In the twentieth century the English cathedral and collegiate choir has consisted typically of about sixteen trebles – boys with unbroken voices, aged between about eight and thirteen (often with four additional ‘probationers’) – and at least six men taking the three lower parts. Numbers have varied from time to time in any particular choral foundation; in recent times York, Durham and Winchester Cathedral choirs have all used twelve men, as have Magdalen College, New College and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. King's College and St John's College in Cambridge have both used fourteen men's voices, each with six basses. St Paul's is the largest establishment of all, with thirty-eight boys and eighteen men.

Historians, journalists, critics and cathedral musicians themselves have been sure they can identify a style of singing peculiar to these choirs which they define by reference to purity of tone, accuracy in intonation, precision in ensemble, and an absence of rhetoric. The ‘essence’ of the cathedral choir said one authority is ‘the boy's voice’, and its men are ‘at their best when they blend with that clean white tone’. Again and again throughout the century the same epithets have been used to characterise the singing, ‘pure’, ‘otherworldly’, ‘ethereal’, ‘impersonal’; writers who do not admire the style refer to its ‘coldness’, its lack of ‘passion’ or ‘personality’, to the cultivation of beauty of sound at the expense of any real expressiveness, to ‘under-interpretation’, to rather barren meticulousness; a French critic writes about ‘performances that are millimetrées, as if they were mathematical exercises’.

Ancient Judaism is perhaps Weber's greatest single creation. Nearly 500 pages in length, though unfinished at the time of his death, it is the largest of the three major studies of the three-volume Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion) (GARS). The work is deeply rooted in Weber's thought. In the Protestant Ethic Weber had already emphasized affinities between Judaism and the outlook of Puritanism, suggesting that ascetic Protestantism had inherited the “perfectly unemotional wisdom of the Hebrews” which had seen “the rational suppression of the mystical, in fact the whole emotional side of religion” (PE 123). He observed that despite its distinct petty-bourgeois and traditionalistic tendencies, “Old Testament morality was able to give a powerful impetus to that spirit of self-righteous and sober legality which was so characteristic of the worldly asceticism o f … Protestantism” (PE 165).

By the time of Ancient Judaism, Weber's appreciation of the significance of the Hebrew legacy had deepened in proportion as his investigations broadened to deal with the origins of western rationality. One can also read the argument of Ancient Judaism as Weber's response to Nietzsche on the very large questions of the “genealogy of morals” and the significance of the Judeo-Christian tradition for the fate of western modernity in general. For Weber shared with Nietzsche a preoccupation with the peculiar character of the religious impulse as such, especially insofar as powerful inner forces are unleashed in directions that lead to various “unnatural” and self-denying practices (FMW 271-272).

This quotation from an anonymous thirteenth-century treatise is not alone in testifying to the pre-eminent role occupied by the voice in medieval music. The Christian church from the very beginning had rejected the use of musical instruments in worship both because of their intimate associations with pagan cults and because of their connection with the profligate immorality of the Greco-Roman world. Christian liturgical music thus developed in a direction consistent with, and determined by, the capabilities of the singing voice. The organ, an instrument difficult to construct and constantly in need of maintenance, made only gradual headway towards its eventual status as the sacred instrument par excellence. Few medieval churches could hope to possess so extraordinary a treasure. Instruments were tangential to the performance of monophonic secular song of the Middle Ages, and they seemed to have played only the most minimal role in secular polyphony.

The ‘early music’ revival of the twentieth century was guided primarily by instrumentalists whose imaginations could roam freely in the absence of instruments surviving from the Middle Ages. The human voice did more than merely survive: its physiology has remained unchanged, yet as John Potter observed, there was no re-evaluation of singing techniques comparable to the re-examination of playing techniques applicable to ‘period’ instruments. Instead, various twentieth-century vocal practices have competed for ‘authentic’ status, based more on the degree of aesthetic satisfaction they afford to twentieth-century ears than on their conformity with practices of the past.

The background

The intensity of the debate which followed the publication of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1904-1905 shows how relevant the essay was considered at the time. The subject interested many of Weber's contemporaries – economists, historians, social scientists and philosophers. What, they were asking, were the origins of capitalism? What were its characteristics in its modern form? How far was it affected by religion and, more particularly, by Protestantism? The prosperity of Holland and England in the seventeenth century, attended by the economic decline of Italy and Spain, had long fascinated scholars and suggested that there was some relationship between the Reformation and economic progress. In order to confirm this theory they could turn to far earlier sources – the seventeenth-century political economist William Petty, the great exponent of the Enlightenment Montesquieu, and the historian Henry Thomas Buckle writing in the mid-nineteenth century. But they were also in search of a more modern analysis of the true nature of the relationship. In his study on suicide which appeared in 1897, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim observed that Protestants, and above all German Protestants, divorced more and killed themselves more than the members of any other confession. Such primacies, he maintained, indicated an industrial society in a particularly advanced stage, with a high standard of education and living. This, in turn, raised the question of the extent to which Protestantism might have contributed to this advance and to the development of the class on which such a society rested, the bourgeoisie.

