The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue (...) class='Hi'>Anderson, In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

In what sense, if any, does the dominant conception of the traditional theistic God as disembodied inform our embodied experiences? Feminist philosophers of religion have been either explicitly or implicitly preoccupied by a philosophical failure to address such questions concerning embodiment and its relationship to the divine. To redress this failure, certain feminist philosophers have sought to appropriate Luce Irigaray’s argument that embodied divinity depends upon women themselves becoming divine. This article assesses weaknesses in the Irigarayan position, notably the problematic (...) move from a woman’s subjectivity to divinity. In the light of these weaknesses the author looks for a better alternative. Drawing on the work of feminist and nonfeminist philosophers, a feminist-friendly conception of theism is sketched in terms of incarnation and intersubjectivity. Philosophical accounts of the ethical formation of gendered subjects by way of bodily practices offer new concepts for con. (shrink)

In my response-paper, I dispute the claim of Firestone and Jacobs that “Kant’s turn to transcendental analysis of the moral disposition via pure cognition is perhaps the most important new element of his philosophy of religion” (In Defense of Kant’s Religion, 233). In particular, I reject the role given—in the latter—to “pure cognition.” Instead I propose a Kantian variation on cognition which remains consistent with Kant’s moral postulate for the existence of God. I urge that we treat this postulate as (...) regulative. So, in place of pure cognition, “belief in” God grounds our hope for perfect goodness. (shrink)

Bridging the traditionally separate domains of analytic and Continental philosophies, Pamela Sue Anderson presents for the first time, a feminist framework for studying the philosophy of religion.

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Feminist philosophy of religion as a subject of study has developed in recent years because of the identification and exposure of explicit sexism in much of the traditional philosophical thinking about religion. This struggle with a discipline shaped almost exclusively by men has led feminist philosophers to redress the problematic biases of gender, race, class and sexual orientation of the subject. Anderson and Clack bring together new and key writings on the core topics and approaches to this growing field. (...) Each essay exhibits a distinctive theoretical approach and appropriate insights from the fields of literature, theology, philosophy, gender and cultural studies. Beginning with a general introduction, part one explores important approaches to the feminist philosophy of religion, including psychoanalytic, poststructualist, postmetaphysical, and epistemological frameworks. In part two the authors survey significant topics including questions of divinity, embodiment, autonomy and spirituality, and religious practice. Supported by explanatory prefaces and an extensive bibliography which is organized thematically, Feminist Philosophy of Religion is an important resource for this new area of study. (shrink)

This article challenges a prominent claim in moral philosophy: that autonomy is a personal ideal, according to which individuals are authors of their own lives. This claim is philosophically dubious and ethically pernicious, having excluded women from positions of rational authority. A reading of Ibsen's A Doll's House illustrates how this conception of the ideal of autonomy misrepresents the reality of individuals' lived experiences and imposes a gendered identity which subordinates women to a masculine narcissism. In Ibsen's play the woman, (...) as a doll confined to home, remains dependent on an autonomous man. It would seem that men in modern philosophy could see only their own image as rational agents reflected in their ethics; but, in fact, this position is self-defeating. The recognition of our contingencies and so, vulnerability, motivated Kant himself to try to make the moral realm secure with something necessarily common to all human beings: our capacity to reason. The unwitting upshot of Kant's ethics has been the restriction of reason to a purely formal function; but this autonomy of reason undermines itself in being unable to guide the writing of the rational agent's own life. I propose instead to preserve the capacities of moral rationality, while urging the incorporation of ethical practices previously devalued by their association with vulnerability, such as attention, affection and relationality. My philosophical challenge is, first, to develop an internal critique of ethics which exposes its authoritative imposition of a gender identity and, next, to propose a revised conception of autonomy, namely, not just writing our own story, but reading the stories in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Ideas of love within religion are usually driven by one of two mythologies – either a personal God who commands love or a mystical God of ineffable love – but both are inadequate for motivating love of neighbour. The first tends towards legalism and the second offers no cognitive guidance. The situation is further complicated by there being different understandings of love of neighbour in the various Abrahamic religions, as exemplified in the approaches of two philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel (...) Levinas. A better approach is therefore to explore actual practices of love in everyday life, and to discover how love might be performed openly and creatively. One such practice is recognition of vulnerability, and this too is often driven by a mythology, in this case one marked by fear, and by a violence either imposed or avoided. One paradigmatic example is the vulnerability felt by speakers, especially women, in front of an audience. A turning from wilful ignorance of vulnerability and a turning to reliance on collective work, modelled on an awareness of mutual vulnerability and openness to the unknown, will help to change our philosophical and social imaginary. The dark myth of vulnerability can be transformed into finding opportunities in vulnerability for openness to affection and so to an enhancement of life. It is only from the perspective of this new imaginary, and from everyday practices of it, that the double love-command – love of God and love of neighbour – will function as any kind of common ground between religions. (shrink)

