Empowerment and Interconnectivity: Toward a Feminist History of Utilitarian Philosophy

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Can I get a copy? As we have seen, Moulton has also commented on the masculinist nature of dominant Anglo-American methodology: However, less work has been done identifying and analyzing the masculinist elements of the picture of philosophy that underlies the two dominant Anglo-American approaches to the history of philosophy.

While this characterization is not to be taken too literally, it can be an illuminating analogy for our understanding and critique of this picture. However, the picture of the history of philosophy given above invokes more than a descent that can be traced from one male philosopher to another; rather than simply being the tracing of a male line patrilineal , the notion of patrimony is also one of male inheritance, legacy, and heritage.

The privilege that comes with patrimony means that an individual has no need to justify why they should be allowed to write or to publish, and moreover there is already an established, legitimate—used in both senses of the word—audience for this written and published work. Historical feminist philosophers, on the other hand, have had to justify their position as philosophers, the legitimacy of their subject matter, and even the legitimacy of their audience if their target audience is women.

In a similar way in the history of philosophy, there are unwritten rules about what is inherited and thus what is considered of philosophical value , who is to inherit who is to be a philosopher , and how inheritance happens how one comes to be considered a philosopher that have functioned to exclude women and feminist philosophers and to maintain male dominance of our discipline. Central to the patrimonial picture is the ideal of the purity or autonomy of philosophy, and this ideal is bound up with a particular—traditional—conceptualization of the knower, knowledge, and the way in which that knowledge is gained.

In essence, purity is an ideal of both true philosophy and the true philosopher. The knowers on this picture are disinterested and autonomous in that they are supposedly able to detach themselves and remain separate from the objects of knowledge; these knowers are conceptually disembodied and disembedded. The truths these traditional knowers of philosophy seek are those unencumbered by subjectivity or the trappings of the material world; indeed, philosophical knowledge is to be kept as free as possible from the external world.

Culturally, women have not been identified with the ability to think autonomously or disinterestedly. Indeed, partialism toward and connectivity with others are seen as central characteristics for women to be able to fulfill these traditional roles properly. In this way we can see that what is inherited—what the discipline of philosophy is considered to be—and who is to inherit are tightly linked. How then does inheritance happen—or, more specifically, not happen? On a direct level, women have had, until recently, restricted access to education.

I shall argue, however, throughout this work that there are more subtle ways that women are excluded from being counted as philosophers. More generally, on the philosophical approach to this history of philosophy, these professional individuals inherit the right to dispute a series of timeless questions that make up the subject matter and thus the delineation of the discipline of philosophy. This activity must be kept pure in that philosophical truths must be kept separate from historical particulars, while the philosopher studying timeless questions must preserve their individual autonomy and do philosophy from a disinterested standpoint.

What I wish to claim next is that—despite the fact that the historical approach to the history of philosophy is usually framed as being in opposition or in contrast to the philosophical approach—the patrimonial picture of philosophy lies behind both. Initially, it might seem that an obvious solution to the problems posed by the philosophical approach to the history of philosophy is to acknowledge that philosophical understanding is also historical understanding. So how far should we embrace the apparent alternative to the philosophical approach, the one I am calling historical?

It has no interest in philosophical theory qua philosophy; this may be simply because this type of historian is not interested or because this historian holds that philosophy can be understood only in its historical context. The job of the historian is to present whatever concepts past philosophers held without trying to translate them into contemporary concepts. If this is the case, then we can report only what was said at a certain historical period. As Gracia points out, compelling arguments can be made for this position, in particular that our historical account is not distorted by a search for truth, and through learning about the different views of the past we may come to see what is missing in the present.

The two main questions to be asked of the historical approach are what value it has, and whether a disinterested history is possible in this way. It can be argued that the historical approach ultimately gives us little more than description. We cannot do interpretation or evaluation, as these would be grounded on our contemporary philosophical knowledge and concepts; moreover, we cannot make connections between the past and the present. Gracia , 66 asks what use this approach is if we cannot build connections between the past and the present; if the past stays just that, then what value is it to us moderns and why would we want to recover this past?

