato later expressed the thought, women ‘imitate the earth.'"

Reason, in asserting its claims and winning its status in human history, was thought to ha ve to conquer the female forces of Unreason. Reasonand clarity of thought were early ass ociated with maleness, and as Lloyd notes, "what had to be shed in developing culturally prized rationalitywas, from the start, symbolically associated with femaleness." In later G reek philosophical thought, the form/matter distinction was articulated,and with a simila r hierarchical and gendered association. Maleness was aligned with active, determinate,

and defining form; femaleness withmere passive, indeterminate, and inferior matter. Plat o, in the Timaeus, compared the defining aspect of form with the father, and indefinitemat ter with the mother; Aristotle also compared the form/matter distinction with the male/f emale distinction. To quote Lloyd again, "Thiscomparison . . . meant that the very nature of knowledge was implicitly associated with the extrusion of what was symbolically asso ciated withthe feminine." The associations, between Reason, form, knowledge, and maleness, have persisted in vari ous guises, and have permeated what has been thoughtto be moral knowledge as well as what has been thought to be scientific knowledge, and what has been thought to be the p ractice of morality.The associations between the philosophical concepts and gender cann ot be merely dropped, and the concepts retained regardless of gender,because gender ha s been built into them in such a way that without it, they will have to be different concept s. As feminists repeatedly show, if theconcept of "human" were built on what we think ab out "woman" rather than what we think about "man," it would be a very different concep t.Ethics, thus, has not been a search for universal, or truly human guidance, but a gender- biased enterprise.

Other distinctions and associations have supplemented and reinforced the identification of reason with maleness, and of the irrational with thefemale; on this and other grounds "man" has been associated with the human, "woman" with the natural. Prominent among distinctionsreinforcing the latter view has been that between the public and the private, because of the way they have been interpreted. Again, these provideas familiar and entre nched a framework as do reason and emotion, and they have been as influential for non- philosophers as for philosophers. Ithas been supposed that in the public realm, man tran scends his animal nature and creates human history. As citizen, he creates government a ndlaw; as warrior, he protects society by his willingness to risk death; and as artist or phi losopher, he overcomes his human mortality. Here, in thepublic realm, morality should g uide human decision. In the household, in contrast, it has been supposed that women me rely "reproduce" life asnatural, biological matter. Within the household, the "natural" nee ds of man for food and shelter are served, and new instances of the biologicalcreature tha t man is are brought into being. But what is distinctively human, and what transcends an y given level of development to createhuman progress, are thought to occur elsewhere.

This contrast was made highly explicit in Aristotle's conceptions of polis and household; i t has continued to affect the basic assumptions of aremarkably broad swath of thought ev er since. In ancient Athens, women were confined to the household; the public sphere wa s literally a maledomain. In more recent history, though women have been permitted to v

enture into public space, the associations of the public, historically malesphere with the d istinctively human, and of the household, historically a female sphere, with the merely na tural and repetitious, have persisted.These associations have deeply affected moral theor y, which has often supposed the transcendent, public domain to be relevant to thefounda tions of morality in ways that the natural behavior of women in the household could not be. To take some recent and representativeexamples, David Heyd, in his discussion of su pererogation, dismisses a mother's sacrifice for her child as an example of the supererog atorybecause it belongs, in his view, to "the sphere of natural relationships and instinctiv e feelings (which lie outside morality)." J. O. Urmson hadearlier taken a similar position. I n his discussion of supererogation, Urmson said, "Let us be clear that we are not now con sidering cases ofnatural affection, such as the sacrifice made by a mother for her child; su ch cases may be said with some justice not to fall under the concept ofmorality. . . ." And i n a recent article called "Distrusting Economics," Alan Ryan argues persuasively about th e questionableness of economicsand other branches of the social sciences built on the ass umption that human beings are rational, self- interested calculators; he discusses variousexamples of non-self- interested behavior, such as of men in wartime, which show the assumption to be false, b ut nowhere in the article is thereany mention of the activity of mothering, which would s eem to be a fertile locus for doubts about the usual picture of rational man. AlthoughRya n does not provide the kind of explicit reason offered by Heyd and Urmson for omitting t he context of mothering from consideration asrelevant to his discussion, it is difficult to u nderstand the omission without a comparable assumption being implicit here, as it so oft en iselsewhere. Without feminist insistence on the relevance for morality of the experien ce in mothering, this context is largely ignored by moraltheorists. And yet, from a gender - neutral point of view, how can this vast and fundamental domain of human experience p ossibly be imagined tolie "outside morality"? The result of the public/private distinction, as usually formulated, has been to privilege t he points of view of men in the public domains of stateand law, and later in the marketpl ace, and to discount the experience of women. Mothering has been conceptualized as a pr imarily biologicalactivity, even when performed by humans, and virtually no moral theor y in the history of ethics has taken mothering, as experienced by women,seriously as a so urce of moral insight, until feminists in recent years have begun to. Women have been se en as emotional rather than as rationalbeings, and thus as incapable of full moral person hood. Women's behavior has been interpreted as either "natural" and driven by instinct, andthus as irrelevant to morality and to the construction of moral principles, or it has be

en interpreted as, at best, in need of instruction andsupervision by males better able to k now what morality requires and better able to live up to its demands.