I begin with the assumption that a philosophically significant tension exists today in feminist philosophy of religion between those subjects who seek to become divine and those who seek their identity in mutual recognition. My critical engagement with the ambiguous assertions of Luce Irigaray seeks to demonstrate, one the one hand, that a woman needs to recognize her own identity but, on the other hand, that each subject whether male or female must struggle in relation to the other in order (...) to maintain realism about life and death. No one can avoid the recognition that we are each given life but each of us also dies. In addition, I raise a more general, philosophical problem for analytic philosophers who attempt to read Continental philosophy of religion: how should philosophers interpret deliberately ambiguous assertions? For example, what does Irigaray mean in asserting. 'Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign'? To find an answer, I turn to the distinctively French readings of the Hegelian struggle for recognition which have preoccupied Continental philosophers especially since the first half of the last century. I explore the struggle for mutual recognition between womrn and men who must face the reality of life and death in order to avoid the projection of their fear of mortality onto the other sex. This includes a critical look at Irigaray's account of subjectivity and divinity. I turn to the French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff in order to shift the focus from divinity to intersubjectivity. I conclude that taking seriously the struggle for mutual recognition between subjects forces contemporary philosophers of religion to be realist in their living and dying. With this in mind, the lesson from the Continent for philosophy of religion is that we must not stop yearning for recognition. Indeed, we must event risk our autonomy/divinity in seeking to recognize intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This text presents a new critical awareness of gender in philosophy and religion, suggesting new core concepts at the interface of philosophy and religion, and ethics and epistemology.

The French feminist philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff has taught us something about “the collectivity,” which she discovers in women’s struggle for access to the philosophical, but also about “the unknown” and “the unthought.” It is the unthought which will matter most to what I intend to say today about a fundamental ignorance on which speaker vulnerability is built. On International Women’s Day, it seems appropriate to speak about – or, at least, to evoke – the silencing which has been imposed (...) on women by an oppressive form of ignorance. My question is: how do our resounding voices as women – on 8 March 2016 – avoid what feminist philosophers have distinguished as wilful forms of silencing? Silencing exploits vulnerability; and speaker vulnerability is an exposure either to violence or affection, in its dependence on an audience. My response seeks to undo the silencing of women by transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into a distinctively ethical avowal. To see the significance of this undoing, we will consider how our contemporary global world reduces vulnerability to an openness to violence, ignoring what has been unthought: an openness to affection. A wilful ignorance of vulnerability develops not as a lack of knowledge but its disavowal – on which various forms of oppression are built. An active disavowal of thinking (the unthought) is the other side of a striving for invulnerability; and this striving is encouraged by a social world which remains ignorant of its own wounding, as well as its own potential for ethical relations in vulnerability. Like la mauvaise foi of the French existentialist, invulnerability is a form of self-deception; and those who claim it embrace ignorance of their own and others’ vulnerability too. (shrink)

Anderson (philosophy, U. of Sunderland, England) presents an exegetical, restorative, and critical account of French philosopher Ricoeur's early work on human will, seeing in it a dual-aspect perspective of people that helps make sense of his later complex writings. Emphasizes the important impact of Kant on his original thinking. (Editor's note: this review corrects a misleading one appearing in the December 1993 issue.) Paper edition (837-0), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In this paper I explore a “variation” on the “theme” of intuition in the evolution of modern metaphysics. My aim is not to criticize A. W. Moore’s account of intuition as one of two ways by which Bergson makes sense of things (the other way is analysis). Instead I will suggest the significance in extending Bergson’s metaphysics to mystical life as “the ‘very life of things’ into which intuition installs itself.” When the metaphysical drama, in The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, (...) reaches chapter 16, “Bergson: Metaphysics as Pure Creativity,” Moore expresses astonishment that Bergson could have thought philosophers have ever agreed on aligning “analysis” in science with the impossibility of non-perspectival sense-making and “intuition” in metaphysics with the possibility of absolute (non-perspectival) knowledge. Using a method of intuition, not of analysis, as non-perspectival sense-making is the opposite of what Moore himself finds in other philosophical contributions to modern metaphysics as “a most general attempt to make sense of things.” He takes an influential example: Bernard Williams associates analysis, not intuition, with the possibility of non-perspectival sense-making and absolute knowledge. My response defends Bergsonian intuition in giving it a positive—and, why not, non-perspectival?—role in metaphysics as mystical; that is, as unique and inexpressible life. Moore describes intuition in Bergson as both the faculty and the method for the evolution of new concepts and new ways of making sense of things. I will stress that Bergsonian intuition is “an effort to place oneself into a movement, such as that of philosophy itself,” expressing “what is ‘living in philosophers’ rather than what is ‘fixed and dead in theses.’ ” This mystical life pushes out the limits set up by Kant for metaphysics (and science) by allowing intuition (with analysis) to reach for absolute, non-perspectival knowledge. (shrink)

