Many feminists have, understandably, challenged or rejected the traditional Kantian approach to morality….Mainstream accounts ignore the lived realities of women….. writes Akshara Ravishankar
PHILOSOPHY ON WALL
THINKING ON PHILOSOPHY III
The absence, until fairly recently, of women’s voices, particularly explicitly feminist voices, in mainstream philosophy is a well documented and acknowledged fact. The need for feminist philosophical input has, however, been more widely recognized in the 20th century. The field of ethics and moral philosophy, for example, has seen a wide range of debates arising from concerns articulated by feminist movements.
By the very nature of their concerns, women’s movements have engaged with ethical questions at fairly fundamental levels. Issues such as abortion, institutionalized violence, bodily and sexual autonomy have, at their crux, enabled fundamental questions surrounding moral responsibility and agency to enter into public debate in ways that tend to challenge many strongly held views on these issues, as well as basic assumptions regarding the way moral questions are understood. The impact of morality on women’s everyday lives in ways that are sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, also needs to be examined in a way that allows for women’s experiences to be included in articulating larger questions of morality.
Many feminists have, understandably, challenged or rejected the traditional Kantian approach to morality. To say that morality is or must be rational, universal and essentially individualistic, according to them, is to ignore the social and relational nature of morality. Writers like Carol Gilligan have challenged both Kantian and utilitarian accounts of ethics in favour of a more socially defined, care-based ethics. Mainstream accounts ignore the lived realities of women; in addition, they tend to gloss over the role of social structures and relationships in shaping ideas of morality. The traditional understanding of moral autonomy sees the individual unrealistically – as having a complete understanding of his/her own needs and desires, as an essentially rational being in isolation from other, social forces. An ethics of care, therefore, recognizes the fact that the idea of care and relationships must be central to any understanding of ethics.
The ethics of care, however, is only one among many feminist responses. Many criticisms have been levelled against it, including the criticism that it reinforces certain stereotypes surrounding what it means to be a woman, and fails to take into account several other perspectives and identities, ignoring the diversity of women’s experiences. Another position on moral agency stresses the need to understand the role of social institutions in enabling various kinds of oppression. It questions the idea of a single ‘female’ identity, instead allowing for the recognition of our various intersecting identities as well as the diverse roles we are required to play in our public and personal lives. It attempts a different view of the self – as comprising various identities, in order to identify the many social forces at work in the moral lives of people of all genders.
It’s clear that one of the important efforts of feminism, both in terms of feminist thought and activism is to broaden moral and political debates to consider otherwise invisibilised forms of oppression, particularly those that take place within structures like marriage and family, which are generally taken for granted. Issues like domestic violence and dowry-related violence against women, for instance, were considered ‘private’ matters for a long time, until women’s movements brought them into the open and demanded recognition of such forms of violence. Similarly, the notion of ‘objectivity’ in looking at specific forms of oppression has also been challenged. In a situation where a woman has been sexually harassed, for example, the violence she faces may not be overt and an attempt to be ‘objective’ may be experienced as further victimization and a denial of the reality of her subjective experience. The same holds true of many other forms of discrimination, such as homophobia and discrimination in the workplace. Women’s movements have always been engaged in taking moral stands on such matters, thus breaking many assumptions surrounding moral and political issues.
As I have mentioned, care ethics, despite its problems, throws up important questions regarding what we do or do not choose to include within our conceptions of the moral, just as other forms of feminism opened up ‘private’ spheres like the family in order to also see them as sites of oppression and resistance. For instance, those people who have actively attempted to create support systems outside traditional notions of family as natal and marital relationships have no choice but to recognize the significance of the ethics of care. These efforts to create alternatives to structures such as family also need to be recognized as intrinsically political and as evolving new understandings of what constitutes moral responsibility. For one, it restates the act of building and sustaining social relationships as essentially political, and not as something that is ‘private’ and therefore less relevant than the building of other, more ‘public’ structures. It also requires a constant negotiation of what it means to be morally responsible to another human being, and a re-formulation of notions like duty and love. It requires formulating norms of relating based, not on generalized theory, but on improvisation and interaction. In order to avoid perpetuating already existing forms of oppression, it requires a constant re-evaluation of those norms and an acute awareness of interpersonal power relationships. Moral theory that is based purely on reason, denying the role of emotion, cannot grasp the variety of ways in which people choose to make moral decisions about their lives. While traditionally male philosophy largely ignored these aspects of social life, we are now faced with the opportunity to use them politically, not simply to further understand and include different forms of relating within the ambit of moral discussion, but to transform them.
While philosophers, including feminist philosophers, cannot settle on an account of morality which satisfies all areas of moral life, there is a need to model any understanding of ethics in a way that does justice to the various aspects of women’s (and men’s) complex lives and diverse experiences, and also allows for the possibility of change, both social and personal.
Akshara Ravishankar
M.A. Philosophy
nowherewoman@gmail.com
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