Feminist Ethics

This chapter is about micro-inequities and their connection to the problem of implicit bias. It begins by defining micro-inequities, goes on to discuss what makes them wrong and what solutions might be appropriate given the institutional context in which they occur.

How should we react to the development of sexbot technology? Taking their cue from anti-porn feminism, several academic critics lament the development of sexbot technology, arguing that it objectifies and subordinates women, is likely to promote misogynistic attitudes toward sex, and may need to be banned or restricted. In this chapter I argue for an alternative response. Taking my cue from the sex positive ‘feminist porn’ movement, I argue that the best response to the development of ‘bad’ sexbots is to (...) make better ones. This will require changes to the content, process and context of sexbot development. Doing so will acknowledge the valuable role that technology can play in human sexuality, and allow us to challenge gendered norms and assumptions about male and female sexual desire. This will not be a panacea to the social problems that could arise from sexbot development, but it offers a more realistic and hopeful vision for the future of this technology in a pluralistic and progressive society. (shrink)

An important question confronting feminist philosophers is why women are sometimes complicit in their own subordination. The dominant view holds that complicity is best understood in terms of adaptive preferences. This view assumes that agents will naturally gravitate away from subordination and towards flourishing, as long as they do not have things imposed on them that disrupt this trajectory. However, there is reason to believe that ‘impositions’ do not explain all of the ways in which complicity can arise. This paper (...) defends a phenomenological account of complicity which offers an alternative explanation. (shrink)

Natalie Stoljar posits that those who have internalized oppressive norms lack normative competence, which requires true beliefs and critical reflection. A lack of normative competence makes agents nonautonomous, according to Stoljar. This framework is thereby meant to address what she calls the “feminist intuition”—the intuition that oppressive norms are incompatible with autonomy. On my view, however, Stoljar’s normative competence account of autonomy is subject to a worrying problem. Her account misattributes nonautonomy to those who perpetrate the oppression, making those who (...) are oppressed and those who oppress count as equally nonautonomous. I argue that this is implausible and demonstrate in this paper that we can establish an asymmetry of autonomy between those who oppress others and those who are made the target of oppression. (shrink)

Ascribing autonomous status to agents is a valuable practice. As such, we ought to care about how we engage in practices of autonomy ascription. However, disagreement between first-personal experiences of an agent's autonomy and third-personal determinations of their autonomy presents challenges of ethical and epistemic concern. My view is that insights from a dialogical rather than nondialogical account of autonomy give us the resources to combat the challenges associated with autonomy ascription. I draw on Andrea Westlund's account of dialogical autonomy—on (...) which autonomy requires a dialogical disposition to hold oneself answerable to external critical perspectives—to make my case. (shrink)

Rigorous evaluations of the effects of vertical public health enterprises on the health systems of low-income countries usefully identify the public health and ethical costs of those initiatives. They reveal that such narrowly focused public health ventures undermine the efforts of those countries to establish and maintain adequately resourced and well-developed national health systems, including comprehensive primary care programs. This paper argues that the scope of assessments of vertical public health ventures should be broadened to include gender as an additional (...) axis of analysis. When members of socio-economically marginalized populations are sick with conditions that are not covered by fragmented and inadequate public health programs or disease-specific vertical public health schemes, their untreated illnesses add to the gendered familial caregiving responsibilities of the female members of their households. Those women and girls have to perform their ‘normal’ familial care work, work outside the home for pay, and take care of the unwell family members for whom the household cannot afford treatment. Given that women and girls from low-income households already shoulder a disproportionate amount of care work for their families, their health and life prospects are further affected by the amplification of their caregiving responsibilities. This paper argues that analyses of the impact of vertical public health initiatives should also track this gendered consequence of those enterprises because it is a crucial public health and ethical matter. (shrink)

