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CHARACTER AND MORAL LUCK

CLAUDIA CAID

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PHILADELPHIA
 Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122
Copyright © 1996 by Temple University.
All rights reserved
Published 1996
Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book meets the requiremen ts of the

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Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984

Text design by William Boehm

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Card, Claudia.
The unnatural lottery : character and moral luck / Claudia Card.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56639-452-X (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 1-56639-453-8
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Character. 2. Fortune. 3. Feminist theory. 4. Philosophy.
I. Title.
BJ1531.028 1996
170 - dc20 96-1316
To the memory of my father; Walter Munro Card (1911-1973),
and the futures of my nephews,
Jason Date Card
Ryan Kazuo Card
Matthew Miller Card
and
Eric Douglas Card
 c o n e n s

Preface ix

One Lifting Veils of Ignorance 1

Two Responsibility and Moral Luck 21

Th ree Women's Voices and Female Character 49

Four Caring, Justice, and Evils 72

Fi v e Rape Terrorism 97

Six Gratitude and Obligation 118

S eve n What Lesbians Do 140

Eight Race Consciousness 163

Notes 183

Index 207
I I
 p r e f a c e

uch of the luck with which this book is occupied

attaches to politically disadvantageous starting
points or early positionings in life. Moral luck is
luck that impacts either on character develop-
ment or on one's ability to do morally good or
right things in particular contexts. The positionings that interest me
for their impact on moral character also interested Nietzsche in his
genealogy of morality. His hypotheses were that deep-seated or perva-
sive bad luck produces ressentiment, a hateful, destructive envy of those
better off, and that this attitude lies at the root of our concepts of moral
goodness and evil. I Yet his evaluation of ressentiment was mixed, if not
ambivalent. For he saw that it could also make us clever and that clever-
ness can be empowering.
On my view early bad luck is influential in developing many kinds of
character, not just the kind that bothered Nietzsche, and I do not find
hatred and envy at the root of moral concepts. The same external con-
ditions can impact us differently as they combine with other variables,
including our often arbitrary choices. My working hypothesis is that,
ethically, there are many ways of being good and many kinds of charac-
ter displaying different strengths and weaknesses. Yet I do not try to
prove this abstractly. It is a hypothesis that guides my inquiries, which, if
successful, may then support it. Although the hypothesis sounds em-
pirical, it involves a response to the philosophical question whether
"virtue is one," whether ethical goodness is the same in all of us. My
view is not that certain virtues are more appropriate to certain people but
that different combinations of circumstances in fact provide oppor-
tunities for, stimulate, nurture, or discourage the development of dif-
ferent virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses of character.
More than two decades ago something that interested me in the
topic of mercy, on which I published my first essay, was that its best
rationales seemed to involve an appreciation of the fact that "there but
for the grace of God go I" - in effect, an appreciation of moral luck
(although the term had not been coined).2 During the same period I
published another essay defending a retributive view ofliability to pun-
Preface X

ishment. 3 The mercy that interested me presupposed a retributive un-

derstanding of punishment. My objective now, as then, is not to let us
off the hook morally by showing that fate determines who we become. I
am no fatalist. I find luck influential but not ordinarily determining. It
narrows and expands our possibilities, often through the agency of
others over whom we have no control and often through the medium
of social institutions. It helps us appreciate and imagine possibilities,
and it also causes difficulty with our doing so in some cases. When it
removes all our possibilities for moral goodness, what we have is not
moral luck but fate. My objective is to explore some virtues, some vices,
and our senses of responsibility and integrity in ways that acknowledge
luck as significant in what we rightly regard as our ethical character and
our ethical choices. If the result is often humbling, it also can generate
pride in what we have managed to make of ourselves and our oppor-
tunities under difficult circumstances that others' luck spared them.
Although personal reflections on why I am who I am often lie in the
backgrounds of inquiries in this book, I am not moved by a sense that
luck has been unusually cruel or kind to me. My sense of how it has
treated others is at least as much a motivating concern. Much of the
salient luck in my life has been in individuals I have known. I never won
the lottery nor have I ever been materially wealthy, but I have had great
friends. My parents left me little materially besides a few debts, al-
though they left indelible marks on my character. My negative luck has
been mostly in social environments; either the environment was bad
or there was a lack of fit between the environment and me. Yet I have
not felt the rigors of severe poverty, although I went through primary
school with children who did. Nor have I been (to my knowledge) a
direct target of racism, although members of my extended family were
interned in concentration camps during World War II for no other rea-
son than the national origin of their parents, and my partner's parents
were barred from attending high school in Alabama in the 1930s be-
cause they were black. Nor have I directly experienced the social chal-
lenges of severe prolonged disability or illness, although my mother
did. Nor have I had to recover from the ravages of alcoholism, although
two of my childhood friends did and my father never recovered. Still, a
glance at my life may be instructive in its very ordinariness.
I began school as a social misfit, an outgoing child, passionately loved
and occasionally abused, in many ways precocious but whose parents'
 Preface Xl

