In a suggestive reading of Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that the passion of wonder, the first of all the passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference. Wonder is the first of all passions because it has no opposite, is prior to judgment and comparison, and because it is united to most other passions. Wonder is surprise at the extraordinary, and Irigaray believes it is the ideal way for women and (...) men to regard each other, as it is prior to judgement, and thus free of hierarchical relations, contrary to traditional ethics. In this sense, it leaves us open to new experiences and the distinctiveness of the other. For Descartes, a different passion, the passion of generosity, gives the key to ethics. Generosity is a species of wonder combined with love, which he understands as proper self-esteem. This proper self-esteem ensures that we have appropriate esteem for others by recognising them as like ourselves in the most important respects – the capacity to exercise free will and the resolve to use it well. He believes that if we value ourselves appropriately, then we will respond to others appropriately. This passion must be cultivated as a habit and virtue. In this paper, I examine how wonder and generosity can be linked to ethics, the relationship between these two passions, and Iris Marion Young’s view that Irigaray’s understanding of wonder can easily be extended to any structured social difference, such as race, class and religion by adopting a stance of ‘moral humility’ and accepting that our relations with others are asymmetrically reciprocal. (shrink)

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant’s view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.

Feminist social theory and female body experience are the twin themes of Iris Marion Young's twelve outstanding essays written over the past decade and brought together here. Her contributions to social theory raise critical questions about women and citizenship, the relations of capitalism and women's oppression, and the differences between a feminist theory that emphasizes women's difference and one that assumes a gender-neutral humanity. Loosely following a phenomenological method of description, Young's essays on female embodiment discuss female movement, pregnancy, clothing, (...) and the breasted body. In an introduction that situates her work in the context of shifts in feminist theory and politics over the past decade, Young emphasizes the rootedness of her theorizing in a dedicated and seasoned political activism. (shrink)

In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice.

A radically subversive critique brings to the fore the masculine ideology implicit in psychoanalytic theory and in Western discourse in general: woman is defined as a disadvantaged man, a male construct with no status of her own.

Written over a span of more than two decades, the essays by Iris Marion Young collected in this volume describe diverse aspects of women's lived body experience in modern Western societies. Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity. The essays combine theoretical description of experience with normative evaluation of the unjust constraints on their freedom and opportunity that (...) continue to burden many women. The lead essay rethinks the purpose of the category of "gender" for feminist theory, after important debates have questioned its usefulness. Other essays include reflection on the meaning of being at home and the need for privacy in old age residences as well as essays that analyze aspects of the experience of women and girls that have received little attention even in feminist theory--such as the sexuality of breasts, or menstruation as punctuation in a woman's life story. Young describes the phenomenology of moving in a pregnant body and the tactile pleasures of clothing. While academically rigorous, the essays are also written with engaging style, incorporating vivid imagery and autobiographical narrative. On Female Body Experience raises issues and takes positions that speak to scholars and students in philosophy, sociology, geography, medicine, nursing, and education. (shrink)

What does it mean to think critically about politics at a time when inequality is increasing worldwide, when struggles for the recognition of difference are eclipsing struggles for social equality, and when we lack any credible vision of an alternative to the present order? Philosopher Nancy Fraser claims that the key is to overcome the false oppositions of "postsocialist" commonsense. Refuting the view that we must choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Fraser argues for an (...) integrative approach that encompasses the best aspects of both. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has been furnished (...) with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

A contribution to the feminist discussion on moral theory, exploring the debate between moral impartiality and the partiality that characterizes personal relationships, the ethic of care and its relation to justice in a gender asymmetrical society, and the role of intimate friendship in an era of the dissolution of both extended and nuclear families.

This collection consists of lectures given at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. They were delivered under the provisions of the Jan Tin- bergen Chair, ...

The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

One of the most fundamental premises of feminist philosophy is the assumption of an invidious asymmetry between the genders that has to be overcome. Parallel to this negative account of asymmetry we also find a positive account, developed in particular within the context of so-called feminist philosophies of difference. I explore both notions of gender asymmetry. The goal is a clarification of the notion of asymmetry as it can presently be found in feminist philosophy. Drawing upon phenomenology as well as (...) feminist difference theory, I argue that a gender asymmetry does exist that cannot-as in the first assumption-be transformed into symmetry. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how a politics of difference, in particular that of Iris Marion Young, can give a much more robust justification for feminist goals and a more cogent diagnosis of and response to oppression than other political philosophies, such as liberalism, communitarianism, and post-socialism,. Nancy Fraser has nonetheless made several compelling criticisms of Young’s conception of the politics of difference, and I address these criticisms by demonstrating how the politics of difference can be ‘split’ into different differences.

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas’s relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume’s primary aims. Levinas breaks with Heidegger’s (...) phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to the Other, the face-to-face, as exceeding the language of ontology. The ethical orientation of Levinas’s philosophy assumes a subject who lives in a world of enjoyment, a world that is made accessible through the dwelling. The feminine presence presides over this dwelling, and the feminine face represents the first welcome. How is this feminine face to be understood? Does it provide a model for the infinite obligation to the Other, or is it a proto-ethical relation? The essays in this volume investigate this dilemma. Contributors are Alison Ainley, Diane Brody, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Claire Katz, Kelly Oliver, Diane Perpich, Stella Sandford, Sonya Sikka, and Ewa Ziarek. (shrink)

This book examines the centrality of integrity in relation to a variety of philosophical and psychological concerns that impinge upon the ethical life.

At stake in his reading of the tale, to which the second half of this book is devoted, are the conditions of gift and forgiveness as essentially bound up with the movement of dissemination, a concept that Derrida has been working out for ...

This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

Lisa Tessman's Burdened Virtues is a deeply original and provocative work that engages questions central to feminist theory and practice, from the perspective of Aristotelian ethics. Focused primarily on selves who endure and resist oppression, she addresses the ways in which devastating conditions confronted by these selves both limit and burden their moral goodness, and affect their possibilities of flourishing. She describes two different forms of "moral trouble" prevalent under oppression. The first is that the oppressed self may be morally (...) damaged, prevented from developing or exercising some of the virtues; the second is that the very conditions of oppression require the oppressed to develop a set of virtues that carry a moral cost to those who practice them--traits that Tessman refers to as "burdened virtues." These virtues have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer's own well being. Tessman's work focuses on issues that have been missed by many feminist moral theories, and her use of the virtue ethics framework brings feminist concerns more closely into contact with mainstream ethical theory. This book will appeal to feminist theorists in philosophy and women's studies, but also more broadly, ethicists and social theorists. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental premises of feminist philosophy is the assumption of an invidious asymmetry between the genders that has to be overcome. Parallel to this negative account of asymmetry we also find a positive account, developed in particular within the context of so-called feminist philosophies of difference. I explore both notions of gender asymmetry. The goal is a clarification of the notion of asymmetry as it can presently be found in feminist philosophy. Drawing upon phenomenology as well as (...) feminist difference theory , I argue that a gender asymmetry does exist that cannot-as in the first assumption-be transformed into symmetry. (shrink)

lntroduction Imaginary and Images M philosophical imaginary refers to both the capacity to imagine and the stock of images philosophers use. ...

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Critics of a politics of difference have misidentified these social movements as asserting an identity politics of recognition. Most of these movements are better understood as resisting unjust structural inequalities. Inclusive democratic process involves paying specific attention to group differences in order to transform preferences and maximize social knowledge.