1 Piercy, Marge ‘For Strong Women,’ Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (New York: Knopf 1982), 257.Google Scholar Reprinted in Thompson, Jane ed., Learning Liberation: Women’s Response to Men’s Education (London: Croom Helm 1983), 7.Google Scholar

2 In his recent book, aptly entitled The View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel is deeply attracted to but ultimately rejects this transcendental definition of individuality as workable in science and in ethics. Nevertheless, he does suggest that saints and mystics can achieve it. Thus, it seems to function as a kind of supererogatory moral ideal. See Nagel, ThomasThe View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986).Google Scholar

3 In an interesting essay, another committed Kantian theorist, Robert Paul Wolff, struggles with the aspirations of Kantian moral theory and their seeming irrelevance when juxtaposed to his actual life. See Wolff, Robert Paul ’There’s Nobody Here But Us Persons,’ in Gould, Carol and Wartofsky, Marx eds., Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1976).Google Scholar

4 Virtually all of this thinking has been carried out by men in situations in which the labour of women performed under conditions of patriarchal oppression has made possible the very philosophical enterprise itself which consigns women to that labour.

5 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 92, Reply to Objection 1 (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics 1981)Google Scholar

6 Ibid., Reply to Objection 2

7 Ibid., Part III, Question 39, Reply to Objection 3

8 See, for example, Kohlberg, Laurence ‘Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach,’ in Lickona, T. ed., Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1976);Google Scholar The Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper and Row 1981). Kohlberg, ’s most well-known feminist critic is Gilligan, CarolIn a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982).Google Scholar

9 Rousseau, Jean-JacquesThe Emile of J-J. Rousseau, trans. Boyd, William (New York: Teachers College 1962); originally published in 1779.Google Scholar

10 See Book V, concerning the education of Sophie.

11 See Kant, ImmanuelObservations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. Goldthwait, John (Berkeley: University of California Press 1960), 76-96Google Scholar

12 For two feminist discussions of this notion, see Beauvoir, Simone deThe Second Sex, trans. Parshley, H.M. (New York: Vintage 1952),Google Scholar esp. Chs. 1 and 9 (Beauvoir discusses both the drawbacks and the potential power of such an identification), and Ortner, Sherry B. ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ in Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist and Lamphere, Louise eds., Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1974).Google Scholar

13 See Easlea, BrianScience and Sexual Oppression: Patriarchy’s Confrontation with Woman and Nature (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1981),Google Scholar chs. 3, 5; also Lowe, Marian ‘The Dialectic of Biology and Culture,’ in Hubbard, RuthHenifrin, Mary Sue and Fried, Barbara eds., The Biobgical Woman: The Convenient Myth (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman 1982).Google Scholar

14 Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, DeirdreFor Her Own Good: 150 Years of Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Doubleday Anchor 1978), 120Google Scholar

15 See Martin’s Criminal Code, 1983, Article 216: ‘A female person commits infanticide when by a willful act or omission she causes the death of her newly-born child, if at the time of the act or omission she is not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child her mind is then disturbed.’

16 In a recent judgment in British Columbia a ‘Menopausal Woman’ (note the use of this phrase as a kind of proper name) was removed from jury duty — one of the exercises of moral–political rationality – on the ground that she was unfit to serve because she was in menopause.

17 See Barnett, Rosaline and Baruch, Grace ‘Women in the Middle Years: Conceptions and Misconceptions,’ in Williams, Juanita ed., Psychology of Women: Selected Readings (New York: Norton 1979), 479-87.Google Scholar This article exposes patriarchal twisting of research findings on the allegedly universal ‘Empty Nest Syndrome.’

18 For a critical analysis of the so-called scientific and epidemiological literature on pre-menstrual syndrome, see Fausto-Sterling, AnneMyths of Gender (New York: Basic Books 1985).Google Scholar For a critical discussion of this and similar decisions, see Hilary Allen, ‘At the Mercy of Her Hormones: Premenstral Tension and the Law,’ M/F 9 (1984).

19 For an acute theoretical discussion of this move, see Frye, Marilyn ‘Male Chauvinism,’ in Baker, Robert and Ellison, Frederick eds., Philosophy and Sex, 1st edition (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1975).Google Scholar For an extended historical analysis of the philosophical tradition, see Lloyd, GenevieveThe Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984).Google Scholar

20 For two representative discussions of this distinction, see Arendt, HannahThe Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1958),Google Scholar and Elshtain, Jean BethkePublic Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980). Also Ch. 5 of Lloyd.Google Scholar

21 For a recent discussion of this distinction see the essays by Hampshire, Stuart ‘Morality and Pessimism’ and ‘Public and Private Morality,’ in Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hampshire discusses, among other things, the challenges presented to the concept of public morality by Machiavellian models of public life.