Introduction

Someone might wonder how there can be feminist epistemology - 'knowledge is simply knowledge, regardless of gender, and that's all there is to it'. There are philosophers of a relativistic mindset, some feminists among them, who would challenge the idea that knowledge is 'simply' knowledge, believing it to be both less and more than it seems. Those, for instance, who regard 'true' as an 'empty compliment' that we pay to propositions we want to endorse, or as part of a philosophical 'discourse of legitimation', will regard 'knowledge' too as a metaphysically empty stamp of approval. Metaphysically speaking, then, they believe knowledge to be less than it seems. But politically speaking, they believe it to be more than it seems; for once their view of knowledge is in place, it is only a small step to the suggestion that propositions approved as knowledge are likely to reflect the perspectives and even serve the interests of those whose social power shapes the practices of approval. Since being female has placed one historically at the less powerful end of gender relations, it would be easy then to see how there could be a role for feminism in the theory of knowledge. Feminism would have a ready-made task in counteracting and protecting against gender bias in the processes and institutions of approval.

The philosophical question of moral justification inquires how substantive moral assertions - claims that particular actions or practices are right or wrong, permissible or impermissible - may be confirmed or disconfirmed. This question has always been central in western moral philosophy and it holds special significance for feminism, which is defined by its moral opposition to male dominance. Feminists need some means of establishing that their critiques of those actions, practices and institutions that rationalize or maintain male dominance are not merely personal opinions but instead are objectively justified.

This chapter discusses some recent feminist contributions to the philosophical debate about moral justification. Part 1 traces feminist engagements with four major moral theorists of the twentieth century, and part 2 makes explicit several common themes running through those feminist critiques. Part 3 outlines some elements of an alternative feminist approach to moral justification, informed by the earlier critiques. Part 4 offers some feminist reflections on the project of providing a philosophical account of moral justification, suggesting that philosophers' claims to authority in defining moral justification may themselves constitute practice of dominance.

Introduction

The articulation of feminist perspectives on the history of western philosophy has been a significant development in feminist philosophy. Critique of the alleged 'maleness' of the philosophical tradition has been a central theme in this development. It has reflected more general divisions within feminist theory between approaches centred on the affirmation of 'sameness' and approaches emphasizing 'difference'. Where some have defended female character and capacities in relation to traditional ideals, others have challenged the supposed gender-neutrality of the ideals themselves.

Despite the contrasts between these approaches, a common tone was evident in the early stages of feminist history of philosophy: the history of philosophy was seen as a repository of misogynist ideas and ideals, towards which feminism took up a defensive posture. In more recent work inspired by feminism, a more positive mood is evident. Rather than defining itself through opposition to a 'male' tradition, feminist history of philosophy has emerged as a shifting set of strategies which bring sexual difference to bear on the reading of philosophical texts.

Introduction

Feminist philosophy of science is situated at the intersection between feminist interests in science and philosophical studies of science as these have developed in the last twenty years. Feminists have long regarded the sciences as a key resource for understanding the conditions that affect women's lives and, in this connection, they have pursued a number of highly productive programmes of research, especially in the social and life sciences. At the same time, however, feminists see the sciences as an important locus of gender inequality and as a key source of legitimation for this inequality; feminists both within and outside the sciences have developed close critical analyses of the androcentrism they find inherent in the institutions, practices and content of science. Both kinds of feminist engagement with science - constructive and critical - raise epistemological questions about ideals of objectivity, the status of evidence and the role of orienting (often unacknowledged) contextual values.

Feminist ethics

Ethics, or moral philosophy, as a field of intellectual inquiry developed in the west for well over two thousand years with minimal input from women. Women's voices have been virtually absent from western ethics until this century, as they have been from every field of intellectual endeavour. The absence of female voices has meant that the moral concerns of men have preoccupied traditional western ethics, the moral perspectives of men have shaped its methods and concepts, and male biases against women have gone virtually unchallenged within it. Feminist ethics explores the substantive effect of this imbalance on moral philosophy and seeks to rectify it.

Like other areas of feminist thought, feminist ethics is grounded in a commitment to ending the oppression, subordination, abuse and exploitation of women and girls, wherever these may arise. In the late 1960s, when feminist ethics began, it consisted mainly of applying the resources of traditional moral philosophy to the array of moral issues that were being brought to public attention by the women's movements then arising in many western societies.

