Miranda Fricker
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198237907
- eISBN:
- 9780191706844
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Justice is one of the oldest and most central themes of philosophy, but sometimes we would do well to focus instead on injustice. In epistemology, the very idea that there is a first-order ethical ...
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Justice is one of the oldest and most central themes of philosophy, but sometimes we would do well to focus instead on injustice. In epistemology, the very idea that there is a first-order ethical dimension to our epistemic practices — the idea that there is such a thing as epistemic justice — remains obscure until we adjust the philosophical lens so that we see through to the negative space that is epistemic injustice. This book argues that there is a distinctively epistemic genus of injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, wronged therefore in a capacity essential to human value. The book identifies two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. In doing so, it charts the ethical dimension of two fundamental epistemic practices: gaining knowledge by being told and making sense of our social experiences. As the account unfolds, the book travels through a range of philosophical problems. Thus, the book finds an analysis of social power; an account of prejudicial stereotypes; a characterization of two hybrid intellectual-ethical virtues; a revised account of the State of Nature used in genealogical explanations of the concept of knowledge; a discussion of objectification and ‘silencing’; and a framework for a virtue epistemological account of testimony. The book reveals epistemic injustice as a potent yet largely silent dimension of discrimination, analyses the wrong it perpetrates, and constructs two hybrid ethical-intellectual virtues of epistemic justice which aim to forestall it.Less
Justice is one of the oldest and most central themes of philosophy, but sometimes we would do well to focus instead on injustice. In epistemology, the very idea that there is a first-order ethical dimension to our epistemic practices — the idea that there is such a thing as epistemic justice — remains obscure until we adjust the philosophical lens so that we see through to the negative space that is epistemic injustice. This book argues that there is a distinctively epistemic genus of injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, wronged therefore in a capacity essential to human value. The book identifies two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. In doing so, it charts the ethical dimension of two fundamental epistemic practices: gaining knowledge by being told and making sense of our social experiences. As the account unfolds, the book travels through a range of philosophical problems. Thus, the book finds an analysis of social power; an account of prejudicial stereotypes; a characterization of two hybrid intellectual-ethical virtues; a revised account of the State of Nature used in genealogical explanations of the concept of knowledge; a discussion of objectification and ‘silencing’; and a framework for a virtue epistemological account of testimony. The book reveals epistemic injustice as a potent yet largely silent dimension of discrimination, analyses the wrong it perpetrates, and constructs two hybrid ethical-intellectual virtues of epistemic justice which aim to forestall it.
Iris Marion Young
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195161922
- eISBN:
- 9780199786664
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195161920.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This essay explores some aspects of the cultural construction of breasts in a male-dominated society, seeking a positive women’s voice for breasted experience. It begins with a discussion of the ...
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This essay explores some aspects of the cultural construction of breasts in a male-dominated society, seeking a positive women’s voice for breasted experience. It begins with a discussion of the dominant culture’s objectification of breasts. Relying on Irigaray’s suggestive ideas about women’s sexuality and an alternative metaphysics not constructed around the concept of object, an experience of breast movement and sensitivity from the point of view of the female subject is presented. It asks how women’s breasts might be experienced in the absence of an objectifying male gaze, and discusses how breasts are a scandal for patriarchy because they disrupt the border between motherhood and sexuality. Finally, the question of objectification is revisited through reflections on a woman’s encounter with the surgeon’s knife at her breast.Less
This essay explores some aspects of the cultural construction of breasts in a male-dominated society, seeking a positive women’s voice for breasted experience. It begins with a discussion of the dominant culture’s objectification of breasts. Relying on Irigaray’s suggestive ideas about women’s sexuality and an alternative metaphysics not constructed around the concept of object, an experience of breast movement and sensitivity from the point of view of the female subject is presented. It asks how women’s breasts might be experienced in the absence of an objectifying male gaze, and discusses how breasts are a scandal for patriarchy because they disrupt the border between motherhood and sexuality. Finally, the question of objectification is revisited through reflections on a woman’s encounter with the surgeon’s knife at her breast.
Miranda Fricker
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198237907
- eISBN:
- 9780191706844
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Two kinds of silence caused by testimonial injustice are identified: that of pre-emptive testimonial injustice, where the prejudice against the speaker's social type operates in advance to prevent ...
