Masks For Boys

Feminist Analytic Philosophy

Introduction

One of the philosophy majors in my recent Feminist Philosophy class - a male student, with a sophisticated background in philosophy - voiced some doubts about the prefix "feminist" attached to the course title, and he wondered, at several points in the semester, whether the issues we were grappling with were perhaps of general philosophical importance, but not of unique interest to feminists. We had talked about illiterate midwives as possessing a sort of knowledge gained through experiences rather than learned through books. "But why not consider this example as part of a general challenge to what counts as knowledge?" he asked. A little later in the term, we turned to a matter at the heart of a feminist "ethics of care" - whether relationships to particular others have any special relevance to morality. Again, this student wanted to know what was distinctive about the problem. He suggested that the matter presented a test for how adaptable Kantianism and Utilitarianism are but not a reason to seek out a new kind of moral theory. Finally, late in the term, we considered whether the "male gaze" implied by many Hollywood movies detracts from their aesthetic quality. Such a topic, this student astutely observed, is related to a more general one: whether moral or political evaluations about a work of art should ever affect our aesthetic appreciation of it.

So why, he wanted to know, should any of these issues be claimed as the special domain of feminist philosophy?

It is possible to see this student's questions as dismissive of the enterprise of feminist philosophy - as taking even "feminist" concerns away from feminism and finding a legitimate voice only within mainstream analytic philosophy. But this is not the spirit in which I took the questions he posed or the spirit in which I take them here and now. In fact, I treat them as an invitation to establish what I believe are the merits of feminist analytic philosophy. There are two answers we might be tempted to give these questions, and I think that the answer we are led to may be partly a function of whether we understand them as discreet questions, unrelated to one another, or as a related set to be treated collectively. We may agree with my student's initial suspicions and claim that there is no special "feminist" problem at all in analytic philosophy. Or we may, as I choose to do, argue that the various problems feminist philosophers have uncovered in epistemology, philosophy of language, ethics, aesthetics, and so on, together point to an undeniable need for reform within philosophy. In each of these areas, feminist philosophers have discovered that seemingly neutral concepts are, in reality, deeply gendered, and in ways that have led to the silencing of women - both women philosophers and, perhaps more ominously, women human beings. There is scarcely a concept, for instance, that seems more obviously objective than "reason, " which implies an ability to arrive deductively at the correct way of viewing the world or some aspect of it. And yet, "reason" is part of a dyadic pair, the other being "emotion, " which has for a great part of our intellectual history been used to distinguish between male and female traits - the male, of course, as rational, the female as emotional (which often implies irrational). The result of this traditional split between male and female has been that certain ways of engaging with the world have come to count as reasoning, and certain others have not. Logical, deductive, scientific, and mathematical reasoning count; intuition and experiential knowledge do not. Men have historically received more training in these first kinds of reasoning; women, often relegated to the domestic sphere, have been encouraged to develop the second sort. The upshot is that "reason" is a term that has been more standardly applied to men than to women. And women, except by assimilating to the male model of reasoning, have often been excluded from the regions in which reason mainly operates. One of these regions is surely the discipline of philosophy, in particular analytic philosophy, where, according to Margaret Urban Walker, under a third of all newly minted philosophy PhD's in the United States are women.[1] But the hidden bias in a concept like reason extends well beyond philosophy, into the daily lives and professions of women who are, in myriad and sometimes unnoticed ways, not treated seriously as reasoners. This problem of exclusion is one that we confront time and again. But before we look specifically at this pattern, I want to suggest that even if we take the first option in answering my student's questions - treating each question as distinct from the others, each presenting a sizeable challenge within philosophy but not a specifically feminist one - we will have gained something for feminism, for philosophy, and for women in general.

Applying the label "feminist"

Let us turn to one philosophical problem and consider how it might be framed both inside and outside the context of feminism. The issue I have in mind is one of the core problems in contemporary aesthetics: how aesthetic value relates to other sorts of value - moral, political, cognitive, and so on.