The Hobbesian conception of reason is very different from the Platonic or Aristotelian co nceptions before it, and from the conceptions ofRousseau or Kant or Hegel later; all have in common that they ignore and disparage the experience and reality of women. Conside r Hobbes'saccount of man in the state of nature contracting with other men to establish s ociety. These men hypothetically come into existence, fully formedand independent, of o ne another, and decide on entering or staying outside of civil society. As Christine Di Stef ano writes, "What we find inHobbes's account of human nature and political order is a vit al concern with the survival of a self conceived in masculine terms. . . . Thismasculine dim ension of Hobbes's atomistic egoism is powerfully underscored in his state of nature, whi ch is effectively built on the foundationof denied maternity." In The Citizen, where Hobbe s gave his first systematic exposition of the state of nature, he asks us to "consider men a s ifbut even now sprung out of the earth, and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full mat urity, without all kinds of engagement with each other." AsDi Stefano says, it is a most inc redible and problematic feature of Hobbes's state of nature that the men in it "are not bo rn of, much less nurturedby, women, or anyone else." To abstract from the complex web of human reality an abstract man for rational perusal, Hobbes has, Di Stefanocontinues, " expunged human reproduction and early nurturance, two of the most basic and typically female- identified features of distinctivelyhuman life, from his account of basic human nature. Su ch a strategy ensures that he can present a thoroughly atomistic subject. . . ." From thepoi nt of view of women's experience, such a subject or self is unbelievable and misleading, e ven as a theoretical construct. The Leviathan, DiStefano writes, "is effectively comprised of a body politic of orphans who have reared themselves, whose desires are situated wit hin and reflectnothing but independently generated movement. . . . These essential eleme nts are natural human beings conceived along masculine lines." Rousseau, and Kant, and Hegel, paid homage to the emotional power, the aesthetic sensib ility, and the familial concerns, respectively, of women.But since in their views morality must be based on rational principle, and women were incapable of full rationality, or a de gree or kind ofrationality comparable to that of men, women were deemed, in the view of these moralists, to be inherently wanting in morality. For Rousseau,women must be train ed from childhood to submit to the will of men lest their sexual power lead both men and women to disaster. For Kant,women were thought incapable of achieving full moral pers onhood, and women lose all charm if they try to behave like men by engaging inrational

pursuits. For Hegel, women's moral concern for their families could be admirable in its p roper place, but is a threat to the more universalaims to which men, as members of the st ate, should aspire. These images, of the feminine as what must be overcome if knowledge and morality are t o be achieved, of female experience as naturallyirrelevant to morality, and of women as i nherently deficient moral creatures, are built into the history of ethics. Feminists examin e these images,and see that they are not the incidental or merely idiosyncratic suppositio ns of a few philosophers whose views on many topics depart far fromthe ordinary anywa y. Such views are the nearly uniform reflection in philosophical and ethical theory of patr iarchal attitudes pervasivethroughout human history. Or they are exaggerations even of ordinary male experience, which exaggerations then reinforce rather than temperother p atriarchal conceptions and institutions. They distort the actual experience and aspiration s of many men as well as of women. AnnetteBaier recently speculated about why it is tha t moral philosophy has so seriously overlooked the trust between human beings that in h er view is anutterly central aspect of moral life. She noted that "the great moral theorists in our tradition not only are all men, they are mostly men who hadminimal adult dealing s with (and so were then minimally influenced by) women." They were for the most part "clerics, misogynists, and puritanbachelors," and thus it is not surprising that they focus t heir philosophical attention "so single- mindedly on cool, distanced relations betweenmore or less free and equal adult stranger s. . . ."

As feminists, we deplore the patriarchal attitudes that so much of philosophy and moral t heory reflect. But we recognize that the problem is moreserious even than changing thos e attitudes. For moral theory as so far developed is incapable of correcting itself without an almost totaltransformation. It cannot simply absorb the gender that has been "left beh ind," even if both genders would want it to. To continue to buildmorality on rational prin ciples opposed to the emotions and to include women among the rational will leave no o ne to reflect the promptings ofthe heart, which promptings can be moral rather than mer ely instinctive. To simply bring women into the public and male domain of the poliswill l eave no one to speak for the household. Its values have been hitherto unrecognized, but t hey are often moral values. Or to continue to seekcontractual restraints on the pursuits o f self- interest by atomistic individuals, and to have women join men in devotion to these pursu its, willleave no one involved in the nurturance of children and cultivation of social relati ons, which nurturance and cultivation can be of greatest moralimport.

There are very good reasons for women not to want simply to be accorded entry as equal s into the enterprise of morality as so far developed. In arecent survey of types of feminis t moral theory, Kathryn Morgan notes that "many women who engage in philosophical re flection are acutelyaware of the masculine nature of the profession and tradition, and fee l their own moral concerns as women silenced or trivialized in virtually allthe official sett ings that define the practice." Women should clearly not agree, as the price of admission t o the masculine realm of traditionalmorality, to abandon our own moral concerns as wo men. And so we are groping to shape new moral theory. Understandably, we do not yet h avefully worked out feminist moral theories to offer. But we can suggest some directions our project of developing such theories is taking. AsKathryn Morgan points out, there is n ot likely to be a "star" feminist moral theorist on the order of a Rawls or Nozick: "There will be noindividual singled out for two reasons. One reason is that vital moral and theor etical conversations are taking place on a large dialectical scale asthe feminist communit y struggles to develop a feminist ethic. The second reason is that this community of femin ist theoreticians is calling intoquestion the very model of the individualized autonomous self presupposed by a star-centered male- dominated tradition. . . . We experience it asa common labour, a common task."