Understanding the ethical concerns of paid and altruistic surrogacy requires a knowledge of reproductive freedom and procreative autonomy. An accurate approach must be sensitive enough of the nature of sexual oppression, specifically in its influence in women’s choices, self-identity and personal relationships. The aim of this essay is to stand up for the prominence of radical feminism in questioning reproductive liberalism, which overfocus the interests of the so-called intended parents. Having in mind what egalitarian philosophers have put forward from a (...) social-relational autonomy view to allow surrogacy contracts under certain circumstances —particularly, they suggest that legalization could be compatible with women’s reproductive autonomy following an altruistic fashion under protective measures and supportive to the surrogate’s revocation of consent—, I uphold that radical feminists properly make clear how oppression remains in the cultural environment that endorses surrogacy contracts. A macroscopic methodology, based on American philosopher’s Marilyn Frye metaphor of the caged bird, is a helpful tool to comprehend why surrogacy contracts do not enhance women’s reproductive autonomy, even if they enable some surrogate mothers to gain an income enough to endure tough economic pressure. (shrink)

This article defends an account of collective hope that arises through solidarity in the pursuit of justice. I begin by reviewing recent literature on the nature of hope. I then explore the relationship between hope and solidarity to demonstrate the ways in which solidarity can give rise to hope. I suggest that the hope born of solidarity is collective when it is shared by at least some others, when it is caused or strengthened by activity in a collective action setting, (...) and when the reciprocal hopeful expressions of individual group members result in an emotional atmosphere of hope that extends across the group. In the context of social movements, collective hope emerges alongside the collective intentions and actions of the solidarity group; namely, in the pursuit of a form of social justice that inspires the movement. I then suggest that the object of collective hope born of solidarity is the guiding ideal of justice and reflect on what it might mean to hope well for justice. (shrink)

Suppose that you are engaging with someone who is your oppressor, or someone who espouses a heinous view like Nazism or a ridiculous view like flat-earthism. In contexts like these, there is a disparity between you and your interlocutor, a dramatic normative difference across which you are in the right and they are in the wrong. As theorists of humility, we find these contexts puzzling. Humility seems like the *last* thing oppressed people need and the *last* thing we need in (...) dealing with those whose views are heinous or ridiculous. Responding to such people via humility seems uncalled for, even inappropriate. But how could this be, given that humility is a *virtue*? The purpose of the paper is to explore this puzzle. We explain what the puzzle is and then attempt to draw some lessons from it: first, the lesson that the importance of humility is limited in several ways, and second, the lesson that humility nonetheless has several important roles to play, even for people who are in the right in contexts of disparity. (shrink)

The querelle des femmes was an intellectual debate over the status of women that occurred in the early modern period, between the 1400s and 1700s. A common argument for the superiority of men and inferiority of women that appeared during the debate is that women are less physically strong than men, and are therefore inferior. In response, two distinct argumentative strategies were developed by defenders of women. First, some argued that men and women did not in fact differ in physical (...) strength. A second strategy was to deny that physical strength is relevant to the question of superiority. In this case, one would argue that a difference in strength is not normatively relevant to evaluations of worth. I argue that this second strategy was the more effective response to the argument that women were inferior because of their alleged physical weakness compared to men. (shrink)

Among various views concerning the nature of womanhood, one kind of divergence between the materialist and the pluralist account centres on whether a woman should be defined or identified based on her typical female biological features. The former treats “woman” as the social meaning of the biological female, while the latter insists that one can be a woman in virtue of their internal identity without also having the normatively associated biological features. In this paper, I argue against the latter view (...) that the inclusion or demarginalization of transwomen requires more than self-identification and that it demands the recognition of the role of “misogyny”. (shrink)

In this paper we show that being blameworthy for not blaming and being blameworthy for victim blaming are structurally similar. Each involve the two traditional contours of moral responsibility: a knowledge condition and a control condition. But interestingly, in these cases knowledge and control are importantly interrelated. Being in a relationship with another person affords us varying degrees of knowledge about them. This knowledge in turn affords agents in relationships varying degrees of influence over one another. Cases where an agent (...) is especially blameworthy for failing to blame a friend, a close colleague, or a spouse highlight this. The interdependence of these two conditions in interpersonal relationships sheds (partial) light on why victim blaming is morally wrong. We argue that victim blamers suffer from a kind of moral myopia by only focusing on what the victim could do, in virtue of their being in a relationship of some sort with their abuser, to avoid abuse. We focus specifically on cases where such moral myopia is fueled by misogynistic and hierarchical gender schema and scripts. (shrink)