In this contribution to Text Matters, I would like to introduce gender into my feminist response to Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology of the capable subject. The aim is to make, phenomenologically speaking, “visible” the gendering of this subject in a hermeneutic problematic: that of a subject’s loss of confidence in her own ability to understand herself. Ricoeurian hermeneutics enables us to elucidate the generally hidden dimensions in a phenomenology of lost self-confidence; Ricoeur describes capability as “originally given” to each lived (...) body; but then, something has happened, gone wrong or been concealed in one’s loss of confidence. Ricoeur himself does not ask how the gender or sex of one’s own body affects this loss. So I draw on contemporary feminist debates about the phenomenology of the body, as well as Julia Kristeva’s hermeneutics of the Antigone figure, in order to demonstrate how women might reconfigure the epistemic limits of human capability, revealing themselves as “a horizon” of the political order, for better or worse. (shrink)

This essay explores the theme of sexual difference in relation to sacrifice by contrasting Girard's account of mimetic desire and cultural violence with Kristeva's extensive reflections on allied themes. Inspired by Reineke's critique of Girard the object of the paper is to generate discussion concerning the ethical implications of recognizing the play of sexual difference in any theory of sacrifice. Specifically it aims to contribute towards a subversion of the sexually specific violence of patriarchy.

This essay argues for a Le Dœuffian dialogue with Spinoza's Ethics, intending the increase of affective knowledge and bodily power. This intention requires a striving to learn: first, what perhaps we do not already know; second, what our bodies can do; and third, to increase in joy. From this dialogue the reader can gain Spinozist knowledge of bodies, minds, affections, as well as gaining the power to affect and to be affected by other bodies. One of the features of this (...) Le Dœuffian practice is a collective exploration of what makes dialogue productive and joyful, opening up new possibilities, especially for women in philosophy today. (shrink)

I locate the starting point for this essay on the common ground between the traditionally conceived attribute of divine love and the moral theory known as divine command ethics. The latter assumes that something is good because God commands it; with the former, the gift of divine love requires love in return. In this light, God’s command to love is recognized as goodness itself by those ‘he’ loves. In other words, those persons loved by God are morally motivated to love. (...) However, this theistic account of divine command theory simply assumes that love is knowable, do-able and so required. The obstacles to knowing love and loving are rarely made explicit. To tackle some of these, this essay is loosely structured around a dialogue with Kantian morality. Analysis of the gendered nature of love will take place indirectly in the course of my account of duty, pure goodness and moral motivation. (shrink)

This paper presents a feminist intervention into debates concerning the relation between human subjects and a divine ideal. I turn to what Irigarayan feminists challenge as a masculine conception of ‘the God’s eye view’ of reality. This ideal functions not only in philosophy of religion, but in ethics, politics, epistemology and philosophy of science: it is given various names from ‘the competent judge’ to the ‘the ideal observer’ (IO) whose view is either from nowhere or everywhere. The question is whether, (...) as Taliaferro contends, my own philosophical argument inevitably appeals to the impartiality and omni-attributes of the IO. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Cet essai incite les philosophes contemporains de la religion à repenser le rôle que la philosophie critique de Kant a joué à la fois dans l’inauguration de la nature analytique de la philosophie moderne et dans le développement de la poussée de la critique de la raison vers l’inconditionné. En particulier, il s’agit, dans cet essai, de démontrer que Kant et d’autres rationalistes modernes, comme Spinoza, peuvent contribuer à notre lutte rationnelle dans la vérité et pour elle. Cette démonstration vise (...) un groupe récent de philosophes analytiques de la religion qui ont nommé leur propre travail « théologie analytique » et ont suscité de nouvelles discussions, y compris de nouveaux arguments sur Kant jetant un pont entre la philosophie et la théologie. La culture de l’ouverture réflexive et critique est ici encouragée pour contrôler les prétentions excessives concernant Dieu. (shrink)