The analytic aesthetic tradition, as it has grown up at least since Kant wrote an influential work called The Critique of Judgment, has been grounded on several assumptions. Among them, aestheticists have taken for granted that the appropriate way to view a work of art is as a disinterested observer, one who leaves his or her own emotional self behind and studies the work of art at a certain intellectual remove. This attitude need not preclude feeling moved by a work of art; but the idea is that art is to be appreciated on its own merits, independent of the observer's own idiosyncratic tastes, moods, and beliefs. In this way, we can each presumably come to experience a work of art in the same way as one another. Related to this assumption is another, that the value of a work of art is a function of its aesthetic properties, which are themselves distinct from any other sort of property. This view is called autonomism, or sometimes aestheticism.[2] The aesthetic value of a work of art, in this view, is not compromised by other values present in the work. Nor, for that matter, is it improved by them. Discussions about the autonomy of art, or the separation of aesthetic value from all other values, often center on moral matters: The autonomist claims that regardless of how morally suspect the message of a work of art may be, its aesthetic value remains perfectly intact. A work of literature that condones slavery might nevertheless be an aesthetic masterpiece. If aesthetic value is tied too closely to the moral or ethical worth of a work of art, the autonomist maintains, then it will not be possible to discuss the aesthetic value of a work whose moral overtones we disagree with. At least part of what concerns the autonomist is the fact that moral and ethical values change over time, and from culture to culture. We can avoid the awkward stance that a work's aesthetic value might change as a society's moral attitudes evolve by insisting on a sharp divide between aesthetic and other values. Notice, then, what such a position suggests: that while other values may be open to change, aesthetic value is timeless, not subject to shifts in tastes or convention. Together with the notion of the disinterested observer, the predominant view of art in contemporary aesthetics remains one which favors the universal aspects of art appreciation.

Some feminists writers, working in the field of aesthetics, step in at this point and ask whether the apparently universal nature of art appreciation really is, well, universal. A number of explicitly feminist texts voice some skepticism that the aesthetic model I have just spelled out properly characterizes our relationship to works of art. One cause for concern, for instance, is the notion of a disinterested observer; some feminists have pointed out that this ideal reinforces the very notion of "reason" that we have already found to be the cause for concern. The disinterested observer, like the "man of reason, "[3] is one who is regulated wholly by his intellect, who brings to the table no emotional or spiritual baggage, nor any concern about the relationship between what he observes and other people or objects. For the paradigmatic male reasoner, such a detached attitude will fall perfectly into line with much other intellectual activity. But for one not so trained, the experience may seem alien, unnatural, and self-denying. At least one question raised by feminists is why we should place such a premium on detachment. Leaving this question aside, however, let us turn away from a specifically feminist aesthetics to consider another challenge to the aesthetic model just developed. As I have suggested, I think that even taking this non-feminist approach, we will find something that appeals to feminists in the debate.

Mary Devereaux, who in recent work supplies feminist grounds for resisting the view that aesthetic value is wholly distinct from other sorts of values, has also, interestingly, approached this matter from a non-feminist standpoint in other work.[4] In an influential paper about the aesthetic value of Leni Riefenstahl's 1939 German propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, which depicts the rise of the German Nationalist movement and the growing political might of Adolph Hitler, Devereaux similarly argues against autonomism.[5] But in that paper, none of the reasons she gives are what we might consider feminist. (Of course, it should go without saying that neither the fact that the writer of the paper is female, nor that the director of the film is, classifies Devereaux's work as feminist. Devereaux makes no appeal, in this piece, to any feminist arguments against autonomism.) In brief, she argues that the moral values espoused by the film affect its aesthetic value. Though she admits that the film is at times beautiful, that Riefenstahl employed what was then state-of-the-art cinematography and that her blending of traditional German folk music with patriotic marches is inspiring, she argues that the moral outlook advocated by this film cannot be divorced from its aesthetic value; because the film is morally corrupt, it is aesthetically bad. Her reason for faulting the work aesthetically is complex but intriguing: All of its various aesthetic properties - its grand beauty, its masterful camerawork, its use of music, even its positioning of Hitler always on a platform so that the film-going audience must look up at him - are themselves intended to produce a certain feeling in viewers, a mix of awe and respect for the German Nationalist Movement. Indeed, when I have shown this film in class, students have reported, sometimes uncomfortably, a feeling of camaraderie with the German leaders on the screen, even as those notorious figures deliver speeches about the purity of the German race. This manipulation of our feelings is just what Devereaux thinks makes this film not just morally but aesthetically bad. It employs aesthetic techniques in order to deliver us to a specific (and in this case, evil) moral outlook. The aesthetic cannot be divorced from the moral because the two work in tandem. Hence, in Devereaux's view, autonomism is unsustainable.

