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Lani Roberts, Ph.D. Oregon State University Lani Roberts, Ph.D. Oregon State University Publication and Copyright Information Prepared for the lecture series, "Ideas Matter," at the Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University, and presented on February 3, 1994. Copyright © 1999 Lani Roberts. Used by permission of the author. Introduction I want to begin with a few caveats. Feminist philosophy, as discussed here, should be understood to be limited to western, European-based philosophy, primarily as done by white women academics. Although multicultural philosophy is rapidly developing and gradually being incorporated into classroom teaching, for most academics, philosophy has been western and European. Here and elsewhere, an increasing number of scholars and teachers are examining other kinds of philosophy, some even predating the ancient Greek masters, often considered to be the founders of philosophy as studied in most of academia. Oregon State University is especially fortunate in this regard because our Philosophy Department has teachers knowledgeable about some non-western philosophy and religion. For example, we offer courses in Chinese and Indian Philosophies, Non-Western Religion, Hispanic Thought and, next term, Pre- Columbian Philosophy. Feminist philosophy, although generally done by women, has been and is being done by men too. There are both classic and contemporary male philosophers who ponder some of the issues raised by feminist philosophy. Contemporary philosophy also sees a few men fully engaged in feminist philosophy and who publish in Hypatia, the journal of feminist philosophy. On the other hand, traditional philosophy, although nearly exclusively done by men in the past, also engages the attention and energy of many women. Today's feminist scholars were required to excel in traditional philosophy in order to become the successful academics many are. As philosophers, feminists also seek to thoroughly understand traditional philosophy in order to avoid "straw men" fallacies in their work of criticizing classic philosophical traditions, presuppositions and methodologies. Given that feminist philosophy does not break cleanly along gender lines, it may be best characterized as a new, challenging and invigorating critique of traditional philosophical questions and the presuppositions that underlie them. One final caveat: a lecture of this sort permits only the broadest of brush strokes, thus every generalization made should be understood to have exceptions. I plan to proceed in the following way. I want to try to give broad answers to two questions: why feminist philosophy? and, what is feminist philosophy? Then, I will offer a specific example of the contribution feminism is making to philosophy. Finally, it seems to me that we can learn something about the future course of philosophy from what we have witnessed over the past 20 or 30 years in regards to the role of feminism in philosophy. Why Feminist Philosophy? The impulse for feminist philosophy arose for at least two relatively simple and related reasons. Women have been unable to recognize themselves in traditional philosophical discourse. A woman studying traditional philosophy experiences a dissonance and senses incoherence between what is claimed as generally true of human beings and women's lived experiences. Philosophical literature is replete with descriptions of women's nature as well as what her function is and/or ought to be, however in most cases, the portrait is not one that would lead a female student to believe she could succeed in the philosophical enterprise. Although I will not be quoting sample passages, some of the more notorious include Rousseau's description of women in Emile or Education and Schopenhauer's utterly misogynistic tirade against women in his essay "On Women." The general characterization of women in philosophical literature is of dependent, childlike, emotional beings. The very skills required for reasoned discourse, objectivity, and philosophical thought were deemed severely limited or altogether missing in women. This kind of portrayal of women, pervasive in traditional philosophy, is particularly disturbing to its women students. The irony is that if the portrayals are accurate at all, the woman student is foreclosed from success. When I would mention my concern about such characterizations of women, I was consistently advised to take into account the historical nature of much of philosophy and to recognize how much had changed since "those" days. And, clearly, much had improved because here I was - a woman - studying philosophy. This explanation satisfied me to a certain extent but the consistency of women's degradation continued to trouble me. What has changed such that women, however few of us, are now successfully studying philosophy and completing doctorates? Has the nature of women changed so dramatically over the past hundred years or so? Alternatively, were the traditional philosophical discourses on women mistaken all along? Or, is there some other explanation? The dissonance that arose between the classic characterization of woman and the actuality of women excelling at philosophy compelled the question of whether the generic "man" of philosophy was gender neutral after all. Students have been encouraged to read "man" as "human being." However, in most philosophy, "man" was generally honored and woman was not. Careful examination of much of philosophical discourse seemed to show that what philosophy said was true of "men" was not necessarily true of women too. Thus, it was exceedingly difficult for women to find themselves in philosophy. This kind of incoherence between ideas and experiences led women students and scholars to more closely examine the assumptions and methods of traditional philosophy. Women asked if the demeaning portrait of women in much of the great works was fully explained solely in historical terms. Close examinations led women to suspect that traditional philosophical assumptions might function in ways that maintain male gender superiority at the deepest theoretical and methodological levels of philosophy. From pre-Socratic philosophy through to the present, value-hierarchical thinking, that is, the assumption that difference entails hierarchy in a normative sense, lays the very foundation of much of philosophical inquiry. For example, pre-existing Plato, Pythagoreans laid down ten principles showing that numbers have attributes belonging to everything, even the virtues. Parallel columns list the following attributes under odd and even numbers respectively. Odd numbers correspond to limits, singular, male, rest, straight, light, good and square. Even numbers are in harmony with unlimited, plural, female, movement, crooked, dark, bad and oblong. The first time I read excerpts from Pythagorean philosophy, I was struck that male, light and the good were grouped together and opposite to female, dark and bad. Perhaps one might wish that the Pythagorean groupings were an historical anomaly but, alas, this cannot be said. Beginning in ancient philosophy and persisting throughout the history of philosophy is the general sense that men, culture, mind and reason are valued over women, nature, bodies and emotions. Valuing one set of these attributes privileges men over women at the very foundation of the philosophical enterprise. Normative dualities such as these form the underlying presuppositions of the traditional philosophical enterprise itself. Echoing the Pythagorean schemata, the following dichotomies form the outlines of philosophical investigation. Objectivity rather than subjectivity, reason rather than emotion and mind rather than body have been the tools of philosophy itself. Is it other than coincidental that women have been identified with emotion, body and subjectivity while philosophy traditionally requires their opposites? Feminist philosophers argue that since the very foundational presuppositions of philosophy define women according to one half of the dualisms and require the other half for participation, that the tradition itself is constituted in such a way that women are pushed to the margins or excluded entirely. This critique prompts feminists to ask whether whatever consensus exists in philosophical discourse is related to philosophy's essentially eurocentric, male character. Is it possible that the classic conception of "objectivity" has arisen from this hegemony? What Is Feminist Philosophy? Although feminist philosophy begins from the politics of subordination and exclusion, it does not work around the edges of philosophy but goes to its heart - the central presuppositions and key concepts that form the very foundation of traditional philosophy itself. It can be argued that this task is best done by feminists. As the Hegelian master-slave dialectic teaches us, the master need only know his own perspective but the slave must know both the master's and his own for survival. From its political genesis, feminist philosophy seeks to understand why philosophy's characterizations of women have been so faulty and how this has functioned to maintain gender inequality. To this end, the valuing of mind over body, reason over emotion, objectivity over lived experienced has been and is being challenged. Although some feminist philosophers seek to reverse the normative dualisms, e.g., raising body over mind, most feminist philosophy seeks to show the fundamental conception of these pairs as dichotomous is itself mistaken. Rather than being opposed to one another, feminist philosophers generally argue that mind and
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