The present special issue of Sophia on ‘feminist philosophy of religion’ is dedicated to Gillian O. Howie who died in 2013. This essay is a short obituary touching on Howie’s philosophical and personal legacy. The intention is to give a brief overview of Howie as a courageous woman with boundless intellectual curiosity and passionate commitments to feminist activities; these include writing and living her philosophical vision for creating a just society with collective political action. Howie inspired both women and men (...) in philosophy—especially, but not only, feminist philosophers of religion—with her work on the critical role of sexual difference in life today. (shrink)

This article defends the place of “standpoint” in a realist epistemology. The conception and role of standpoint are proposed to be receptive to the shifting perspectives of actual knowers. A standpoint is distinguished from a spontaneous perspective or mere outlook. In this realist epistemology standpoint will have something to do with background beliefs. but rather than a starting point, it is an achievement gained as a result of a struggle for less biased knowledge. Epistemologists currently employ various conceptions of standpoint. (...) However. the present concern is with a conception that functions to expose the framing influence of the social and material variables constituting complex power relations. Oppression and domination are not as easily elucidated as background beliefs. Confronting the truth of racism, for example. involves not only empirical justification and hermeneutical dialogue but recognition of standpoint in a reflexive and transformative interplay of perspectives. (shrink)

This article defends the place of “standpoint” in a realist epistemology. The conception and role of standpoint are proposed to be receptive to the shifting perspectives of actual knowers. A standpoint is distinguished from a spontaneous perspective or mere outlook. In this realist epistemology standpoint will have something to do with background beliefs. but rather than a starting point, it is an achievement gained as a result of a struggle for less biased knowledge. Epistemologists currently employ various conceptions of standpoint. (...) However. the present concern is with a conception that functions to expose the framing influence of the social and material variables constituting complex power relations. Oppression and domination are not as easily elucidated as background beliefs. Confronting the truth of racism, for example. involves not only empirical justification and hermeneutical dialogue but recognition of standpoint in a reflexive and transformative interplay of perspectives. (shrink)

In my response-paper, I dispute the claim of Firestone and Jacobs that “Kant’s turn to transcendental analysis of the moral disposition via pure cognition is perhaps the most important new element of his philosophy of religion” (In Defense of Kant’s Religion, 233). In particular, I reject the role given—in the latter—to “pure cognition.” Instead I propose a Kantian variation on cognition which remains consistent with Kant’s moral postulate for the existence of God. I urge that we treat this postulate as (...) regulative. So, in place of pure cognition, “belief in” God grounds our hope for perfect goodness. (shrink)

Pamela Sue Anderson urges feminist philosophers to embrace Michèle Le Doeuff’s revaluation of women in philosophy through according “fair value” to intuition as an intellectual faculty, a view of intuition articulated by Henri Bergson. She asks whether women who follow Bergson could be given fair value along with intuition. She turns from Le Doeuff’s writings on intuition to writings by Bergson and by Beauvoir, but periodically returns to Le Doeuff herself. In the end, a picture of freedom, friendship (...) and feminism emerges from readings of all three. This is a portrait of confident and capable interactions in creativity and dynamic projects, which transform our becoming within life, on the assumption that the love of friendship is between like-minded, embodied and interrelated selves. She explores whether we transform our lives in freedom and in love between friends. Although attracted to the human – and humane – solidarity in freedom of “great souls,” as in Beauvoir’s women of action, she instead aligns herself with Le Doeuff’s critical caution against naturalizing a timelessly abstract female soul for contemporary feminist philosophers. She concludes her proposed orientation with a Le Doeuffian feminist image of living life freely for and with friends. (shrink)

