This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
See, e.g., Genevieve Lloyd,The Man of Reason (London: Methuen, 1984); Ludmilla Jordanova,Sexual Visions (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
Thus feminism, like many another initially ardent and united revolutionary movement, was soon overtaken by fragmentation, internal conflict, uncertainty of political direction and loss of momentum. Compare the early histories of psychoanalysis and communism.
A. Jaggar,Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester, 1983).
. at 9.
Jaggar finds Lukàcs's Marxist solution to the problem of ideology the most convincing, and adapts it to the assessment of the different conceptual frameworks of feminism. She summarizes the relevant points as follows: “... classes whose interest most closely approximates the interest of the social totality will have an interest in overthrowing the established order. Consequently, they are more likely to construct conceptual frameworks that will reveal accepted views as myths and provide a more reliable understanding of the world” (. at 362). The nature of this “reliability”, the key point for my purposes, is not here explained. However, Jaggar later adapts this to socialist feminism by treating the two sexes as different classes and claiming that the views of the oppressed, i.e. women, are similarly more reliable than those of the oppressors, i.e. men. Reality is therefore best viewed from the standpoint of women, which it is the job of feminist theory to elaborate. Why it should be thought that women's interests approximate more closely to those of the social totality than men's is obscure. But it emerges that what makes women's view more reliable is that “women do not have an interest in mystifying reality and so are likely to develop a clearer and more trustworthy understanding of the world. A representation of reality from the standpoint of women is more objective and unbiased than the prevailing representations that reflect the standpoint of men” (supra n.3,A. Jaggar,Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester, 1983). at 384). I cannot see why an oppressed person who wants to change the world should not have just as much interest in “mystifying reality” as an oppressor who wants to keep the world as it is. It is in the oppressor's interest to exaggerate the social benefits of the status quo and the dangers of change, and to conceal its social injustices and the benefits of change. It is in the oppressed's interests to conceal the social benefits of the status quo and the dangers of change, and to exaggerate its social injustices and the benefits of change. Thus what distinguishes their interests is what portions or aspects of reality it is in their interest to mystify. Note also the reappearance of the previously explicitly rejected “liberal” assumptions (seesupra n.3,A. Jaggar,Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester, 1983). at 52–5, 358) that there is a theory-neutral reality to mystify or represent less or more reliably, and that objectivity and impartiality are intellectual virtues. Jaggar's theoretical practice seems at variance with her metatheory.
The criteria for adequacy of a moral or political theory are identified as follows: the theory “must express values that are morally desirable... provide a guide to conduct that is consistent, comprehensive and practicable, and ... should be in some sense impartial.” The criteria of adequacy for a scientific theory are that it should be “self-consistent, ... well-supported by the available evidence ... comprehensive in accounting for all the data and ... illuminating or have explanatory power” (. at 354; Jaggar regards feminist theory as both political and scientific). She thinks these criteria are also shared with non-feminists; compare my remarks on the universality of reason in the text. For Jaggar's defence of the socialist feminist interpretation of these criteria, see n.5 A. Jaggar,Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester, 1983). above.
I am led to these views by evolutionary biology and by the emergence of generalization from training (i.e., from a model of the construction of universal laws on the basis of experience) in connectionist models of various cognitive functions. For an application of this to moral principles, see A. Clark, “Connectionism, moral cognition, and collaborative problem-solving”, inMind and Morals: Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science, ed. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1996), 109–28.
Those excluded from reasoned political dialogue are excluded from political deliberation and thereby from political participation. Here I agree with Avner de-Shalit — political dialogue is essential to democracy not just instrumentally as a means to the best decision-making, but as such. See A. de-Shalit, “On behalf of ‘The participation of the people’: a radical theory of democracy”,Res Publica 3/1 (1997), 61–80. See also A. Gutmann and D. Thompson on public deliberation in “Moral conflict and political consensus”,Ethics 101 (1990), 64–88.
