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Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and sometimes (...) socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices. (shrink)

A contribution to the feminist discussion on moral theory, exploring the debate between moral impartiality and the partiality that characterizes personal relationships, the ethic of care and its relation to justice in a gender asymmetrical society, and the role of intimate friendship in an era of the dissolution of both extended and nuclear families.

Carol Gilligan heard a ‘distinct moral language’ in the voices of women who were subjects in her studies of moral reasoning. Though herself a developmental psychologist, Gilligan has put her mark on contemporary feminist moral philosophy by daring to claim the competence of this voice and the worth of its message. Her book, In a Different Voice, which one theorist has aptly described as a best-seller, explored the concern with care and relationships which Gilligan discerned in the moral reasoning of (...) women and contrasted it with the orientation toward justice and rights which she found to typify the moral reasoning of men. (shrink)

This essay counteracts that trend [regarding the debate about whether partiality can be justified, those supporting impartiality have generally been on the offensive arguing that morality calls for impartiality] by taking a closer look at the moral complexity of our social practices of partiality. My adoption of this approach does not represent an endorsement of current notions of impartiality. The ideal of impartiality, in my view, should be substantially reformulated. However, that the concept of partiality is transparently defensible. In this (...) discussion, I focus on the aspects of partiality that complicate the philosophical defense of it. In the first part of the discussion, I argue that the moral value of partiality depends partly on the moral value of the relationships it helps to sustain. It matters to the philosophical issues at stake that personal relationships can be abusive and oppressive. In Section II, I refer to the vastly unequal social distribution of the means for favoring loved ones. Because many people have inadequate resources for caring for their loved ones, our conventional relationship practices of partiality-practices by which we care only for our ``own''-can be disasterous for many people. This seriously complicates the defense of partiality. The paper ends with a discussion, in Section III, of ``global moral concern'' and the resistance which most partialists show to it. (shrink)

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be indispensable for political philosophers (...) and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections developmental psychology and evolutionary biology. This cross-disciplinary interchange coincides, not accidentally, with the renewed interest in ethical naturalism.

This chapter focuses on John Rawls's recent approach to liberal political legitimacy. His views on reasonableness and rationality are considered. It is argued that Rawls's legitimation pool for political liberalism is defined precisely in such a way as to exclude those whose prior commitments would lead them to reject political liberalism. The challenge for Rawls is to find good but politically independent reasons for eliminating so-called unreasonable people from the legitimation pool.

This chapter contains section titled: Care Ethics Applied Ethics Autonomy Communicative Ethics Feminist Ethical Strategies Notes Further Reading.

Author note: Penny A. Weiss, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, is the author of Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics. Marilyn Friedman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, is the author of What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory.

Can men who dominate women nevertheless be happy or lead flourishing lives? Building on Claudia Card's exploration of moral luck, this paper considers the belief that male dominators cannot be happy. The discussion ranges over both virtue theory and empirical research into the "belief in a just world." I conclude that there are reasons to avoid believing that male dominators cannot be happy or flourish, and that feminism does not need that belief.

This paper raises some minor questions about Lisa Tessman's book, Burdened Virtues. Friedman's questions pertain, among other things, to the adequacy of a virtue ethical focus on character, the apparent implication of virtue ethics that oppressors suffer damaged characters and are not any better off than the oppressed, the importance of whether privileged persons may have earned their privileges, and the oppositional anger that movement feminists sometimes direct against each other.

Feminist ethics supports the contemporary educational trend toward increased multiculturalism and a diminished emphasis on the Western canon. First, I outline a feminist ethical justification for this development. Second, I argue that Western canon studies should not be altogether abandoned in a multicultural curriculum. Third, I suggest that multicultural education should help combat oppression in addition to simply promoting awareness of diversity. Fourth, I caution against an arrogant moralism in the teaching of multiculturalism.

