Thank you for your insightful remarks.
On the first and third, I definitely agree with you. (And agree with you that it ought to be obvious from simple inspection.)
Maybe, but I think some of them were more about reducing women to embodiments of sexual and other passions than to their perceived functions within the family. Aristotle, for instance.
This is interesting, and hopefully if someone else takes up a discussion of one of Okin’s later chapters we’ll see more about what specifically she means when she claims that patriarchal political theory reduces womens to their functions within the family. I suspect actually that a picture of women as ruled by and largely defined by certain passions (especially hetero-sexual passion) may in fact be part of what Okin’s talking about–at least, if she’s willing to claim that the reason for that picture of women has to do with male political philosophers seeing women as being for
their peculiar functions imposed on them as wives, mothers, daughters, etc. within the hetero-patriarchal family–including sexual as well as reproductive and domestic functions). I dunno. Does that make sense?
A more interesting question from my POV is, what does all this mean? Okay, so Western culture is saturated with patriarchy, including Western philosophy. Does this mean we can disregard all Western philosophy and chuck it out the window as only applicable to white males? I don’t think so but I have heard some academic theorists argue for this.
I definitely agree that Western philosophy as such shouldn’t just be thrown out or written off as non-applicable to non-white-propertied-men. (After all, I defend an ethical approach — virtue ethics — most famously championed by the evangelizing misogynist slaver Aristotle, and a concept of property rights largely derived from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.) But isn’t there still a question about how much needs to get increased scrutiny — even if not dismissal — for ways in which the philosophical tradition may have said or done things subtly related to the shoving of women to the margins, even if the stuff in question doesn’t directly deal with the Woman Question
in any obvious way?
Here’s an example off the top of my head: a lot of te theoretical details of how you spell out a virtue-ethical theory, if you believe in one, have to do with what you think goes on the list of cardinal virtues, since in virtue ethics all the virtues are usually seen as being importantly related to each other, and as tending to structure how each other virtue’s demands work on us. But if you look at classical sources there seems to be a definite gender dynamic in what gets listed — e.g. why is courage so often one of the first virtues listed, and why are, say, kindness, or sensitivity, so rarely listed at all? Does that affect the overall picture of human virtue, or moral psychology, or the good for human beings, or whatever, that you get from a theorist like Aristotle, even where the gender dynamics are more tacit than in explicit treatments of marriage or women’s nature? And do cases like these possibly demand radical revisions in light of the greater scrutiny? I’m inclined to think that this may be part of what Okin’s going for. Thus, when you argue:
I think most of these philosophers are right about a lot, if you just ignore what they say about women and change every reference to
menintomen and women.
This is definitely something that Okin’s going to disagree with, at least in some prominent cases (e.g., I know she does this in her criticism of Locke’s labor-mixing theory of property, which she suggests falls apart if it tries to take into account the forms of labor distinctive of women under male supremacy, including the labor of childbearing and childrearing).
She thinks that not only have male-crafted political theories explicitly excluded women from the charmed circle of full citizenship or full humanity, but also that their ideas about the status, rights, duties, and virtues of the men within that charmed circle seem well-grounded only as long as you treat the male experience as the universal human experience; whereas if you replace men
with men and women
in the same arguments, bringing female experience into the consideration will undermine the arguments. So the idea will be not only that many otherwise eglitarian but male-supremacist theories have no good reason to treat of men
rather than men and women,
but also that if they try to talk about men and women
then they will be shown to be half the truth at best, or perhaps completely wrong.
I’m inclined to disagree with her about Locke and the labor theory of property, specifically, but at least it seems to me that it is something that’s likely to come up and important to watch for in a lot of other cases in political theory.
Does that make sense? What do you think?
]]>This doesn’t even seem debatable to me: of course. Most western political philosophers have dealt with the “woman question” as an aside, and with the clear goal of dismissing women’s claim on equal rights of citizenship.
Have male political philosophers reduced women’s nature and status to their perceived functions within the family?
Maybe, but I think some of them were more about reducing women to embodiments of sexual and other passions than to their perceived functions within the family. Aristotle, for instance.
Are political philosophers stances on social equality between men and women so often inconsistent with, or simply determined independently of, their express views on egalitarianism as a general principle?
Another one that seems fairly obvious to me: yes.
A more interesting question from my POV is, what does all this mean? Okay, so Western culture is saturated with patriarchy, including Western philosophy. Does this mean we can disregard all Western philosophy and chuck it out the window as only applicable to white males? I don’t think so but I have heard some academic theorists argue for this.
I think most of these philosophers are right about a lot, if you just ignore what they say about women and change every reference to “men” into “men and women.”
]]>“Society is part of the rubicon of language,” says Bataille; >however, according to Geoffrey[1] , it is not so much society >that is part of the rubicon of language, but rather the failure, >and thus the paradigm, of society. Debord’s model of Marxist >socialism implies that the significance of the participant is >significant form.
Therefore, Dahmus[2] holds that we have to choose between >conceptual theory and the neosemanticist paradigm of expression. >The opening/closing distinction prevalent in Smith’s Dogma >emerges again in Clerks, although in a more self-falsifying >sense. > Thus, if cultural deconstruction holds, we have to choose >between subcapitalist discourse and posttextual feminism. The >subject is contextualised into a that includes sexuality as a >totality.
However, many sublimations concerning a cultural reality may be >discovered. Pretextual theory implies that the Constitution is >capable of significance, but only if art is interchangeable with >truth; if that is not the case, the purpose of the artist is >deconstruction.
Geoffrey, T. ed. (1980) Constructivism and conceptual theory. University of North Carolina Press
Dahmus, D. S. L. (1978) Contexts of Collapse: Conceptual theory in the works of Smith. Harvard University Press
If you could shoot me an email at cielomobile [at] gmail DOT com, I’d appreciate it. I can’t seem to get your contact page up and wish to discuss something with you.
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