Despite the fact that Norway is considered to be one of the most gender equal countries in the world, the proportion of women in philosophy is still low. In this article, we reflect on women's presence in Norwegian philosophy, partly based on interviews with Norwegian women philosophers from different universities. -/- We discuss the low proportion of women among students and staff in the field, investigate whether gender perspectives and feminist philosophy are present in the study of philosophy today. We (...) also identify some characteristics of the Norwegian postwar philosophy, such as diversity and openness, power struggles and gender blindness. Our material also shows that measures to improve gender balance in philosophy, has met fierce resistance. We discuss how the features of Norwegian postwar philosophy, together with direct and indirect stereotypes on gender, rationality and natural properties, has contributed to the fact that women still are a minority in Norwegian philosophy. -/- We also argue that the study of feminist philosophy and the integration of gender perspective is necessary in order to achieve gender equality in the discipline, to pave way for a new development in Norwegian philosophy, and to ensure the quality of higher education. (shrink)

Foucault rejette la dissociation entre savoir et pouvoir, il la renverse même en insistant sur leur interaction. On examine d'abord en quoi consiste la conception foucaldienne du pouvoir. On illustre ensuite les fluctuations du philosophe français concernant les rapports entre savoir et pouvoir. Puis on propose une relecture de "L'histoire de la sexualité" comme exemple privilégié de savoir-pouvoir, un savoir-pouvoir non seulement "du" sexe, mais aussi "de" sexe, c'est-à-dire "reflétant le point de vue particulier des hommes sur la sexualité, à (...) l'exclusion de celui des femmes. Cette perspective permet de remettre en cause la conception foucaldienne du pouvoir. (shrink)

Born out of the struggles of the feminist movements of the 20th century, feminist political theory is characterized by its commitment to expanding the boundaries of the political. Feminism, as a political movement, works to fight inequality and the social, cultural, economic, and political subordination of women. The goal of feminist politics is to end the domination of women through critiquing and transforming institutions and theories that support women’s subordination. Feminist political theory is a field within both feminist theory and (...) within political theory that takes a feminist approach to traditional questions within political philosophy, contemporary and historical. In this entry, I will explore the nature of feminist political theory by asking two questions: what is feminist about feminist political theory, and what is specifically political about feminist political theory. (shrink)

Common experiences of mothering offer profound critiques of maternal ethical norms found in both Christianity and Islam. The familiar responsibilities of caring for children, assumed by the majority of Christian and Muslim women, provide the basis for reassessing sacrificial and selfless love, protesting unjust religious and political systems, and dismantling romanticized notions of childcare. As a distinctive category of women's experience, motherhood may offer valuable perspectives necessary for remedying injustices that afflict mothers and children in particular, as well as for (...) developing cross-cultural understandings of justice in general. (shrink)

In this article, I propose one way of understanding the expression “feminist epistemology.” I begin from the premise that improper philosophical attention has been paid to the implications of what I call The Fact of Preconditions for Agency: that moral and rational agents become such only through a long, deliberate, and intensive process of intervention and teaching, a process that requires commitments of time, effort and emotion on the part of other agents. I contend that this is a sufficiently important (...) aspect of what it is to be a person that accounting for its philosophical implications may have repercussions not only for moral and political theory, but for epistemology as well. I contend further that, given the current configuration of social possibilities, a theory that acknowledges this Fact might appropriately be deemed “feminist.” My argument is presented in four segments. In Section II, I show how such a theory could be feminist by providing a discussion of categories of social identity; in Section III, I show how such a theory could be epistemology by describing a strategy of argument from parity. In Section IV, I apply this strategy to a case from political philosophy to show why its counter‐intuitive implications do not provide good grounds for rejecting the suggested redistricting. And in Section V, I apply the same strategy to a case from epistemology to bring out how it might lead to a theory that might legitimately claim to be feminist epistemology. (shrink)

The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis’. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions. The (...) ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize ‘democracy’ and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neo-secular age. (shrink)

L'étude des rapports entre féminisme et philosophie politique présuppose une classification des principales tendances du féminisme contemporain. l'article présente d'abord la typologie proposée par Alison Jaggar et indique les problèmes qu'elle pose. Il examine ensuite un ensemble de textes consacrés, expressément ou non, à la taxonomie de ces tendances, pour dégager une grille d'interprétation permettant de les rassembler dans un même cadre théorique explicitant les enjeux qu'elles abordent,mais aussi ceux qui sont ignorés.