Creepiness and the emotion of the creeps have been overlooked in the moral philosophy and moral psychology literatures. We argue that the creeps is a morally significant emotion in its own right, and not simply a type of fear, disgust, or anger (though it shares features with those emotions). Reflecting on cases, we defend a novel account of the creeps as felt in response to creepy people. According to our moral insensitivity account, the creeps is fitting just when its object (...) is agential activity that is insensitive to basic moral considerations. When, only when, and insofar as someone is disposed to such insensitivity, they are a creep. Such insensitivity, especially in extreme forms, raises doubts about creeps’ moral agency. We distinguish multiple types of insensitivity, respond to concerns that feeling the creeps is itself objectionable, and conclude with a discussion of epistemic issues relating to the creeps. (shrink)

Reflections on the role and position of maternal relations within philosophy as a practical discipline, as a metaphor for philosophical practice, and as a subject of philosophical investigation.

the author analyzes the origin and meaning of the expression ‘Ethics of Sexual Difference’ (ESD), contextualising it in the paradigm ‘thought of Sexual Difference’, in which the potentiality and aporias arising from the debate within the feminist movement are highlighted. Possible interpretations of these ethics, developed in the Italian philosophical context, are illustrated and evaluated. the author proposes a critical comparison with other models, for example, the queer theories, and attempts to show how the ‘thought of Sexual Difference’ (TSD) opens (...) itself to destabilization produced by the emergence of new subjects (gay and lesbian, transgender, intersex) and their corresponding scientific knowledge. the author therefore proposes an update to the plural, ‘Ethics of Sexual Difference’ (ESDs), listing the possible methodological and content assumptions (including the development of a relational model in all scientific disciplines) and the disciplinary implications (also in the psychoanalytic field) of an ethics so defined. A reference is made to the discussion of socalled gender ideology, in which the protagonists have often showed a certain difficulty in implementing an ethics of differences. (shrink)

The debate regarding the role of conscientious objection in healthcare has been protracted, with increasing demands for curbs on conscientious objection. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that in some cases, high rates of conscientious objection can affect access to legal medical services such as abortion—a major concern of critics of conscientious objection. Moreover, few solutions have been put forward that aim to satisfy both this concern and that of defenders of conscientious objection—being expected to participate in (...) the provision of services that compromise their moral integrity. Here we attempt to bring some resolution to the debate by proposing a pragmatic, long-term solution offering what we believe to be an acceptable compromise—a quota system for medical trainees in specialties where a conscientious objection can be exercised, and is known to cause conflict. We envisage two main objectives of the quota system we propose. First, as a means to introduce conscientious objection into countries where this is not presently permitted. Second, to minimise or eliminate the effects of high rates of conscientious objection in countries such as Italy, where access to legal abortion provision can be negatively affected. (shrink)

Throughout her work, Audre Lorde maintains that her self-preservation in the face of oppression depends on acting from the recognition and valorization of her feelings as a deep source of knowledge. This claim, taken as a portrayal of agency, poses challenges to standard positions in ethics, epistemology, and moral psychology. This article examines the oppositional agency articulated by Lorde’s thought, locating feeling, poetry, and the power she calls “the erotic” within her avowed project of self-preservation. It then explores the implications (...) of taking seriously Lorde’s account, particularly for theorists examining ethics and epistemology under nonideal social conditions. For situations of sexual intimacy, for example, Lorde’s account unsettles prevailing assumptions about the role of consent in responsibility between sexual partners. I argue that obligations to solicit consent and respect refusal are not sufficient to acknowledge the value of agency in intimate encounters when agency is oppositional in the way Lorde describes. (shrink)

