Modern Engendering

Critical Feminist Readings in Modern Western Philosophy

Edited by Bat-Ami Bar On

Subjects: Gender Studies
Series: SUNY series, Feminist Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791416426, 280 pages, December 1993
Hardcover : 9780791416419, 280 pages, December 1993

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction
Bat-Ami Bar On

Part One: Beginnings: Descartes

1. The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and the Seventeenth-Century Flight from the Feminine
Susan R. Bordo

Part Two: Themes of Modernity: The English Tradition

2. Locke's Epistemology and Women's Struggles
Elizabeth Potter

3. Indians, Savages, Peasants and Women: Hume's Aesthetics
Marcia Lind

4. A Feminist Use for Hume's Moral Ontology
Sarah A. Bishop Merrill

Part Three: Themes of Modernity: The Continental Tradition

5. Women and Rousseau's Democratic Theory: Philosopher Monsters and Authoritarian Equality Lynda Lange

6. Women in Kantian Ethics: A Failure at Universality
Kristin Waters

7. Rereading the Canon: Kantian Purity and the Suppression of Eros
Robin May Schott

8. Kant's Immature Imagination
Jane Kneller

9. Hegel's Theoretical Violence
Amy Newman

10. Hegel, Antigone, and the Possibility of a Woman's Dialectic
Cynthia Willett

Part Four: Critics of Modernity

11. Marx and the Ideology of Gender: A Paradox of Praxis and Nature
Wendy Lee-Lampshire

12. Who is Nietzsche's Woman?
Kelly Oliver

13. Nietzschean Debris: Truth as Circe
Margaret Nash

14. Nietzsche's Psychology of Gender Difference
Ofelia Schutte

15. Interaction in a World of Chance: John Dewey's Theory of Inquiry
Lisa M. Heldke

Suggestions for Further Reading

Contributors

Index

Description

This book contains readings of canonical Western philosophical texts from the viewpoint of current feminist thinking. The contributors focus specifically on the ways in which modern Western philosophy constructs genders and analyzes gender relations. They provide a detailed analysis of modern philosophers' conceptions of masculinity and femininity and call attention to the intertwining of gender with conceptual schema and networks.

Reviews

"Each essay blends careful historical analysis and feminist theory. Also, these are not 'add women and stir' works, that is, they truly integrate feminist theory (and ultimately transform the texts) rather than take the texts as given and simply 'add on' women's experiences. This is NEW feminist scholarship. Each treatment brings something new to our understanding of a canonical work. " — Diane Raymond, Simmons College

"Bar On includes historical, psychological, literary (poststructural) in addition to philosophical essays and clearly forges the current forefront of feminist responses to classical texts of Western philosophy. " — Inez Alfors, State University of New York, College at Oswego