religious, political, and sexual values were at odds with those of the
village community (Pardeeville, Wisconsin) in which we lived. I learned
to appeal to laughter and developed a thick skin. From age five I was in
love with girls and women but believed I could not do much about it
and did not, for decades. My entertainment skills developed further,
and I found solace for many years in piano lessons (within the eco-
nomic reach of most villagers at fifty cents per half hour lesson), learn-
ing discipline in the process. Consistent with the English and German
ethos of Pardeeville in the 1940s and 1950s, my parents believed in
corporal punishment, administering it freely but with little consistency.
My mother, who took decades to learn to say no to my father, said it con-
stantly to my younger brother and me. We became imaginative liars,
and our skin continued to thicken. When I was eight, my mother suf-
fered a paralytic stroke, permanently damaging her right side. Her mis-
fortune reprieved me from frequent physical punishments, although
the verbal excoriation intensified and for the next decade I inherited
household tasks from cleaning and ironing to marketing and meal
preparation.
Thus I learned both rebellion and responsibility early. Responsibility
won out when two more brothers were born. By creating imaginary
worlds I learned to make life interesting for myself in the face of early
hard work, as I had earlier relied on fantasy for self-healing from pun-
ishments. As I escaped between chores and scoldings into music and
ideas, my intellectual skills outpaced my social ones. They still do.
One thing I consistently did right was to get As, a habit that even-
tually earned me college scholarships and graduate school fellowships.
By twelve I was a fanatical student, and by thirteen, my nearsightedness
was no longer concealable. Early unrecognized nearsightedness pro-
duced, I now believe, a certain physical insecurity, especially in the
world of competitive team sports, where I thought I was a natural cow-
ard. Under then Wisconsin law my closest brother was permitted a
paid job (a paper route) in high school while I, as a girl, was not, al-
though more work was expected of me (at home). He learned to man-
age money. I learned to volunteer. Every child in Pardeeville (and for
miles around) had free swimming lessons- a Village Board decision
taken to minimize tragedies in our two lakes. Mter three years' military
service. my brother spent college summers as a lifeguard. I discon-
tinued life-saving classes to help with babies at home, where I learned
Preface xu

baking, canning, wallpapering, the small daily economies, how to make

do with little cash flow. My mother, who by then could write no other
way (because of her stroke), taught me typing. Thanks to years of piano
lessons, I learned the typewriter keyboard and a decent speed in four
hours and spent college summers at typing jobs, save one on a student
tour in Europe, a reward from extended family for prior home service.
My brother did marine boot camp that summer, just long enough be-
fore Viet Nam that he is now alive (and sleeps well in Seattle).
In many ways, my character is a complex product of meeting and
failing to meet the challenges of relative disempowerment in less-than-
friendly environments. At that level, my story has parallels in the ordi-
nary stories of many women, many people of color in the United States,
many Jewish children raised in predominantly Christian environments,
many lesbians and gay men, and many who have lived from an early age
with disabilities or health impairments. As our stories enter the body of
data on which philosophical ethics is theorized, perhaps the shape of
ethical theories to come will reflect a greater appreciation of the roles
ofluck in moral development.
Beginning in the 1970s when I became "radicalized" by lesbianfemi-
nism, I did what felt like starting all over. To create courses in femi-
nist philosophy and lesbian culture, I had to set aside what I had been
doing (work on punishment and theories of justice), do an enor-
mous amoun t of in terdisciplinary reading (especially histories I was not
taught in school), and connect with new colleagues in many depart-
ments and institutions. I began attending new conferences, speaking to
new audiences in ways I had never spoken before, experimenting with
new teaching styles. For a long time it felt as though I was not able to
draw in a deliberate or self-conscious way on my graduate training, nor
on my years of untenured teaching and research. Mine was a struggle to
become realistically subjective, to set aside my fantasy worlds and re-
enter the real one to discover who I had become, how I connected with
others, what my possibilities were.
When I began to publish again in the 1980s, it was "in a different
voice," although not the one that Carol Gilligan wrote about in 1982.4 I
drew on my life-experiences, both in and out of the academy, which I
had not done in my earlier work on justice and punishment. The chap-
ters below integrate my earlier research and training with my more
radical work and integrate my radical work with some of the work of
 Pre f ace XIU

philosophers who have not been so immersed - at least in their philo-

sophical work - as I have been in radical causes.