The article examines the following interpretive hypothesis: from the formulation of the concept of “precariousness” in Precarious Life (2004), Judith Butler's thought undergoes a inflection towards a ethical-political foundation normatively understood and previously rejected by the author as evidenced in her debate with Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib in the 1990s. It is therefore a matter of questioning the impact of this theoretical mutation on the notions of universal and subject that are embedded in the argumentative lines of the author’s (...) texts, thus establishing “precariousness” and “co-dependence” as ethical-political conditions that should guide political guidelines aimed at making life possible and viable. The article is divided into three moments: 1) the universal denied in form and content; 2) The universal affirmed in its form, but denied in its content; 3) the universal materially and formally affirmed. It will also address the different notions of subject that emerge from each of these three understandings of universal. (shrink)

I introduce the concept pathophobia, to capture the range of morally objectionable forms of treatment to which somatically ill persons are subjected. After distinguishing this concept from sanism and ableism, I argue that the moral wrongs of pathophobia are best analysed using a framework of vice ethics. To that end I describe five clusters of pathophobic vices and failings, illustrating each with examples from three influential illness narratives.

INTRODUCTION[|] Feminism was born as an ethical opposition to the women's oppression by patriarchal society in almost every aspects of life. Termination of an unwanted pregnancy is one such aspect of life where this oppression is felt most intensively both in the past and still today. The aim of this study is to analyze how the feminist theorists and their supporters percieve the issue of termination of pregnancy and with which arguments they defend or object it. [¤]METHODS[|]The texts and books (...) which were used in this study are accessed via my own personal library, Library of Marmara University Faculty of Medicine, Prof.Dr Orhan Oğuz Central Library of Marmara University and the remote access service to the databases of Marmara University Library which is offered by the library's itself.[¤]RESULTS[|]-[¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|] The study, in accordance with the neutral stance of the previous revisionary texts written on the termination of pregnancy, doesn't support any specific thought or side regarding feminist ethical approach to the termination of pregnancy. But the study shows that feminism has been in this world not more than 250 years and in the academic field not more than 50 years as a serious philosophical idea which gained supporters and a constructive stance by going beyond it's critical nature. Ergo, feminist views should be voiced more, should be taken more seriously and it's intellectual content should be improved whenever possible in the philosophical, medical, legal, etc. texts written on the termination of pregnancy.[¤]. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe central hypothesis of this paper is that the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty offers significant philosophical groundwork for an ethics that honours key feminist commitments – embodiment, situatedness, diversity and the intrinsic sociality of subjectivity. Part I evaluates feminist criticisms of Merleau-Ponty. Part II defends the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s non-dualist ontology underwrites leading approaches in feminist ethics, notably Care Ethics and the Ethics of Vulnerability. Part III examines Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of embodied percipience, arguing that these offer a powerful critique of the (...) view from nowhere, a totalizing God’s-eye-view with pretensions to objectivity. By revealing the normative structure of perceptual gestalts in the intersubjective domain, he establishes the view from everywhere. Normativity is no longer deferred to higher authorities such as duty, utility or the valorized virtue, but through the perceptual gestalt it is returned to the perceiving embodied subject. This... (shrink)

My commentary deals with the fourth chapter of Against Purity, entitled “Consuming Suffering,” where Shotwell invites us to imagine what an alternative to ethical individualism might look like in practice. I am particularly interested in the analogy she develops to help pull us into the frame of what she calls a “distributed” or “social” approach to ethics. I will argue that grappling with this analogy can help illuminate three challenges confronting those of us seeking a genuine alternative to ethical individualism: (...) first, that of recognizing that and how certain organizational forms work to entrench an individualistic orientation to the world; second, that of acknowledging the inadequacy of alternatives to individualism that are merely formal in character; and third, that of avoiding the creation of organizational forms that foster purism at the collective level. (shrink)