Peaceful co-existence and co-operation are universal human ends in the sense that they are practically intelligible in any society, and thus universally available for consideration in any circumstances even if not universally espoused. In this they differ from the ends internal to a particular culture such as, say, Christian salvation or consumer choice, which are intelligible only within a particular set of beliefs and a particular form of economic organisation respectively.
I.e., a view of reason which makes theoretical reason explanatorily prior to practical reason, and sees the job of the philosopher as systematic theory-construction (and demolition). Since I agree with Jaggar that we are dealing with something like her “paradigms” here, and that paradigms are not deductive systems, I agree that we cannot hope to bring a paradigm down by applying some incontrovertible test, like proofs of inconsistency or similar forms of destructive logical analysis, to a key point. But why let this divest feminism of the power of deductive and analytic methods altogether? Perhaps they can help in other, piecemeal, ways. The problem is to discover where and how to apply them. The same applies to the fact/value distinction.
These remarks were prompted both by Jaggar's account of Marxist critiques of scientific objectivity in the final chapter of herFeminist Politics and Human Nature, and by Karen Green's discussion of structuralist and post-structuralist attacks on humanism (citing principally Saussure, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and Irigaray) in Chapter 1 of K. Green,The Woman of Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 10–26. Both alerted me to large issues and literatures which should be acknowledged even if not directly addressed at length. I have indicated very briefly why I am not convinced by Jaggar's favoured Marxist solution in n.5 above.
Not that any scientist relies on, or aspires to, these; they are rather the dream of scientism, against which, rather than against science, post-structuralist critiques seem to me appropriately directed.
A similar strategy for a similar project was adopted by Carol Jones to reexamine Plato's feminist credentials in theRepublic. See C. Jones, “Since she's my queen, well I must be king”,Res Publica 1/1 (1995), 41–56. Jones, however, is less concerned than I am with the parameters of ideological argument in general.
. My own representation of the dissension over reason is a further simplification and idealization based on Jaggar's, and is thus an epitome of an epitome, not an account of an actual dispute between identifiable individuals; hence my scare-quotes round the labels, and my failure to attribute particular points to particular people. Instead I have schematized what seems to me to be at issue, because in my view most of the arguments about reason share the same basic structure represented by my schematization — ideological accusation plus appeal to assorted facts, neither of them making much impression on the opposition. Furthermore, my interest is not in particular arguments of this kin, but in what is going on in this kind of argument.
Such views, labelled “liberal” by Jaggar, would probably be regarded by many as more naturally labelled “radical”; but for my purpose, nothing hangs on this terminological point. I therefore follow Jaggar.
Those requiring grand metaphysical theory may be interested to note that the paradigmatic circle is in my view a near relation of the hermeneutic circle, which links objectivity and subjectivity. See Joseph Bleicher on Heidegger and the relation between the hermeneutic and the hermeneutical circle: “Hermeneutical theory has always stressed the importance of considering the parts within a whole, which itself can only be understood in respect of its constituent parts. I have referred to this circle as the hermeneutical circle in order to contrast it with the hermeneutic circle, of which it is only a derivative ... This circle is the expression of the existential fore-structure of Dasein [Existence or Being], an entity that is concerned with its own Being, in its Being-in-the-world. It is not a question of avoiding this circle but of getting into it properly since it contains the possibility of original insight ... Heidegger's exposition of the existential structure of understanding and interpretation — which is never merely the presuppositionless grasping of something pregiven but the interpretation of something as something — covers all cognition: ‘Knowledge as a mode of Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world”: M. Heidegger,Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Neomarius, 1949, 6th ed.), 61; transl. asBeing and Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). The co-existence in the world of subject and object disallows the possibility of their strict separation at the cost of objectivism and the negation of the foundation of cognition as mode of Dasein” — J. Bleicher,Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 102–3. My hope in the current article is to be at least more easily intelligible than this, at any rate for readers not alreadyau fait with Heidegger; though my views are congruent with Bleicher's as expressed here. In this article I am trying not to avoid the paradigmatic circle, but to get into it properly.