The dialogues that are enabling feminist approaches to moral theory to develop are proc eeding. As Alison Jaggar makes clear in her usefuloverview of them, there is no unitary vi ew of ethics that can be identified as "feminist ethics." Feminist approaches to ethics shar e a commitmentto "rethinking ethics with a view to correcting whatever forms of male bi as it may contain." While those who develop these approaches are"united by a shared pr oject, they diverge widely in their views as to how this project is to be accomplished."

Not all feminists, by any means, agree that there are distinctive feminist virtues or values . Some are especially skeptical of the attempt to givepositive value to such traditional "fe minine virtues" as a willingness to nurture, or an affinity with caring, or reluctance to see k independence.They see this approach as playing into the hands of those who would con fine women to traditional roles. Other feminists are skeptical of allclaims about women a s such, emphasizing that women are divided by class and race and sexual orientation in ways that make any conclusionsdrawn from "women's experience" dubious.

Still, it is possible, I think, to discern various important focal points evident in current fe minist attempts to transform ethics into a theoretical andpractical activity that could be a cceptable from a feminist point of view. In the glimpse I have presented of bias in the hist ory of ethics, I focusedon what, from a feminist point of view, are three of its most questi

onable aspects: 1) the split between reason and emotion and the devaluation ofemotion; 2) the public/private distinction and the relegation of the private to the natural; and 3) t he concept of the self as constructed from a malepoint of view. In the remainder of this ar ticle, I shall consider further how some feminists are exploring these topics. We are show ing how theirprevious treatment has been distorted, and we are trying to re- envision the realities and recommendations with which these aspects of moraltheorizing do and should try to deal.

I. REASON AND EMOTION

In the area of moral theory in the modern era, the priority accorded to reason has taken t wo major forms. A) On the one hand has been theKantian, or Kantian- inspired search for very general, abstract, deontological, universal moral principles by w hich rational beings should beguided. Kant's Categorical Imperative is a foremost exampl e: it suggests that all moral problems can be handled by applying an impartial, pure,ratio nal principle to particular cases. It requires that we try to see what the general features o f the problem before us are, and that we apply anabstract principle, or rules derivable fro m it, to this problem. On this view, this procedure should be adequate for all moral decisi ons. We shouldthus be able to act as reason recommends, and resist yielding to emotiona l inclinations and desires in conflict with our rational wills.

B) On the other hand, the priority accorded to reason in the modern era has taken a Utilit arian form. The Utilitarian approach, reflected inrational choice theory, recognizes that p ersons have desires and interests, and suggests rules of rational choice for maximizing th e satisfaction ofthese. While some philosophers in this tradition espouse egoism, especial ly of an intelligent and long- term kind, many do not. They begin,however, with assumptions that what are morally rel evant are gains and losses of utility to theoretically isolatable individuals, and that theout come at which morality should aim is the maximization of the utility of individuals. Ratio nal calculation about such an outcome will, in thisview, provide moral recommendations to guide all our choices. As with the Kantian approach, the Utilitarian approach relies on abstract generalprinciples or rules to be applied to particular cases. And it holds that alth ough emotion is, in fact, the source of our desires for certain objectives,the task of morali ty should be to instruct us on how to pursue those objectives most rationally. Emotional attitudes toward moral issuesthemselves interfere with rationality and should be disrega rded. Among the questions Utilitarians can ask can be questions about which emotionsto

cultivate, and which desires to try to change, but these questions are to be handled in the terms of rational calculation, not of what our feelingssuggest.

Although the conceptions of what the judgments of morality should be based on, and of h ow reason should guide moral decision, are different inKantian and in Utilitarian approac hes, both share a reliance on a highly abstract, universal principle as the appropriate sou rce of moral guidance,and both share the view that moral problems are to be solved by th e application of such an abstract principle to particular cases. Both share anadmiration fo r the rules of reason to be appealed to in moral contexts, and both denigrate emotional re sponses to moral issues.

Many feminist philosophers have questioned whether the reliance on abstract rules, rath er than the adoption of more context- respectfulapproaches, can possibly be adequate for dealing with moral problems, especia lly as women experience them. Though Kantians may hold thatcomplex rules can be elab orated for specific contexts, there is nevertheless an assumption in this approach that the more abstract the reasoningapplied to a moral problem, the more satisfactory. And Utilit arians suppose that one highly abstract principle, the Principle of Utility, can beapplied t o every moral problem no matter what the context.

A genuinely universal; or gender- neutral moral theory would be one which would take account of the experience and conc erns of women as fullyas it would take account of the experience and concerns of men. W hen we focus on the experience of women, however, we seem to be able to seea set of mo ral concerns becoming salient that differs from those of traditional or standard moral the ory. Women's experience of moral problemsseems to lead us to be especially concerned with actual relationships between embodied persons, and with what these relationships seem torequire. Women are often inclined to attend to rather than to dismiss the particul arities of the context in which a moral problem arises. And weoften pay attention to feeli ngs of empathy and caring to suggest what we ought to do rather than relying as fully as possible on abstract rules ofreason.