Whether Devereaux is right in her condemnation of Riefenstahl's work is beside the point, at least for our present purposes. That her view represents one side in an ongoing debate in contemporary aesthetics is crucial, however, for it brings us back to my student's question: Why label as feminist a rejection of autonomism when, in fact, the argument over how to classify aesthetic value is part of the general discourse among today's aestheticists? Or, to put it another way, isn't it possible that the feminist concern is just a part of a more general issue, and not a unique problem at all? What do we gain by casting the problem in feminist terms?

Particularly when we think of this matter as distinct from others discussed by feminist philosophers, it begins to look as if there is nothing specifically feminist at issue. To some extent, of course, this is true. Mary Devereaux apparently saw no need to cast her doubts about autonomism in feminist terms in the paper on Triumph of the Will. We certainly can engage in the general debate on autonomism without being feminists. Still, I think this is not the end of the story - not a complete answer to my student. For even if we make this concession, agreeing that feminists do not exercise a controlling share in this debate (nor, similarly, in the debates within epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, ethics, and so on), it does not follow that feminism has no special stake in the outcome of the debate nor any special contribution to make toward it. Two responses seem appropriate to me: First, though personally I believe that we need pointedly feminist work to expose and correct many inconsistencies, oversights, and errors in philosophy, it matters less how we characterize the problems, whether as feminist or not, so long as we take care to resolve them. If the limitations of theories in aesthetics (or in other subfields of philosophy) that have worried feminist scholars are - for other, non-feminist reasons - reconsidered and corrected, that may still represent a net gain for women. Second, and more significantly, I think we can admit that there is room within most academic debates to pursue many different angles on a single problem. If we acknowledge the existence of a problem (autonomism, in the case of aesthetics, but each subfield has its own issues) then we will have provided reason to work on solving it. Acknowledging the legitimacy of the autonomism debate gives license to feminist scholars, among others, to work toward a solution. Feminists, in conjunction with others tackling different aspects of the problem, just might make some real progress.

A Collective Enterprise

The importance of analytic feminist philosophy is even more evident, I believe, if we cease to see the problems it deals with as distinct from one another and instead look for general patterns and assumptions within philosophy as a whole. That is to say, a clear answer to my student's questions emerges when we engage them collectively. Philosophy, like so many other academic disciplines, has become very specialized in the last half century. No one attempts the kind of encyclopedic knowledge that Aristotle once thought possible; philosophers tend to focus on some small set of issues in one or another area of philosophy. The same is true of feminists working in analytic philosophy; the feminist epistemologists are, by and large, a different community of thinkers than the feminist ethicists. Each group does important and focused work on a small subset of issues. And yet, part of the motivation for feminist philosophy comes not merely from such insulated work but from the enterprise as a whole. Once we can see how similar the problem of defining "reason" neutrally is to the problem of viewing art as a disinterested observer, for instance, we can appreciate that feminism, indeed, presents a formidable challenge to philosophy as it has traditionally been practiced. Let us put this idea to the test by examining, briefly, a few philosophical problems feminist analytic philosophers have worked on.

