Week 5 Help please? Feminist Transformations of Ethical Theory

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Using Virginia Held’s article “Feminist Transformations of Ethical Theory” as a foundation (found in the textbook), explain three things that you did not know about feminist thought that you found interesting and/or informative.  What were those things?  Why are they interesting or informative?  How do they relate to the view that you now hold of ethics and how one can live a good life?  Explain why you do or do not think that feminist ethics could be a fruitful transformation of ethical theory and practice in the Western tradition.  Be sure to utilize and cite the readings from the week and specific examples that relate to your analysis.

References related directly to question!! ( SEE ATTACHED PDF )Feminist Document.pdf 

References for your help!

Texts

  1.  Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Retrieved from https://lms.manhattan.edu/pluginfile.php/26517/mod_resource/content/1/Gilligan%20In%20a%20Different%20Voice.pdf
    • Gilligan presents her analysis of the differences between ethical responses in young boys and young girls and she reinterprets female responses through the lens of what has become known as “care ethics.”
  2. Noddings, N. (2010). Maternal factor: Two paths to mortality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Retrieved from the ebrary database.
    • Read pages 213-220 of the chapter titled “War and Violence.” In this essay, Noddings analyzes the relationship between masculinity, violence, and war and opposes a certain conception of masculine violence to maternal thinking in relation to these topics.

Article
  1. Zúñiga y Postigo, G. (2013). How to write an argumentative essay [Unpublished work]. College of Liberal Arts, Ashford University, Clinton, IA.
    • This document explains how students can effectively present a philosophical argument.

Multimedia
  1. TED. (2013, January 18). Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueOqYebVhtc&feature=youtu.be
    • In this TED talk, Colin Stokes examines how media and films represent manhood and the outcomes that result from these representations.Transcrip


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"Feminist  Transformations  of  Moral  Theory,"  Virginia  Held     In  the  following  reading  Virginia  Held  outlines  how  current  feminist  ethical  philosophy   has  reacted  to  and  attempted  to  rethink  the  history  of  ethical  thought.  Held  contrasts   the  male-­‐centric  history  of  Western  ethical  philosophy  with  female-­‐centric  principles   on  which  a  new  radical  ethic  might  emerge.  Held  is  a  professor  of  philosophy  at  Hunter   College  and  the  Graduate  Center  of  the  City  University  of  New  York.     Guided  Reading  Questions     As  you  read  the  following  text  from  Held,  use  these  questions  to  guide  your  reading.     1. What  does  Held  say  about  the  history  of  ethical  philosophy?  How  has  that   history  excluded  women  and  minority  voices?   2. Feminism  not  only  focuses  on  the  rights  and  ideas  of  women,  but  also   promotes  other  minority  voices  that  have  been  subjugated.  What  are  some   such  voices  and  what  social  conditions  led  to  their  subjugation?   3. Women  have  historically  been  viewed  as  close  to  nature  and  volatile,   whereas  men  have  historically  been  viewed  as  rational  and  measured.  In   your  opinion,  why  have  these  ideas  tended  to  permeate  so  many  societies?   How  does  Held  propose  that  we  break  away  from  these  forms  of  thinking?  Do   you  think  humans  will  ever  be  able  to  think  outside  of  gender?  Why  or  why   not?     FEMINIST  TRANSFORMATIONS  OF  MORAL  THEORY     The  history  of  philosophy,  including  the  history  of  ethics,  has  been  constructed  from   male  points  of  view,  and  has  been  built  on  assumptions  and  concepts  that  are  by  no   means  gender-­‐neutral.  Feminists  characteristically  begin  with  different  concerns   and  give  different  emphases  to  the  issues  we  consider  than  do  non-­‐feminist   approaches.  