Gracia also questions whether a disinterested history is possible. Ultimately claiming that a philosopher, for example, contributed to epistemology, is saying that there were elements of truth in his or her philosophy. What should feminist philosophers make of the historical approach? She claims that feminists can use it, even though it is not particularly feminist in itself. The feminist could write about issues of interest to feminists without actually taking the viewpoint of a feminist. In this way the historical examination would be kept objective and disinterested I would argue, however, that feminists have a political and philosophical agenda, and thus it would appear that adopting the historical approach will not ultimately be fruitful.

In other words, we want an interested history and we will need to use contemporary concepts to produce such a history. However, despite the different difficulties that both Gracia and Freeland identify with the historical approach, I intend to argue that historical context is vital for any feminist examination of a philosophical text. The question then for feminist historians of philosophy is whether a requirement that we read texts within their historical context need necessarily bring with it the other aspects of the historical approach: Despite the fact that these two mainstream approaches to the history of philosophy are typically framed as being in tension or contrast to each other, I maintain that they have shared elements, specifically, elements that are part of what I call the patrimonial picture of philosophy.

Unlike the practitioner of the philosophical approach, the practitioner of the historical approach does not participate in a shared inheritance of philosophy or a trajectory of thinkers, but this practitioner is an inheritor nonetheless. Texts are objects in the care of historians to be jealously guarded from distortion by contemporary concepts or interested use. While this does not mean that women or feminists are actually excluded from the historical approach, it does mean that feminists may not be interested or may find little of value in this approach.

Both approaches inherit a surprisingly similar object of study. The historical approach is in agreement with the philosophical approach over the autonomy of philosophy as a discipline, and, as such, does not have the potential to dovetail with the feminist philosophical project. Both approaches share a similar inheritance in their ideal of the disinterestedness of knowledge that we gain from the study of the history of philosophy. In the case of the historical approach, the knowledge we gain from the examination of texts is value-free in the sense that we aim not to distort this knowledge by interpreting it through our own historically situated position or by using our contemporary philosophical concepts.

In the case of the philosophical approach, we search for timeless truths: Both approaches strive for purity in their own separate way, whereas feminist philosophy, by its very nature, is not pure in the sense that both the historical and philosophical approaches share. Both approaches aim for autonomy or purity of their subject matter, whether it is keeping philosophical truths separate from historical particulars or keeping textual analysis free of anachronistic interpretation.

Both approaches also value the autonomy of the individual knower. The connection between the philosopher studying timeless questions and their individual autonomy is obvious, but perhaps the connection is not so clear in the case of the historical scholar. This notion of purity does not simply function as an ideal, it also functions both literally and metaphorically to maintain philosophical inheritance.

In the case of the mainstream philosophical approach, if we want to trace philosophical lineage or assign philosophers to sects or groups e. In the case of the mainstream historical approach, the commentator inherits the right to analyze and interpret texts through their own purity—their disinterestedness—and through guarding the purity of the texts they study from distortion from modern concepts of a search for timeless truth.

At present, the claim that the patrimonial picture underlies both approaches is—not surprisingly—skeletal; I shall explore and develop this picture and the shared elements of the two approaches as I study the work of my chosen nineteenth-century feminist philosophers. Thus far it would seem that neither the philosophical nor the historical approach is a particularly good match for the goals and requirements of the feminist philosophical enterprise, especially if our particular interest is examining feminist historical works, which aim to describe not abstract truths but the real-life truths of the oppressions of women, and to argue for practical change through the subjective change empowerment on a real audience.

So let us now consider two examples of approaches to the history of philosophy that avoid the extremes of the philosophical and historical viewpoints and aim to combine them in some way. He argues that the problem with the historical approach is that it misconceives the philosophical enterprise.