Margaret Walker, for instance, contrasts feminist moral "understanding" with traditional moral "knowledge." She sees the components of theformer as involving "attention, conte xtual and narrative appreciation, and communication in the event of moral deliberation." This alternativemoral epistemology holds that "the adequacy of moral understanding dec reases as its form approaches generality through abstraction."

The work of psychologists such as Carol Gilligan and others has led to a clarification of w hat may be thought of as tendencies among women toapproach moral issues differently. Rather than interpreting moral problems in terms of what could be handled by applying abstract rules of justiceto particular cases, many of the women studied by Gilligan tended to be more concerned with preserving actual human relationships, and withexpressing c are for those for whom they felt responsible. Their moral reasoning was typically more e mbedded in a context of particular othersthan was the reasoning of a comparable group of men. One should not equate tendencies women in fact display with feminist views, sin ce theformer may well be the result of the sexist, oppressive conditions in which women' s lives have been lived. But many feminists see our ownconsciously considered experienc e as lending confirmation to the view that what has come to be called "an ethic of care" n eeds to be developed.Some think it should supersede "the ethic of justice" of traditional o r standard moral theory. Others think it should be integrated with the ethic ofjustice and rules.

In any case, feminist philosophers are in the process of reevaluating the place of emotion in morality in at least two respects. First, many thinkmorality requires the development of the moral emotions, in contrast to moral theories emphasizing the primacy of reason. As Annette Baiernotes, the rationalism typical of traditional moral theory will be challen ged when we pay attention to the role of parent. "It might be important,"she writes, "for f ather figures to have rational control over their violent urges to beat to death the childre n whose screams enrage them, but morethan control of such nasty passions seems neede d in the mother or primary parent, or parent- substitute, by most psychological theories. Theyneed to love their children, not just to co ntrol their irritation." So the emphasis in many traditional theories on rational control ov er the emotions,"rather than on cultivating desirable forms of emotion," is challenged by feminist approaches to ethics.

Secondly, emotion will be respected rather than dismissed by many feminist moral philo sophers in the process of gaining moral understanding.The experience and practice out o f which feminist moral theory can be expected to be developed will include embodied fee ling as well asthought. In a recent overview of a vast amount of writing, Kathryn Morgan states that "feminist theorists begin ethical theorizing with embodied,gendered subjects who have particular histories, particular communities, particular allegiances, and particu lar visions of human flourishing. Thestarting point involves valorizing what has frequentl y been most mistrusted and despised in the western philosophical tradition. . . ." Among t heelements being reevaluated are feminine emotions. The "care" of the alternative femin

ist approach to morality appreciates rather than rejectsemotion. The caring relationships important to feminist morality cannot be understood in terms of abstract rules or moral reasoning. And the"weighing" so often needed between the conflicting claims of some rel ationships and others cannot be settled by deduction or rationalcalculation. A feminist et hic will not just acknowledge emotion, as do Utilitarians, as giving us the objectives towa rd which moral rationality candirect us. It will embrace emotion as providing at least a p artial basis for morality itself, and for moral understanding.

Annette Baier stresses the centrality of trust for an adequate morality. Achieving and mai ntaining trusting, caring, relationships is quite differentfrom acting in accord with ration al principles, or satisfying the individual desires of either self or other. Caring, empathy, f eeling with others,being sensitive to each other's feelings, all may be better guides to wh at morality requires in actual contexts than may abstract rules of reason, orrational calcu lation, or at least they may be necessary components of an adequate morality.

The fear that a feminist ethic will be a relativistic "situation ethic" is misplaced. Some feel ings can be as widely shared as are rational beliefs,and feminists do not see their views a s reducible to "just another attitude." In her discussion of the differences between femini st medical ethicsand non- feminist medical ethics, Susan Sherwin gives an example of how feminists reject the mer e case by case approach that has come topredominate in non- feminist medical ethics. The latter also rejects the excessive reliance on abstract rules ch aracteristic of standard ethics, and inthis way resembles feminist ethics. But the very foc us on cases in isolation from one another deprives this approach from attending to gener alfeatures in the institutions and practices of medicine that, among other faults, systemat ically contribute to the oppression of women. Thedifference of approach can be seen in t he treatment of issues in the new reproductive technologies, where feminists consider h ow the newtechnologies may further decrease the control of women over reproduction.

This difference might be thought to be one of substance rather than of method, but Sher win shows the implications for method also. With respectto reproductive technologies o ne can see especially clearly the deficiencies of the case by case approach: what needs to be considered is not onlychoice in the purely individualistic interpretation of the case by case approach, but control at a more general level and how it affects the structureof gend er in society. Thus, a feminist perspective does not always counsel attention to specific ca se vs. appeal to general considerations, as somesort of methodological rule. But the gener al considerations are often not the purely abstract ones of traditional and standard moral

theory, theyare the general features and judgments to be made about cases in actual (whi ch means, so far, patriarchal) societies. A feminist evaluation of amoral problem should n ever omit the political elements involved; and it is likely to recognize that political issues cannot be dealt with adequatelyin purely abstract terms any more than can moral issues.

