Samantha Brennan

Recent Work in Feminist Ethics

No longer primarily a critique of mainstream moral philosophy, feminist ethics is now a mature and well-established subdiscipline within the broader field of moral philosophy. Feminist philosophers are making positive contributions to matters of urgent moral concern as well as developing increasingly sophisticated alternative moral theories. The independence of feminist ethics as a field is marked by a range of standard texts in the area (Card 1991; Tong 1993; Cole and Coultrap-McQuin 1992; Frazer, Hornsby, and Lovibond 1992; Kittay and Meyers 1987; and more recent anthologies by Meyers 1997a; Jaggar 1994; and DiQuinzio and Young 1997); a broadening of the range of concerns taken up by feminist ethicists, such as the application of feminist thinking to family justice (Nelson 1997; Minow and Shanley 1996) and to matters of global justice (Nussbaum and Glover 1995); and an increasing theoretical sophistication (see work by Walker 1998; Card 1996). At the same time as feminist ethics has become established as an area in its own right within the study of ethics, there has also been a blurring of the boundaries between feminist ethics and the rest of ethics. A number of factors have contributed to this move. First, there is now a body of work by prominent women moral philosophers who have written on feminist ethics—Annette Baier, Onora O’Neill, and Jean Hampton, for example. Second, there are also a number of women, known primarily as feminist philosophers, who have turned their attention to more mainstream or traditional problems— Claudia Card on moral luck and Margaret Urban Walker on Sidgwick’s ethics, for example. Third, there are male moral philosophers—such as Laurence Thomas (1989), Michael Stocker (1990), and Owen Flanagan (1991)— who have moved in directions advocated by feminist moral theorists. Fourth, it has been suggested that work by women working in the main

Reconciling feminist politics and feminist ethics on the issue of rights

a component with feminist criticisms of rights. There are two parts to this project. First, I must respond to the criticisms feminists have made against rights theories in order to show that it is possible for a moral theory that includes rights to be a feminist moral theory. Answering these criticisms is necessary if I am to establish that moral theories that include rights are among the candidate theories from which feminists might choose. Second, I must develop a feminist moral theory that encompasses rights, and argue for its superiority to other sorts of moral theories in order to show that a moral theory that encompasses rights is a plausible feminist moral theory. Going beyond responding to criticisms and developing a positive feminist rights theory is necessary if feminists are to find rights theories to be attractive candidate moral theories. 2 In this paper I am concerned mostly with the first part of the project, responding to some feminist arguments against theorizing about morality in terms of rights, although in the course of responding to the objections I make remarks that might suggest ways in which some rights theories might be developed as feminist moral theories. 3 By this point in the paper, it should be clear what the project is that I am undertaking. However, some readers might still be wondering why Ia m undertaking it. Why should feminists care about reconciling feminist criticisms of moral theories that include rights with feminist concern for the oppression of women expressed in terms of “women’s rights”? Why isn’t it talk of “women’s rights” that ought to be abandoned in light of feminist criticisms of rights? I think that there are both pragmatic and principled reasons for thinking that feminist theorists ought to reconsider rights. First, the pragmatic answer to this question is that feminist moral theory ought not to abandon the moral and political language of the communities in which we live, if peace can be made with that language. Feminism does not exist in the academy alone and feminist intellectuals risk isolation if we reject the moral concepts that inform political debate. The language of rights is well established both in mainstream political institutions and in progressive political movements for social change. 4 If feminist theorists can rethink rights, rather than reject rights, then there is a role for feminist moral and political philosophers to participate in debates about the content of women’s rights and about what governments and individuals need to do to accord women rights.

Children’s Rights, Well-Being, and Sexual Agency

In this paper we review some of the literature surrounding childhood sexuality and point to a lack of discussion of the possibility that children may be sexual agents. It is likely, we suggest, that children have some degree of sexual agency that ought to be supported in order to cultivate their present, and not simply their future, well-being. To make this argument we provide support for the claims that sexuality may be a good of childhood, and that a self-chosen and explored sexuality can be an aspect of children’s well-being. We are also aware that not all forms of sexual experience are good for children. We therefore suggest directions for future research that would clarify, among other things: ways in which sexuality may be a good of childhood; the nature of childhood sexual agency; the degree to which it should be respected; and connections between encouraging agency and preventing harm. This kind of discussion is necessary both so that we do not misrepresent the lives of children, and so that we may enable childhood flourishing.

How Many Parents Can a Child Have? Philosophical Reflections on the 'Three Parent Case'

In light of recent legal decisions affording more than two parents to Canadian children, we consider whether there is any moral reason for limiting the number of parents a child can have to two. We look at several traditional arguments for this position and find that they fail to justify it. We also consider an argument inspired by Brighouse and Swift’s work on the goods of parenting and find that while it brings up important points, it is not strong enough to support a limit of just two parents. We conclude with some thoughts about how else the notion of parenthood could be helpfully separated from traditional notions.

Feminist Philosophers Turn Their Thoughts to Death

Abstract The connection between philosophy and death has a long and distinguished history. This paper asks whether there are any gendered aspects to thinking about the relationship between death and philosophy. Feminist philosophers in recent years have turned their attention to the problem of death. This paper presents some of that work in feminist philosophy. It covers contemporary work on death that attempts to deal with a puzzle first posed by the ancient philosophers, and then presents and examines one aspect of the feminist critique of contemporary philosophical work on death.

Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Moral Philosophers , edited by Cheshire Calhoun

What does it mean to set a compass? Although we tend to use this expression in ordinary conversation to mean staking out a direction or making a plan for travel, its actual meaning is closer to “calibrate.” When we set a compass we adjust it so that the compass corresponds to some external standard, as in setting a clock. But what does it mean to set a moral compass? Presumably we adjust and calibrate our moral theories to match the world so that they guide us well. Might women set our moral compasses differently than men? This volume of essays by women moral theorists, edited by Cheshire Calhoun, answers in the affirmative. Papers in the volume explore various aspects of moral reality, including aspects of that reality which moral theory has traditionally ignored. Topics covered include the household as moral repair shop (Elizabeth Spelman), the ethics of common decency (Calhoun), genocide as social death (Claudia Card), and the vice of arrogance (Robin Dillon). There are nineteen papers in the volume in total (just more than half published for the first time), and they are grouped by Calhoun into six sections: an ethics for ordinary life and vulnerable persons; what we ought to do for each other; the normative importance of a shared social world; achieving adequate moral understandings; the dramatic and narrative form of deliberation and agency; and emotions, reason, and unreason. In her preface Calhoun writes that the conviction which unifies this volume is that gender does makes a difference in moral philosophy. The claim is that women moral philosophers focus on less familiar parts of the world or view familiar territory with a new eye. Sometimes we look in different directions. For example, women moral philosophers have written about justice in the family and on the ethics of aging. At other times we look at more familiar issues but pay attention to different details. When women moral philosophers think about abortion most see the location of the fetus and the experience of pregnancy as morally significant factors. Calhoun’s collection of essays, published as it is as part of a feminist philosophy series, itself constitutes an argument for the conclusion that bringing together work by women philosophers—not all of them feminists perhaps, certainly not all writing on explicitly feminist topics—is a contribution to feminist philosophy. What is it that women moral philosophers have in common other than their gender? Why is bringing their work together a feminist project? Now for some of the authors whose work is included in this volume, the answer is obvious. They are the moral theorists whose work set the direction for feminist moral and political philosophy. Even if the papers included in this volume are not explicitly feminist, no one will doubt the feminist credentials of