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> This blindness to feminist ethics is revealing. In part it is a function of the era in which they worked, but not completely; they all lived through various w
by slibhb 5y ago
> This blindness to feminist ethics is revealing. In part it is a function of the era in which they worked, but not completely; they all lived through various waves of feminism. And yet the ethical battles they were involved in—even when about abortion—were, it seems, purely intellectual ones. One can imagine contemporary feminists seeing some maddening abstraction in their work, as they themselves did in the Oxford ethicists. Questions about female embodiment and intersectionality, so crucial to current feminist thinking, are absent from their “gender-neutral” work—and from this book.
Always lovely to read a retrospective of talented women that chastises them for not having been feminist enough.
I've read a few Murdoch novels and recommend them. As I read them, I did not find myself yearning for a discussion of "female embodiment and intersectionality" but your mileage may vary.
- santjego 5y agoThe pagan saints of feminism.
- klyrs 5y ago"One can imagine [feminists] seeing..." is a mention of imagined critique, a position that the author is carefully not taking. That's nowhere near "chastising."
- yesenadam 5y agoIt reads to me like strong chastisement. Not just that sentence fragment you quote, but 3 whole paragraphs (the 3 before the last paragraph) are devoted to that theme. And similarly to when on HN people say loftily that something someone else wrote "is very revealing", what it reveals is never mentioned. I think it's like saying "Of course it's bad" i.e. "It's not what I'm used to." You don't have to get into why it's bad, just say it's very revealing. Possibly Schopenhauer covered that in his Stratagems, sounds like it. On a more positive note, I've read quite a lot of all four of these women, mostly decades ago. Still have books by all of them. I didn't realize the size of their contribution, particularly Anscombe's in reviving (academic) virtue ethics.
- klyrs 5y agoHow interesting. As I read it, those paragraphs are quite neutral -- the author seems to be contrasting without any overt judgement. I can imagine a reader similarly taking offence at a perceived celebration of the noted absence of modern feminism in the women's works. But personally, I strive to read an author's words, not their mind. At one time, presenting differing viewpoints was considered a hallmark of good journalism. I'm not wont to wist for a bygone era; perhaps I am getting old after all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]