The liberal tradition in social and moral philosophy argues that in pluralistic society and even more clearly in a pluralistic world, we cannot agreeon our visions of the good life, o n what is the best kind of life for humans, but we can hope to agree on the minimal condit ions for justice, forcoexistence within a framework allowing us to pursue our visions of t he good life. Many feminists contend that the commitment to justiceneeded for agreemen t in actual conditions on even minimal requirements of justice is as likely to demand relati onal feelings as a rationalrecognition of abstract principles. Human beings can and do car e, and are capable of caring far more than at present, about the sufferings ofchildren quit e distant from them, about the prospects for future generations, and about the well- being of the globe. The liberal tradition'smutually disinterested rational individualists w ould seem unlikely to care enough to take the actions needed to achieve moral decency at a globallevel, or environmental sanity for decades hence, as they would seem unable to r epresent caring relationships within the family and amongfriends. As Annette Baier puts it, "A moral theory, it can plausibly be claimed, cannot regard concern for new and future persons as an optionalcharity left for those with a taste for it. If the morality the theory e ndorses is to sustain itself, it must provide for its own continuers, not just takeout a loan on a carefully encouraged maternal instinct or on the enthusiasm of a self- selected group of environmentalists, who make it theirbusiness or hobby to be concerne d with what we are doing to mother earth." The possibilities as well as the problems (and we are well aware of some of them) in a fe minist reenvisioning of emotion and reason need to befurther developed, but we can alre ady see that the views of non-feminist moral theory are unsatisfactory.

II. THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE

The second questionable aspect of the history of ethics on which I focused was its concep tion of the distinction between the public and theprivate. As with the split between reaso n and emotion, feminists are showing how gender- bias has distorted previous conceptions of thesespheres, and we are trying to offer more appropriate understandings of "private" morality and "public" life.

Part of what feminists have criticized has been the way the distinction has been accompa nied by a supposition that what occurs in the householdoccurs as if on an island beyond

politics, whereas the personal is highly affected by the political power beyond, from legis lation about abortion tothe greater earning power of men, to the interconnected division of labor by gender both within and beyond the household, to the lack ofadequate social p rotection for women against domestic violence. Of course we recognize that the family is not identical to the state, and we needconcepts for thinking about the private or personal , and the public or political. But they will have to be very different from the traditionalco ncepts.

Feminists have also criticized deeper assumptions about what is distinctively human and what is "natural" in the public and private aspects ofhuman life, and what is meant by "na tural" in connection with women. Consider the associations that have traditionally been built up: the publicrealm is seen as the distinctively human realm in which man transcen ds his animal nature, while the private realm of the household is seen as thenatural regio n in which women merely reproduce the species. These associations are extraordinarily pervasive in standard concepts and theories,in art and thought and cultural ideals, and es pecially in politics.

Dominant patterns of thought have seen women as primarily mothers, and mothering as the performance of a primarily biological function. Thenit has been supposed that while engaging in political life is a specifically human activity, women are engaged in an activit y which is notspecifically human. Women accordingly have been thought to be closer to n ature than men, to be enmeshed in a biological function involvingprocesses more like tho se in which other animals are involved than like the rational discussion of the citizen in t he polis, or the glorious battles ofnoble soldiers, or the trading and rational contracting o f "economic man." The total or relative exclusion of women from the domain of publiclife has then been seen as either inevitable or appropriate.

The view that women are more determined by biology than are men is still extraordinari ly prevalent. It is as questionable from a feministperspective as many other traditional m isinterpretations of women's experience. Human mothering is an extremely different acti vity from themothering engaged in by other animals. The work and speech of men is reco gnized as very different from what might be thought of as the"work" and "speech" of oth er animals. Human mothering is fully as different from animal mothering. Of course all h uman beings are animal aswell as human. But to whatever extent it is appropriate to reco gnize a difference between "man" and other animals, so would it be appropriate torecogn ize a comparable difference between "woman" and other animals, and between the activi ties—including mothering—engaged in bywomen and the behavior of other animals.

Human mothering shapes language and culture, it forms human social personhood, it dev elops morality. Animal behavior can he highlyimpressive and complex, but it does not ha ve built into it any of the consciously chosen aims of morality. In creating human social p ersons,human mothering is different in kind from merely propagating a species. And hu man mothering can be fully as creative an activity as thoseactivities traditionally thought of as distinctively human, because to create new persons, and new types of persons, can s urely be as creative as tomake new objects, products, or institutions. Human mothering is no more "natural" or "primarily biological" than is any other human activity. Consider nursing an infant, often thought of as the epitome of a biological process with w hich mothering is associated and women are identified.There is no reason to think of hu man nursing as any more simply biological than there is to think of, say, a businessmen's lunch this way. Eatingis a biological process, but what and how and with whom we eat ar e thoroughly cultural. Whether and how long and with whom a woman nursesan infant, a re also human, cultural matters. If men transcend the natural by conquering new territor y and trading with their neighbors and makingdeals over lunch to do so, women can tran scend the natural by choosing not to nurse their children when they could, or choosing to nurse themwhen their culture tells them not to, or singing songs to their infants as they n urse, or nursing in restaurants to overcome the prejudices againstdoing so, or thinking h uman thoughts as they nurse, and so forth. Human culture surrounds and characterizes t he activity of nursing as it does theactivities of eating, or governing, or writing, or thinkin g.

