Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:18:45.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Influential Theories of Ignorance and Philosophy's Interests in Ignoring Them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Sandra Harding
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided powerful accounts of systematic interested ignorance. Fifty years ago, Anglo-American philosophies of science stigmatized Marx's and Freud's analyses as models of irrationality. They remain disvalued today, at a time when virtually all other humanities and social science disciplines have returned to extract valuable insights from them. Here the argument is that there are reasons distinctive to philosophy why such theories were especially disvalued then and why they remain so today. However, there are even better reasons today for philosophy to break from this history and find more fruitful ways to engage with systematic interested ignorance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminist Epistemologies of Ignorance , Summer 2006 , pp. 20 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor W., Frenkel‐Brunswik, Else, and Levinson, Daniel J. 1969. The authoritarian personality (Studies in prejudice). New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Balbus, Isaac. 1982. Marxism and domination. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 1999. Agential realism: Feminist interventions in understanding scientific practices. In The science studies reader, ed. Biagioli, Mario. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Jessica. 1980. The bonds of love: Rational violence and erotic domination. Feminist Studies 6:1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biagioli, Mario ed. 1999. The science studies reader. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bloor, David. 1977. Knowledge and social imagery. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Carnap, Rudolf. 1963. Autobiographical statement. In The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. Schilpp, P. A.LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court.Google Scholar
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1991. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. 1976. The mermaid and the minotaur: Sexual arrangements and human malaise. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1963/1991. The wretched of the earth. Trans. Farrington, Constance. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.Google Scholar
Flax, Jane. 1983/2003. Political philosophy and the patriarchal unconscious: A psychoanalytic perspective on epistemology and metaphysics. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, 2nd edition, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Forman, Paul. 1987. Behind quantum electronics: National security as bases for physical research in the U.S., 1940–1960. 32 18: 149–229.Google Scholar
Frank, Andre Gunder. 1969. Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1949. An outline of psycho‐analysis. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1960. The ego and the id. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1961. Civilization and its discontents. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gross, Paul, and Levitt, Norman. 1994. Higher superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Gross, Paul, Levitt, Norman, and Lewis, Martin W., eds. 1997. The flight from science and reason. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Grunbaum, Adolf. 1984. The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophic critique. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hagestrom, Warren. 1965. Scientific community. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hanly, Charles, and Lazerowitz, Morris, eds. 1970. Psychoanalysis and philosophy. New York: International University Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspectives. In Simians, cyborgs, and women. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1983. Is gender a variable in conceptions of rationality? In Beyond domination: New perspectives on women and philosophy, ed. Gould, Carol C.Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, and Co.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1993. Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is ‘strong objectivity’? In Feminist epistemologies, ed. Alcoff, Linda and Potter, Elizabeth. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1998. Is science multicultural? Postcolonialisms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra ed. 2004. The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 2005a. Negotiating with the positivist legacy: New social justice movements and a standpoint politics of method. In The politics of method in the human sciences, ed. Steinmetz, George. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 2005b. Science and social inequality: Feminist and postcolonial perspectives. Urbana University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hart, Roger. 1996. The flight from reason: Higher superstition and the refutation of science studies. In Science wars, ed. Ross, Andrew Durham, N.,C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 1983/2003. The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, 2nd edition, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Hollinger, David. 1996. Science, Jews, and secular, culture Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W., 1972. Dialectic of enlightenment. New York Herder & Herder.Google Scholar
Jameson, Frederic. 1981. The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1983/2003. Gender and science. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, 2nd edition, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1984. Reflections on gender and science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kimball, Roger. 1991. Tenured radicals. New York: HarperPerennial.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962/1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Machlup, Fritz. 1962. The production and distribution of knowledge in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1936/1954. Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co.Google Scholar
Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1964. Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Ed. Struik, Dirk. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1967. Capital. Vol. 1. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1970. The German ideology. Ed. Arthur, C. J.New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
McCumber, John. 2001. Time in the ditch: American philosophy and the McCarthy era. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert. 1973. The normative structure of science. In The sociology of science, ed. Storer, Norman W.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert. 1994. A life of learning. American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper No. 25. New York: ACLS.Google Scholar
Mies, Maria. 1986. Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: Women in the international division of labor. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 2005. How positivism made a pact with the postwar social sciences in the United States. In The politics of method in the human sciences, ed. Steinmetz, George Durham, N.,C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Nandy, Ashis ed. 1990. Science, hegemony, and violence: A requiem for modernity. Delhi: Oxford.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1969. Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Price, Derek. 1963. Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Don K. 1964. The scientific estate. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1953. Two dogmas of empiricism. In From a logical point of view. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ravetz, Jerome. 1971. Scientific knowledge and its social problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Root, Michael. 1993. Philosophy of social science. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew ed. 1996. Science wars. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouse, Joseph. 1996. Feminism and the social construction of scientific knowledge. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science, ed. Nelson, Lynn Hankinson and Nelson, Jack. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Rouse, Joseph. 2002. How scientific practices matter: Reclaiming philosophical naturalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. The traffic in women: Notes on the political economy of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. Reiter, Rayna. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Sachs, Wolfgang ed. 1992. The development dictionary: A guide to knowledge as power. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1921. The sociological significance of the “stranger.” In Introduction to the science of sociology, ed. Park, Robert E. and Burgess, Ernest W.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: A sociology for women. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1990. The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Sokal, Alan, and Bricmont, Jean. 1998. Fashionable nonsense: Postmodern intellectuals abuse of science. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The modern world‐system. Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1968. The methodology of the social sciences. Trans. and ed. Shils, Edward and Finch, Henry. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Weeks, Kaihi. 1998. Constituting feminist subjects, Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1998.Google Scholar