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Two kinds of silence caused by testimonial injustice are identified: that of pre-emptive testimonial injustice, where the prejudice against the speaker's social type operates in advance to prevent their view even being solicited; and that particular kind of silence associated with forms of objectification — ‘silencing’. The wrong of testimonial injustice is further explored, exploiting certain cues from the work of Edward Craig to reveal it as a morally bad form of epistemic objectification. And, further, as an exclusion from the practice (that of pooling information) which dramatizes the very core of the concept of knowledge.Less
Two kinds of silence caused by testimonial injustice are identified: that of pre-emptive testimonial injustice, where the prejudice against the speaker's social type operates in advance to prevent their view even being solicited; and that particular kind of silence associated with forms of objectification — ‘silencing’. The wrong of testimonial injustice is further explored, exploiting certain cues from the work of Edward Craig to reveal it as a morally bad form of epistemic objectification. And, further, as an exclusion from the practice (that of pooling information) which dramatizes the very core of the concept of knowledge.
Elizabeth Brake
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199774142
- eISBN:
- 9780199933228
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199774142.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter examines three of the most influential defenses of marriage; each holds that marriage is the sole permissible context for sex and the unique context for achieving certain goods. Kant ...
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This chapter examines three of the most influential defenses of marriage; each holds that marriage is the sole permissible context for sex and the unique context for achieving certain goods. Kant held that marriage morally transforms sexual objectification, thereby making procreation morally possible. Natural law accounts argue that basic human goods of procreation and marital friendship can only be attained through marriage. Roger Scruton argues that marriage enables virtuous erotic love, which is an essential contributor to human flourishing;. These three accounts, which attribute to marriage a unique transformative role, share a failing: entry into a legal institution does not effect, nor is it required for, the psychological transformation which virtues require. Basic goods and virtues can exist outside marriage, as in unmarried relationships. Furthermore, unqualified attributions of value to marriage fail to recognize the variability of real marriages and ignore their vices.Less
This chapter examines three of the most influential defenses of marriage; each holds that marriage is the sole permissible context for sex and the unique context for achieving certain goods. Kant held that marriage morally transforms sexual objectification, thereby making procreation morally possible. Natural law accounts argue that basic human goods of procreation and marital friendship can only be attained through marriage. Roger Scruton argues that marriage enables virtuous erotic love, which is an essential contributor to human flourishing;. These three accounts, which attribute to marriage a unique transformative role, share a failing: entry into a legal institution does not effect, nor is it required for, the psychological transformation which virtues require. Basic goods and virtues can exist outside marriage, as in unmarried relationships. Furthermore, unqualified attributions of value to marriage fail to recognize the variability of real marriages and ignore their vices.
Anne Barnhill
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199855469
- eISBN:
- 9780199932788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199855469.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Sexual modesty is a feminist sexual virtue—in one sense, but not another. There are at least two distinct kinds of feminist sexual virtues: first, character traits that allow individual sexual ...
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Sexual modesty is a feminist sexual virtue—in one sense, but not another. There are at least two distinct kinds of feminist sexual virtues: first, character traits that allow individual sexual flourishing given the realities of sexism within a specific social context; second, character traits related to sex that encourage feminist change. Modesty is a feminist sexual virtue in the second sense—it encourages feminist change, however minimally. More precisely, modesty is a feminist sexual virtue for those women whose sexuality is overvalued, though not for those women whose sexuality is undervalued. Regrettably, I doubt that sexual modesty is a feminist sexual virtue in the first sense; given the realities of sexism, being modest doesn’t necessarily allow individual women to flourish sexually, but might in fact put a damper on their sex lives. In identifying sexual modesty as a feminist sexual virtue for women, I find a surprising point of agreement with conservative and feminist critic Roger Scruton, though we disagree about why sexual modesty is a virtue for women. However, I put myself at odds with those feminist writers who consider women’s sexually provocative display of their bodies and their sexuality to be a feminist act.Less
Sexual modesty is a feminist sexual virtue—in one sense, but not another. There are at least two distinct kinds of feminist sexual virtues: first, character traits that allow individual sexual flourishing given the realities of sexism within a specific social context; second, character traits related to sex that encourage feminist change. Modesty is a feminist sexual virtue in the second sense—it encourages feminist change, however minimally. More precisely, modesty is a feminist sexual virtue for those women whose sexuality is overvalued, though not for those women whose sexuality is undervalued. Regrettably, I doubt that sexual modesty is a feminist sexual virtue in the first sense; given the realities of sexism, being modest doesn’t necessarily allow individual women to flourish sexually, but might in fact put a damper on their sex lives. In identifying sexual modesty as a feminist sexual virtue for women, I find a surprising point of agreement with conservative and feminist critic Roger Scruton, though we disagree about why sexual modesty is a virtue for women. However, I put myself at odds with those feminist writers who consider women’s sexually provocative display of their bodies and their sexuality to be a feminist act.
