Sandrine Berges

Why Women Hug their Chains: Wollstonecraft and Adaptive Preferences

In a recent article, Amartya Sen writes that one important influence on his theory of adaptive preferences is Wollstonecrafts account of how some women, though clearly oppressed, are apparently satisfied with their lot. Wollstonecrafts arguments have received little attention so far from contemporary political philosophers, and one might be tempted to dismiss Sens acknowledgment as a form of gallantry. That would be wrong. Wollstonecraft does have a lot of interest to say on the topic of why her contemporaries appeared to choose what struck her as oppression, and her views can still help us reflect on contemporary problems such as the ones identified and discussed by Amartya Sen. In this article I will argue that a close look at Wollstonecrafts arguments may lead us to rethink some aspects of Sens discussion of the phenomenon of adaptive preferences.

Teaching Christine de Pizan in Turkey

An important part of making philosophy as a discipline gender equal is to ensure that female authors are not simply wiped out of the history of philosophy. This has implications for teaching as well as research. In this context, I reflect on my experience of teaching a text by medieval philosopher Christine de Pizan as part of an introductory history of philosophy course taught to Turkish students in law, political science, and international relations. I describe the challenges I encountered, the ways in which I dealt with them, and draw some conclusions based on my observations and feedback obtained at the end of the course.

A feminist perspective on virtue ethics

Introduction - A Historical Perspective on Womens Ethical Experience, Care and Virtue Ethics 1. Origins Revisited: on the Mothers Side 2. Stoic Virtues, Christian Caritas, and the Communal Life 3. The Paradox of the Virtuous Woman in Christine de Pizans Fortress, and in XVth Century Public Life 4. Revolutionary Mothers, or Virtue in the Age of Enlightenment 5. Care as Virtue 6. Care, Gender and the Public Life 7. Care and Global Justice 8. Looking Back and the Way Ahead

What’s it got to do with the price of bread? Condorcet and Grouchy on freedom and unreasonable laws in commerce

István Hont identified a point in the history of political thought at which republicanism and commercialism became separated. According to Hont, Emmanuel Sieyès proposed that a monarchical republic should be formed. By contrast the Jacobins, in favour of a republic led by the people, rejected not only Sieyès’s political proposal, but also the economic ideology that went with it. Sieyès was in favour of a commercial republic; the Jacobins were not. This was, according to Hont, a defining moment in the history of political thought. In this article, I offer a different analysis of that particular moment in the history of the commercial republic, one that instead of focusing on Sieyès and the Jacobins, looks at the thought of Girondins philosophers Nicolas de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy. I argue that their arguments provide sound models for a commercial republic, reconciling late 18th century republican ideals in which virtue was central, with the need for a flourishing and internationally active market economy.

The philosophy of Mary Astell: an early modern theory of virtue

One way of helping the recovery of women philosophers of the past is to inscribe them in one of the philosophical traditions that help shape our understanding of history. This is what Jacqueline Br...

Care and Global Justice

The last two chapters discussed ways that virtue ethics and care ethics could best interact to produce an ethical outlook that took the experiences of women as central and levelled the field as far as women’s participation in public life is concerned. But Chapter 5 turned up a significant source of conflict between those theories: whereas virtue ethics has the potential to produce a theory of justice because virtues can be exercised universally, care is always geared towards a particular individual, and therefore it is harder to see how one might derive justice from care ethics. In this chapter I investigate further this difference by asking whether we can or should care for distant others as we care for our dependents. Clearly, we do need to care for distant others; letting them suffer because they are not in our home and we cannot give the same kind of close-up attention to all who need help is no reason to ignore their plight. But does care ethics, with its emphasis on one-to-one relationships, leave room for this sort of caring, and can older virtue ethics help at all?

Stoic Virtues, Christian Caritas and the Communal Life

The focus of this chapter is to show how already in the Middle Ages the construction of a virtue ethics that resulted in a specifically feminist appropriation in the twentieth century had begun.1 The (very) few women who participated in the ethical debates of the time found that certain aspects of the philosophical views inherited from antiquity fitted their needs better. I focus on one such woman: Heloise of Argenteuil.2

Origins Revisited: On the Mother’s Side

Our way of looking at the history of philosophy and of constructing a canon for ourselves has been for a long time hostile to the inclusion of female writers. We look to those we regard as significant and influential and neglect the rest. We pick a figurehead, because we judge that is enough to represent the main strains in the history of thought. This has obvious advantages: it makes it possible to hold a debate about the history of philosophy with almost anyone who has studied for a philosophy degree. Even if one specialises in the philosophy of mind or applied ethics or areas in which one does not have to engage with historical figures, one can formulate a reasonably clear view of how one’s theories fit in to the history of the subject. It also makes it easier to have something in common with other philosophers: we can all agree or disagree about Plato’s forms, Aristotle’s mean, Hume’s scepticism, Kant’s aesthetics — if nothing else. But this approach also has strong disadvantages: figureheads are picked for their influence, either at the time they wrote or later. But we know that those who are in a position of power socially are more likely to be influential and to be regarded as such. For writers to be influential, their work must be published, read, engaged with. And those with the power to do this tend to prefer those who are like them, only a little better.

Care as Virtue

In the first half of this book I sought to establish that there had been a number of moral and political texts in philosophy by women authors who, throughout the centuries, examined and embraced virtue ethics at various stages of its development. The second half of this book is dedicated to finding out whether this feminist history of virtue ethics could have any bearing on contemporary feminist philosophy. I chose to focus on care-based approaches to feminist ethics rather than, say, liberal or radical approaches because it struck me that one could more successfully argue that they were a continuation of the sort of virtue-ethical approaches I presented in part 1. However, care ethicists have at times wished to disassociate themselves from Aristotelian ethics; so it may seem strange that I decided to devote most of the content of the coming chapters to the ethics of care. What’s more, care ethicists may be suspicious of claiming any sort of historical roots for their views. The point of an ethics of care is that it begins the history of philosophy, from a women’s perspective, on a fresh page. As the history of philosophy is mostly male, it is understandable for the proponents of care ethics not to want to get mixed up in it.

Looking Back and the Way Ahead

I began this book by looking at what Annette Baier said on what women wanted from moral philosophy. As I conclude, I would like to look again at what she says: Generalizations are extremely rash, but when I think of Philippa Foot’s work on the moral virtues, Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on intention and on modern moral philosophy, Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings, Ruth Barcan Marcus’s work on moral dilemmas, the work of radical feminist moral philosophers who are not content with orthodox Marxist lines of thought, Jenny Teichman’s book on illegitimacy, Susan Wolf’s articles, Claudia Card’s essays on mercy, Sabina Lovibond’s writings, Gabriele Taylor’s work on pride, love, and on integrity, Cora Diamond and Mary Midgeley’s work on our attitude towards animals, Sissela Bok’s work on lying and on secrecy, Virginia Held’s work, the work of Alison Jaggar, Marilyn Frye, and many others, I seem to hear a different voice from the standard moral philosophers.’ voice. I hear the voice Gilligan heard, made reflective and philosophical. What women want in moral philosophy is what they are providing.1