And,  as  Lorraine  Code  expresses  it,  "starting  points  and  focal  points   shape  the  impact  of  theoretical  discussion."  Within  philosophy,  feminists  often  start   with,  and  focus  on,  quite  different  issues  than  those  found  in  standard  philosophy   and  ethics,  however  "standard"  is  understood.  Far  from  providing  mere  additional   insights  which  can  be  incorporated  into  traditional  theory,  feminist  explorations   often  require  radical  transformations  of  existing  fields  of  inquiry  and  theory.  From  a   feminist  point  of  view,  moral  theory  along  with  almost  all  theory  will  have  to  be   transformed  to  take  adequate  account  of  the  experience  of  women.     I  shall  in  this  paper  begin  with  a  brief  examination  of  how  various  fundamental   aspects  of  the  history  of  ethics  have  not  been  gender-­‐neutral.  And  I  shall  discuss   three  issues  where  feminist  rethinking  is  transforming  moral  concepts  and  theories.     THE  HISTORY  OF  ETHICS     Consider  the  ideals  embodied  in  the  phrase  "the  man  of  reason."  As  Genevieve  Lloyd   has  told  the  story,  what  has  been  taken  to  characterize  the  man  of  reason  may  have   changed  from  historical  period  to  historical  period,  but  in  each,  the  character  ideal   of  the  man  of  reason  has  been  constructed  in  conjunction  with  a  rejection  of   whatever  has  been  taken  to  be  characteristic  of  the  feminine.  "Rationality"  Lloyd   writes,  "has  been  conceived  as  transcendence  of  the  ‘feminine,'  and  the  ‘feminine'   itself  has  been  partly  constituted  by  its  occurrence  within  this  structure."     This  has  of  course  fundamentally  affected  the  history  of  philosophy  and  of  ethics.   The  split  between  reason  and  emotion  is  one  of  the  most  familiar  of  philosophical   conceptions.  And  the  advocacy  of  reason  "controlling"  unruly  emotion,  of  rationality,   guiding  responsible  human  action  against  the  blindness  of  passion,  has  a  long  and   highly  influential,  history,  almost  as  familiar  to  non-­‐philosophers  as  to  philosophers.   We  should  certainly  now  be  alert  to  the  ways  in  which  reason  has  been  associated   with  male  endeavor,  emotion  with  female  weakness,  and  the  ways  in  which  this  is  of   course  not  an  accidental  association.  As  Lloyd  writes,  "From  the  beginnings  of   philosophical  thought,  femaleness  was  symbolically  associated  with  what  Reason   supposedly  left  behind—the  dark  powers  of  the  earth  goddesses,  immersion  in   unknown  forces  associated  with  mysterious  female  powers.  The  early  Greeks  saw   women's  capacity  to  conceive  as  connecting  them  with  the  fertility  of  Nature.  As   Plato  later  expressed  the  thought,  women  ‘imitate  the  earth.'"…     The  associations,  between  Reason,  form,  knowledge,  and  maleness,  have  persisted   in  various  guises,  and  have  permeated  what  has  been  thought  to  be  moral   knowledge  as  well  as  what  has  been  thought  to  be  scientific  knowledge,  and  what   has  been  thought  to  be  the  practice  of  morality.  The  associations  between  the   philosophical  concepts  and  gender  cannot  be  merely  dropped,  and  the  concepts   retained  regardless  of  gender,  because  gender  has  been  built  into  them  in  such  a   way  that  without  it,  they  will  have  to  be  different  concepts.  As  feminists  repeatedly   show,  if  the  concept  of  "human"  were  built  on  what  we  think  about  "woman"  rather   than  what  we  think  about  "man,"  it  would  be  a  very  different  concept.  Ethics,  thus,   has  not  been  a  search  for  universal,  or  truly  human  guidance,  but  a  gender-­‐biased   enterprise.     Other  distinctions  and  associations  have  supplemented  and  reinforced  the   identification  of  reason  with  maleness,  and  of  the  irrational  with  the  female;  on  this   and  other  grounds  "man"  has  been  associated  with  the  human,  "woman"  with  the   natural.  