Thus, for Passmore, we should be both a historian and a philosopher. We see the inner history of the development of philosophy, but this is not done in isolation from historical and cultural context. Jorge Gracia , 68 , a more modern example than Passmore, holds that we can examine and understand some elements of our history without the distortion of our contemporary lenses. While these more moderate approaches to the history of philosophy may be more suitable for feminist historical enterprise, they are—ultimately—still not a good fit.

The problem is the understanding of philosophy itself at play in these more moderate approaches.

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The identification of philosophy as an autonomous intellectual enterprise with identifiable problems and aims—rather unfortunately—is the foundation for the potential agreement between the philosophical and historical approaches. In addition, women have rarely been allowed to participate in discussions of what Passmore sees as recurring problems or what Gracia calls the overall aims of philosophy, either discussions of the problems themselves or discussions where these problems are identified as such.

Yet both the philosophical and the historical approaches are grounded on the assumption that the goals and processes of their separate enterprises are objective or unbiased. Feminist philosophers have shown us that this is not the case. Simply put, the construction, whether literally or metaphorically, of what we call the discipline of philosophy has been male dominated and has functioned to exclude women.

In other words, we are left with the sense that the revised approaches of Gracia and Passmore are framed against the background of the patrimonial picture of philosophy and thus a patrimonial history of philosophy. Cynthia Freeland , suggests that it is possible to offer a feminist version of a combined philosophical—historical approach.

This claim can then be combined with a historical study of why a particular philosopher said what he or she did. A central question Freeland asks is whether this approach is feminist enough.

A feminist approach to the history of philosophy that begins with the canon as a resource is valuable for the feminist enterprise, but I am uncertain that it encompasses the entire enterprise. Surely we should also allow for the possibility of beginning with figures who are potentially feminist philosophers, even though they will typically be noncanonical or even forgotten. What then do I want for what I am calling a feminist lens or perspective for the history of philosophy? I have argued that neither the historical nor the philosophical approach is well suited for examining the work of early feminist philosophers.

This is not to say that these approaches cannot be used to interpret the work of these philosophers; rather, I am claiming that using these approaches does not ultimately contribute to the feminist philosophical enterprise as a whole. I hold that we should look for another approach or approaches that will result in more fruitful interpretations of specific texts and philosophies and the retrieval of previously neglected forbearers, while at the same time—due to both its conceptualization and its actual results—this approach will participate in and develop the feminist philosophical enterprise.

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I want to avoid another false dilemma. Just as MacIntyre claims that we do not necessarily have to reject one of the mainstream approaches and keep the other, so I want to claim that we may not necessarily have to mount a wholesale rejection of both mainstream approaches in order to produce an alternative feminist perspective.

To do so would be to buy into the picture of philosophy as a series of battles or opposing positions with one viewpoint as the winner and the other as the loser. A new—feminist—lens or perspective should certainly place early feminist philosophers within their historical and cultural context; indeed, as I argued above, this context is central to a feminist history of philosophy. Whereas the mainstream philosophical approach aims to search for truth for its own sake, a feminist approach—simply put—should search for truths about the subordination of women and the knowledge that will end this subordination.

It may be asked where the significant differences lie between the question I have just outlined and the mainstream historical and philosophical approaches I have argued are not a good fit for interpreting feminist philosophical texts. Initially, it may appear that the empowerment question is simply a version of the philosophical approach in that I am asking of historical texts a transhistorical question: On a strict interpretation of the philosophical approach an interested question, such as the empowerment of women, would be forbidden. But conceived more loosely, it might seem that the philosophical approach allows for such interested questions.

I would argue that the empowerment question is more than an interested question. It is not simply that we are making value judgments about a particular text or philosophy or taking up a particular position from which to examine a text or philosophy; rather, the empowerment question brings with it the need for self-consciousness about the political and ethical dimensions of our theorizing. Feminist philosophy is not an intellectual game; we theorize about lived oppressions and hope to remove them.