Mainstream conceptions of autonomy have been surreptitiously gender-specific and masculinist. Feminist philosophers have reclaimed autonomy as a feminist value, while retaining its core ideal as self-government, by reconceptualizing it as “relational autonomy.” This article examines whether feminist theories of relational autonomy can adequately illuminate the agency of Islamist women who defend their nonliberal religious values and practices and assiduously attempt to enact them in their daily lives. I focus on two notable feminist theories of relational autonomy advanced by Marina Oshana (...) and Andrea Westlund and apply them to the case of Women's Mosque Movement participants in Egypt. I argue that feminist conceptions of relational autonomy, centered around the ideal of self-government, cannot elucidate the agency of Women's Mosque Movement participants whose normative ideal involves perfecting their moral capacity. (shrink)

Genetically engineered (GE) insects, such as the GE OX513A Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, have been designed to suppress their wild-type populations so as to reduce the transmission of vector-borne diseases in humans. Apart from the ecological and epidemiological uncertainties associated with this approach, such biotechnological approaches may be used by individual governments or the global community of nations to avoid addressing the underlying structural, systemic causes of those infections... We discuss here key ethical questions raised by the use of GE mosquitoes, (...) with the aim of fostering discussion between the public, researchers, policy makers, healthcare organizations, and regulatory agencies at the local, national, and international levels. We affect that goal by outlining a procedural approach to decision-making about the use of the “biotechnology” that goes beyond “community engagement.” The protocol we advocate for entails informed deliberations and decision-making at the community level. It is designed to ensure that the voices of the marginalized and vulnerable groups that would be disproportionately affected by the decision are heard during the community-wide discussions. Moreover, we make the case that the values embedded in the risk assessment should be identified so that the community can make an informed decision about the use of GE insects. In addition, we advocate for the involvement of a variety of actors whose responsibility would be to ensure that the community has the opportunity to make an informed decision based on deliberations about the use of the “biotechnology.”. (shrink)

Philosophers generally prescribe against complaining, or endorse only complaints directed to rectification of the circumstances. Notably, Aristotle and Kant aver that the importuning of others with one’s pains is effeminate and should never be done. In this paper, I reject the prohibition of complaint. The gendered aspects of Aristotle’s and Kant’s criticisms of complaint include their deploring a self-indulgent "softness" with respect to pain, yielding to feelings at the expense of remembering one’s duties to others and one’s own self-respect. I (...) argue that complaining may also take the form of mindful attention to shared suffering. A complainer may observe affective duties, such as commiseration and invitations to disclose pains. Against more contemporary views that justify only constructive complaints directed to change, I suggest that quotidian, unconstructive complaining sometimes fulfills important social functions, including the amelioration of loneliness and affective solidarity, for the sake of others as well as oneself. (shrink)

Judith Butler argues for collective liberatory action grounded in ontological vulnerability. Yet descriptive social ontology alone provides neither normative ethical prescriptions nor direction for political action. I believe Butler tries to overcome this gap by appealing to equality as an ethical ideal. In this article, I reconstruct how equality operates in her transition from ontological vulnerability to prescriptive commitments. Then, turning to Sylvia Wynter, I argue Butler's uncritical use of equality constrains the radical direction of her liberatory goals—firstly because it (...) cannot mitigate the coloniality of Being, and secondly because she figures the locus of critique as an anonymous and equally vulnerable body at the limits of the recognizably human. I conclude with Wynter's demand for liberatory critique to arise out of specific decolonial locations of rupture from our historically situated, oppressive, and overrepresented genre of being human. (shrink)

Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may (...) be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression. (shrink)

In Entangled Empathy, Lori Gruen offers an alternative ethic for our relationships with animals. In this article, I examine Gruen's account of entangled empathy by first focusing on entangled empathy's relation to the moral emotions of sympathy, compassion, and other emotions. I then challenge Gruen's account of how entangled empathy moves us to attend to others. Lastly, and without intending to place humans at the center of the conversation, I reflect on the ways entangled empathy can help us solve some (...) human problems—particularly the racial divide in the United States. (shrink)

Second edition of Property in the Body, containing about fifty percent new and updated material, including a chapter on surrogacy.