Luce Irigaray classically challenges what she takes to be the masculine foundations of knowledge in Western liberal culture. The present article contends not only that this epistemological challenge implicates a radical feminist politics, but that it is also more helpful in formulating a multicultural feminist theory than is often acknowledged by her readers. This is because her account responds to the false neutrality of liberal feminist approaches to multiculturalism. It does so by supporting, at the socio-political level, transformative genealogical practices (...) that are aimed at fostering women's agency in culturally sensitive ways. However, Irigaray's recent work on multiculturalism does not sustain the necessary continuity between her core epistemological critique and her political claims. In particular, the continuity between her criticism of the West's sexual indifference and the cultural multiplicity of female identity becomes problematic in her recent work. The author finally contends that Irigaray's writings pose difficulties for a multicultural feminism, because they fail to specify the different forms of policy necessary to promote diverse women's equality in the postcolonial contexts on which she recently focuses. (shrink)

An anti-representationalist view of language and a deflationary view of truth, key themes in contemporary pragmatism and especially Richard Rorty, do not undermine the notion, in critical theory, of ideology as 'false consciousness'. Both Foucault and Marx were opposed to what Marxists call historical idealism and so they should be seen as objecting to forms of ideology-critique that do not sufficiently avoid such an 'Hegelian' perspective. Foucault's general views on the relations between truth and power can plausibly be construed in (...) a way that makes them compatible with a Marxian critical theory. (shrink)

Rousseau's Emile has attracted an avalanche of critical responses. His theme of negative education, or as he defines it, “well-regulated freedom”, has been denounced as outright manipulation in disguise, which instead of respecting the child's autonomy and dignity, places him at the whim of the teacher's machinations and stratagems. His recommendation that the child's imagination be curtailed (that he may not acquire desires which cannot be satisfied) is widely held to militate against one of the most cherished goals of education: (...) the fostering of the natural curiosity of the child. Rousseau is also accused of professing an “ideology of childhood” which ignores the real needs of children. In the sterilized environment which Rousseau proposes for the growing child, affection, praise and approval, are some of the sacrifices made to this ideology. Furthermore, his views on women are considered degrading, outrageous and blatantly sexist. Yet despite the myriad criticisms leveled against his work, Rousseau's Emile highlights one of the most exacting challenges for education — how to educate the child without alienating him. Rousseau connects this issue with the larger problem of alienation: namely, that experienced by man within the modern social order. Rousseau's views anticipate the contemporary debate between virtue-based and deontological ethics. The purpose of this paper is (i) to describe Rousseau's diagnosis of the problem of alienation as it arises in the various spheres of human life, paying special attention to the moral domain, and (ii) to assess the solutions he offers to the problem of alienation. These solutions are based on a conception of the good life which, I argue, is unacceptable. I also argue that this conception dissipates one form of alienation only at the expense of creating another. The paper begins by tracing the changes which the concept of alienation has undergone, and consequently I draw a distinction between two kinds of alienation — conscious and unconscious. I demonstrate that even if Rousseau is successful in offering a remedy for conscious alienation, this very remedy itself gives rise to unconscious alienation. (shrink)

Just as Dewey argued during the industrial revolution, from the 1890s–1930s, and Martin argued in the 1960s–1990s with our “second wave” working revolution : today’s times are out of joint, potentially dangerous conflicts exist, and teachers have some responsibility in making things right. We are in another social revolution, as work is changing significantly again, due to advances in technology. Let’s call these current changes in work the technology revolution. Again, we need to rethink our school structures, curriculum, and pedagogy. (...) In an effort to contribute to that process, I direct our attention to the need to redefine work, and re/examine the connections between work and education in this paper. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the material and rhetorical connection between “parental involvement” and motherhood has the effect of making two important features of parental involvement disappear. Both of these features need to be taken into account to think through the positive and negative effects of parental involvement in public schooling. First, parental involvement is labor. In the following section of this paper, I discuss the work of feminist scholars who have brought this to light. Second, parental involvement remains (...) one of the most significant ways in which citizens participate in the public sphere. While education reform projects centered on parental involvement do show some recognition that what parents/mothers do is in fact work, even as they ignore the gendered dimensions of this work and sunnily demand that parents do ever more of it, these projects resist the recognition that parents’/mothers’ involvement is also political. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Socrates believed that there is no distinction between man's virtue and woman's virtue and that there is no difference in the achievement of virtue between men and women. My analysis shows Plato's position on the moral equality of guardian women and men in the Republic to be a continuation of the Socratic position of nongendered virtue. I thus disagree with Spelman's recent interpretation of the Republic on this issue.

