Feminist Ethics

by Claudia Card (Editor)

What is "feminist" about feminist ethics? Do women's voices yield a distinct approach to the study of ethics?

Although they're far from uniform, women's voices, shaped by legacies of sexual politics, differ enough from men's to warrant a separate hearing. In Feminist Ethics feminist philosopher Claudia Card provides the forum. She brings together fifteen new essays on the nature, current state, and implications of feminist ethics, including many by some of the best and best known feminist philosophers in the U.S.

The connecting threads?

"Feminist ethics is born of women's refusals to endure with grace the arrogance, indifference, hostility, and damage of oppressively sexist environments," Card writes. Thus, woven throughout feminist writings on ethics run experiences of oppression. From a variety of perspectives the writers of these essays address a fundamental question: If oppressive contexts shape the moral development of the oppressed, what does it mean for the oppressed to resist, to make morally responsible choices, to become moral agents, to develop character?

This volume presents no single answer. Instead, the essays collected here reflect the pluralism and "feistiness" of modern feminism. Subjects range from the history of feminist ethics to the logic of pluralist feminism, presenting feminist perspectives on such unexpected topics as terrorism, bitterness, women trusting other women, and survival and ethics.

Genres: Philosophy

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Claudia Falconer Card (September 30, 1940 – September 12, 2015) was the Emma Goldman (WARF) Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with teaching affiliations in Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies, and LGBT Studies.

She earned her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1962) and her M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1969) from Harvard University, where she wrote her dissertation under the direction of John Rawls.

Card joined the faculty in the philosophy department at Wisconsin straight from her Harvard studies. She has held visiting professorships at The Goethe Institute (Frankfurt, Germany), Dartmouth College (Hanover NH), and the University of Pittsburgh. She has written four treatises, edited or co-edited six books, and published nearly 150 articles and reviews. She has delivered nearly 250 papers at conferences, colleges, and universities and has been featured in 29 radio broadcasts. She delivered the John Dewey Lecture to the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA) in 2008. In April 2011 Card became the President of the APA's Central Division. Her Presidential Address was "Surviving Long-Term Mass Atrocities: U-Boats, Catchers, and Ravens". In 2013, she was invited to deliver the Paul Carus Lectures, a series of three lectures delivered to the APA; these will be delivered at the Central Division in 2016.

In 2011, Card was awarded the University of Wisconsin's Hilldale Award for excellence in teaching, research and service. In nominating her for this award, her department chair, Russ Shafer-Landau, said, "Her books and articles have become as essential to feminist thinking as Das Capital is to labor theory. You simply can't do feminism without reading Card, and even if you don't read Card, today's feminism bears her mark so deeply that you may not even realize that you have in some other way digested her theoretical perspectives."

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Matthew Sobolik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Card here collects essays from numerous genius feminist theorists; Lugones, Frye, Spelman, Hoagland, and many others. I found all of the essays to be interesting, however most failed to go much farther beyond just interesting. Several of the first essays felt like professional courtesys to Card; brief and surface-level, the kind of essay written in an afternoon and read and digested in a manner of minutes. Later essays were longer, but still a common motif was the phrase "space does not allow further examination of this subject". Ultimately I think the subject matter was too broad. Feminist ethics is a large field and so all of the essays felt disjointed. The best anthologies are those where each essay works off the others leading to a book that is greater than the sum of its parts, Feminist Ethics does not achieve that. So if you are interested in learning the basics of numerous canonical feminist theorists, this is a great read, otherwise I would reccomend other books on feminist ethics.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

worn edges and cover; $2.99