A. W. Eaton
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199609581
- eISBN:
- 9780191746260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609581.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Moral Philosophy
Insofar as erotic art and in particular the female nude makes male dominance and female subordination and objectification sexy, this chapter argues, it eroticizes the traditional gender hierarchy and ...
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Insofar as erotic art and in particular the female nude makes male dominance and female subordination and objectification sexy, this chapter argues, it eroticizes the traditional gender hierarchy and in this way is a significant part of the complex mechanism that sustains sex inequality. To substantiate this claim, she offers a close analysis, supported by a long list of examples, of the different ways in which artworks belonging to the genre of the female nude can be sexually objectifying. She also lends some much-needed precision to the concept of the male gaze, and addresses two serious objections to her particular feminist approach. Firstly, if visual representations typically trade in tokens, not types, then the question arises how a picture can objectify women in general. Secondly, since many consider objectification to be a normal and even healthy part of human sexuality, one might wonder what is wrong with sexual objectification in the first place? This chapter concludes by underlining a significant difference between pornographic works and the traditional female nude: the latter not only eroticizes but also aestheticizes the sexual objectification of women, and does so ‘from on high’, art's venerated status investing the traditional nude's message of female inferiority with special authority, making it an especially effective way of promoting sexual inequality.Less
Insofar as erotic art and in particular the female nude makes male dominance and female subordination and objectification sexy, this chapter argues, it eroticizes the traditional gender hierarchy and in this way is a significant part of the complex mechanism that sustains sex inequality. To substantiate this claim, she offers a close analysis, supported by a long list of examples, of the different ways in which artworks belonging to the genre of the female nude can be sexually objectifying. She also lends some much-needed precision to the concept of the male gaze, and addresses two serious objections to her particular feminist approach. Firstly, if visual representations typically trade in tokens, not types, then the question arises how a picture can objectify women in general. Secondly, since many consider objectification to be a normal and even healthy part of human sexuality, one might wonder what is wrong with sexual objectification in the first place? This chapter concludes by underlining a significant difference between pornographic works and the traditional female nude: the latter not only eroticizes but also aestheticizes the sexual objectification of women, and does so ‘from on high’, art's venerated status investing the traditional nude's message of female inferiority with special authority, making it an especially effective way of promoting sexual inequality.
Uri McMillan
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479802111
- eISBN:
- 9781479865451
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479802111.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
In Embodied Avatars, Uri McMillan zeroes in on a counterintuitive claim: by performing objecthood—or transforming themselves into art objects —black women preserved their subjectivity. Tracing a ...