Several decades ago, feminists differentiated between the biologically given basis of sex identity (sex) and the socially constructed cultural practices anchored by sex identity (gender). In recent years, many feminists have challenged that distinction, arguing that biological sex is as much a social construct as are the practices comprising gender. I survey two examples from biological studies of sex identity that, by contrast (I maintain), warrant saving the concept of biologically given sex identity. The result is not antithetical to feminism, (...) however, since these studies also suggest that sex identity proliferates beyond the rigid female/male dichotomy. If articulated carefully, this view can avoid metaphysically essentialist baggage while enriching feminist conceptions of sex identity. (shrink)

Debates about how to incorporate the severely cognitively disabled into liberal theory typically focus on John Rawls’s assumption that citizens choosing the principles of justice should be understood as full social cooperators. In this paper, we argue that social cooperation is not the fundamental barrier to the inclusion of the severely cognitively disabled. We argue that these persons are excluded from the entire project of liberal legitimacy in virtue of the apparent inability of a severely cognitively disabled person to understand (...) and evaluate the legitimacy of political principles for herself. Severely cognitively disabled persons lack a kind of access to political principles that is crucial, according to liberal theory, for political principles to be legitimate to someone, and not simply for someone. (shrink)

In modern Western philosophy, impartial reasoning has defined the moral point of view and determined the strategies of moral justification. Political philosophers have invoked it as well, to legitimate certain governmental and social institutions. Normative impartiality has become highly controversial in recent years, however, and feminists have contributed substantially to these debates.

Should women’s terrorist acts be understood differently than similar acts carried out by men? Does the gender identity of a terrorist make a difference to the meaning of a terrorist’s acts? Commentators who explain women’s involvement in terrorism often offer explanations other than political commitment. They often refer instead to factors in the women’s personal relationships, thereby drawing on gender stereotypes and diminishing the women’s political commitments. I suggest instead that terrorism by a woman involves symbolic political “testimony.” It amounts (...) to saying that someone who is a typically nonviolent sort of person has engaged in violence on behalf of a political cause. Because of this significance, women’s terrorism merits a more serious consideration as testimony than similar acts by men. (shrink)

Feminists, communitarians, and other social theorists have raised numerous challenges to the very possibility of the ideal of personal autonomy and its alleged value. This chapter offers a negative defense of autonomy by responding to six critical challenges that have been or may be leveled against it. These are that autonomy-self-determination is impossible because there are no selves; autonomy is impossible because selves cannot “determine” themselves: human actions are merely links in chains of interpersonal interactions; autonomy is impossible because selves (...) cannot determine themselves: they cannot understand themselves accurately; autonomy is possible but not genuinely valuable, and may even be positively harmful, especially to socially subordinated or oppressed groups; autonomy is possible and genuinely valuable, but has been restricted in practice to elite social groups; and that autonomy is possible and genuinely valuable but can be, and has been, distorted in practice into something harmful. (shrink)

This chapter presents the author's basic account of autonomy, considering its social context and dimensions. It then explores the difference between a substantive and a content-neutral conception of autonomy, opting for the latter. This is followed by some thoughts about the prospects for autonomy under dangerous or oppressive conditions. The chapter concludes with some remarks about possible counterexamples to the conception of autonomy presented.

This chapter aims to identify a common ground between liberals and defenders of cultural minorities that can serve as the basis for a mutually acceptable, yet still liberal, policy toward the treatment of women and girls by the cultural minority groups to which they belong. It also aims to defend the very project of a liberal policy by responding to some of the criticisms that Okin and others have received for defending women's rights in apparent opposition to some minority cultural (...) traditions. (shrink)

This chapter examines autonomy in regard to domestic violence. It discusses how intimate partner abuse diminishes autonomy. It is argued that professional care-givers should usually provide uncritical support for abused women who choose to remain in abusive relationships rather than trying rationally to persuade them to change their minds. Legal policy must treat individual cases with consideration for the material and symbolic impact of that treatment on a whole population.

Feminist ethics supports the contemporary educational trend toward increased multiculturalism and a diminished emphasis on the Western canon. First, I outline a feminist ethical justification for this development. Second, I argue that Western canon studies should not be altogether abandoned in a multicultural curriculum. Third, I suggest that multicultural education should help combat oppression in addition to simply promoting awareness of diversity. Fourth, I caution against an arrogant moralism in the teaching of multiculturalism.

InThe View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel develops a theory of practical reasoning which attempts to give the personal, or subjective, point of view its due2 while still insisting on the objectivity of ethics.On the objective side, Nagel affirms that there are truths about values and reasons for action which are independent of the ways in which reasons and values appear to us, independent of our own particular beliefs and inclinations (p. 144). The objective foundation for these truths consists in a (...) certain distinctive process of understanding. Objective understanding is explicated in terms of an objective standpoint, a standpoint defined as impersonal, that is, as detached from the subjective point of view. The objective standpoint is structured by a conception ‘of the world as centerless—as containing ourselves and other beings with particular points of view’ (p. 140). As with scientific reasoning, ‘we begin from our position inside the world and try to transcend it by regarding what we find here as a sample of the whole’ (p. 141). (shrink)