Feminist Interpretations Of Immanuel Kant

This volume presents radically divergent interpretations of Kant from feminist perspectives. Some essays see Kant as having contributed significantly to theories of rationality and autonomy in ways that can further feminist projects. Other essays argue that Kant is a preeminent exponent of patriarchal views and that gender hierarchies are inscribed in the very structure of his theories of morality and aesthetic judgment. But both sympathizers and critics challenge the accepted topography of Kantian philosophy by which central philosophical concerns are defined as those that are abstract, universal, and transcendental. Instead, these feminist writers resituate Kantian questions in the politics of everyday life and emphasize the embodied nature of knowledge, morality and aesthetics. They analyze dilemmas that face concentrate subjects, involving issues of friendship, collective responsibility, xenophobia, and colonialism, among others.

In this book Hay argues that the moral and political frameworks of Kantianism and liberalism are indispensable for addressing the concerns of contemporary feminism. After defending the use of these frameworks for feminist purposes, Hay uses them to argue that people who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression.

Are we in a post-feminist era? Has the term, feminist, grown out of its resisted stance? What from today's standpoint is an appropriate concept of feminist philosophy? And is it not the case that all people thinking democratically must share its central concern? In this book internationally acclaimed philosopher Herta Nagl-Docekal discusses and critiques the theories of today. Her study ranges across philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, philosophy of science, the critique of reason, political theory, and philosophy of law. Continually confronting the persistent problem of the hierarchical relations of the sexes, Nagl-Docekal affirms the importance of feminist thought as she presses for effective approaches to common problems.

In this book Jane Kneller focuses on the role of imagination as a creative power in Kant's aesthetics and in his overall philosophical enterprise. She analyzes Kant's account of imaginative freedom and the relation between imaginative free play and human social and moral development, showing various ways in which his aesthetics of disinterested reflection produce moral interests. She situates these aspects of his aesthetic theory within the context of German aesthetics of the eighteenth century, arguing that Kant's contribution is a bridge between early theories of aesthetic moral education and the early Romanticism of the last decade of that century. In so doing, her book brings the two most important German philosophers of Enlightenment and Romanticism, Kant and Novalis, into dialogue. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both Kant studies and German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Many people believe that gender equality has been achieved. In such a world, why dwell on the dualism between the sexes? Why separate, and therefore marginalize, women's scholarship from scholarship as a whole? In short, why feminist philosophy? Discovering Feminist Philosophy provides an accessible introduction to the central issues in feminist philosophy. At the same time, it answers current objections to feminism, arguing that in today's world it is as compelling as ever to probe the impact of the dualism of the sexes. Therefore, feminist perspectives make a vital contribution to the present and future of philosophy. Author Robin May Schott also contributes an original perspective on feminist ethics, based on her work on war and rape. This unique book is equal parts survey, viewpoint, and scholarship—ideal for anyone seeking to understand the current and future role of feminist philosophy.

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas&’s relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume&’s primary aims. Levinas breaks with Heidegger&’s phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to the Other, the face-to-face, as exceeding the language of ontology. The ethical orientation of Levinas&’s philosophy assumes a subject who lives in a world of enjoyment, a world that is made accessible through the dwelling. The feminine presence presides over this dwelling, and the feminine face represents the first welcome. How is this feminine face to be understood? Does it provide a model for the infinite obligation to the Other, or is it a proto-ethical relation? The essays in this volume investigate this dilemma. Contributors are Alison Ainley, Diane Brody, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Claire Katz, Kelly Oliver, Diane Perpich, Stella Sandford, Sonya Sikka, and Ewa Ziarek.

Past interpreters of Kant’s thought seldom viewed his writings on politics as having much importance, especially in comparison with his writings on ethics, which (along with his major works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason) received the lion’s share of attention. But in recent years a new generation of scholars has revived interest in what Kant had to say about politics. From a position of engagement with today’s most pressing questions, this volume of essays offers a comprehensive introduction to Kant’s often misunderstood political thought. Covering the full range of sources of Kant’s political theory—including not only the Doctrine of Right, the Critiques, and the political essays but also Kant’s lectures and minor writings—the volume’s distinguished contributors demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy offers compelling positions that continue to inspire the best thinking on politics today. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Michaele Ferguson, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, Mika LaVaque-Manty, Onora O’Neill, Thomas W. Pogge, Arthur Ripstein, and Robert S. Taylor.

Helga Varden rethinks Kant's work on human nature to make space for sex, love, and gender within his moral account of freedom. She shows how Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves.