A definition and a problem

•      “A belief that women should have equal economic, social, moral, legal, and political rights.”

•      A standard dictionary definition of “feminism.”

•      Women on the average make $.76 of the dollar that men make.

•      Title IX and women’s athletics.

•      What do you think of affirmative action? Is it compatible with classical liberalism?

A history of the problem

•      Institutionalized sexism is ancient, but racism is not.

•      Aristotle: a woman’s telos is to reproduce, but the man’s

•      Aristotle: women are defined in terms of both

•      Women are incapable of virtue and must be ruled by men.

•      Sexual apartheid just like the racial kind.

A Jewish view of women

•      There are three partners in man . . . His father supplies the semen of the white substance . . . . His mother supplies the semen of the red substance. . . . God gives him the soul and breath, beauty of features, eyesight, hearing, speech, understanding and discernment” (The Talmud).

Jesus’ feminism

•      Favored his women “disciples” over the men.

•      Anointed as Messiah by a woman?

•      Implicit reference to a Goddess Sophia in the New Testament.

•      Yahweh’s consort Asherah

•      Women in the early church.  Karen Torjesen, When Women were Priests.

•      Later sexism in the Church.

Kant on women

•      Kant thought that males and females were equal but different.  Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile.

•      Different roles but equally valuable.

•      Main value of woman is her beauty; man's value is

•      Women know nothing of duty.  They do not know

•      A woman’s place is in the home.

“Equality” or “liberal” feminism

•      Mary Wollenstonecraft is the earliest spokeswoman.

•      Feminist wing of classical liberalism:

•      Moral rationalism: women are just

•      They can control their

•      Virtues are universal and can be attained by both men and women.

•      Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

“Difference” Feminism

•      Aristotle, Christians, Rousseau, and Kant: Difference with a negative implication.

•      Virtues are not universal but are gendered.

•      Mary Daly: true virtue is feminine virtue.

•      Virility and virtue.  “Virile” courage.

•      Does “difference” feminism lead to “essentialism”--a male “essence” vs. a female “essence”?

•      Chinese yin and yang as essential female and essential male?

The vocational virtue model

•      Inspired by Karl Marx: differences in virtue are based on social and economic condi-tions rather than sex.

•      Are men necessarily excluded from relationality, care, and nonviolence?

•      Where does the Buddha and Confucius stand on this?  Hume? 

•      The emotions are not irrational and not “feminine.”  Ren ren*.

•      Buddhist relationality and nonviolence.

Kohlberg on moral development

•      Three categories:

–  The preconventional (needs of self).

–  The conventional (needs of society).

–   The postconventional (beyond society to the universal).

•      Either a utilitarian  (pleasure/pain) calculation.

•      Or a Kantian-like appeal to universal principles.

Two stages of the preconventional

•      One: Punishment and Obedience:

•      Two: Instrumental Hedonism:

•      Transition to the conventional:

•       

Two stages of the conventional

•      Three: Interpersonal Concordance:

•      Four: Law, Order, and Welfare.

•      Transition to the postconventional: nonegoism, disinterestedness, altruism.

Two stages of the postconventional

•      Five: Social Contract based on personal rights or hedonic calculus.

•      Equal liberty and equal opportunity

•      Six: Universal Ethical Principles. 

•      Aquinas and Kant best examples?

•      Moral rationalism wins?

Jake, Amy & Heinz’s dilemma

•      Jake formulates an abstract principle: “life is worth more than money.” 

•      No question that Heinz should steal.

•      Amy, however, is concerned about all parties, even the druggist.

•      Heinz might go to jail.  By all means, talk to the druggist!

•      Jake is at level five at least, but Amy is at level three.  Poor Amy or good girl, Amy?

Who is morally superior?

•      Annette Baier:.

•      Hume: 

•      No precise rational principles possible.

•      The postconventional does

•      Moral judgments are

Gilligan’s three categories

•      Preconventional selfish stages.

•      Conventional “Goodness as Self-Sacrifice”

•      Postconventional ethics of nonviolence. 

•      Irony: a sexist male Gandhi as the most successful proponent of this ethic.

•      Hume:

•      Is Gilligan mapping Kohlberg too closely.  Do we need a postconventionalist stage?