Not a few feminist writers, such as Kristeva, Irigaray, and Chodorow, have dealt with Freud’s psychoanalysis so far, but it is not clear to what degree the Freudian theory grounds their arguments, because Freud himself developed his psychoanalysis mainly for the male mental world (Seelenleben). In this paper, we shall follow Freud’s train of thought exclusively from this angle. After the geneses of Pcpt.-Cs., id, ego, and super-ego (W-Bw, Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, respectively) are treated (§§7-10), we shed light on (...) how these factors relate to the female spirituality (§§11-24) and why feminists could still rely on Freud’s thought (§25). On the other hand, the present research will also provide an easy introduction to Freud’s psychoanalysis, by reference to which each thinker could overview the Freudian theory (Fig. (5) and Fig. (8) will help). In this respect, we shall also take account of the masculine side of his discussion, that is to say, how a man usually develops his male personality, while we constantly put it in stark contrast to the female spirituality. Although, in this modern world, not a few thinkers criticize the Freudian theory as non-scientific like Popper did (§2), we should remember that there remain supporters of his theory, such as Grümbaum (§3). We shall touch on this kind of argument relating to philosophy of science in the first half of this paper, which will also provide some useful knowledge for the readers who still get doubtful of the Freudian theory and its usage in feminist arguments. (shrink)

This chapter begins by discussing what feminist ethics is and does through examination of a specific example of the spheres into which our lives are separated: the public and the private. After demonstrating how feminist ethicists critique, complicate, and expand the content and experiences of such categories, I characterize the overarching aims of feminist ethics as (1) critical and (2) creative. I then turn to major themes in feminist ethics, exploring four of them in depth: oppression, vulnerability and dependency, relationality, (...) and the nonideal. Having provided an overview of the ethical themes that matter to feminists, I also depict three different varieties of feminist ethics—liberal, care, and transnational—before concluding. (shrink)

I reconsider the concept of dignity in several ways in this article. My primary aim is to move dignity in a more relational direction, drawing on care ethics to do so. After analyzing the power and perils of dignity and tracing its rhetorical, academic, and historical influence, I discuss three interventions that care ethics can make into the dignity discourse. The first intervention involves an understanding of the ways in which care can be dignifying. The second intervention examines whether the (...) capacity to care should be considered a distinguishing moral power – as rationality often is – in light of which humans have dignity. In the third intervention, I cast dignity as a fundamentally relational concept and argue that relationality is constitutive not only of dignity but also of the wider enterprise of normativity. I understand relationality as the condition of connection in which all human beings stand with some other human beings. A thought experiment involving the last person on earth helps to reframe the normative significance of human relatedness. Dignity emerges as fundamentally grounded in relationality. (shrink)

This paper advances the somewhat unphilosophical thesis that “Trump is gross” to draw attention to the need to take matters of taste seriously in politics. I begin by exploring the slipperiness of distinctions between aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics, subsequently suggesting that we may need to pivot toward the aesthetic to understand and respond to the historical moment we inhabit. More specically, I suggest that, in order to understand how Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and in order (...) to stem the damage that preceded this and will ensue from it, we need to understand the power of political taste (and distaste, including disgust) as both a force of resistance and as a force of normalization. (shrink)

Interview on the commodified body with Donna Dickenson by Alana Cattapan.