The paper builds on the postulate of “myths we live by,” which shape our imaginative life (and hence our social expectations), but which are also open to reflective study and reinvention. It applies this principle, in particular, to the concepts of love and vulnerability. We are accustomed to think of the condition of vulnerability in an objectifying and distancing way, as something that affects the bearers of specific (disadvantaged) social identities. Against this picture, which can serve as a pretext for (...) paternalist and controlling attitudes to the groups in question – notably to women – Anderson urges us to reimagine our vulnerability as a condition not merely of exposure to violence but of openness to mutual affection, love, and friendship. Hegel’s celebrated image of the owl of Minerva, which takes wing only with the coming of dusk, suggests an association of (philosophical) wisdom with negativity – with the experience of death or loss. Anderson, by contrast, proposes an alternative and more hopeful image of the dawn of enlightenment, in the guise of new ethical dispositions shaped by an emancipatory (and so, no longer an oppressive or sexist) conception of our capacity for love. Her main interlocutors or influences in this piece are Judith Butler (who contributes the idea of a “relational ontology”), Michèle Le Doeuff, and Mary Midgley. (shrink)

This essay urges contemporary philosophers of religion to rethink the role that Kant’s critical philosophy has played both in establishing the analytic nature of modern philosophy and in developing a critique of reason’s drive for the unconditioned. In particular, the essay demonstrates the contribution that Kant and other modern rationalists such as Spinoza can still make today to our rational striving in and for truth. This demonstration focuses on a recent group of analytic philosophers of religion who have labelled their (...) own work ‘analytic theology’ and have generated new debates, including new arguments about Kant bridging philosophy and theology. Cultivation of a reflective critical openness is encouraged here; this is a practice for checking reason’s overly ambitious claims about God. (shrink)

Reviews/interviews/contributors Tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz - Agnieszka Salska New Media Effects on Traditional News Sources: A Review of the State of American Newspapers - Richard Profozich Review of The Body, ed. by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow - Grzegorz Kość “Taste good iny?”: Images of and from Australian Indigenous Literature - Jared Thomas Speaks with Teresa Podemska-Abt Engaging the “Forbidden Texts” of Philosophy - Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper.

Tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz - Agnieszka Salska New Media Effects on Traditional News Sources: A Review of the State of American Newspapers - Richard Profozich Review of The Body, ed. by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow - Grzegorz Kość “Taste good iny?”: Images of and from Australian Indigenous Literature - Jared Thomas Speaks with Teresa Podemska-Abt Engaging the “Forbidden Texts” of Philosophy - Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper.

This essay on the life and work of Pamela Sue Anderson traces aspects of her scholarly work that I was very fortunate to share with her over twenty-six years. What brought us together was our commitment to feminism but also our strong interest in the work of Paul Ricoeur – which seemed to many people an odd combination, given Ricoeur’s silence on the topic of women and gender issues. Over the years, we met at conferences, read each other’s (...) books, and published articles in each other’s publications. My principal aim is to chart her own journey and her relation to the work of Paul Ricoeur. What was remarkable in Pamela’s work was her passionate commitment, which was especially contagious. Her early work on the philosopher Kant was rigorous in ways that helped to initiate a wealth of new scholarship and increased an awareness of Ricoeur’s Kantian influence. In relation to Ricoeur’s work, Pamela was intrigued by his silence on women, but she realized that, given his dialogical approach, she could attempt not only to introduce feminist insights but also to expand his ideas so as to incorporate philosophy of religion. First, she integrated Ricoeur’s approach of the hermeneutics of suspicion to assist in this task. Then she adapted his writings on hospitality. But it was only when Ricoeur turned his attention to human suffering and vulnerability in his later years – a topic that resonated deeply with Pamela – that she was moved to write specifically in ways that helped incorporate her insights with Ricoeur’s in constructive ways. Her final publications reflect her wise and thought-provoking conclusions. (shrink)

Pamela had, throughout her life, an ambivalent relationship with the church. She wanted her work to make a difference to it and she was committed to being a feminist philosopher of religion. There are many recurrent themes in her work that clearly relate to her background in the church, and particularly in the Lutheran church of her upbringing. Her challenge to the patriarchy of what she called “hyper-traditional” Christianity is clear, but also her critique of some forms of forgiveness (...) and her search for new understandings of love and vulnerability. Her work presents significant challenges to the church, but does not abandon it, instead offering new ways of connecting with some of its most profound and important teachings and themes. Her work encourages us women in the church to value our own life experience as a source of knowledge, to re-frame our vulnerabilities and to find love in ways that offer freedom and hope. Pamela saw her work as her own contribution to the community of the church. It remains important that her voice, even and especially with its “speaker vulnerability,” is heard in that place. (shrink)

This paper introduces a special issue on logic and philosophy of religion in this journal. After discussing the role played by logic in the philosophy of religion along with classical developments, we present the basic motivation for this special issue accompanied by an exposition of its content.