Prominent  among  distinctions  reinforcing  the  latter  view  has  been  that   between  the  public  and  the  private,  because  of  the  way  they  have  been  interpreted.   Again,  these  provide  as  familiar  and  entrenched  a  framework  as  do  reason  and   emotion,  and  they  have  been  as  influential  for  non-­‐philosophers  as  for  philosophers.   It  has  been  supposed  that  in  the  public  realm,  man  transcends  his  animal  nature  and   creates  human  history.  As  citizen,  he  creates  government  and  law;  as  warrior,  he   protects  society  by  his  willingness  to  risk  death;  and  as  artist  or  philosopher,  he   overcomes  his  human  mortality.  Here,  in  the  public  realm,  morality  should  guide   human  decision.  In  the  household,  in  contrast,  it  has  been  supposed  that  women   merely  "reproduce"  life  as  natural,  biological  matter.  Within  the  household,  the   "natural"  needs  of  man  for  food  and  shelter  are  served,  and  new  instances  of  the   biological  creature  that  man  is  are  brought  into  being.  But  what  is  distinctively   human,  and  what  transcends  any  given  level  of  development  to  create  human   progress,  are  thought  to  occur  elsewhere…     The  result  of  the  public/private  distinction,  as  usually  formulated,  has  been  to   privilege  the  points  of  view  of  men  in  the  public  domains  of  state  and  law,  and  later   in  the  marketplace,  and  to  discount  the  experience  of  women.  Mothering  has  been   conceptualized  as  a  primarily  biological  activity,  even  when  performed  by  humans,   and  virtually  no  moral  theory  in  the  history  of  ethics  has  taken  mothering,  as   experienced  by  women,  seriously  as  a  source  of  moral  insight,  until  feminists  in   recent  years  have  begun  to.  Women  have  been  seen  as  emotional  rather  than  as   rational  beings,  and  thus  as  incapable  of  full  moral  personhood.  Women's  behavior   has  been  interpreted  as  either  "natural"  and  driven  by  instinct,  and  thus  as   irrelevant  to  morality  and  to  the  construction  of  moral  principles,  or  it  has  been   interpreted  as,  at  best,  in  need  of  instruction  and  supervision  by  males  better  able  to   know  what  morality  requires  and  better  able  to  live  up  to  its  demands…     These  images,  of  the  feminine  as  what  must  be  overcome  if  knowledge  and  morality   are  to  be  achieved,  of  female  experience  as  naturally  irrelevant  to  morality,  and  of   women  as  inherently  deficient  moral  creatures,  are  built  into  the  history  of  ethics.   Feminists  examine  these  images,  and  see  that  they  are  not  the  incidental  or  merely   idiosyncratic  suppositions  of  a  few  philosophers  whose  views  on  many  topics   depart  far  from  the  ordinary  anyway.  Such  views  are  the  nearly  uniform  reflection   in  philosophical  and  ethical  theory  of  patriarchal  attitudes  pervasive  throughout   human  history.  Or  they  are  exaggerations  even  of  ordinary  male  experience,  which   exaggerations  then  reinforce  rather  than  temper  other  patriarchal  conceptions  and   institutions.  They  distort  the  actual  experience  and  aspirations  of  many  men  as  well   as  of  women.    Annette  Baier  recently  speculated  about  why  it  is  that  moral   philosophy  has  so  seriously  overlooked  the  trust  between  human  beings  that  in  her   view  is  an  utterly  central  aspect  of  moral  life.  She  noted  that  "the  great  moral   theorists  in  our  tradition  not  only  are  all  men,  they  are  mostly  men  who  had   minimal  adult  dealings  with  (and  so  were  then  minimally  influenced  by)  women."   They  were  for  the  most  part  "clerics,  misogynists,  and  puritan  bachelors,"  and  thus   it  is  not  surprising  that  they  focus  their  philosophical  attention  "so  single-­‐mindedly   on  cool,  distanced  relations  between  more  or  less  free  and  equal  adult  strangers.  .  .  ."     As  feminists,  we  deplore  the  patriarchal  attitudes  that  so  much  of  philosophy  and   moral  theory  reflect.  But  we  recognize  that  the  problem  is  more  serious  even  than   changing  those  attitudes.  For  moral  theory  as  so  far  developed  is  incapable  of   correcting  itself  without  an  almost  total  transformation.  It  cannot  simply  absorb  the   gender  that  has  been  "left  behind,"  even  if  both  genders  would  want  it  to.  To   continue  to  build  morality  on  rational  principles  opposed  to  the  emotions  and  to   include  women  among  the  rational  will  leave  no  one  to  reflect  the  promptings  of  the   heart,  which  promptings  can  be  moral  rather  than  merely  instinctive.  To  simply   bring  women  into  the  public  and  male  domain  of  the  polis  will  leave  no  one  to  speak   for  the  household.  Its  values  have  been  hitherto  unrecognized,  but  they  are  often   moral  values.  Or  to  continue  to  seek  contractual  restraints  on  the  pursuits  of  self-­‐ interest  by  atomistic  individuals,  and  to  have  women  join  men  in  devotion  to  these   pursuits,  will  leave  no  one  involved  in  the  nurturance  of  children  and  cultivation  of   social  relations,  which  nurturance  and  cultivation  can  be  of  greatest  moral  import.     There  are  very  good  reasons  for  women  not  to  want  simply  to  be  accorded  entry  as   equals  into  the  enterprise  of  morality  as  so  far  developed…Women  should  clearly   not  agree,  as  the  price  of  admission  to  the  masculine  realm  of  traditional  morality,  to   abandon  our  own  moral  concerns  as  women.       And  so  we  are  groping  to  shape  new  moral  theory.  Understandably,  we  do  not  yet   have  fully  worked  out  feminist  moral  theories  to  offer.  But  we  can  suggest  some   directions  our  project  of  developing  such  theories  is  taking...     Not  all  feminists,  by  any  means,  agree  that  there  are  distinctive  feminist  virtues  or   values.  Some  are  especially  skeptical  of  the  attempt  to  give  positive  value  to  such   traditional  "feminine  virtues"  as  a  willingness  to  nurture,  or  an  affinity  with  caring,   or  reluctance  to  seek  independence.  They  see  this  approach  as  playing  into  the   hands  of  those  who  would  confine  women  to  traditional  roles.  Other  feminists  are   skeptical  of  all  claims  about  women  as  such,  emphasizing  that  women  are  divided  by   class  and  race  and  sexual  orientation  in  ways  that  make  any  conclusions  drawn  from   "women's  experience"  dubious.     Still,  it  is  possible,  I  think,  to  discern  various  important  focal  points  evident  in   current  feminist  attempts  to  transform  ethics  into  a  theoretical  and  practical  activity   that  could  be  acceptable  from  a  feminist  point  of  view.  In  the  glimpse  I  have   presented  of  bias  in  the  history  of  ethics,  I  focused  on  what,  from  a  feminist  point  of   view,  are  three  of  its  most  questionable  aspects:  1)  the  split  between  reason  and   emotion  and  the  devaluation  of  emotion;  2)  the  public/private  distinction  and  the   relegation  of  the  private  to  the  natural;  and  3)  the  concept  of  the  self  as  constructed   from  a  male  point  of  view.  In  the  remainder  of  this  article,  I  shall  consider  further   how  some  feminists  are  exploring  these  topics.  We  are  showing  how  their  previous   treatment  has  been  distorted,  and  we  are  trying  to  re-­‐envision  the  realities  and   recommendations  with  which  these  aspects  of  moral  theorizing  do  and  should  try  to   deal.     I.  REASON  AND  EMOTION     In  the  area  of  moral  theory  in  the  modern  era,  the  priority  accorded  to  reason  has   taken  two  major  forms.  A)  On  the  one  hand  has  been  the  Kantian,  or  Kantian-­‐ inspired  search  for  very  general,  abstract,  deontological,  universal  moral  principles   by  which  rational  beings  should  be  guided.  