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Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal Lisa Tessman Editor

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Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal Lisa Tessman Editor Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal Lisa Tessman Editor Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal 123 Editor Prof. Lisa Tessman Binghamton University Dept. Philosophy P.O.Box 6000 Binghamton NY 13902-6000 Library Tower USA [email protected] ISBN 978-1-4020-6840-9 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-6841-6 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-6841-6 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009926832 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover illustration: Nancy Spero, “Black and the Red III”, 1994 (detail). Handprinted and printed collage on paper. 22 panels, 50×245 cm each. Installation view, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden. Private collection. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Photo by David Reynolds. The work of Nancy Spero (b.1926), artist, activist and feminist, has focused on diverse historical, mythical and contemporary cultural representations of women since the 1970’s. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgments I would like to thank Bat-Ami Bar On, Randy Friedman, Anna Gotlib, Elizabeth Potter, and Melissa Zinkin (as well as some anonymous readers) for help and encouragement with the editing of this volume, Charles Mills for the essay that sparked my idea of how to shape it, and all of the contributors for their hard, origi- nal work and for many wonderful conversations. –Lisa Tessman Some portions of chapter eight were published in 2008 by Eva Feder Kittay as ‘Ideal Theory Bioethics and the Exclusion of People with Severe Cognitive Disabil- ities’ in Naturalized Bioethics: Toward Responsible Knowing and Practice edited by Hilde Lindemann, Marian Verkerk, and Margaret Walker (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), and are reprinted here with permission. v Contents Introduction ....................................................... xiii Lisa Tessman Part I Feminist Theorizations of Ethics and Politics, and of the Ideal and Non-ideal 1 Normativity, Feminism, and Politics .............................. 3 Bat-Ami Bar On 2 Ethical Reasons and Political Commitments ....................... 25 Lisa Rivera 3 Feminist Eudaimonism: Eudaimonism as Non-Ideal Theory ........ 47 Lisa Tessman 4 L’Imagination au Pouvoir: Comparing John Rawls’s Method of Ideal Theory with Iris Marion Young’s Method of Critical Theory ... 59 Alison M. Jaggar Part II Critiquing Idealized Characterizations of Personhood 5 Conjoined Twins, Embodied Personhood, and Surgical Separation ... 69 Christine Overall 6 The Ideology of the Normal: Desire, Ethics, and Kierkegaardian Critique ....................................................... 85 Ada S. Jaarsma 7 The Challenge of Care to Idealizing Theories of Distributive Justice . 105 Anca Gheaus vii viii Contents 8 The Ethics of Philosophizing: Ideal Theory and the Exclusion of People with Severe Cognitive Disabilities ..........................121 Eva Feder Kittay Part III Remaking the Moral and Political Subject 9 The Vulnerable Self: Enabling the Recognition of Racial Inequality . 149 Desirée H. Melton 10 Anger, Virtue, and Oppression ...................................165 Macalester Bell 11 Practicing Imperfect Forgiveness ................................185 Alice MacLachlan 12 Feminist Political Solidarity .....................................205 Sally J. Scholz Part IV Contextualizing in Actualities 13 Resisting Organizational Power ..................................223 Peggy DesAutels 14 Women and Violence: A Theory of Judgment ......................237 María Pía Lara 15 Narrative Structures, Narratives of Abuse, and Human Rights ......253 Diana Tietjens Meyers 16 Women, Corporate Globalization, and Global Justice ..............271 Ann Ferguson Index .............................................................287 About the Contributors Bat-Ami Bar On is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Binghamton University (SUNY). She is a recipient of the Chancellor Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her research and teaching are focused on violence, democratic theory, and feminism. She is the author of The Subject of Violence: Arendtean Exercises in Understanding (2002) and the editor of two special issues of Hypatia (23/2 and 11/4), Jewish Locations: Traversing Racial- ized Landscapes (with Lisa Tessman, 2001), Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics (with Ann Ferguson, 1998), Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings of Plato and Aristotle and Modern Engendering: Critical Feminist Read- ings in Modern Western Philosophy (both 1994). She is also the author of numerous anthologized and journal essays. Macalester Bell is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University. Her main research and teaching interests are in ethics, moral psychology, feminist philosophy, and aesthetics. Peggy DesAutels is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Dayton. Her research interests focus on ethical theory, feminist ethics, and moral psychology. Her recent books include a co-edited volume with Rebecca Whisnant, Global Feminist Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield); and a co-edited volume with Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (Rowman and Littlefield). Ann Ferguson is a feminist philosopher and social justice activist who is an emerita Professor of Women’s Studies and Philosophy at the University of Mas- sachusetts at Amherst. She has written two books and numerous articles in feminist theory, ethics and politics. The books are: Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sex- uality and Male Dominance (London: Pandora\Unwin Hyman, 1989) and Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression and Revolution (Boulder: Westview, 1991). She also co-edited a book in feminist ethics with Bat-Ami Bar On, Daring to be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics (Routledge, 1998). Anca Gheaus has earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Central European University, in Budapest, Hungary with a thesis entitled ‘Care and Justice: Why They Cannot Go Together All the Way.’ She did post-doctoral research at the New ix x About the Contributors Europe College in Bucharest, the Chaire Hoover d’etique economique et sociale, Université Catholique de Louvain and the Centre for the Study of Social Justice at Oxford University. Recent publications include ‘Gender Justice and the Welfare State in Post-Communism,’ in Feminist Theory; ‘What Would a Basic Income Do for Gender Justice?’ in Basic Income Studies, and ‘How Much of What Matters Can We Redistribute?’ forthcoming in Hypatia. Ada S. Jaarsma is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University, where she teaches feminist philosophy and critical theory. Her research examines the intersections of contemporary queer theory, religion, and spirituality. Alison M. Jaggar is College Professor of Distinction in Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is author and editor of a num- ber of books including The Blackwell Companion to Feminist Philosophy, co-edited with Iris M. Young (Blackwell, 1998); Just Methods (Paradigm, 2007); and Abor- tion: Three Perspectives, co-authored with Michael Tooley, Philip Devine and Celia Wolf-Devine (Oxford 2008). Jaggar is interested in transnational gender justice and in moral reasoning, especially in contexts of inequality and cultural difference. She was a founding member of the Society for Women in Philosophy and is past chair of the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women. Eva Feder Kittay is Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Major publications include “On the Margins of Moral Personhood” (in Ethics); Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency; Blackwell Studies in Feminist Philosophy (with L. Alcoff); Theoretical Perspectives on Depen- dency and Women (with E. Feder); Women and Moral Theory (with D. T. Meyers), Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure; and Frames, Fields and Contrasts (edited with A. Lehrer). She is working on three books, one tentatively entitled, A Quest for A Humbler Philosophy: Thinking about Disabled Minds and Things that Matter; another, a collection of her essays on ethics of care; and the third, a collection of essays entitled Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy (with Licia Carlson). She is the mother of two adult children, one of whom has significant cognitive impairments. María Pía Lara is a Professor of Political Philosophy and Ethics at the Univer- sidad Autonoma Metropolitana (Mexico City). She is the author of Moral Tex- tures (1997) and Narrating Evil (2007) and the editor of Rethinking Evil (2001). She has published in many international journals and is currently working on a book ten- tatively called Authority and Legitimacy: Religion and Politics in the Public Sphere. Alice MacLachlan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at York University. She completed her Ph.D. at Boston University in 2007. Her main areas of teaching and research are theoretical ethics (especially feminist ethics, virtue ethics and moral psychology),
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