As both a teacher and consumer of philosophy,
my experience has mostly been to find writings on feminism bound within general
philosophical texts.  For example, a book on epistemology will have a chapter
on feminist epistemology within it;  a book on metaphysics or one on political
philosophy will have a chapter on feminist metaphysics or political philosophy
among its chapters.  And my experience has been to find that the writings of
only a few feminist writers, such as Mary Wollenstonecraft and Simone de
Beauvoir will appear repeatedly in various locations as the representatives of
what has been written.  I was very happy to find this book, Feminist Theory: 
A Philosophical Anthology, in publication and available for review.  Here
we have many of the seminal and foundational essays on feminism conveniently
assembled in one volume.  Since this book is an anthology, space does not
permit me to go into much detail on any of its chapters, so I’ll simply give an
overview of what it contains. 

The book is divided into seven parts.  The first part
consists of five chapters attempting to define what exactly feminism is.  These
chapters, written by Mary Wollenstoncraft, John Stuart Mill, Simone de
Beauvoir, Kate Millet, and bell hooks, give both a theoretical and a historical
perspective on the environment that gave birth to feminism.  By the way, Mill’s
chapter is the only one written by a man published in this volume. 

The second part deals with the
issue of sexism primarily by examining the various kinds of oppression to which
women have been subjected.  But rather than being a session of
"male-bashing" and conspiracy theories, the authors in this section
discuss the economic, religious, and sociological developments of the human
race which allowed for, and at times created, the need for the existence of
second-class citizens for the good of society.

The third part considers the
difference between the biological female sex and the socially constructed role
of the female gender.  The main assumption over most of history has been that
women are inferior to men in many ways, and the writings of both philosophers
and theorists in most other disciplines have been based on the assumption that
male is the norm–including medicine, where, until very recently, medical
statistics about things like blood pressure, heart attacks, ulcers, and so on
were based on information gathered about men and then generalized to women. 
This section asks the reader to recognize the differences between men and women
without making the mistake of judging those differences to be an indication of
the superiority of one over the other. 

The chapters in the fourth section
consider the question of whether there is a "women’s way of knowing"
that is distinct and different from the knowledge that has been produced by
men.  This is therefore a section on feminist epistemology calling into
question the pervasive attitude that rationality is always more practical than
intuition.  The chapter which caught my interest is the one by Helen E. Longino,
which asks whether there can be a feminist science that is distinct from
contemporary science.  This is a hotly debated topic in epistemology because of
the assumption that science deals with empirical facts, the products of which
cannot, and should not, be described as either male or female knowledge.

For those who have read extensively
in the area of moral theory and ethics, the fifth section of this book will
prove particularly interesting.  Ever since Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral
development was challenged on the basis that his research of moral development
was conducted on boys and could not be generalized to girls, moral philosophers
have been taking a close look at some of their pet theories such as Rawls’
"justice as fairness."  The chapters in this section dispute the claim
that morality ought to be based on objective decision-making that upholds
‘blind’ justice, and instead suggest that it is fair to let one’s relatedness
and care for loved ones weigh heavily in any moral decision made.  Jean Hampton
also presents a chapter here which takes a feminist perspective on the
formality of contractual agreements and how they can affect a sense of
community. 

Part six seems like it could have
come at the beginning of the book.  It asks the question, What is a self?  To
answer this question the four authors deal with topics such as various
conceptions of autonomy, identity that is imposed and assumed, the social
control of women even in so-called democratic societies, the expectation that
women sacrifice their own interests on behalf of others, and recovery after
trauma. 

The final section offers some
insights into what an ideal world might be like if it were designed by women. 
Again, this is not a radical feminist manifesto calling for the eradication of
men.  Rather the authors discuss the possibility of a world without sexual
discrimination, and a form of justice that isn’t ‘man-made’ and therefore
biased towards the needs and expectations of men. 

This book could be a solid
foundation for an upper-level feminist philosophy course.  I say "upper-level"
because some of the technical language would be a difficult challenge for
college freshmen… or should I say fresh-persons?  For non-academics this book
is an excellent reference source of some of the best and best-known writings in
the most important areas of the field of feminism.  One added note, almost all
of the book’s chapters contain a number of subheadings, making chapters less
daunting to read, and there is a good index at the end. 

© 2005 Peter B. Raabe

Peter B. Raabe teaches
philosophy and has a private practice in philosophical counseling in North Vancouver, Canada. He is the author
of the books Philosophical
Counseling: Theory and Practice (Praeger, 2001) and Issues
in Philosophical Counseling (Praeger, 2002).

Categories: Ethics, Philosophical