History Of European Political Philosophy By Bhandari Pdf 15
Ivany Irizarry
The figures speak for themselves, 90 per cent of Heads of Government are men, said Mara Fernanda Espinosa Garcs (Ecuador), calling on world leaders to demonstrate the political will needed to change the course of history.
In the later 19th and early 20th century, social justice became an important theme in American political and legal philosophy, particularly in the work of John Dewey, Roscoe Pound and Louis Brandeis. One of the prime concerns was the Lochner era decisions of the US Supreme Court to strike down legislation passed by state governments and the Federal government for social and economic improvement, such as the eight-hour day or the right to join a trade union. After the First World War, the founding document of the International Labour Organization took up the same terminology in its preamble, stating that "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice". From this point, the discussion of social justice entered into mainstream legal and academic discourse.
This entry turns to how feminist philosophers have intervened in and,to a great extent, transformed the intellectual field known aspolitical philosophy, which for millennia had largely ignored mattersof sex and gender. Traditional political philosophy largely sidelinedand excluded the private sphere and civil society from politicaltheorizing, the very realms in which women were largely sequestered.It focused instead on matters of state and governance. The rise ofliberalism since the seventeenth century abetted this tendency bydrawing a sharp line between the public and the private realms. Whathappened in the household, it held, were not matters of politicalconcern. Today, thanks largely to feminist interventions, politicalphilosophy is a far richer field of philosophical inquiry. Itunderstands power and governance much more broadly.
While feminist philosophy has been instrumental in critiquing andreconstructing many branches of philosophy, from aesthetics tophilosophy of science, feminist political philosophy is alsoparadigmatic because it best exemplifies the point of feminist theory,which is, to borrow a phrase from Marx, not only to understand theworld but to change it (Marx 1845). And, though other fields haveeffects that may change the world, feminist political philosophyfocuses most directly on understanding ways in which collective lifecan be improved. This project involves understanding the ways in whichpower emerges and is used or misused in public life (see the entry on feminist perspectives on power). As with other kinds of feminist theory, common themes have emergedfor discussion and critique, but there has been little in the way ofconsensus among feminist theorists on what is the best way tounderstand them. This introductory article lays out the areas ofconcern that have occupied this vibrant field of philosophy for thepast forty years. It understands feminist philosophy broadly toinclude work conducted by feminist theorists doing this philosophicalwork from other disciplines, especially political science but alsoanthropology, comparative literature, law, and other programs in thehumanities and social sciences.
Political philosophy began to change enormously in the late 1980s,just before the end of the Cold War, with a new invocation of an oldHegelian category: civil society, an arena of political lifeintermediate between the state and the household. This was the arenaof associations, churches, labor unions, book clubs, choral societiesand manifold other nongovernmental yet still public organizations. Inthe 1980s political theorists began to turn their focus from the stateto this intermediate realm, which suddenly took center stage inEastern Europe in organizations that challenged the power of the stateand ultimately led to the downfall of communist regimes. It alsoopened up more avenues, beyond the state, for feminist politicaltheorizing.
Political philosophy today is significantly more interesting, complex,and capacious thanks to feminist interventions in the field. While theprevious section traces these interventions in broad terms, showinghow political philosophy has been transformed as a result, thissection will provide more detailed descriptions of some of the majorsites of concern, debate, and critique animating feminist politicalphilosophy. Because feminist political philosophy is oftendistinguished by its attention to the concrete realities shaping thelives of women, differences among women (cultural, social, economic,experiential) drive the rich diversity of work being done in thisfield, and difference itself is a major topic for theorizingwith respect to foundational concepts like justice, freedom, andequality. Thus, it is important to emphasize that there is noone feminist perspective shaping work in feminist politicalphilosophy, but a rich variety of perspectives emerging fromparticular contexts, histories, and traditions. They are sometimes intension with each other.