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In Embodied Avatars, Uri McMillan zeroes in on a counterintuitive claim: by performing objecthood—or transforming themselves into art objects —black women preserved their subjectivity. Tracing a dynamic genealogy of performance works from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, he contends that black women performers practiced a purposeful self-objectification that raises new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment. McMillan reframes the concept of the avatar in the service of black performance art, describing black women performers’ skillful manipulation of synthetic selves and adroit projection of their performances into other representational mediums. A bold rethinking of performance art, with black women at its center, Embodied Avatars analyzes daring and dazzling performances of alterity staged by “ancient negress” Joice Heth and fugitive slave Ellen Craft, seminal artists Adrian Piper and Howardena Pindell, and contemporary visual and music artists Simone Leigh and Nicki Minaj. Fusing performance studies with literary analysis and visual culture studies, McMillan offers astute readings of performances staged in theatrical and quotidian locales, from freak shows to the streets of 1970s New York; in literary texts, from artists’ writings to slave narratives; and in visual and digital mediums, including engravings, photography, and video art. Throughout, McMillan reveals how these performers manipulated the triumvirate of objecthood, black performance art, and avatars a powerful mode of re-scripting their bodies, and its perception by others, while enacting artful forms of social misbehavior.Less
In Embodied Avatars, Uri McMillan zeroes in on a counterintuitive claim: by performing objecthood—or transforming themselves into art objects —black women preserved their subjectivity. Tracing a dynamic genealogy of performance works from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, he contends that black women performers practiced a purposeful self-objectification that raises new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment. McMillan reframes the concept of the avatar in the service of black performance art, describing black women performers’ skillful manipulation of synthetic selves and adroit projection of their performances into other representational mediums. A bold rethinking of performance art, with black women at its center, Embodied Avatars analyzes daring and dazzling performances of alterity staged by “ancient negress” Joice Heth and fugitive slave Ellen Craft, seminal artists Adrian Piper and Howardena Pindell, and contemporary visual and music artists Simone Leigh and Nicki Minaj. Fusing performance studies with literary analysis and visual culture studies, McMillan offers astute readings of performances staged in theatrical and quotidian locales, from freak shows to the streets of 1970s New York; in literary texts, from artists’ writings to slave narratives; and in visual and digital mediums, including engravings, photography, and video art. Throughout, McMillan reveals how these performers manipulated the triumvirate of objecthood, black performance art, and avatars a powerful mode of re-scripting their bodies, and its perception by others, while enacting artful forms of social misbehavior.
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This book collects together fifteen chapters on pornography and objectification. Arguments from uncontroversial liberal premises are shown to yield controversial feminist conclusions that pornography ...
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This book collects together fifteen chapters on pornography and objectification. Arguments from uncontroversial liberal premises are shown to yield controversial feminist conclusions that pornography of a certain kind subordinates and silences women, and that women have rights against it. The arguments draw on speech act theory and pragmatics to show how such pornography may be speech that subordinates and silences. It subordinates if it is an illocution that ranks women, deprives women of powers, and legitimates violence and discrimination. It silences if it creates illocutionary disablement, preventing women's words having the intended illocutionary force. The chapters explore the idea that there is something solipsistic about pornography, in the way women are treated as things, and things are treated as women. They develop an understanding of the wider concept of objectification, which is itself shown to be solipsistic. Objectification is traditionally viewed in Kantian guise as the idea of treating someone as a thing, a mere instrument, and denying their autonomy. But it has unnoticed epistemological aspects. On a feminist conception of objectification, moral and epistemological features interact: for it is, partly, through a kind of self-fulfilling projection of beliefs and perceptions of women as subordinate that women are made subordinate and treated as things. Pornography can have an epistemological role here, shaping desires that guide wishful, oppressive belief, providing evidence confirming oppressive belief, suppressing counter-evidence, by silencing. Kant's moral philosophy threads through a number of chapters: his pessimism about some pathologies of sexual love; his optimism about love and friendship, which offer an escape route from solipsism.Less
This book collects together fifteen chapters on pornography and objectification. Arguments from uncontroversial liberal premises are shown to yield controversial feminist conclusions that pornography of a certain kind subordinates and silences women, and that women have rights against it. The arguments draw on speech act theory and pragmatics to show how such pornography may be speech that subordinates and silences. It subordinates if it is an illocution that ranks women, deprives women of powers, and legitimates violence and discrimination. It silences if it creates illocutionary disablement, preventing women's words having the intended illocutionary force. The chapters explore the idea that there is something solipsistic about pornography, in the way women are treated as things, and things are treated as women. They develop an understanding of the wider concept of objectification, which is itself shown to be solipsistic. Objectification is traditionally viewed in Kantian guise as the idea of treating someone as a thing, a mere instrument, and denying their autonomy. But it has unnoticed epistemological aspects. On a feminist conception of objectification, moral and epistemological features interact: for it is, partly, through a kind of self-fulfilling projection of beliefs and perceptions of women as subordinate that women are made subordinate and treated as things. Pornography can have an epistemological role here, shaping desires that guide wishful, oppressive belief, providing evidence confirming oppressive belief, suppressing counter-evidence, by silencing. Kant's moral philosophy threads through a number of chapters: his pessimism about some pathologies of sexual love; his optimism about love and friendship, which offer an escape route from solipsism.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of ...
