7.3 Feminist responses to Kant and Enlightenment thought

Feminist responses to Kant and Enlightenment thought challenge core ideas like universal morality, rational autonomy, and progress. These critiques argue that traditional philosophies neglect women's experiences, emotions, and relationships in ethics.

Feminists have reexamined Enlightenment ideals of reason, liberty, and equality through a gendered lens. While exposing limitations, some thinkers also aim to reclaim and reinterpret these concepts for women's liberation, sparking ongoing debates in feminist philosophy.

Feminist critiques of Kant's moral philosophy

• Kant's moral philosophy, based on universal principles and rational autonomy, has been challenged by feminist philosophers who argue it neglects women's experiences and moral reasoning
• Feminists contend that Kant's emphasis on abstraction and impartiality fails to account for the situatedness of moral agents and the role of emotions, care, and relationships in ethics

Universality vs women's experiences

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• Kant's categorical imperative aims to derive universal moral laws from pure reason alone, but feminists argue this ignores the particularity of women's moral experiences shaped by gender, race, class, etc.
• Feminists point out that historically, the "universal" moral subject has been implicitly male, white, and privileged, marginalizing other perspectives (Gilligan)
• Kant's insistence on universality can lead to a "view from nowhere" that abstracts away from embodied, contextual realities vital to moral life (Benhabib)

Reason vs emotion in moral judgments

• In Kant's view, emotions are irrational impulses that threaten to undermine the purity of moral reasoning based solely on a priori principles
• However, feminists argue that emotions like empathy, care, and compassion are integral to moral perception and motivation, not just biases to be overcome (Held)
• Feminist philosophers contend that emotions can attune us to the needs of particular others and morally salient features of context that abstract reasoning alone may miss

Autonomy vs relational self

• Kant places paramount value on individual autonomy - the rational will's capacity for self-legislation free from heteronomous influences
• But feminists have questioned the model of the self as an atomized, independent agent, stressing that selves are constituted through social relationships of interdependence (Kittay)
• An ethic premised on the relational self shifts focus to responsibilities emerging from particular ties (family, friends) rather than from self-chosen rational commitments

Feminist perspectives on Enlightenment ideals

• While the Enlightenment championed universal ideals of reason, progress, liberty and equality, early feminists argued these did not extend to women in theory or practice
• Feminists have critically examined how Enlightenment dualisms (public/private, culture/nature, mind/body) were mapped onto gender, relegating women to an inferior status
• However, some feminists have also sought to reclaim Enlightenment values of autonomy and rights for women's liberation, or to envision alternative forms of emancipatory reason

Liberty and equality for women

• The French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man excluded women from citizenship and political participation, prompting Olympe de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman
• Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women must be educated as rational creatures with equal rights and liberty, defying Rousseau's vision of women as emotional helpmeets to men
• Enlightenment concepts of natural rights, consent of the governed, and rebellion against tyranny inspired feminist arguments for women's suffrage, marital freedom, and equal opportunities

Challenging the public/private divide

• The Enlightenment reinforced a gendered separation of spheres that identified the public realm of politics and commerce with men, and the private domestic realm with women
• Feminists exposed how this public/private split masked women's subjugation and exploitation within the family and devalued their care labor as pre-political (Pateman)
• Challenging the boundaries of public and private, feminists politicized "personal" issues like sexuality, reproduction, domestic violence, and the gendered division of household and childcare work

Rethinking progress and civilization

• Enlightenment narratives of progress that equated European civilization with reason and portrayed colonized peoples as irrational, childlike "savages" in need of paternal guidance
• Feminists have critiqued how this discourse of civilization justified political exclusions and domination of women and non-Europeans as not fully developed rational subjects (Narayan)
• Some feminists reject an emancipation model premised on a singular scale of progress, arguing for multiple pathways of development reflecting different cultural values and histories

Alternative ethical frameworks

• Dissatisfied with the limitations of traditional moral theories like Kantian deontology and utilitarianism, feminist philosophers have developed alternative approaches to ethics
• These frameworks aim to better account for women's moral experiences, the importance of emotions and care, and the ways gender shapes ethical concepts, practices, and institutions
• Key examples include the ethics of care, feminist virtue ethics, and postmodern feminist ethics, though these diverse views also contain internal debates

Ethics of care vs Kantian deontology

• In contrast to Kant's ethics of universal duties determined by rational principles, care ethics focuses on responsibilities emerging from particular relationships and attending to context
• Nell Noddings argues that caring, rooted in women's experiences of mothering, should be the foundation of ethics, not abstract rules
• Care ethics values emotional attunement, compassion, and responsiveness to needs, seeing the moral agent not as an autonomous rational will but as "one-caring"