In recent years, the notion of “tiger mother” has been popularized since Amy Chua’s publication of her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). This notion is allegedly representative of “Chinese” mothering that produces “stereotypically successful kids” (ibid., p.3). No wonder, the characteristics of the tiger mother revolve around strict disciplining and pressuring of children to excel academically based on her assumption that children “owe everything” to her and that she knows “what is best for [the] children” (ibid., p.53). (...) Chinese mothering is based roughly on Confucian mothering—a traditional mothering style originating from Confucian East Asia. Given the intense debate that has been generated by this popular book, it seems timely to theorize about what Confucian mothering involves, which has been largely neglected by Confucians themselves or contemporary feminists. This chapter attempts to start a conversation on this very important topic and explores the idea of Confucian mothering as follows: In sections II and III, I examine exemplary mothers in Confucian East Asia of the past in order to derive a preliminary idea of Confucian mothering. In order to consider whether Confucian mothering is conducive to promoting the Confucian ideal, I first identify the Confucian ideal in section IV by providing a plausible conception of Confucianism as a universal philosophical system. In section V, I elaborate on how Confucian mothering in its goal and style has been conducive to enabling male children to realize the Confucian ideal. Yet these historical instances of Confucian mothering cannot be incorporated into the universal Confucian philosophical system because Confucian mothers themselves were prevented from realizing the Confucian ideal. I therefore argue in section VI for a reconceptualization of Confucian mothering consistent with Confucianism as a universal philosophical system. Reconceptualized in this way, I show in section VII the ways in which Confucian mothering is distinct from tiger mothering and argue that tiger mothering is morally unjustifiable. Finally, I conclude by examining why Confucian mothering is relevant even for contemporary American parents in the 21st century. (shrink)

Drawing upon the practice of caregiving and the insights of feminist care ethics, I offer a phenomenology of caregiving through the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that caregiving is a material dialectic of embodied response involving moments of leveling, attention, and interruption. In this light, the Levinasian opposition between responding to another's singularity and leveling it via parity-based principles is belied in the experience of care. Contra much of response ethics’ and care ethics’ respective literatures, (...) this dialectic suggests that they are complementary in ways that productively illuminate themes of each. I conclude by suggesting that when response and care ethics are thought together through the experience of caregiving, such labors produce finite responsibility with infinite hope. (shrink)

Most discussions of racial fetish center on the question of whether it is caused by negative racial stereotypes. In this paper I adopt a different strategy, one that begins with the experiences of those targeted by racial fetish rather than those who possess it; that is, I shift focus away from the origins of racial fetishes to their effects as a social phenomenon in a racially stratified world. I examine the case of preferences for Asian women, also known as ‘yellow (...) fever’, to argue against the claim that racial fetishes are unobjectionable if they are merely based on personal or aesthetic preference rather than racial stereotypes. I contend that even if this were so, yellow fever would still be morally objectionable because of the disproportionate psychological burdens it places on Asian and Asian-American women, along with the role it plays in a pernicious system of racial social meanings. (shrink)

Numerous studies have found that many people believe that a provocatively dressed woman is at greater risk for sexual assault and bears some responsibility for her assault if she is attacked. Furthermore, in legal, academic, and public debates about sexual assault the appropriateness of the term ‘provocative’ as a descriptor of certain kinds of women’s clothing is rarely questioned. Thus, there is a widespread but largely unquestioned belief that it is appropriate to describe revealing or suggestive women’s clothing as ‘provocative’ (...) and that women who wear such clothing could provoke sexual assault and harassment from men. Yet it is rarely noted that only women’s clothing is described as sexually provocative. Men’s clothing, no matter how revealing, is never described as provocative. Why is this the case? This Article challenges the assumption that it is appropriate to describe women’s clothing as provocative. Drawing on on models of the legal defense of provocation and research on objectification and responsibility, this Article demonstrates that continued use of ‘provocative’ term normalizes and entrenches deeply problematic attitudes about women’s responsibility for men’s sexual behavior. The social interpretation of women’s clothing as provocative arises from the privileged social and legal status of men’s sexual arousal and the objectification of women’s bodies. Describing women’s clothing as provocative thus reinforces a problematic conception of women’s bodies and sexuality that is connected to women’s experiences of their bodies, their clothes, and shapes their vulnerability to sexual assault and social and legal attitudes to such attacks. (shrink)