We have already seen a key issue that arises in feminist epistemology: the challenge of defending the gender-neutrality of the concept "reason." If we consider this challenge the overarching problem in feminist epistemology, we soon see that a number of related issues spin off from it. One such issue concerns how we characterize knowledge. What "counts" as knowing something, and when might the sex of the knower be relevant? We might plausibly think that if reason and knowledge are equally the domain of men and women, then the sex of the knower should not typically matter; but, as some feminist philosophers convincingly argue, traditionally sex has mattered profoundly. Linda Alcoff and Vrinda Dalmiya, in their now-classic article "Are Old Wives' Tales Justified?" have argued that the standard definition of knowledge - what philosophers label propositional knowledge - excludes many women as knowers.[6] Propositional knowledge is often expressed in the form "S knows that p, " where S is some individual knower and p is some fact that can be stated explicitly in the form of a proposition: "Dr. S. knows that spinal anesthesia is preferable to the epidural for scheduled c-sections." Alcoff and Dalmiya point out, however, that many women have acquired knowledge from their daily experiences and not from the kind of formal education that teaches facts about the world. Their example is the illiterate midwife, a person who, by dint of many years' experience in delivering babies (including giving birth to her own children), gains a kind of non-propositional knowledge. She knows how to deliver babies, even if it would be impossible for her to formulate this knowledge explicitly. If we discount this sort of experiential knowledge, these writers argue, then we end up with an impoverished account of knowledge, and we deny the status of knower to vast numbers of people, many of them women. Another way in which women are sometimes discredited as knowers emerges when we explore a pair of concepts that have traditionally been viewed as distinct - reason as independent and impartial, emotion as obscuring reason. Feminist philosophers have challenged such a hard-and-fast distinction, asking to what extent the two are actually mutually enabling.[7] If, having taken seriously this feminist work, we accept a broader notion of knowledge, and if we acknowledge a role for the emotions in reasoning, then what differences might we expect to emerge among knowers who are situated differently from one another? What factors (such as gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity) contribute to our knowledge, especially our knowledge of ourselves and of other human beings? I detect in Sandra Harding's work on standpoint theory some welcome optimism on this front; she argues that our knowledge is always situated, always grounded in the kinds of experiences we have as individuals and as members of groups, but that genuine efforts to inhabit another's standpoint can open up to us new ways of seeing and understanding ourselves and others.[8]

Feminist work in the philosophy of language similarly explores imbalances in what, on the surface, appears to be an even playing field. We have already observed the hidden gender biases in supposedly neutral terms like "reason" and "knowledge." Many feminists who study language observe that the gender bias in language extends well beyond these few key philosophical concepts; language is ineluctably gendered, a fact that bears significantly on women's attempts to make themselves understood. At nearly every moment, we are confronted with words that wear a patina of gender neutrality, but which subtly shape our view of the world in ways that establish a male norm as the standard. Even more menacing is the prospect that women's speech may go unacknowledged. This line of argument grows out of work by the philosopher J.L. Austin, who observed in How To Do Things With Words that in speaking we do more than describe states of affairs; we perform various acts. In uttering "You're fired" in the appropriate setting, I terminate someone's employment; by saying "I promise, " I commit myself to some future activity. Of course, if I utter these sentences in the wrong settings, or if someone refuses to acknowledge my words, then I will not have succeeded in performing these acts. This observation has been an important one for feminists interested in speech act theory. Both Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton argue that women can, in various ways, be silenced - either by a refusal to acknowledge women's own speech acts, or by the harmful speech acts of others.[9] This concern parallels those we've discussed already: Similar to being denied the status of reasoners and knowers, women's chances at being taken seriously as speakers are also seriously limited in ways that feminist analytic philosophy has been uniquely poised to detect.