Feminist virtue ethics

• Feminist virtue ethicists draw on the role of character, moral perception, and practical wisdom in Aristotelian ethics, while critiquing its masculinist and elitist biases
• Philosophers like Rosalind Hursthouse and Lisa Tessman examine how patriarchal conditions can distort feminine socialization into oppressive gender roles misconstrued as virtues (e.g. self-sacrifice, servility)
• Feminist virtue ethics considers how to cultivate morally good character for women in sexist societies and what truly liberatory virtues might look like

Postmodern feminist ethics

• Postmodern and post-structuralist feminists reject moral theories that subordinate difference to sameness and universality, instead affirming irreducible plurality and alterity
• Thinkers like Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous challenge the phallocentrism of Western philosophy that defines women as lack, Other, or object, never a subject in their own terms
• A postmodern feminist ethic troubles the stability of the moral self, gender binaries, and cultural value hierarchies, opening up spaces for thinking sexual difference beyond oppositional relations

Reclaiming Enlightenment for feminism

• Despite the limitations of Enlightenment thought from a feminist perspective, some thinkers argue for critically retrieving its emancipatory potential for women
• This involves reinterpreting Enlightenment ideals of reason, rights, and progress in more inclusive, egalitarian ways, while remaining attuned to their past and present misuses
• Early feminist engagements with the Enlightenment, like those of Wollstonecraft, De Gouges, and Condorcet, provide resources for this project of immanent critique and productive reformation

Mary Wollstonecraft's vindication

• In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft extends Enlightenment arguments for men's natural rights and political inclusion to women
• Against philosophers like Rousseau who portrayed women as creatures of emotion and objects of male desire, she defends women's capacity and right to cultivate reason
• Wollstonecraft calls for a "revolution in female manners" through rational education to make women autonomous agents and full citizens, not frivolous subordinates to men

Olympe de Gouges and women's rights

• Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791) challenges the exclusion of women from the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man
• She argues that if women can be executed under the law, they must also be represented in legislation, exposing the contradictions of revolutionary ideals
• Gouges advocates for women's political participation, legal equality in marriage, and the abolition of male privileges, radicalizing Enlightenment notions of liberty and citizenship

Marquis de Condorcet's proto-feminism

• Condorcet was a rare Enlightenment thinker who extended ideas of progress, reason, and equal rights to women and opposed slavery
• In his essay "On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship" (1790), he argues that sexual difference is irrelevant to political rights and calls for women's suffrage and education
• Condorcet's "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind" (1795) envisions a future of gender equality and the disappearance of patriarchal institutions like forced marriage

Contemporary applications and debates

• Feminist engagements with Enlightenment thought remain relevant to present-day discussions in political and moral philosophy
• Theorists continue to debate the extent to which feminism should embrace, revise, or reject Enlightenment principles in responding to contemporary challenges
• Key issues include the viability of moral universalism, the tensions between humanism and identity politics, and the place of reason in postmodern times

Feminist Kantian constructivism

• Some philosophers have sought to reconcile Kant's ethics with feminist concerns by developing a feminist Kantian constructivism (Hay, Schwartzman)
• This approach aims to generate moral norms through a process of inclusive, intersubjective practical reasoning that takes into account diverse perspectives and experiences
• Proponents argue this can preserve valuable Kantian insights about dignity, rights, and rational agency, while making the process of moral justification more contextual and gender-sensitive

Enlightenment humanism vs identity politics

• Feminism's relation to Enlightenment humanism is debated in light of tensions with contemporary identity politics emphasizing differences among women (Dietz)
• Some feminists defend a humanist commitment to women's shared interests and universal norms of gender justice, arguing identity politics can fragment feminist solidarity
• Others contend that appeals to universal womanhood or humanity can erase the specific oppressions faced by women of color, LGBTQ people, disabled women, etc.

Universalism in a multicultural world

• The Enlightenment's universalist aspirations are challenged by the realities of cultural pluralism and postcolonial critiques of Western imperialism
• Feminists debate whether ideals of women's rights and equality can be legitimately universalized across cultures, or if this amounts to an imposition of Western values (Okin, Mahmood)
• Some seek a "critical universalism" that upholds basic moral norms while remaining open to cross-cultural dialogue and contestation of their meanings and applications in different contexts