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7 - Feminism in epistemology

Exclusion and objectification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Rae Langton
Edited by
Miranda Fricker  and
Jennifer Hornsby
Miranda Fricker
Affiliation:
University of London
Jennifer Hornsby
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Summary

Introduction

Philosophy leaves everything as it is, or so it has been said. Feminists do not leave everything as it is. We are always interfering, always fighting for something, always wanting things to be otherwise and better - even in philosophy itself. But if philosophy leaves everything as it is, shouldn't feminists leave philosophy as it is? If philosophy leaves everything as it is, then it cannot hurt women, and it cannot help women. To be sure, if philosophy leaves everything as it is, it leaves oppression as it is, but one should no more hope otherwise than one should hope for the stones to cry out for justice. Shouldn't feminists let philosophy be? Well, not everyone agrees with the one who said philosophy leaves everything as it is. Someone else began his meditations thus:

Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again . . .

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy , pp. 127 - 145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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