Affiliation:
1. Worcester College, Oxford
Abstract
This article explores the concept of ‘gendering’, as applied to various traditional fields of enquiry and to ethics in particular. It starts from the idea of a form of criticism that challenges the masculine bias of our inherited models of human nature. But it then argues that if we are to correct this kind of bias and to win back due respect for characteristics hitherto devalued as ‘feminine’, we shall need some criterion of when these characteristics actually deserve respect and when, instead, they should be seen as artefacts of a hostile sexual power structure. Because such a criterion cannot be provided without some degree of engagement in pre-existing patterns of ethical reasoning, the process of ‘gendering’ – however radical – turns out to be one that operates on ethics from a position not wholly external but at least partially internal to it. And this is unsurprising in that feminism depends for its motivation on an egalitarian, and hence irredeemably ethical, impulse.
Cited by
11 articles.
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1. Reviews and Interviews / Contributors;Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture;2011-11-23
2. Bibliography;Errant Modernism;2008
3. Notes;Errant Modernism;2008
4. Epilogue;Errant Modernism;2008
5. Fiction;Errant Modernism;2008