Transcript Feminism - dascolihum.com

Feminism: Pro and Con
 I.
Evolution of Feminism: Wollstonecraft,
Woolf, de Beauvoir
 II. Fleming’s Biological Analysis of Sex
 III. de Beauvoir’s version of Ethical
Creativity
 IV. Problem for de Beauvoir: Location of
Justice
I. Evolution of Feminism
 Mary
Wollstonecraft: a semi-classical
feminist (1759-1797).
 She agreed with Plato that virtue, not
pleasure, was the supreme goal of life.
 She saw women held back from developing
virtue by perverse incentives: that rewarded
charm & beauty over inner strength and
virtue.
Wollstonecraft vs. Aristotle
 Wollstonecraft
identified virtue with the reign
of reason over sensuality, and left no room for
right sentiments (Lewis’s “chest”).
 Although she admitted that men & women
played different roles, she insisted that the
standard of virtue is the same, grounded in a
supernatural, eternal goal.
 For Aristotle, different roles necessitated
diffferent forms of virtue.
Virginia Woolf’s Feminism
 Unlike
Wollstonecraft, Woolf did not limit
the sex differences to the body: she argued
that, since the mind is rooted in the body,
women and men differ mentally.
 Woolf rejects the classical ideal that limits
the sphere of women to the “private house”.
 Woolf is deeply disaffected by society as it
actually exists: she sees it as consistently
oppressive, hypocritical and warlike.
The Three Guineas
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First Letter: from a Women’s College
Second Letter: from a Society to Aid
Professional Women
Third Letter: from an appeal to join a
Manifesto on behalf of Culture and
Intellectual Freedom.
Overarching Letter: how to prevent war?
Woolf’s Two Targets
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Confinement to the “private house”: cruelty,
poverty, servility, immorality.
Assimilation into the masculine professions:
possessive, jealous, greedy, combative.
Both extreme poverty and extreme wealth
are undesirable.
The Four Teachers
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Poverty: earn just enough to live on.
Chastity: refuse to sell your brain.
Derision: reject fame and honor.
Freedom from unreal loyalties: to nation,
religion, school, family, sex.
Woolf’s View of Value
 There
are “unwritten laws”, but these are not laid
down by God (a patriarchal myth) or by nature
(which varies and is under human control).
 These laws are “private” and must be discovered
“afresh” by each generation. Relativism?
Historicism?
 Two sources for the laws:
–
–
Private psychometer: moral intuition.
Public psychometer: art
Woolf’s Dualism
 Woolf
was part of the “Bloomsbury circle”,
that included philosopher G. E. Moore.
 Moore believed that there were objective
moral facts, but that these were totally
separate from “nature” (including God).
 We have access to these facts by a mysterious
faculty of “moral intuition”.
 Moore opposed traditional values; he held
that only friendship & beauty matter.
Differences between Woolf and
Moore
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Woolf addresses the question Moore evades: how
do we, as natural beings, gain access to the world
of value?
She seems to embrace a kind of reductive
materialism: that our minds are products of the
brain.
Given biological differences between the sexes,
she embraces a kind of sexual relativism: each sex
has its own set of “private” or unwritten laws.
II. Fleming: Men
 Men
can have many children, and the
minimum investment in each child can be
extremely low (one sperm, a few minutes).
 2 models of biological equilibria:
–
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Monogamy
“Free agency”
Monogamy as an Equilibrium
 Each
man is limited to one marriage
throughout his lifetime.
 Men's reproductive possibilities become
similar to women's, and to each other's.
 Equalization of opportunities for
reproduction.
 Consequently, each household has two
parents, who are equally committed to the
household's children.
Males as “free agents”
 Each
man seeks to have sex with as many
fertile women as possible.
 Households consist of mother and
children.Minimal involvement of father(s).
 Reproductive inequality: some men have
many children, many have few or none.
Paradox
 Monogamy
feminizes men -- makes the
father/mother roles similar -- and equalizes
the sexes.
 Yet, monogamy and patriarchy are
connected:
–
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Patriarchal privilege is one of the glues used to
bind men to marriage as an institution.
If men are absent from the home, they lose the
opportunity of being dominant there.
Questions
 Is
monogamy natural?
 Is patriarchy natural (adaptive)?
 What does it matter if they are?
Classical vs. Modern
 According
to the classical tradition,
objective value is rooted in human nature,
prior to our choices and actions.
 We exist within a framework of values and
norms that are prior to and independent of
our wills.
The Modern View
 According
to the modern tradition: we enjoy
the power or freedom of ethical creativity.
 There are no objective norms or values to
constrain us, with authority over us.
 Case in point: consider Wilson's discussion of
sex roles. pp. 132-133.
 Wilson admits that the differentiation of
humans into distinct male and female roles is
adaptive (product of natural selection).
 However,
he gives this fact no normative
weight -- no authority over our choices.
 We are still free as a society to decide
whether to alter, exaggerate or eliminate
these differences.
III. Simone de Beauvoir and
Ethical Creativity
 Is
more consistent than Wilson, Pinker, et
al.
 She clearly affirms the freedom of ethical
creativity, but she does so by embracing a
radical sort of nature/culture dualism.
 Ethical choice transcends the biological
and the physical.
Metaphysical Discontinuity
 Based
on a metaphysical theory, in which
human consciousness represents something
radically new, a complete discontinuity.
 Jean-Paul Sartre: dualism of physicality
and consciousness, Being and Nothingness.
Consequences
 We
can divide the world into two domains:
that of immanence (nature), and that of
transcendence (freedom).
 For example: feminity and masculinity in
human life are a social construction
(transcendent), having only a contingent
relationship to biological categories of sex
(immanent).
Transcendence of Nature
 de
Beauvoir's goal: an androgynous society.
 She freely admits that this has no basis in
biology.
Is the freedom of ethical
creativity a coherent idea?
 In
classical tradition, not even God has this
freedom.
 14th. C. philosopher Duns Scotus is first to
attribute it to God. Followed by William
Occam.
 Rousseau -- transfers it to human beings.
An Aristotelian objection:
1. All decisions depend on a pre-existing scale
of values. We always decide for the better.
2. FEC means that all values are created by a
prior human decision.
This leads to an infinite regress.
Criterionless Choice
 Defender
of FEC must believe in the
possibility of an absolute, criterionless
choice.
 A choice of what I shall be, what I shall
seek, that depends on no prior conception of
value. (e.g., "I choose androgyny, not
because it is good, but as a fundamental,
ungrounded value")
Aristotelian Response
 Aristotle:
this is impossible. The human will
is not built this way.
 Some kind of self-deception must be
involved in any attempt to do so.
IV. de Beauvoir and the Problem
of Justice
 de
Beauvoir clearly affirms that sexual
inequality is unjust.
 Where do we locate justice: in the realm of
the immanent or the transcendent?
 de Beauvoir seems to face an insoluble
dilemma.
The Dilemma of Justice
 If
de B. locates justice in the realm of the
immanent, then it is something which we
humans can freely transcend -- if we do not
do so, we are guilty of bad faith.
 If de B. locates justice in the realm of the
transcendent, then it must be the product of
an individual, criterionless choice. No room
for universal judgments.
 If
justice is transcendent, then de B. cannot
consistently condemn the standards of
patriarchal society as inherently unjust.
 At most, she can claim that she chooses
(without reason) to regard it as unjust.
 If others choose to regard patriarchy as just,
then for them, it is just.