Now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, feministtheorists are doing an extraordinary variety of work on matterspolitical and democratic that confront new and/or pressing challenges.Similar developments in the areas of global ethics, public policy,human rights, disabilities studies, bioethics, climate change, andinternational development blur the distinction between theory andpractice in philosophically generative ways.
For example, in global ethics there is a debate over whether there areuniversal values of justice and freedom that should be intentionallycultivated for women in the developing world or whether culturaldiversity should be prioritized. Feminist theorists have sought toanswer this question in a number of different and compelling ways.(For some examples see Ackerly 2000; Ackerly & Okin 1999; Benhabib2002 and 2006; Butler 2000; Gould 2004; Khader 2019; Abu-Lughod 2013;Nussbaum 1999a; and Zerilli 2009; see also the entry on feminist perspectives on globalization.)
Feminists contributions in ethics and moral psychology that emphasize relations of care have also had a major impact onpolitical philosophy. This intervention has challenged masculinistcharacterizations of political subjects as highly independent andrational, as well as core concepts within political philosophy (e.g.,justice, freedom, rights, sovereignty, and autonomy) derived from thatcharacterization (see also section 2.5 below).
Likewise, new philosophical work on disabilities, as the entry on feminist perspectives on disability explains, is informed by a great deal of feminist theory, fromstandpoint philosophy to feminist phenomenology and feminist careethics, as well as political philosophical questions of identity,difference, and diversity (see also Kittay & Carlson [ed.] 2010).Feminist political philosophers like Martha Nussbaum (2006) have drawnon the insights of philosophers of disability to offer new conceptionsof justice (i.e., the capabilities approach).
Ultimately, the number of approaches that can be taken on any of theseissues are as many as the number of philosophers there are working onthem. The remainder of this entry will outline a variety of approachesto central concerns in feminist political philosophy, noting generalfamily resemblances among these approaches (i.e., liberal feminist,radical feminist, Marxist feminist, socialist feminist) andhighlighting new constellations that have emerged (e.g.,intersectional feminisms).
Those who work in radical feminism continue to take issue with many ofthe central tenets of liberal feminism, especially its focus on theindividual and the supposedly free choices that individuals can make.Where the liberal sees the potential for freedom, the radical feministsees structures of domination that are bigger than any individual. Theidea that domination and oppression affect social groups in ways thatare structural and systemic, though they may beexperienced differently by members of different social groups, is amajor contribution of feminist political philosophy (Frye 1983; Young1990). Radical feminists remain committed to getting at the root ofmale domination by understanding the source of power differentials,which some radical feminists, including Catharine MacKinnon, traceback to sexuality and the notion that heterosexual intercourse enactsmale domination over women.
Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we knowthem, by the requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, whichinstitutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.If this is true, sexuality is the linchpin of gender inequality.(MacKinnon 1989: 113)
Unlike liberal feminists, who view power as a positive social resourcethat ought to be fairly distributed, and feminist phenomenologists,who understand domination in terms of a tension between transcendenceand immanence, radical feminists tend to understand power in terms ofdyadic relations of dominance/subordination, often understood onanalogy with the relationship between master and slave. (2005:3.2)
A new generation of radical feminist theorists are renewing thetradition, showing how it has respected concerns such asintersectionality (Whisnant 2016) and shares some of the commitmentsof the postmodern feminists discussed below, e.g., skepticism aboutany fixed gender identity or gender binaries and a more fluid andperformative approach to sexuality and politics (Snyder 2008), as wellas the ways that power and privilege continue to hold women back(Chambers 2017b: 656).
According to the materialist conception, the decisive element ofhistory is pre-eminently the production and reproduction of life andits material requirements. This implies, on the one hand, theproduction of the means of existence (food, clothing, shelter and thenecessary tools); on the other hand, the generation of children, thepropogation of the species. (Engels 1884 [trans. Untermann 1902],Preface).
Rather than attempting to align their theories with those values ofindividualism, rationality, and abstraction associated withmasculinity (and classical liberalism), many feminist thinkers haveinstead sought to revalue traditionally denigrated values associatedwith femininity.
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