Turning to feminist ethics, we may seem to be headed in a new direction altogether. The emphasis in this field is less on the gendered nature of specific concepts than on questions about how we reason as moral agents. But even here, we will find common ground with other work in feminist philosophy. Traditional theories in moral philosophy have put high stakes on universals, particularly on determining the universal principles that underlie morality. Utilitarianism rests on a single universal principle: that our actions should promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Kantianism insists that our duties and obligations stem directly from our status as autonomous moral agents; the reasoning power of individuals delivers us to a universal morality. As we have seen before, many feminist philosophers have voiced suspicions about theories that purport to be universal in nature; recall their claims that the universal standards of "reason" and "disinterested" aesthetic observation imply a male standard which, in practice, excludes many or all women. Feminist ethicists (and others) have worried that neither of these moral theories places the right emphasis on our relationships with particular others - Utilitarianism, because it impartially weighs the happiness or well-being of some people against that of others; Kantianism, because it is grounded in the autonomy of the individual. Work by feminist ethicists asks whether attention to women's moral reasoning could ground an alternative ethical theory, whether such a theory is by its nature essentialist, and even whether a way of reconciling these feminist concerns with more traditional ethical theories can be found. One also finds, importantly, feminist work focused not on moral reasoning but on women's moral status within a community. The implication, again, is that in its focus on universal principles, moral philosophy has neglected matters of real significance for women - and human beings, generally.

Common themes

What emerges in the work of feminist analytic philosophers are some common themes: a wariness about universal claims and a suspicion that what masquerades as gender-neutrality actually masks a bias that has been harmful to women. Feminism as a whole - not feminist philosophy now, but feminism, more broadly conceived - has long been concerned with the oppression of women and the internalization by men and women of various gender roles. Women have been, and continue to be, oppressed in numerous ways, some more explicit than others. For a long time, unfavorable marriage and property inheritance laws prevented women in the Western world from functioning as fully autonomous citizens; similar laws in other parts of the world continue to treat women as inferior to men. But women have been hurt by other unnoticed tendencies as well: Consider the higher rate of deaths caused by automobile air bags among women than men, simply because in crash tests performed on cars the average-sized driver has been assumed to be male. Consider that until recently, medical tests routinely produced statistical information about male bodies but not female bodies, which were left out of studies because they were deemed to be too complex. Of course, it can be hard to detect the ways in which women are disadvantaged in society. Part of the reason that oppression can be hard to see is that often it is perpetrated unknowingly, by men and women alike. In countless instances, we accept without question, even embrace, a highly gendered existence - by dressing in the prescribed clothing for our gender, by pursuing gender-specific vocations and hobbies, by seeking out different forms of entertainment. The embrace of gender tags may seem harmless; in some cases, perhaps, it really is harmless. But feminists have given us reason to be wary of what seems innocuous, and they have supplied a word which highlights the problem: "Androcentrism" is the phenomenon of treating the male as a standard and the female as some deviant or variation from this standard.[10] The mere fact of distinguishing between male and female, men and women, masculine and feminine is not itself a problem. But where we can show that one half of the duo has an advantage over the other, we can also expose the resulting injuries to the other half. Feminism, in its various forms, attempts to reveal the androcentrism in our culture with the goal of ending women's oppression.

The common thread of feminist philosophers' work is evident not only in the specific arguments they advance, which I have detailed above, but in the methods and aims they employ. Many feminist writers openly resist the methods of their male forbears, challenging us to consider the relationship between method and content. Janice Moulton, for instance, has famously challenged the "adversary method" - the philosopher's strategy of devastating an opponent's argument in order to demonstrate the strength of his or her own alternative view - as perpetuating the errors of a male-dominated field. Such a method, she suggests, puts undue emphasis on the authority of a single reasoner; she prefers a method which takes into account a number of different angles on a problem and from them pieces together a solution. Thus, her method itself presents an alternative to a male standard - or at least, a standard that has evolved in a predominantly male field - and it attempts to etch out a more harmonious way to engage in philosophy. In one sense, Moulton's essay is representative of the move I believe feminist analytic philosophers can most fruitfully make in their own work. Moulton does not reject philosophy as such. What she is doing is still philosophy - indeed, still analytic philosophy; she offers to us a carefully reasoned argument for a specific philosophical position. She does not attempt to undercut reason or argument here, only to present an alternative way of thinking. Similarly, the writers I have discussed today rarely suggest that we abandon outright the philosophical concepts they expose as gendered. Rather, they ask how these very concepts can be reassessed and whether they can be more fairly employed. Such is the work of individuals who want not to tear down a structure but to reform it to the benefit of all.