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What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of objectification that characterize pornography? Or that the representation of politics offers us more than a work of propaganda? This chapter argues that in his portrait of the artist Coetzee refuses to accept any account of literary seriousness grounded in notions of aesthetic distance, privileged relation to the truth, or access to higher values, and that his interest lies instead in portraying the literary as an equivocal and even marginal kind of discourse that emerges only in an unsettling way from a deeply compromised position of weakness. It shows that Coetzee's thinking on this subject is informed by a profound exploration of Dostoevsky's late fiction—in particular The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov.Less
What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of objectification that characterize pornography? Or that the representation of politics offers us more than a work of propaganda? This chapter argues that in his portrait of the artist Coetzee refuses to accept any account of literary seriousness grounded in notions of aesthetic distance, privileged relation to the truth, or access to higher values, and that his interest lies instead in portraying the literary as an equivocal and even marginal kind of discourse that emerges only in an unsettling way from a deeply compromised position of weakness. It shows that Coetzee's thinking on this subject is informed by a profound exploration of Dostoevsky's late fiction—in particular The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov.
Usha Sanyal
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190120801
- eISBN:
- 9780199099900
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190120801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sociology of Religion
Since the late twentieth century, new institutions of Islamic learning for South Asian women and girls have emerged rapidly, particularly in urban areas and in the diaspora. This book reflects upon ...
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Since the late twentieth century, new institutions of Islamic learning for South Asian women and girls have emerged rapidly, particularly in urban areas and in the diaspora. This book reflects upon the increased access of Muslim girls and women to religious education and the purposes to which they seek to put their learning. Scholars of Faith is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two institutions of religious learning: the Jami‘a Nur madrasa in Shahjahanpur, North India, and Al-Huda International, an NGO that offers online courses on Islam, especially the Qur’an. In this monograph, Sanyal argues that Islamic religious education in the early twenty-first century—particularly for women—is thoroughly ‘modern’ and that this modernity, reflected in both old and new interpretations of religious texts, allows young South Asian women to evaluate their place in traditional structures of patriarchal authority in the public and private spheres in novel ways.Less
Since the late twentieth century, new institutions of Islamic learning for South Asian women and girls have emerged rapidly, particularly in urban areas and in the diaspora. This book reflects upon the increased access of Muslim girls and women to religious education and the purposes to which they seek to put their learning. Scholars of Faith is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two institutions of religious learning: the Jami‘a Nur madrasa in Shahjahanpur, North India, and Al-Huda International, an NGO that offers online courses on Islam, especially the Qur’an. In this monograph, Sanyal argues that Islamic religious education in the early twenty-first century—particularly for women—is thoroughly ‘modern’ and that this modernity, reflected in both old and new interpretations of religious texts, allows young South Asian women to evaluate their place in traditional structures of patriarchal authority in the public and private spheres in novel ways.
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Kant put objectification on the moral map: we should not treat each other as ‘means’, instruments, tools. Kant's correspondence with Maria von Herbert offers a real life illumination: how lying and ...
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Kant put objectification on the moral map: we should not treat each other as ‘means’, instruments, tools. Kant's correspondence with Maria von Herbert offers a real life illumination: how lying and suicide involve treating someone as a means; how love and friendship involve treating someone as an end; how this works against a backdrop of sexual objectification, which may justify lying, in Maria's case. It illustrates objectification and ‘objective’ attitudes (Strawson, Korsgaard). And it presents a challenge. Maria is sunk in misery and apathy, yet follows the moral law — she is perhaps a Kantian saint. What does this spell for Kant's philosophy?Less
Kant put objectification on the moral map: we should not treat each other as ‘means’, instruments, tools. Kant's correspondence with Maria von Herbert offers a real life illumination: how lying and suicide involve treating someone as a means; how love and friendship involve treating someone as an end; how this works against a backdrop of sexual objectification, which may justify lying, in Maria's case. It illustrates objectification and ‘objective’ attitudes (Strawson, Korsgaard). And it presents a challenge. Maria is sunk in misery and apathy, yet follows the moral law — she is perhaps a Kantian saint. What does this spell for Kant's philosophy?
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
What is objectification? Nussbaum proposes a cluster concept, seven ways to ‘treat’ someone as an ‘object’. Autonomy-denial and instrumentality form the core. This chapter responds, distinguishing ...