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:

Introduction

A great deal of recent feminist work on philosophy of mind has been grounded on a central claim: that the key oppositions between body and mind, and between emotion and reason, are gendered. While the mind and its capacity to reason are associated with masculinity, the body, together with our emotional sensibilities, are associated with the feminine. Evidence for this view comes from at least two sources. First, overtly sexist philosophers have in the past claimed that women are by nature less capable reasoners than men and are more prone to ground their judgements on their emotional responses. These authors have been repeatedly opposed by defenders of women, whether male or female. Secondly, feminists have explored ways in which gendered oppositions are at work even in the writings of philosophers who do not explicitly differentiate the mental capacities of men and women or connect women with the bodily work of reproduction and domestic labour. By studying the metaphorical structures of philosophical texts, looking at what may appear to be digressions from the main line of argument, and paying attention to examples, they have identified persistent patterns of association running through the history of philosophy.

Some philosophical work about language and its use has been inspired by feminist agenda, some by malestream philosophical agenda. Reading work in these two areas - in feminist-philosophy of language and in philosophy of language, as I shall call them - one easily gets the impression that they are totally separate enterprises. Here I hope to show that the impression is partly due to habits of thought that pervade much analytical philosophy and have done damage in philosophy of language. My claim will be that an idea of communicative speech acts belongs in philosophy of language (section 2). I think that the absence of such an idea from malestream accounts of linguistic meaning might be explained by ways of thinking which are arguably characteristically masculine (section 3). Once communicative speech acts are in place, various feminist (and other political) themes can be explored (section 4).

Feminist-philosophy of language and philosophy of language

Language's relation to gender was at the centre of discussions from the beginning of feminism's second wave. Dale Spender, in a path-breaking book, claimed that 'males, as the dominant group, have produced language, thought and reality'.3 Some feminists refused to share Spender's pessimism, and questioned whether language could be the powerful controlling influence that Spender represented.4 But a view of language as a vehicle for the perpetuation of women's subordination was prevalent in the 1980s, even if it was often based upon less radical claims than Spender's. Writers gave attention to the sexism implicit in language that contains purportedly generic uses of masculine terms, especially the supposedly neutral 'man' and male pronouns.

This Companion represents a departure from the previously published volumes in its series. Each of those dealt with a single philosopher and with a male one in every case, whereas this one brings women in and treats a theme rather than an authority. So far as the departure allows, this book's principal aim is in line with that of other Companions: it consists of new papers by an international team of philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship; and these have been written with non-specialists in mind, so that the collection can serve as an introduction to the area. We have tried to design it to be helpful to any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about feminism's place in their subject.

The present Companion has a further aim. It is intended to foster appreciation of the potentially far-reaching impact of feminist thinking in philosophy. As departments of women's studies and gender studies have grown up in the last twenty years, there has come to be more and more published work falling under the head of feminist philosophy.

The question of difference has preoccupied feminists in one way or another for a decade and a half. And even where difference is not in the foreground of feminist thinking and writing, it remains in the background as a point of contention that can be used against any empirical or theoretical generalizations that may be advanced. To focus on difference would thus seem a suitable approach not only to a discussion of feminist political theory, but to feminist theory and philosophy more generally.

Feminists have reflected on three kinds of difference: first, their own difference as women in relation to men, usually taken as a socially constructed gender difference; secondly, social differences between women; and thirdly, theoretical differences between feminists. The second and third types of difference have been seen as threatening the very possibility of feminist theory. My thesis will be that the reason why difference has become so divisive and threatening to feminists is that there has been a conflation of the second and third types of difference, i.e. of social and theoretical differences.

The relationship between feminism and psychoanalytical theory has been stormy. Feminists of all stripes have criticized Freud and his followers for many different aspects of psychoanalytical thought and practice. While some of these criticisms are relatively local in scope, concerning features of psychoanalysis that can be regarded as inessential or transient, others are directed against more central theoretical commitments. The first category includes examples such as the sexist expectations manifested by Freud in his analyses of female patients: the case history documenting Freud's treatment of 'Dora', for example, has been discussed at length by feminist critics. More theoretical criticisms include the charges of false universalism, ahistoricism (in particular the reification of the nuclear family), heterosexism, biologism and phallocentrism. The aim, also, of psychoanalytical therapy has been criticized as reactionary, insofar as it is thought to divert patients from a political understanding of their discontents to the 'individualist' solution of personal adjustment to the status quo.

We talk of processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them we think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent.) - And now the analogy which was to make us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them.

When I do not see plurality stressed in the very structure of a theory, I know that I will have to do lots of acrobatics - like a contortionist or tight-rope walker - to have this theory speak to me without allowing the theory to distort me in my complexity.