Acarya Samantabhadra’s Svayambhustotra (2nd century CE) is a fine composition in Sanskrit dedicated to the adoration of the Twenty-four Tîrthankara, the Most Worshipful Supreme Beings. Acarya Samantabhadra was one of the most impelling proponents of the Jaina doctrine of anekantavada, a philosophical system which maintains that reality has multifarious aspects and that a complete apprehension of it must necessarily take into account all these aspects. Non-appreciation of this jewel of Jainism has caused the other philosophical systems fall into the trap (...) of one-sided, incomplete, and unsustainable dogmas that fail to explain the Truth. Through its 143 verses Svayambhustotra not only enriches reader’s devotion, knowledge, and conduct but also frees his mind from blind faith and superstitions. Rid of ignorance and established firmly in right faith, the reader’s mind experiences ineffable tranquility and equanimity. As proclaimed by Acarya 108 Vidyanand Muni, Svayambhustotra is an essential reading for all – ascetics and laymen. (shrink)

In "Existential Humanism and Moral Freedom in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics" Tove Pettersen elucidates the close connection between Beauvoir’s ethics and humanism, and argues that her humanism is an existential humanism. Beauvoir’s concept of freedom is inspected, followed by a discussion of her reasons for making moral freedom the leading normative value, and her claim that we must act for humanity. In Beauvoir’s ethics, freedom is not reserved for the elite, but understood as everyone being “able to surpass the given (...) toward an open future.” By addressing the continuing friction between individual freedom and public interests, Beauvoir’s normative thinking remains highly relevant today. It also exemplifies the enduring importance of humanistic reflections and demonstrates how, through critical and creative thinking, the humanities can contribute to a free, well-functioning democratic society. (shrink)

The ‘Animal Question’ has occupied Western philosophy for more than a decade now. Whether inspired by the rising urgency of the problem of violence towards and exploitation of nonhuman animals perpetuated by science, technology and culture broadly speaking, or by an enthralment with otherness, an increasing number of theorists engage with the concepts of the animal and human–nonhuman relations. These notions become an incessant impetus for creative and critical inquiry and the exploration of philosophical, political, ethical and artistic thinking. What, (...) however, needs to be asked in the first place is: how can we, as humans, relate to the nonhuman, and more specifically, to nonhuman animals ethically? Is it possible at all? The question of ethics is one of the main driving forces behind The Animal Catalyst: Towards Ahuman Theory, edited by Patricia MacCormack. (shrink)

This paper on feminism was given at a public lecture in Spain. The author speaks from the perspective of contemporary Catholicism, represented in the magisterial teachings of St John Paul II, foreshadowed in the works of St. Edith Stein, and amplified and developed by contemporary Catholic scholars such as Prudence Allen, Michelle Schumacher, Leonie Caldecott and Cardinals Angelo Scola, Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann.

The ancient Stoics had an uneven track record with regard to women’s standing. On the one hand, they recognized women as fully capable of rationality and virtue. On the other hand, they continued to hold that women’s roles were in the home. These views are consistent, given Stoic value theory, but are unacceptable on liberal feminist grounds. Stoic value theory, given different emphasis on the ethical role of choice, is shown to be capable of satisfying the liberal feminist requirement that (...) autonomy must be respected. In turn, a model for Stoic feminism is proposed. (shrink)

In this paper I engage interdisciplinary conversation on inaction as the dominant response to climate change, and develop an analysis of the specific phenomenon of complacency through a critical-feminist lens. I suggest that Chris Cuomo's discussion of the “insufficiency” problem and Susan Sherwin's call for a “public ethics” jointly point toward particularly promising harm-reduction strategies. I draw upon and extend their work by arguing that extant philosophical accounts of complacency are inadequate to the task of sorting out what it means (...) to be complacent on climate change. I offer a sketch for an alternative account, which I take to be a start in the direction of mapping out a diverse array of “motivational vices” that need to be named, grappled with, and remedied. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that the non-therapeutic, non-consensual alteration of children‘s genitals should be discussed in two separate ethical discourses: one for girls (in which such alterations should be termed 'female genital mutilation' or FGM), and one for boys (in which such alterations should be termed 'male circumcision‘). In this article, I call into question the moral and empirical basis for such a distinction, and argue that all children - whether female, male, or indeed intersex - should be free from (...) having parts of their genitals removed unless there is a pressing medical indication. (shrink)