22 Even a thinker as emancipated as John Stuart Mill succumbs to this kind of thinking, though not as the result of an essentialist line of thinking. See Mill, J.S.The Subjection of Women, reprinted in Rossi, Alice eds., Essays on Sex Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Blum et al. discuss the notion of distorted paradigms. See Blum, L.Homiak, M.Houseman, J. and Sheman, N. ‘Altruism and Women’s Oppression,’ in Gould, and Wartofsky, eds., Women and Philosophy, 222-47.Google Scholar

24 I distinguish moral integrity (which entails a moral and particular sense of connectedness and definition through others) from the notion of transcendent, detached, individual autonomy. I regard the latter as a form of conceptual pathology which pervades much of traditional and modern ethical theory (though the emphasis on autonomy per se is more distinctly Kantian and post-Kantian).

25 Andelin, Helen B.Fascinating Womanhood (New York: Bantam 1974);Google ScholarMorgan, MarabelThe Total Woman (Markham, ON: Simon and Schuster 1975)Google Scholar

26 Andelin, 270

27 Canaan, Andrea ‘Brownness,’ in Moraga, Cherrie and Anzaldua, Gloria eds., This Bridge Called My Back (Waterton, MA: Persephone Press 1981), 233Google Scholar

28 See Dworkin, Andrea ‘The Fairy Tales,’ chs. 1 & 2, in Woman Hating (New York: E.P. Dutton 1974);Google ScholarKobenschlag, Madonna Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye (New York: Bantam 1981).Google Scholar

29 For an extended analysis of this move, see Caplan, Paula ‘The Myth of Masochism,’ American Psychologist 39, 2, (1984) 130-9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

30 For an excellent and perceptive discussion of these metamorphoses, see Miller, Jean BakerToward a New Psychology of Woman (Boston: Beacon Press 1976).Google Scholar See especially chs. 4, 5.

31 I am grateful to Norma Shearer and other students in my Philosophy of Feminism class for providing me with this example.

32 For an extended analysis of this experience and ideology of love, see Beauvoir, Simone de chapter 23, The Woman in Love,’ and my essay ‘Romantic Love, Altruism, and Self-Respect,’ Hypatia 1, 1, 117-48.Google Scholar This essay is reprinted in Nemiroff, Greta ed., Woman and Man (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside 1986).Google Scholar

33 For a discussion of these forms of power, see the chapter ‘Women and Interpersonal Power’ in Frieze, I.Parsons, J.Johnson, P.Ruble, D. and Zellman, G. eds., Women and Sex Rotes (New York: Norton 1978), 301-20.Google Scholar

34 See Caplan, Paula and McCorquodale, Ian Hall ‘Mother-Blaming in Major Clinical Journals,’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (July 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Ruddick has, of course, done much to begin to address the vacuum in this area. See Ruddick, Sara ‘Maternal Thinking,’ Feminist Stuidies 6, 2 (Summer 1980), 342-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in an important anthology, Trebilcot, Joyce ed., Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld 1983).Google Scholar

36 Blum, et al., ‘Altruism and Women’s Oppression’Google Scholar

37 Some feminist theorists working in the area of feminist ethics include Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Annette Baier, Mary Daly, Marilyn Frye, Carol Gilligan, Beverley Harrison, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Barbara Houston, Jean Baker Miller, Sheila Mullett, Nel Noddings, Adrienne Rich, Carol Robb, Sue Sherwin, and Debra Shogun. (This list is not intended to be exhaustive.)

38 For a discussion of how such an epistemic shift might work, see Keller, Evelyn FoxReflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press 1985),Google Scholar especially the essays ‘Gender and Science,’ ‘Dynamic Autonomy: Objects and Subjects,’ ‘Dynamic Objectivity: Love, Power and Knowledge,’ and ‘Cognitive Repression in Contemporary Physics.’

39 The most sustained critique of the gender-labelling and devaluation of this model of the self grows out of the work of object-relations theorists such as Jane Flax and Nancy Chodorow. See, for example, Chodorow, NancyThe Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press 1978).Google Scholar For an application of this work, see Noddings, NelCaring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984).Google Scholar This research, which emphasizes an essential sense of personal connectedness, runs through much of feminist moral theorizing. It calls into question the adequacy of Isaiah Berlin’s theory of two concepts of liberty and the alleged illegitimacy of other-directness in moral agency (the ‘horrible spectacle’ of the craven, heteronomous moral agent). Subtler distinctions are called for here. See Berlin, Isaiah ‘Two Concepts of Liberty,’ in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969).Google Scholar