This self-conscious interpreter must hold him- or herself accountable, and be held accountable, to the overall goals of the feminist philosophical enterprise. The interpreter is thus a member of and accountable to a community of knowers. It is here that I think it makes sense—both conceptually and for the sake of clarity—to shift to talking of a feminist perspective or lens rather than an approach. To call the empowerment question an approach may indicate that I am offering some new or replacement methodology, whereas to call it a perspective or lens points to these signature characteristics that differentiate it from mainstream philosophizing.

As I shall show, the empowerment question is asked against a background of a different picture of philosophy from the patrimonial one. As I said, the knower is a self-conscious knower, who is held accountable to a community of knowers with common goals. These knowers do not just search for philosophical or historical truths; both the end of the search and their understanding of the search are different. This stands in contrast to the patrimonial picture of the knower as a disinterested, autonomous knower who is supposedly able to detach him- or herself and remain separate from the objects of knowledge, where the truths sought after are unencumbered by subjectivity or the needs of the material world.

I have argued that this position is harder for women to inherit than it is for men. Even if it were to appear that the empowerment question is simply a version of the philosophical approach, there does not seem to be a theoretical space for the answers to this question on the patrimonial picture of philosophy that lies behind the philosophical approach. Thus the approaches themselves are not at issue here; rather, it is the patrimonial picture of philosophy that lies behind them. The approaches themselves are potentially neutral; it is how they are used or can be used and the picture of philosophy that informs them that are my concerns.

Certainly, it may be possible to have feminist variants of the two approaches, but while the patrimonial picture of philosophy lies behind these two approaches, these variants will not easily accommodate historical feminist texts.

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In addition, philosophy need not be adversarial. Perhaps the history of philosophy can be read this way, and maybe certain areas of philosophy measure progress in terms of how one's theory improves upon that of another, but plenty of philosophy is new and creative and not simply responsive to what has gone before.

Finally, while "patrimonial" philosophy is thought to be "pure" in the sense that the traditional view of the knower, knowledge, and the way knowledge is gained is that of a disinterested, autonomous subject who is detached from the objects of knowledge and disembodied 14 , feminist philosophy is "impure" in the sense that it includes the motivations and biases of persons who seek to alleviate women's oppression.

Success for feminist philosophy, according to Gardner, is not measured by having an unbeatable argument, but by whether one's theory empowers women. I ask, why can't it be both? If a work is philosophical, it has to give arguments, since justification is what philosophy is all about. A philosophical work that aimed to end women's oppression would give some analysis of oppression, show how other work in the area at issue i.

It obviously would have to rely on empirical data to establish claims about oppression. But the philosophical aspects I just outlined will inevitably involve argumentation e.

Empowerment and interconnectivity : toward a feminist history of utilitarian philosophy | EIGE

On this point, I found that Gardner was not sufficiently attentive to the fact that content determines whether a work is philosophical, by which I mean that it invokes philosophizing about an issue, engaging it in a critical way. Instead of focusing on this, Gardner at points talks about the kind of work it is e. I would have liked to see more focus on the former, as it would give insight into her understanding of philosophy. Space allows me to treat mostly the first two. Without political rights, women cannot develop their minds and characters and thus enjoy the highest pleasures.

So a community of rational persons that wants to promote the happiness of all should accord women political rights. Surely, though, feminism doesn't defend women's being the dominant group -- it is theory that does not support any kind of domination, but equality. To achieve the goal of happiness for all, Wheeler and Thomson call on women to respect themselves so men will respect them.

I am, of course, not optimistic about this proposal, but motivating change is a complicated matter. According to Gardner, Wheeler and Thomson want ultimately not just that women have equal rights and opportunities with men, but that women are treated with respect and dignity. Gardner reads this as their wanting empowerment for women, but I read it also as their wanting something that utilitarianism cannot really give them -- i. I am suspicious about the compatibility of utilitarianism and feminism, and I was hoping that she would have explored this issue more extensively than she does.

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