Kant's  Categorical  Imperative  is  a   foremost  example:  it  suggests  that  all  moral  problems  can  be  handled  by  applying   an  impartial,  pure,  rational  principle  to  particular  cases.  It  requires  that  we  try  to   see  what  the  general  features  of  the  problem  before  us  are,  and  that  we  apply  an   abstract  principle,  or  rules  derivable  from  it,  to  this  problem.  On  this  view,  this   procedure  should  be  adequate  for  all  moral  decisions.  We  should  thus  be  able  to  act   as  reason  recommends,  and  resist  yielding  to  emotional  inclinations  and  desires  in   conflict  with  our  rational  wills.     B)  On  the  other  hand,  the  priority  accorded  to  reason  in  the  modern  era  has  taken  a   Utilitarian  form.  The  Utilitarian  approach,  reflected  in  rational  choice  theory,   recognizes  that  persons  have  desires  and  interests,  and  suggests  rules  of  rational   choice  for  maximizing  the  satisfaction  of  these.  While  some  philosophers  in  this   tradition  espouse  egoism,  especially  of  an  intelligent  and  long-­‐term  kind,  many  do   not.  They  begin,  however,  with  assumptions  that  what  are  morally  relevant  are   gains  and  losses  of  utility  to  theoretically  isolatable  individuals,  and  that  the   outcome  at  which  morality  should  aim  is  the  maximization  of  the  utility  of   individuals.  Rational  calculation  about  such  an  outcome  will,  in  this  view,  provide   moral  recommendations  to  guide  all  our  choices.  As  with  the  Kantian  approach,  the   Utilitarian  approach  relies  on  abstract  general  principles  or  rules  to  be  applied  to   particular  cases.  And  it  holds  that  although  emotion  is,  in  fact,  the  source  of  our   desires  for  certain  objectives,  the  task  of  morality  should  be  to  instruct  us  on  how  to   pursue  those  objectives  most  rationally.  Emotional  attitudes  toward  moral  issues   themselves  interfere  with  rationality  and  should  be  disregarded.  Among  the   questions  Utilitarians  can  ask  can  be  questions  about  which  emotions  to  cultivate,   and  which  desires  to  try  to  change,  but  these  questions  are  to  be  handled  in  the   terms  of  rational  calculation,  not  of  what  our  feelings  suggest.     Although  the  conceptions  of  what  the  judgments  of  morality  should  be  based  on,  and   of  how  reason  should  guide  moral  decision,  are  different  in  Kantian  and  in   Utilitarian  approaches,  both  share  a  reliance  on  a  highly  abstract,  universal  principle   as  the  appropriate  source  of  moral  guidance,  and  both  share  the  view  that  moral   problems  are  to  be  solved  by  the  application  of  such  an  abstract  principle  to   particular  cases.  Both  share  an  admiration  for  the  rules  of  reason  to  be  appealed  to   in  moral  contexts,  and  both  denigrate  emotional  responses  to  moral  issues.     Many  feminist  philosophers  have  questioned  whether  the  reliance  on  abstract  rules,   rather  than  the  adoption  of  more  context-­‐respectful  approaches,  can  possibly  be   adequate  for  dealing  with  moral  problems,  especially  as  women  experience  them.   Though  Kantians  may  hold  that  complex  rules  can  be  elaborated  for  specific   contexts,  there  is  nevertheless  an  assumption  in  this  approach  that  the  more   abstract  the  reasoning  applied  to  a  moral  problem,  the  more  satisfactory.  And   Utilitarians  suppose  that  one  highly  abstract  principle,  the  Principle  of  Utility,  can  be   applied  to  every  moral  problem  no  matter  what  the  context.     A  genuinely  universal;  or  gender-­‐neutral  moral  theory  would  be  one  which  would   take  account  of  the  experience  and  concerns  of  women  as  fully  as  it  would  take   account  of  the  experience  and  concerns  of  men.  