Mary Brabeck, Dean of the School of Education of Boston College, offers here a dozen articles which explore the ethical dilemmas raised by bringing to bear feminist concerns upon traditional modes of psychological practice. The book is a useful road map for exploring topics ranging from forensic practice and hate speech to the extent to which feminists should disclose details of their personal lives and political concerns to their students and counselees. As is the case with most road maps, what is a great help for practitioners may not be a particularly exciting read for generalists.

The most valuable aspect of this text which runs throughout is the genuine wrestling of its 20 authors with the challenges that feminists are now presenting to orthodoxy in a number of both practical and theoretical domains. Is it really the case that scientists (and here, social scientists) must be objective in their presentations — or is objectivity merely a cover for patriarchal attitudes and dominance structures deeply embedded in our culture (Jennifer J. Freyd and Kathryn Quina, “Feminist Ethics in the Practice of Science”)? Does the feminist concern for the welfare of persons add additional bars to free speech (Melba J.T. Vasquez and Jeanne D. Day, “Hate Speech or Freedom of Expression?”)? How do we balance conflicting claims of race and gender (Elizabeth E. Sparks and Aileen H. Park, “The integration of Feminism and Multiculturalism: The Ethical Dilemmas at the Border”)? How far should the feminist forensic practitioner move in challenging and re-educating male-shaped and dominated assumptions in the law (Laura S. Brown, “Feminist Considerations in Forensic Practice”)?

All of the contributors to this collection have valuable things to say and raise new and useful questions from the perspective feminist theory. The one weakness I sensed throughout was an over dependence on ‘philosophic’ ethics for guidelines. None of the authors really seemed at home with contemporary ethical theory — a common reference was to Tom Beauchamp and J.S. Childress’ Principles of Biomedical Ethics, one of the most influential texts in medical ethics, which bases its approach on four fundamental moral principles. The authors are best when they were dealing with moral issues on their own with no philosophic eyes over their shoulders. One can speak about good and bad acts without characterizing them in those Latinate abstractions as the “virtues of beneficence” or “evils of maleficence.” And caring (giving a damn!) is hopefully what we all — not just feminists — must do. I suspect that Nell Nodding and Carol Gilligan, who have made significant contributions to revising our vision of things, had teachers who had imbibed of John Dewey’s deeply caring and egalitarian philosophy of education.
 

Edward Kent, who teaches social, political, and legal philosophy at Brooklyn College, CUNY, has been a member of the CUNY faculty seminar on Balancing the Curriculum (gender, race, class, and sexual orientation), the ACLU Church-State Advisory Committee, and the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Human Rights

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Categories: General, Philosophical