And so we have, finally, an answer to my student's questions. Why consider any of these problems "feminist"? Because when viewed collectively, and placed alongside other feminist work, we see that their aim is much more ambitious than the mere reform of philosophy. Their aim is to open up a space in which women, as well as men, can be assured of having an intellectual voice.

Inclusiveness

Of course, feminist analytic philosophy is not alone in this hope, and we cannot afford (nor should we wish) to be insular. Feminist philosophers have been inspired not merely by reading other analytic philosophers, but by actively engaging with other feminists. So, for instance, to understand what has evolved into a significant epistemological stance with great potential for reshaping debates in analytic epistemology - feminist standpoint theory - it helps to return to the roots of this view: Marxist feminism. Indeed, a step away from analytic philosophy frequently helps to clarify the debate within it: Work by linguists on the gendered aspects of language helps to set up inquiries into more traditional issues in the philosophy of language, including seeing speech as a kind of act, and one that may (even inadvertently) have the effect of silencing women. A catalytic essay by a psychologist on the differences in boys' and girls' moral reasoning touches off a debate within moral theory on the compatibility of justice and care. And a long courtship with continental theories, including psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and phenomenology, helps to shed light on some of the questions of autonomy and art appreciation that have been raised by analytic philosophers interested in aesthetics. To deny these many, and varied, influences on feminist philosophers teaching and writing within an analytic tradition would be artificially limiting.

And yet, at the end of the day, I think we have good reason to continue to locate feminist work within analytic philosophy. The goals of this field - a certain rigor and a way of asking questions that is clear-headed and productive - are worth maintaining. (Though Moulton's challenge to the "adversary method" is a good reminder not simply to take the methods and aims of analytic philosophy for granted.) Perhaps more importantly, I believe we can share with a broader audience the many stimulating and important issues being worked on in analytic philosophy - issues that, as we have seen, are not immune to feminist investigation. Courses in women's studies and gender theory are excellent for raising students' awareness of various covert and internalized examples of female oppression. But there is still much work to be done in applying these lessons more narrowly: in economics, in political theory, in medicine, in the sciences, and - yes - in analytic philosophy.

Finally, I want to address one further aspect of feminism. It is not acceptable to think of feminism as relating to a single monolithic group: Women. Countless papers appearing in journals in the last few decades have taken pains to point out that women are differently oppressed as white women or black women, as women who are straight or women who are lesbians, as women who are mothers or women who are not. A danger exists, of course, that in restricting our discussions of difference to a few specific essays or a few key topics we will inadvertently contribute to the marginalizing of some women; we must avoid the presumption that once we've acknowledged the matter of difference we can go back to our "real work" on core philosophical issues. Rather, since I have argued that feminist analytic philosophy is best read and digested collectively - seeing in one set of problems insight into treating others - I'd like to extend this advice. Feminism is not one strand of thought, nor is it about one sort of person. We should continually ask what the consequences of a diverse population of individuals are for the kinds of philosophical problems we are trying to solve. This continual demand on us does not mean, of course, that we should insist that each essay produced by feminist scholars openly address the plurality of women and of feminist viewpoints. We can no more make this demand than we can wish that each essay addressed epistemology, language, ethics, and aesthetics, all together. But it does mean approaching the body of feminist scholarship with a kind of openness to difference and an awareness that it is all too easy to mistake one's own experiences for those of humanity at large. In correcting the biases we've confronted in philosophy, we will want to be sure we avoid introducing new ones.