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The True Believer and the Moral Agent : Alternative Images of Feminist Action

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The True Believer and the Moral Agent : Alternative Images of Feminist Action University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1975 The true believer and the moral agent : alternative images of feminist action. Susan Friedman Risch University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Risch, Susan Friedman, "The true believer and the moral agent : alternative images of feminist action." (1975). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1855. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1855 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i THE TRUE BELIEVER AND THE MORAL AGENT ALTERNATIVE IMAGES OF FEMINIST ACTION A Dissertation Presented By Susan Friedman Risch Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February, 1975 Political Science ( c ) Susan F. Risch All Rights Reserved THE TRUE BELIEVER AND THE MORAL AGENT: ALTERNATIVE IMAGES OF FEMINIST ACTION A Dissertation By Susan Friedman Risen Approved as to style and content by: L2£ , Chairman of ^Cornrpi"ttee Wi I I iam E. Connol ly len Gordon, Member Lewis Ki 1 1 ian, Member Glen Gordon, Department Chairman Political Science iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Professor William E. Connolly of the Department of Political Science, the University of Massachusetts for his inspiration and continuous encourage- ment, and for his thoroughness as advisor and critic. Thanks also to Professor Glen Gordon of the same department and to Professor Lewis Killian of the Department of Sociology for their comments on rough drafts. This dissertation would have been far more difficult to complete without the support and criticism of Jean Elshtain and Shirley Haslip, also of the Department of Political Science. Their friendship, their encouragement, their familiarity with resources and their concern for the issues were vital to my work. Finally, I want to thank Michael for helping me in the hardest way possible, by living with me through most of this very trying period. t iv The Moral Agent and the True Believer Alternative Images of Feminist Action Massachusetts (February 1975) Susan Friedman Risch, B.A., Cornell University M.A., University of California Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Dr. William E. Connolly The dissertation is an investigation into several of the epistemological problems involved in the study of human action. I have assumed that what a person does - as opposed to what happens to her - involves a conceptual component. This assumption has lead me to three questions » 1) how are political concepts linked to political action; in particular, what is the relation between moral concepts and political action; 2) how do persons acquire political concepts; 3) what is the significance of some political concepts being essen- tially disputed. I have attempted to show that political concepts are linked in one direction to explanatory theory - concepts such as 'liberation' involve an explanatory theory of what a liber- ated life would look like and what inhibits liberation - and in another direction to the passions. I have explicated two contending theories of concept acquisition - the inductionist approach in which persons learn those concepts and rules al- ready embedded in social practise, and the cognitive develop- • V mental approach which attempts to explain the acquisition of critical consciousness. I have linked these contending images of concept acquisition with contending conceptions of the justificatory term ' liberation. I have termed these alternative approaches to political action the True Believer and Moral Agent models. Each carries within it a contrast model which serves to highlight desirable and undesirable features of human action. The True Believer contrast model is the model of rational liberal politics - a politics of self-interest constrained by the rules of liberal democratic procedures. The Moral Agent contrast model is heteronomous political action, or action guided by an uncritical acceptance of existing norms and rules. Finally, I have applied these alternative images of pol- itical action to the Women's Liberation Movement in an attempt to both illustrate the importance of conceptual disputes in politics, and to demonstrate the manner in which our under- standings of what can be a rational basis for human action can blind us to alternatives to which other understandings are open. I have attempted to show that the problem of interpretation is not a problem for political analysts alone, but also for Move- ment activists. If analysts do not share the concepts deployed by actors as justifications for action, those actions will re- main opaque. And for actors, rational political discourse will be impeded to the extend that conceptual frameworks are not shared. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT iv Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE TRUE BELIEVER 13 Assumptions Underbidding the Model 15 The Social Conditions under which True Believers and Rational Political Agents Appear 16 Moral Development ....... 25 Alternative Images of Political Action ... 30 True Believer Motivation! The Primacy of Passion ..... 30 The Contrast Model 1 Rational Political Action 39 A Preliminary Critique ...... 51 III. AN ALTERNATIVE IMAGE OF RATIONAL POLITICAL ACTION 60 The Moral Agent i Persons and Human Relationships ......... 61 Is Moral Reasoning Enough? . 88 Moral Reasoning and Explanatory Theory 88 Affective Commitment and Political Actioni The Problem of Saintliness . 97 Reasons and Actions 115 The Conditions under which Moral Devel- opment Can Succeed 120 Adequacy of the Two Models 131 Acquisition of Political Motives . 131 Reason, Passion and Action 136 IV. THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT 145 The True Believer Model ..... 146 The Frustrated Bitch Hypothesis .... 146 • Rational Feminism! Liberal Variant . 154 Bitchiness as a Justification for Feminism 171 An Alternative Image of Rational Feminism . 181 CONCLUSIONS 2 33 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2 35 i CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Over fifty years ago Sigraund Freud asked the question "What do women want?" Freud raised this question during an earlier period of feminist activity, and although he has subsequently been held responsible for the counter-reformation which followed upon the heels of nineteenth century feminism, his question remains a vital one. Today, in this second wave of American feminism, we need to ask once again i "What do women want?" At root this is an epistemological question i how can we know what motivates other people's actions? My assumption is that what we do is to bring to bear our understanding of what we think can motivate any person in our attempts to understand what a specific person has done or says she will do. We bring to bear on any specific action we encounter our understanding of what we think persons* interests, reasons, purposes, wants, intentions, etc. can be. I also assume that every attempt to understand political motives must come to grips with at least the following elements 1) Because political action is often justified by an appeal to moral concepts (e.g., interests, justice, equality, 1 freedom), every attempt to understand political action must reach some understanding of what these concepts mean and how V, Both perspectives I develop are theories of action as opposed to behavior \ i.e., both treat persons as rule- followers. The difference between them rests on their understanding of how persons learn and follow rules. I have excluded other possible modes of explanation, in particular a thorough-going behaviorist explanation. 2 persons acquire them. Human action always includes a con- ceptual component! distinguishing between what a person does and what happens to her involves us in investigation of the reasons that lie behind the activity. In a limited sense, "thinking makes it so," or at least possible. What a person does in part depends on what she believes is possible for her to do. Her beliefs are the conceptual tools she brings to bear on her own understanding of the circumstances in which she finds herself and in which she must decide and act. Action, then, is delimited in part by the concepts which one can deploy in understanding, reasoning about and deciding among alternatives. I shall argue that the con- cepts we use, especially our moral concepts, are embedded in our social relationships, are bound up in the way persons interact and thereby learn to view each other and themselves. I shall also argue that different theories of concept acquis- 2 ition pick out different features of the same concepts. The example I shall use in the final chapter of this dissertation 1 is the Feminist concept of •liberation . I shall want to 3 show that 'liberation' is an essentially disputed concept, and that this dispute revolves around different explanations 2~, There is another side to human activity which analysts like Freud have pointed to - the unconscious side. Indeed, our conscious reasons may be rationalizations of our uncon- scious ones. I want to be clear that the notion of action does not exclude unconscious motives, that the focus on justi- fication in this dissertation does not preclude rationalization. 3. William E. Connolly,
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