Karoline Reinhardt ABSTRACT: IDiversity matters – theoretically and practically, within philosophy and beyond. It is less clear, however, how we are to conceive of diversity. In current debates it is quite common to discuss diversity as a diversity of social identities. In this paper, I will raise five major concerns with regard to this approach ….

In this article, I argue that there are moral reasons to embrace the construction of self-designing and sex/gender-neutral cyborg athletes. In fact, with the prospect of advanced genetic and cyborg technology, we may face a future where sport (as we know it) occurs in its purest form; that is, where athletes get evaluated by athletic performance only and not by their gender, and where it becomes impossible to discriminate athletes based on their body constitution and gender identity. The gender constructions (...) within sports and sports culture are solid, however. Here, I argue that the rough distinctions we use to define people in terms of sex/gender tend to create and recreate old-fashioned and discriminatory sex/gender-boundaries. A morally reasonable way of meeting this issue, is to say that the problem is not the individuals who (for one reason or another) transcend certain gender categories, but the categories in themselves. (shrink)

I examine the ancient and perennial notion of the elements (stoicheia) and its relation to an idea of place proper (topos) and natural place (topos oikeios) in Aristotle's work. Through an exploration of his accounts, I argue that Aristotle develops a robust theory of place that is relevant to current environmental and geographical thought. In the process, he provides a domestic household and home for earth, air, fire and water that offers a supplement or an alternative to more abstract and (...) controversial uses of a conception of 'nature' (physis). I identify and elaborate upon environmental aspects of place-based and elemental philosophy. (shrink)

This review essay considers three prominent recent works in the philosophy of race: Mills's The Racial Contract, Outlaw's On Race and Philosophy, and McGary's Race and Social Justice. Each of these books has played an important role in convincing social and political philosophers to take race more seriously as a category for theoretical analysis rather than simply as a subject related to certain applied moral and political problems such as affirmative action. Each of these works also wrestles with the question (...) of whether the dominant theoretical traditions in modern Western political philosophy, and particularly liberalism, are capable of addressing the wide range of forms of social injustice that are linked to racism. The author indicates a number of differences between the books' approaches and argues that the conclusions at which they arrive are subject to different shortcomings. The author also shows that all three books raise sharp challenges to the liberal tradition at the same time that they remain ambivalent about the risks of departing altogether from that tradition. Key Words: justice • liberalism • modernity • race. (shrink)

A magnificent chaos: feminist (nursing) comments on Western philosophyThis paper primarily concerns feminists' problems with Western philosophy and the implications of these for nursing. My interest arises from some reading of philosophy and a profound disenchantment with its male bias. As Susan Moller Okin says, readers should not be misled by the use of supposedly generic terms like ‘mankindrsquo; and allegedly inclusive pronouns, into thinking philosophers intended to refer to the whole human race. Moira Gatens takes the view that feminists (...) cannot ignore the frameworks and assumptions of traditional philosophy and identifies three major ways in which the relationship between feminist theory and philosophical discourse can be characterized. In contrasting Gatens' thesis with a nursing case in point about ways of viewing disciplines, some ideas emerge for nurses to find positive ways forward in the philosophical enterprise. The topic extends to feminists' reactions to postmodern thinking and subsequent questions raised by these for nurses and nursing. (shrink)

Equality has become a highly controversial concept within feminism, not least because standard egalitarian accounts have been accused of neglecting both difference and also issues of real concern to feminists, such as the structure of the `domestic' sphere, contexts of power, and responsibility for domestic work. Michael Walzer's theory of `complex equality' promises a commitment to equality that deploys a much broader analytical focus, and yet is sensitive to difference. As such, it merits attention from feminists. In this article, I (...) will begin to investigate the possibilities offered by this theory, by examining the positions it can generate on issues of domestic work and decision-making power. It will be my contention that Walzer's own position on these issues is a little abbreviated, but that a distinctive and worthwhile account can be developed merely by applying arguments he has advanced elsewhere. (shrink)