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What is objectification? Nussbaum proposes a cluster concept, seven ways to ‘treat’ someone as an ‘object’. Autonomy-denial and instrumentality form the core. This chapter responds, distinguishing ‘object’ from ‘treatment’ aspects of the concept. First, three features should be added to Nussbaum's seven: reduction to body, reduction to appearance, silencing. Second, autonomy-denial involves a plurality of independent modes of treatment: e.g., non-attribution of autonomy, violation of autonomy. Paternalism illustrates non-attribution without violation; sadistic rape illustrates violation without non-attribution. Autonomy-affirming treatment can, paradoxically, be autonomy-denying: attributing autonomy can be a way of violating someone's autonomy, as when enslaved pornography model Lovelace was welcomed as a beacon of freedom.Less
What is objectification? Nussbaum proposes a cluster concept, seven ways to ‘treat’ someone as an ‘object’. Autonomy-denial and instrumentality form the core. This chapter responds, distinguishing ‘object’ from ‘treatment’ aspects of the concept. First, three features should be added to Nussbaum's seven: reduction to body, reduction to appearance, silencing. Second, autonomy-denial involves a plurality of independent modes of treatment: e.g., non-attribution of autonomy, violation of autonomy. Paternalism illustrates non-attribution without violation; sadistic rape illustrates violation without non-attribution. Autonomy-affirming treatment can, paradoxically, be autonomy-denying: attributing autonomy can be a way of violating someone's autonomy, as when enslaved pornography model Lovelace was welcomed as a beacon of freedom.
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Autonomy-denial and desire-driven projection have been crucial ideas for feminists, a liberal camp focusing on the former, a continental on the latter. Both ideas get labeled ‘objectification’, in ...
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Autonomy-denial and desire-driven projection have been crucial ideas for feminists, a liberal camp focusing on the former, a continental on the latter. Both ideas get labeled ‘objectification’, in apparently unrelated senses, moral and epistemological. But these two ideas connect in a feminist understanding of sexual objectification. Three projective mechanisms are distinguished: phenomenological gilding, wishful thinking, and pseudo-empathy. These three belief-forming mechanisms can be morally positive or neutral, but in oppressive sexual contexts they sustain and mask the denial of women's autonomy. Thus projection, or epistemological objectification, can help and hide autonomy-denial, or moral objectification.Less
Autonomy-denial and desire-driven projection have been crucial ideas for feminists, a liberal camp focusing on the former, a continental on the latter. Both ideas get labeled ‘objectification’, in apparently unrelated senses, moral and epistemological. But these two ideas connect in a feminist understanding of sexual objectification. Three projective mechanisms are distinguished: phenomenological gilding, wishful thinking, and pseudo-empathy. These three belief-forming mechanisms can be morally positive or neutral, but in oppressive sexual contexts they sustain and mask the denial of women's autonomy. Thus projection, or epistemological objectification, can help and hide autonomy-denial, or moral objectification.
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Feminism's questioning of prejudice is continuous with philosophical method (Descartes, Astell, le Doeuff). Feminism contributes to epistemology by identifying sins of omission: women get left out, ...
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Feminism's questioning of prejudice is continuous with philosophical method (Descartes, Astell, le Doeuff). Feminism contributes to epistemology by identifying sins of omission: women get left out, as objects and subjects of knowledge. Women fail to be known, to be knowers, to count as knowers (Frye, Code, Gilligan, Alcoff, Fricker). Feminism identifies sins of commission: women get hurt, ‘objectivity objectifies’ (MacKinnon). Epistemological assumptions of objectivity suppose an objective direction of fit (Anscombe): belief about women has come to fit the world. This helps objectify women, masking a constructive direction of fit (Haslanger): the world has come to fit belief. The real culprit is the lazy assumption, not the hope, of objectivity.Less
Feminism's questioning of prejudice is continuous with philosophical method (Descartes, Astell, le Doeuff). Feminism contributes to epistemology by identifying sins of omission: women get left out, as objects and subjects of knowledge. Women fail to be known, to be knowers, to count as knowers (Frye, Code, Gilligan, Alcoff, Fricker). Feminism identifies sins of commission: women get hurt, ‘objectivity objectifies’ (MacKinnon). Epistemological assumptions of objectivity suppose an objective direction of fit (Anscombe): belief about women has come to fit the world. This helps objectify women, masking a constructive direction of fit (Haslanger): the world has come to fit belief. The real culprit is the lazy assumption, not the hope, of objectivity.