When  we  focus  on  the  experience  of   women,  however,  we  seem  to  be  able  to  see  a  set  of  moral  concerns  becoming   salient  that  differs  from  those  of  traditional  or  standard  moral  theory.  Women's   experience  of  moral  problems  seems  to  lead  us  to  be  especially  concerned  with   actual  relationships  between  embodied  persons,  and  with  what  these  relationships   seem  to  require.  Women  are  often  inclined  to  attend  to  rather  than  to  dismiss  the   particularities  of  the  context  in  which  a  moral  problem  arises.  And  we  often  pay   attention  to  feelings  of  empathy  and  caring  to  suggest  what  we  ought  to  do  rather   than  relying  as  fully  as  possible  on  abstract  rules  of  reason…     The  work  of  psychologists  such  as  Carol  Gilligan  and  others  has  led  to  a  clarification   of  what  may  be  thought  of  as  tendencies  among  women  to  approach  moral  issues   differently.  Rather  than  interpreting  moral  problems  in  terms  of  what  could  be   handled  by  applying  abstract  rules  of  justice  to  particular  cases,  many  of  the  women   studied  by  Gilligan  tended  to  be  more  concerned  with  preserving  actual  human   relationships,  and  with  expressing  care  for  those  for  whom  they  felt  responsible.   Their  moral  reasoning  was  typically  more  embedded  in  a  context  of  particular   others  than  was  the  reasoning  of  a  comparable  group  of  men.  One  should  not  equate   tendencies  women  in  fact  display  with  feminist  views,  since  the  former  may  well  be   the  result  of  the  sexist,  oppressive  conditions  in  which  women's  lives  have  been   lived.  But  many  feminists  see  our  own  consciously  considered  experience  as  lending   confirmation  to  the  view  that  what  has  come  to  be  called  "an  ethic  of  care"  needs  to   be  developed.  Some  think  it  should  supersede  "the  ethic  of  justice"  of  traditional  or   standard  moral  theory.  Others  think  it  should  be  integrated  with  the  ethic  of  justice   and  rules…     The  "care"  of  the  alternative  feminist  approach  to  morality  appreciates  rather  than   rejects  emotion.  The  caring  relationships  important  to  feminist  morality  cannot  be   understood  in  terms  of  abstract  rules  or  moral  reasoning.  And  the  "weighing"  so   often  needed  between  the  conflicting  claims  of  some  relationships  and  others   cannot  be  settled  by  deduction  or  rational  calculation.  A  feminist  ethic  will  not  just   acknowledge  emotion,  as  do  Utilitarians,  as  giving  us  the  objectives  toward  which   moral  rationality  can  direct  us.  It  will  embrace  emotion  as  providing  at  least  a   partial  basis  for  morality  itself,  and  for  moral  understanding.     Annette  Baier  stresses  the  centrality  of  trust  for  an  adequate  morality.  Achieving   and  maintaining  trusting,  caring,  relationships  is  quite  different  from  acting  in   accord  with  rational  principles,  or  satisfying  the  individual  desires  of  either  self  or   other.  Caring,  empathy,  feeling  with  others,  being  sensitive  to  each  other's  feelings,   all  may  be  better  guides  to  what  morality  requires  in  actual  contexts  than  may   abstract  rules  of  reason,  or  rational  calculation,  or  at  least  they  may  be  necessary   components  of  an  adequate  morality…       II.  THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  PRIVATE     The  second  questionable  aspect  of  the  history  of  ethics  on  which  I  focused  was  its   conception  of  the  distinction  between  the  public  and  the  private.  As  with  the  split   between  reason  and  emotion,  feminists  are  showing  how  gender-­‐bias  has  distorted   previous  conceptions  of  these  spheres,  and  we  are  trying  to  offer  more  appropriate   understandings  of  "private"  morality  and  "public"  life…     Revised  conceptions  of  public  and  private  have  significant  implications  for  our   conceptions  of  human  beings  and  relationships  between  them.  