We are continually being presented with images of the humanly new and creative as occ urring in the public realm of the polis, or the realms ofmarketplace or of art and science o utside the household. The very term "reproduction" suggests mere repetition, the "natur al" bringing intoexistence of repeated instances of the same human animal. But human re production is not repetition. This is not to suggest that bringing upchildren in the intersti ces of patriarchal society, in society structured by institutions supporting male dominanc e, can achieve the potential oftransformation latent in the activity of human mothering. B ut the activity of creating new social persons and new kinds of persons is potentiallythe most transformative human activity of all. And it suggests that morality should concern it self first of all with this activity, with what its normsand practices ought to be, and with h ow the institutions and arrangements throughout society and the world ought to be struc tured to facilitate theright kinds of development of the best kinds of new persons. The flo urishing of children ought to be at the very center of moral and social andpolitical and ec onomic and legal thought, rather than, as at present, at the periphery, if attended to at all.

Revised conceptions of public and private have significant implications for our conceptio ns of human beings and relationships between them.Some feminists suggest that instead of seeing human relationships in terms of the impersonal ones of the "public" sphere, as s tandard politicaland moral theory has so often done, we might consider seeing human rel ationships in terms of those experienced in the sphere of the "private," orof what these r elationships could be imagined to be like in post- patriarchal society. The traditional approach is illustrated by those whogeneralize, to oth er regions of human life than the economic, assumptions about "economic man" in contra ctual relations with other men. It seessuch impersonal, contractual relations as paradigm atic, even, on some views, for moral theory. Many feminists, in contrast, consider the real m ofwhat has been misconstrued as the "private" as offering guidance to what human bei ngs and their relationships should be like even in regionsbeyond those of family and frie ndship. Sara Ruddick looks at the implications of the practice of mothering for the condu ct of peace politics.Marilyn Friedman and Lorraine Code consider friendship, especially a s women understand it, as a possible model for human relationships.Others see society a s non- contractual rather than as contractual. Clearly, a reconceptualization is needed of the wa ys in which every human life isentwined with personal and with social components. Femi nist theorists are contributing imaginative work to this project.

III. THE CONCEPT OF SELF

Let me turn now to the third aspect of the history of ethics which I discussed and which f eminists are re- envisioning: the concept of self. One ofthe most important emphases in a feminist approa ch to morality is the recognition that more attention must be paid to the domain between , on theone hand, the self as ego, as self- interested individual, and, on the other hand, the universal, everyone, others in general. Traditionally, ethics hasdealt with these poles of individual self and universal all. Usually, it has called for impartiality against the partiality of the egoistic self;sometimes it has def ended egoism against claims for a universal perspective. But most standard moral theory has hardly noticed as morallysignificant the intermediate realm of family relations and re lations of friendship, of group ties and neighborhood concerns, especially from thepoint of view of women. When it has noticed this intermediate realm it has often seen its attac hments as threatening to the aspirations of the Manof Reason, or as subversive of "true" morality. In seeing the problems of ethics as problems of reconciling the interests of the s elf with whatwould be right or best for "everyone," standard ethics has neglected the mo

ral aspects of the concern and sympathy which people actually feel forparticular others, a nd what moral experience in this intermediate realm suggests for an adequate morality.

The region of "particular others" is a distinct domain, where what can be seen to be artifi cial and problematic are the very egoistic "self" and theuniversal "all others" of standard moral theory. In the domain of particular others, the self is already constituted to an imp ortant degree byrelations with others, and these relations may be much more salient and significant than the interests of any individual self in isolation. The"others" in the picture, however, are not the "all others," or "everyone," of traditional moral theory; they are not what a universal point of view ora view from nowhere could provide. They are, character istically, actual flesh and blood other human beings for whom we have actual feelingsand with whom we have real ties.

From the point of view of much feminist theory, the individualistic assumptions of liberal theory and of most standard moral theory are suspect.Even if we would be freed from th e debilitating aspects of dominating male power to "be ourselves" and to pursue our own interests, we would,as persons, still have ties to other persons, and we would at least in p art be constituted by such ties. Such ties would be part of what we inherentlyare. We are, for instance, the daughter or son of given parents, or the mother or father of given childr en, and we carry with us at least some ties tothe racial or ethnic or national group within which we developed into the persons we are.

If we look, for instance, at the realities of the relation between mothering person (who ca n be female or male) and child, we can see that what wevalue in the relation cannot be br oken down into individual gains and losses for the individual members in the relation. N or can it be understoodin universalistic terms. Self- development apart from the relation may be much less important than the satisfactory d evelopment of the relation.What matters may often be the health and growth of and the d evelopment of the relation-and-its- members in ways that cannot be understood inthe individualistic terms of standard mor al theories designed to maximize the satisfaction of self- interest. The universalistic terms of moraltheories grounded in what would be right for " all rational beings" or "everyone" cannot handle, either, what has moral value in the relat ionbetween mothering person and child.