Could this be because both belong within the same, larger, paradigm, and thus share criteria of rationality? Jaggar does not consider possible relations between paradigms, e.g. nesting or overlapping, though I suspect most of us occupy, or partially occupy, a number of different paradigms at once.
See Quine on radical translation: W.V.O. Quine,Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960), 59.
J. Locke,An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited and abridged by J.W. Yolton (London: J.M. Dent & Son, 1961), 58–65, 230.
On 18th-century gender essentialism, see Ludmilla Jordanova's description of 18th-century medical theory — L. Jordanova, “Natural facts: a historical perspective on science and sexuality” inNature, Culture and Gender, ed. C. MacCormack and M. Strathern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 42–69. Eighteenth-century medicine expresses the same assumptions about biology and gender as are manifest in Rousseau'sEmile, the most probable source of Kant's views on male and female characteristics; seeinfra, n.23 J.-J. Rousseau (Paris: Garnier, 1951), 472–73.
Since this has been questioned by one of my referees, perhaps I should specify what I have in mind — though I had thought it was both obvious and uncontroversial: human males differ anatomically from human females, and, inhabiting a differently-shaped body, with different mechanical properties (e.g. a higher centre of gravity), must feel different; males do not experience menstruation, childbearing or (normally) lactation; hormones affect mood, and male and female hormonal physiology and functions differ; chemistry is critical to brain function, and it is not impossible that hormonal chemistry affects brain chemistry. I make no claims abouthow such differences affect psychological or behavioural characteristics, nor about the importance of any such effects compared to the effect of the environment: I claim only that it is more plausible than implausible that such effects exist.
I take the implied argument to be: no “ought” entailed by an “is” can be a real (i.e., unconditional or moral) “ought”, because, as Hume and Kant have shown, you can't get an unconditional “ought” from an “is”. Since the moral “ought” is conditioned by a material “is”, the moral “ought” is not an unconditional “ought”, i.e. it expresses no moral obligation as understood by Kant. In other words, there is no such thing as Kantian morality.
“The fair sex has just as much understanding as the male, but it is abeautiful understanding, whereas ours should be adeep understanding, an expression that signifies identity with the sublime ... The beautiful understanding selects for its objects everything closely related to the finer feeling, and relinquishes to the diligent, fundamental, and deep understanding abstract speculations or branches of knowledge useful but dry. A woman therefore will learn no geometry; ...”: I. Kant,Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trld. John T. Goldthwaite (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), 78–79. Cf. Rousseau: “Women's reason is a practical reason that makes them adept at finding the means to accomplish a known end, but inept at finding this end. The social relation of the sexes is a wonderful thing. The result of their social bond is a single moral person whose eye is woman and whose arm is man, each so dependent on the other that woman learns from man what she has to see, and man learns from woman what he has to do. If woman were as good as man at ascending to first principles, and man had as keen an eye for detail as woman, the sexes, being always independent of each other, would live in eternal discord, and the social bond between them could not endure. But harmonized as they are, everything furthers the common end. ... the one essential is to be what nature made us ... Woman has more quickness of mind, man more genius; woman observes, man reasons ... Thus art ever tends to perfect the instrument given by nature” — J.-J. Rousseau,Emile (Paris: Garnier, 1951), 472–73, 488–89; my translation.
See M.J. Renner and M.R. Rosenzweig,Enriched and Impoverished Environments: Effects on Brain and Behaviour (New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, London, Paris, Tokyo: Springer-Verlag, 1987); I am grateful to Prof. Steven Rose for this reference. See also G. Kempermann, H.G. Kuhn and F.H. Gage, “More hippocampal neurons in adult mice living in an enriched environment”,Nature 386/6624 (1997), 493–95.
St Augustine,Confessions I, vii, 11; quoted in Peter Brown,Augustine of Hippo (London and Boston: Faber, 1969), 28–29.
This is because the underlying processes are not immediately accessible to inspection and have so far resisted analysis. Consequently, no general rules or laws ensuring or governing successful learning are as yet derivable from their performance. See D.E. Rumelhart, J.L. McClelland and the PDP Research Group,Parallel Distributed Processing (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992) and M.A. Minsky and S. Papert,Perceptrons (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969). An example may better convey the main point: neural network software packages now exist which can learn to whom to give bank loans more reliably than human bank managers. See, e.g., “Neural credit scoring using DECIDER” (Neural Technologies White Paper, 1997, obtainable from Neural Technologies Ltd, Bedford Rd, Petersfield, Hampshire, U.K.). But so far as I know, it has not yet been possible to extract rules from their performance which could be used to train humans to function as well as the packages.
, at 485–86; my translation
J.-J. Rousseau, “[U]sing simply the intelligence that was his by nature, he had the power to reach the right conclusion in matters that have to be settled on the spur of the moment and do not admit of long discussions, and in estimating what was likely to happen, his forecasts of the future were always more reliable than those of others ... To sum him up in a few words, it may be said that through force of genius and by rapidity of action this man was supreme at doing precisely the right thing at precisely the right moment” — Thucydides on Themistocles,The Pelopponesian War, trld. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 117. Note that all this is true of Rousseau's coquette as well.
Cf. Carol McMillan on the subtle but non-verbal navigational skills of supposedly “primitive” peoples, rendered obsolete by modern technology: “[t]he primitive navigator bases his actions on “complex perceptions —visual, auditory, kinaesthetic — ... combined with vast amounts of data stored in memory ... he cannot possibly put into words all of the myriad perceptions which have led him to be sure at that moment where the island lies ... The simultaneous integration of several discrete thought processes defies verbalization. The navigator can probably inventory all the factors to which he must be alert, but the process whereby these are weighted and combined is both complex and fluid” — Thomas Gladwin,Cultural and Logical Process, quoted in C. McMillan,Women, Reason and Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 45–46. Connectionist models mimic precisely this assignment and integration of weights and their refinement through learning.
Or perhaps more accurately, unfemalebecause chilling: I freely confess myself not totally immune to 18th-century influence, extended to pop culture; biological transcendence sounds too much like the project of the mad scientist of popular fiction.
To which my initial reaction was, well, if they're all wrong, why are we going into them in such wearisome detail? This still seems to me a good question. What is philosophy for, that texts which are wrong can still provide it? For I don't suppose works just out are any less wrong than the classics — rather the reverse, in that classics are few and far between. What makes a text philosophically worthwhile must be something as much to do with its global effect or significance as with its truth.
Which was perhaps what Robert Musil had in mind in the following passage from his novelThe Man Without Qualities: “[p]hilosophers are despots who have no armies to command, so they subject the world to their tyranny by locking it up in a system of thought. This apparently also accounts for the presence of great philosophers in times of great tyrants, while epochs of progressive civilization and democracy fail to bring forth a convincing philosophy, at least to judge by the disappointment one hears so widely expressed on the subject. Hence today we have a terrifying amount of philosophizing in brief bursts, so that shops are the only places where one can sill get something without Weltanschauung, while philosophy in large chunks is viewed with decided mistrust. It is simply regarded as impossible ....” Quite. Note that the “today” of the novel is 1913; Musil died in Switzerland in 1942, and the novel was first published in German in 1951. Perhaps its author was not unmindful of the fact that the countries which produced two of the great tyrannies of the 20th century also produced Lenin and Heidegger. I doubt if he would regard the USA and Rawls as quite in the same league. Wittgenstein could perhaps be accounted for as a producer of a terrifying number of brief bursts. Quotation from Robert Musil,The Man Without Qualities, trld. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 272–73.
. at 22.
Onmetis see Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant,Les ruses d'intelligence: la metis des grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974) (trld. Janet Lloyd asCunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, Brighton: Harvester, 1978); onmetis as manifested in philosophy, see Hélêne Védrine,Les ruses de la raison (Paris: Payot, 1982).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zaw, S.K. Is reason gendered? — Ideology and deliberation. Res Publica 4, 167–197 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02390097
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02390097