Book contents
1 - Feminist Contractarianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
Summary
Like any good theory, [a woman's moral theory] will need not to ignore the partial truth of previous theories. So it must accommodate both the insights men have more easily than women, and those women have more easily than men. It should swallow up its predecessor theories. Women moral theorists, if any, will have this very great advantage over the men whose theories theirs supplant, that they can stand on the shoulders of men moral theorists, as no man has yet been able to stand on the shoulders of any woman moral theorist. There can be advantages, as well as handicaps, in being latecomers.
Annette C. BaierIs it possible to be simultaneously a feminist and a partisan of the contractarian approach to moral and political theory? The prospects for a successful marriage of these two positions look dubious if one has read recent feminist criticisms of contemporary contractarian theories. Moreover, this brand of moral theory has been suffused with the technical machinery of game theory, logic, and economics of the sort often thought to attract male philosophers and repel female ones, making such theorizing, in the words of one feminist philosopher, a “big boys' game” and a “male locker room” that few female philosophers have “dared enter.”
But this seemingly inhospitable philosophical terrain has been my intellectual home for some years now.
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- Information
- The Intrinsic Worth of PersonsContractarianism in Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 1 - 38Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006