Feminism is of course not the only locus of criticism of the individualistic and abstractly universalistic features of liberalism and of standardmoral theory. Marxists and communi tarians also, see the self as constituted by its social relations. But in their usual form, Mar

xist andcommunitarian criticisms pay no "more attention than liberalism and standard moral theory to the experience of women, to the context ofmothering, or to friendship as women experience it. Some recent non- feminist criticisms, such as offered by Bernard Williams, of theimpartiality required by st andard moral theory, stress how a person's identity may be formed by personal projects in ways that do not satisfyuniversal norms, yet ought to be admired. Such views still inter pret morality from the point of view of an individual and his project, not a socialrelations hip such as that between mothering person and child. And recent non- feminist criticisms in terms of traditional communities and theirmoral practices, as seen for instance in the work of Stuart Hampshire, and Alasdair MacIntyre, often take traditio nal gender roles as given, orprovide no basis for a radical critique of them. There is no su bstitute, then, for feminist exploration of the area between ego and universal, aswomen e xperience this area, or for the development of a refocused concept of relational self that c ould be acceptable from a feminist point ofview.

Relationships can be evaluated as trusting or mistrustful, mutually considerate or selfish, harmonious or stressful, and so forth. Where trust andconsideration are appropriate, wh ich is not always, we can find ways to foster them. But understanding and evaluating rela tionships, andencouraging them to be what they can be at their best, require us to look at relationships between actual persons, and to see what both standardmoral theories and t heir non- feminist critics often miss. To be adequate, moral theories must pay attention to the negl ected realm of particularothers in the actual relationships and actual contexts of women' s experience. In doing so, problems of individual self- interest vs. universal rulesmay recede to a region more like background, out-of- focus insolubility or relative unimportance. The salient problems may then be seen to be how we ought best to guide or to maintain or to reshape the relationships, both close and more distant, that we have, or might have, with actualother human beings. Particular oth ers can be actual children in need in distant continents, or the anticipated children of gen erations not yet evenclose to being born. But they are not "all rational beings" or "the gre atest number," and the self that is in relationships with particular others andis composed to a significant degree by such relations is not a self whose ego must be pitted against abs tract, universal claims. Developing theneeded guidance for maintaining and reshaping rel ationships presents enormous problems, but a first step is to recognize how traditional a ndnon-

feminist moral theory of both an individualistic and communitarian kind falls short in pr oviding it.

The concept of the relational self which is evolving within feminist thought is leading to i nteresting inquiry in many fields. An example is thework being done at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. Psychologists there have posited a self-in- relation theory and are conducting empiricalinquiries to try to establish how the female self develops. They are working with a theory that a female relational self develops throu gh amutually empathetic mother- daughter bond. The work has been influenced by Jean Baker Miller's re- evaluation of women's psychologicalqualities as strengths rather than weaknesses. In he r book Toward a New Psychology of Women, published in 1976, Miller identified women's" great desire for affiliation" as one such strength. Nancy Chodorow's The Reproduction of Mothering, published in 1978, has also had asignificant influence on the work done at the Stone Center, as it has on much feminist inquiry. Chodorow argued that a female affiliativ e self isreproduced by a structure of parenting in which mothers are the primary caretak ers, and sons and daughters develop differently in relation to aparent of the same sex, or a parent of different sex, as primary caretaker. Daughters develop a sense of self by ident ifying themselves with themother; they come to define themselves as connected to or in r elation with others. Sons, in contrast, develop a sense of self by differentiatingthemselves from the mother; they come to define themselves as separate from or unconnected to oth ers. An implication often drawn fromChodorow's work is that parenting should be share d equally by fathers and mothers so that children of either sex can develop with caretake rs ofboth same and different sex. In 1982, Carol Gilligan, building on both Miller and Chodorow, offered her view of the "di fferent voice" with which girls and women expresstheir understanding of moral problem s. Like Miller and Chodorow, Gilligan valued tendencies found especially in women to affi liate with othersand to interpret their moral responsibilities in terms of their relationshi ps with others. In all, the valuing of autonomy and individualindependence over care and concern for relationships, was seen as an expression of male bias. The Stone Center has t ried to elaborate and tostudy a feminist conception of the relational self. In a series of Wo rking Papers, researchers and clinicians have explored the implications of thisconception for various issues in women's psychology (e.g. power, anger, work inhibitions, violence, e ating patterns) and for therapy.

The self as conceptualized in these studies is seen as having both a need for recognition a nd a need to understand the other, and these needs areseen as compatible. They are crea

ted in the context of mother- child interaction, and are satisfied in a mutually empathetic relationship. This doesnot re quire a loss of self, but a relationship of mutuality in which self and other both express in tersubjectivity. Both give and take in a way thatnot only contributes to the satisfaction of their needs as individuals, but also affirms the "larger relational unit" they compose.

Maintaining this larger relational unit then becomes a goal, and maturity is seen not in te rms of individual autonomy but in terms of competencein creating and sustaining relatio ns of empathy and mutual intersubjectivity.

The Stone Center psychologists contend that the goal of mutuality is rarely achieved in a dult male- female relationships because of the traditionalgender system. The gender system leads men to seek autonomy and power over others, and to undervalue the caring and relation al connectednessthat is expected of women. Women rarely receive the nurturing and em pathetic support they provide. Accordingly, these psychologists look tothe interaction th at occurs in mother- daughter relationships as the best source of insight into the promotion of the healthy, rel ational self. Thisresearch provides an example of exploration into a refocused, feminist c onception of the self, and into empirical questions about its developmentand implication s.