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0015
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
If solipsism is false but believed, the agent treats people as things (objectification). If solipsism is true but not believed, the agent treats things as people (projective animation). These two ...
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If solipsism is false but believed, the agent treats people as things (objectification). If solipsism is true but not believed, the agent treats things as people (projective animation). These two global solipsisms have two local, sexual counterparts. In pornography ‘the human becomes thing’ (MacKinnon's ambiguous phrase): women are treated as things, and things are treated as women. This chapter discusses objectification, objective attitudes, and sadism (Kant, Herman, Strawson, Scruton, Sartre); then asks how the two solipsisms connect. Is it chance that in pornography, things are treated as women, and women as things? Is there a causal connection? Or a constitutive one (Vadas)?Less
If solipsism is false but believed, the agent treats people as things (objectification). If solipsism is true but not believed, the agent treats things as people (projective animation). These two global solipsisms have two local, sexual counterparts. In pornography ‘the human becomes thing’ (MacKinnon's ambiguous phrase): women are treated as things, and things are treated as women. This chapter discusses objectification, objective attitudes, and sadism (Kant, Herman, Strawson, Scruton, Sartre); then asks how the two solipsisms connect. Is it chance that in pornography, things are treated as women, and women as things? Is there a causal connection? Or a constitutive one (Vadas)?
Rae Langton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247066
- eISBN:
- 9780191594823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247066.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Solipsism involves going on as if you are the only person. Traditionally viewed as a morally neutral problem in epistemology (Descartes), it can also emerge as the morally loaded problem of ...
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Solipsism involves going on as if you are the only person. Traditionally viewed as a morally neutral problem in epistemology (Descartes), it can also emerge as the morally loaded problem of objectification, or treating other people as things (Kant, Nussbaum, de Beauvoir, MacKinnon). Objectification is usually viewed as a moral concept: treating someone as an instrument, denying their autonomy. But there is an epistemological concept of objectification which involves projection. Are these unrelated? No. The chapters in this book develop an understanding of objectification which connects moral and epistemological dimensions, with respect to pornography, and further afield.Less
Solipsism involves going on as if you are the only person. Traditionally viewed as a morally neutral problem in epistemology (Descartes), it can also emerge as the morally loaded problem of objectification, or treating other people as things (Kant, Nussbaum, de Beauvoir, MacKinnon). Objectification is usually viewed as a moral concept: treating someone as an instrument, denying their autonomy. But there is an epistemological concept of objectification which involves projection. Are these unrelated? No. The chapters in this book develop an understanding of objectification which connects moral and epistemological dimensions, with respect to pornography, and further afield.
Bernard Debarbieux, Gilles Rudaz, and Martin F. Price
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226031118
- eISBN:
- 9780226031255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226031255.003.0001
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
The introduction presents the approach. This book argues that mountains, far from being a given of nature on which these representations and imaginaries come to be grafted, deserves to be studied as ...
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The introduction presents the approach. This book argues that mountains, far from being a given of nature on which these representations and imaginaries come to be grafted, deserves to be studied as a notion in itself, as the product of a social and political construction. The analysis relies on 4 key concepts: objectification (process of designating an entity), problematization (the issues that the objectification helps to address), paradigm (the ideological frame), and intervention (actions undertaken on the materiality of geographical entities). These 4 concepts compose figures of mountains, through various configurations. This section makes explicit the project of the book : identifying these configurations which have been at work in the Western world during the last three centuries, and in the context of colonization and globalization.Less
The introduction presents the approach. This book argues that mountains, far from being a given of nature on which these representations and imaginaries come to be grafted, deserves to be studied as a notion in itself, as the product of a social and political construction. The analysis relies on 4 key concepts: objectification (process of designating an entity), problematization (the issues that the objectification helps to address), paradigm (the ideological frame), and intervention (actions undertaken on the materiality of geographical entities). These 4 concepts compose figures of mountains, through various configurations. This section makes explicit the project of the book : identifying these configurations which have been at work in the Western world during the last three centuries, and in the context of colonization and globalization.
John Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199239351
- eISBN:
- 9780191716959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239351.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This chapter considers why rape is a moral and legal wrong. It confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because of the bad experience of being raped. It also confronts and rejects the ...
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This chapter considers why rape is a moral and legal wrong. It confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because of the bad experience of being raped. It also confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because it infringes the ownership rights of the raped person over her own body. The failure of these accounts are used to develop and defend the view that rape is wrong as the sheer use of another human being, as a denial of the status of subject and its substitution with the status of object. A two-stage view is developed according to which rape shares its objectifying aspect with prostitution, pornographic depiction, etc., but differs from these other activities in the way in which it relates to the rights of the person who is objectified. Some of the implications of this view for the law are explored at the end of the chapter.Less
This chapter considers why rape is a moral and legal wrong. It confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because of the bad experience of being raped. It also confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because it infringes the ownership rights of the raped person over her own body. The failure of these accounts are used to develop and defend the view that rape is wrong as the sheer use of another human being, as a denial of the status of subject and its substitution with the status of object. A two-stage view is developed according to which rape shares its objectifying aspect with prostitution, pornographic depiction, etc., but differs from these other activities in the way in which it relates to the rights of the person who is objectified. Some of the implications of this view for the law are explored at the end of the chapter.
Anne Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150864
- eISBN:
- 9781400846368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150864.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter expands on the difficulties in claiming the body as special and addresses some of the arguments for and against claiming it as property, before laying out the general grounds of the ...
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This chapter expands on the difficulties in claiming the body as special and addresses some of the arguments for and against claiming it as property, before laying out the general grounds of the present critique. It begins by defining the concepts of objectification, commodification, and self-ownership. It then explains the influence of feminist theory on the author's views about what it means to think of the body as property, and whether we can justify treating it as different from other “things.” It goes on to analyze property rights, which have come to be understood as fashioned through legal and social relationships that regulate your claims on me as well as my claims on you. It argues that bodily rights and property rights should be kept in their separate boxes. The reasons for this are only partly grounded in the fear that thinking of our relationship to our bodies and selves in property terms will assist and normalize their commodification. Even where there is no danger of this, the adoption of property models is problematic.Less
This chapter expands on the difficulties in claiming the body as special and addresses some of the arguments for and against claiming it as property, before laying out the general grounds of the present critique. It begins by defining the concepts of objectification, commodification, and self-ownership. It then explains the influence of feminist theory on the author's views about what it means to think of the body as property, and whether we can justify treating it as different from other “things.” It goes on to analyze property rights, which have come to be understood as fashioned through legal and social relationships that regulate your claims on me as well as my claims on you. It argues that bodily rights and property rights should be kept in their separate boxes. The reasons for this are only partly grounded in the fear that thinking of our relationship to our bodies and selves in property terms will assist and normalize their commodification. Even where there is no danger of this, the adoption of property models is problematic.
Sally Haslanger
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199892631
- eISBN:
- 9780199980055
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892631.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Contemporary theorists use the term “social construction” with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly “natural” is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the ...
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Contemporary theorists use the term “social construction” with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly “natural” is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. The chapters in this book draw on insights from feminist and critical race theory to develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. The central chapters of the book offer critical social realist accounts of gender and race. These accounts function as case studies for a broader approach that draws upon notions of ideology, practice, and social structure developed through interdisciplinary engagement with research in social science. Ideology, on the proposed view, is a relatively stable set of shared dispositions to respond to the world, often in ways that also shape the world to evoke those very dispositions. This looping of our dispositions through the material world enables the social to appear natural. Additional chapters in the book situate a critical realist approach in relation to philosophical methodology, and to debates in analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language.Less
Contemporary theorists use the term “social construction” with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly “natural” is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. The chapters in this book draw on insights from feminist and critical race theory to develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. The central chapters of the book offer critical social realist accounts of gender and race. These accounts function as case studies for a broader approach that draws upon notions of ideology, practice, and social structure developed through interdisciplinary engagement with research in social science. Ideology, on the proposed view, is a relatively stable set of shared dispositions to respond to the world, often in ways that also shape the world to evoke those very dispositions. This looping of our dispositions through the material world enables the social to appear natural. Additional chapters in the book situate a critical realist approach in relation to philosophical methodology, and to debates in analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language.