Some  feminists   suggest  that  instead  of  seeing  human  relationships  in  terms  of  the  impersonal  ones   of  the  "public"  sphere,  as  standard  political  and  moral  theory  has  so  often  done,  we   might  consider  seeing  human  relationships  in  terms  of  those  experienced  in  the   sphere  of  the  "private,"  or  of  what  these  relationships  could  be  imagined  to  be  like  in   post-­‐patriarchal  society.  The  traditional  approach  is  illustrated  by  those  who   generalize,  to  other  regions  of  human  life  than  the  economic,  assumptions  about   "economic  man"  in  contractual  relations  with  other  men.  It  sees  such  impersonal,   contractual  relations  as  paradigmatic,  even,  on  some  views,  for  moral  theory.  Many   feminists,  in  contrast,  consider  the  realm  of  what  has  been  misconstrued  as  the   "private"  as  offering  guidance  to  what  human  beings  and  their  relationships  should   be  like  even  in  regions  beyond  those  of  family  and  friendship.  Sara  Ruddick  looks  at   the  implications  of  the  practice  of  mothering  for  the  conduct  of  peace  politics.   Marilyn  Friedman  and  Lorraine  Code  consider  friendship,  especially  as  women   understand  it,  as  a  possible  model  for  human  relationships.  Others  see  society  as   non-­‐contractual  rather  than  as  contractual.  Clearly,  a  reconceptualization  is  needed   of  the  ways  in  which  every  human  life  is  entwined  with  personal  and  with  social   components.  Feminist  theorists  are  contributing  imaginative  work  to  this  project.     III.  THE  CONCEPT  OF  SELF     Let  me  turn  now  to  the  third  aspect  of  the  history  of  ethics  which  I  discussed  and   which  feminists  are  re-­‐envisioning:  the  concept  of  self.  One  of  the  most  important   emphases  in  a  feminist  approach  to  morality  is  the  recognition  that  more  attention   must  be  paid  to  the  domain  between,  on  the  one  hand,  the  self  as  ego,  as  self-­‐ interested  individual,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  universal,  everyone,  others  in   general.  Traditionally,  ethics  has  dealt  with  these  poles  of  individual  self  and   universal  all.  Usually,  it  has  called  for  impartiality  against  the  partiality  of  the   egoistic  self;  sometimes  it  has  defended  egoism  against  claims  for  a  universal   perspective.  But  most  standard  moral  theory  has  hardly  noticed  as  morally   significant  the  intermediate  realm  of  family  relations  and  relations  of  friendship,  of   group  ties  and  neighborhood  concerns,  especially  from  the  point  of  view  of  women.   When  it  has  noticed  this  intermediate  realm  it  has  often  seen  its  attachments  as   threatening  to  the  aspirations  of  the  Man  of  Reason,  or  as  subversive  of  "true"   morality.  In  seeing  the  problems  of  ethics  as  problems  of  reconciling  the  interests  of   the  self  with  what  would  be  right  or  best  for  "everyone,"  standard  ethics  has   neglected  the  moral  aspects  of  the  concern  and  sympathy  which  people  actually  feel   for  particular  others,  and  what  moral  experience  in  this  intermediate  realm  suggests   for  an  adequate  morality.     The  region  of  "particular  others"  is  a  distinct  domain,  where  what  can  be  seen  to  be   artificial  and  problematic  are  the  very  egoistic  "self"  and  the  universal  "all  others"  of   standard  moral  theory.  In  the  domain  of  particular  others,  the  self  is  already   constituted  to  an  important  degree  by  relations  with  others,  and  these  relations  may   be  much  more  salient  and  significant  than  the  interests  of  any  individual  self  in   isolation.  The  "others"  in  the  picture,  however,  are  not  the  "all  others,"  or   "everyone,"  of  traditional  moral  theory;  they  are  not  what  a  universal  point  of  view   or  a  view  from  nowhere  could  provide.  They  are,  characteristically,  actual  flesh  and   blood  other  human  beings  for  whom  we  have  actual  feelings  and  with  whom  we   have  real  ties.     