In a quite different field, that of legal theory, a refocused concept of self is leading to reex aminations of such concepts as property and autonomyand the role these have played in political theory and in constitutional law. For instance, the legal theorist Jennifer Nedelsk y questions theimagery that is dominant in constitutional law and in our conceptions of p roperty: the imagery of a bounded self, a self contained withinboundaries and having rig hts to property within a wall allowing it to exclude others and to exclude government. Th e boundary metaphor, sheargues, obscures and distorts our thinking about human relati onships and what is valuable in them. "The boundedness of selves," Nedelskywrites, "ma y seem to be a self-evident truth, but I think it is a wrong- headed and destructive way of conceiving of the human creatures law andgovernment ar e created for." In the domain of the self's relation to the state, the central problem, she ar gues, is not "maintaining a sphere intowhich the state cannot penetrate, but fostering aut onomy when people are already within the sphere of state control or responsibility." Wh at wecan from a feminist perspective think of as the male "separative self" seems on an e ndless quest for security behind such walls of protection asthose of property. Property fo

cuses the quest for security "in ways that are paradigmatic of the efforts of separative sel ves to protect themselvesthrough boundaries. . . ." But of course property is a social const ruction, not a thing; it requires the involvement of the state to define what it isand to def end it. What will provide what it seeks to offer will not be boundaries and exclusions, but constructive relationships.

In an article on autonomy, Nedelsky examines the deficiencies in the concept of self with which so much of our political and legal thinking aboutautonomy has been developed. Sh e well recognizes that of course feminists are centrally concerned with freedom and auto nomy, with enablingwomen to live our own lives. But we need a language with which to e xpress these concerns which will also reflect "the equally importantfeminist precept that any good theorizing will start with people in their social contexts. And the notion of socia l context must take seriously itsconstitutive quality; social context cannot simply mean t hat individuals will, of course, encounter one another." The problem, then, is how tocomb ine the claim of the constitutiveness of social relations with the value of self- determination. Liberalism has been the source of our languageof freedom and self- determination, but it lacks the ability to express comprehension of "the reality we know: the centrality of relationships inconstituting the self."

In developing a new conception of autonomy that avoids positing self- sufficient and thus highly artificial individuals, Nedelsky points out firstthat "the capacity to find one's own law can develop only in the context of relations with others (both intim ate and more broadly social) thatnurture this capacity, and second, that the ‘content' of o ne's own law is comprehensible only with reference to shared social norms, values, andc oncepts." She sees the traditional liberal view of the self as implying that the most perfect ly autonomous man is the most perfectly isolated, andfinds this pathological.

Instead of developing autonomy through images of walls around one's property, as does the Western liberal tradition and as does U.S.constitutional law, Nedelsky suggests that "t he most promising model, symbol, or metaphor for autonomy is not property, but childre aring. Therewe have encapsulated the emergence of autonomy through relationship with others. . . . Interdependence [is] a constant component of autonomy."And she goes on to e xamine how law and bureaucracies can foster autonomy within relationships between ci tizen and government. This does notentail extrapolating from intimate relations to large scale ones; rather, the insights gained from experience with the context of childrearing al lowus to recognize the relational aspects of autonomy. In work such as Nedelsky's we ca n see how feminist reconceptualizations of the self can leadto the rethinking of fundamen

tal concepts even in terrains such as law, thought by many to be quite distant from such disturbances.

To argue for a view of the self as relational does not mean that women need to remain en meshed in the ties by which they are constituted. Inrecent decades, especially, women ha ve been breaking free of relationships with parents, with the communities in which they grew up, and withmen, relationships in which they defined themselves through the tradit ional and often stifling expectations of others. These quests for self haveoften involved w renching instability and painful insecurity. But the quest has been for a new and more sat isfactory relational self, not for the self- sufficient individual of liberal theory. Many might share the concerns expressed by Aliso n Jaggar that disconnecting ourselves from particularothers, as ideals of individual auton omy seem to presuppose we should, might make us incapable of morality, rather than ca pable of it, if, as somany feminists think, "an ineliminable part of morality consists in resp onding emotionally to particular others."

I have examined three topics on which feminist philosophers and feminists in other field s are thinking anew about where we should start and howwe should focus our attention i n ethics. Feminist reconceptualizations and recommendations concerning the relation be tween reason andemotion, the distinction between public and private, and the concept of the self, are providing insights deeply challenging to standard moraltheory. The implicati ons of this work are that we need an almost total reconstruction of social and political an d economic and legal theory in alltheir traditional forms as well as a reconstruction of m oral theory and practice at more comprehensive, or fundamental, levels.

Virginia Held, "Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Fall 1990 (supplement) Vol. 50, pp.

321–344. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing Ltd. .

Applied Sciences

Architecture and Design

Biology

Business & Finance

Chemistry

Computer Science

Geography

Geology

Education

Engineering

English

Environmental science

Spanish

Government

History

Human Resource Management

Information Systems

Law

Literature

Mathematics

Nursing

Physics

Political Science

Psychology

Reading

Science

Social Science

Home

Blog

Archive

Contact

google+twitterfacebook

Copyright © 2019 HomeworkMarket.com