From  the  point  of  view  of  much  feminist  theory,  the  individualistic  assumptions  of   liberal  theory  and  of  most  standard  moral  theory  are  suspect.  Even  if  we  would  be   freed  from  the  debilitating  aspects  of  dominating  male  power  to  "be  ourselves"  and   to  pursue  our  own  interests,  we  would,  as  persons,  still  have  ties  to  other  persons,   and  we  would  at  least  in  part  be  constituted  by  such  ties.  Such  ties  would  be  part  of   what  we  inherently  are.  We  are,  for  instance,  the  daughter  or  son  of  given  parents,   or  the  mother  or  father  of  given  children,  and  we  carry  with  us  at  least  some  ties  to   the  racial  or  ethnic  or  national  group  within  which  we  developed  into  the  persons   we  are.     If  we  look,  for  instance,  at  the  realities  of  the  relation  between  mothering  person   (who  can  be  female  or  male)  and  child,  we  can  see  that  what  we  value  in  the  relation   cannot  be  broken  down  into  individual  gains  and  losses  for  the  individual  members   in  the  relation.  Nor  can  it  be  understood  in  universalistic  terms.  Self-­‐development   apart  from  the  relation  may  be  much  less  important  than  the  satisfactory   development  of  the  relation.  What  matters  may  often  be  the  health  and  growth  of   and  the  development  of  the  relation-­‐and-­‐its-­‐members  in  ways  that  cannot  be   understood  in  the  individualistic  terms  of  standard  moral  theories  designed  to   maximize  the  satisfaction  of  self-­‐interest.  The  universalistic  terms  of  moral  theories   grounded  in  what  would  be  right  for  "all  rational  beings"  or  "everyone"  cannot   handle,  either,  what  has  moral  value  in  the  relation  between  mothering  person  and   child…     To  argue  for  a  view  of  the  self  as  relational  does  not  mean  that  women  need  to   remain  enmeshed  in  the  ties  by  which  they  are  constituted.  In  recent  decades,   especially,  women  have  been  breaking  free  of  relationships  with  parents,  with  the   communities  in  which  they  grew  up,  and  with  men,  relationships  in  which  they   defined  themselves  through  the  traditional  and  often  stifling  expectations  of  others.   These  quests  for  self  have  often  involved  wrenching  instability  and  painful   insecurity.  But  the  quest  has  been  for  a  new  and  more  satisfactory  relational  self,   not  for  the  self-­‐sufficient  individual  of  liberal  theory.  Many  might  share  the  concerns   expressed  by  Alison  Jaggar  that  disconnecting  ourselves  from  particular  others,  as   ideals  of  individual  autonomy  seem  to  presuppose  we  should,  might  make  us   incapable  of  morality,  rather  than  capable  of  it,  if,  as  so  many  feminists  think,  "an   ineliminable  part  of  morality  consists  in  responding  emotionally  to  particular   others."     I  have  examined  three  topics  on  which  feminist  philosophers  and  feminists  in  other   fields  are  thinking  anew  about  where  we  should  start  and  how  we  should  focus  our   attention  in  ethics.  Feminist  reconceptualizations  and  recommendations  concerning   the  relation  between  reason  and  emotion,  the  distinction  between  public  and   private,  and  the  concept  of  the  self,  are  providing  insights  deeply  challenging  to   standard  moral  theory.  The  implications  of  this  work  are  that  we  need  an  almost   total  reconstruction  of  social  and  political  and  economic  and  legal  theory  in  all  their   traditional  forms  as  well  as  a  reconstruction  of  moral  theory  and  practice  at  more   comprehensive,  or  fundamental,  levels.     Virginia  Held,  "Feminist  Transformations  of  Moral  Theory,"  Philosophy  and   Phenomenological  Research,  Fall  1990  (supplement)  Vol.  50,  pp.  321–344.  Reprinted   by  permission  of  Blackwell  Publishing  Ltd.  .  
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