Parts of many chapters in this volume have as predecessors

lectures presented at conferences and universities from 1976 through
1994. The earliest such roots underlie parts of Chapters Six, Three,
Seven, and Five, whose ancestors were heard by audiences, respectively,
at Iowa State University, Dartmouth College, the Midwest Society of
Women in Philosophy, and the University of Wisconsin Center System
Philosophers' Association. Later ancestors of many chapters bene-
fited from discussions with audiences at the Universities of Buenos
Aires, Cincinnati, Kansas State, Minnesota, North Carolina-Chapel
Hill, Northern Michigan, Oswego, San Diego, Syracuse, Virginia Com-
monwealth, and Wisconsin and at conventions of the Midwest Society
of Women in Philosophy and the American Philosophical Association
as well as a conference on gender and philosophy at the Esalen In-
stitute. Early work was supported by a sabbatical semester in 1986 and
two summers' research support from the University of Wisconsin Grad-
uate School. A Vilas Associateship during 1989-91 helped substantially,
for which I thank the William F. Vilas Trust and the Women's Studies
Program at the University of Wisconsin.
For an atmosphere of cooperative inquiry I thank the many students
who took my "Feminism and Sexual Politics" course where I first lec-
tured on rape and sexuality in the 1970s and early 1980s, and many
other students who have taken my courses and seminars since then in
feminist ethics, advanced ethical theory, and classics in feminist theory.
For organizing first-rate conferences on women and legal theory at the
University of Wisconsin Law School in 1985 and 1986, which discussed
antecedents of Chapters Three and Seven, I am grateful to Martha
Fineman. For a superb conference on violence and terrorism in 1988
that led to much of the current shape of Chapter Five, I am grateful to
Christopher Morris and R. G. Frey, and for an outstanding conference
on racism and sexism at Georgia State University in 1991 that stimu-
lated a forerunner of Chapter Eight, I am grateful to Linda Bell and
David Blumenfeld. Enthusiastic support from Louis Werner (who died
in 1977), Maudemarie Clark, and Amelie Rorty helped with early
efforts toward Chapter Six. Temple University Press's former editor
Jane Cullen has earned my permanent gratitude for her nurturance of
P ref ace XIV

this work through many years. To Victoria Davion, Marilyn Frye, Ruth
Ginzberg, Maria Lugones, Richard Mohr,Joann Pritchett, and Marcus
Singer I am grateful for long-term friendship and good advice of many
kinds during the past decade.
The good luck that sustained the writing of this book includes many
more friends, colleagues, and correspondents who offered comments
on chapter drafts and much support, includingJeffner Allen, Annette
Baier, Bat-Ami Bar On, Sandra Bartky, Lorna Benjamin, Susan Bordo,
Bernard Boxill, Richard Brandt, Harry Brighouse, Joan Callahan, Nor-
man Care, Chris Cuomo, Marcia Falk, Joel Feinberg, Owen Flanagan,
Vivian Foss, Marilyn Friedman, Bernie Gert, David Goldberg, Bill Hay,
Sarah Hoagland, Lester Hunt, Alison Jaggar, Sharon Keller, Noretta
Koertge, Elaine Marks, Lynne McFall, Howard McGary, Nellie McKay,
Michelle Moody-Adams, the late John Moulton, Alexander Nehamas,
Nel Noddings, Martha Nussbaum, Lucius Outlaw, Chris Pierce, Ann
Pooler, Josie Pradella, Annis Pratt, Joan Ringelheim, Ellen Rose, Jean
Rumsey, Naomi Scheman, Fran Schrag, Vicky Spelman, Michael Stocker,
Nancy Thomadsen, Laurence Thomas, Lynne Tirrell, Joyce Trebilcot,
Elton Tylenda, Terry Winant, Iris Young, and Margarita Zamora.
For permission to draw on work published previously, I am grateful
to MIT Press for materials used in Chapter Three from "Gender and
Moral Luck" in Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology,
ed. Owen Flanagan and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (1990), to the Ameri-
can Philosophical Quarterly for materials used in Chapter Six from "Grati-
tude and Obligation," APQ vol. 25, no. 2 (Apr. 1988), to Cambridge
University Press for materials used in Chapter Five from "Rape as a
Terrorist Institution" in Violence, Terrorism, andJustice, ed. R. G. Frey and
Christopher Morris (1991) (Reprinted with the permission of Cam-
bridge University Press), and to Routledge, Chapman, and Hall for
materials used in Chapter Seven from "Intimacy and Responsibility:
What Lesbians Do," in At the Boundaries of Law: Feminism and Legal
Theory, ed. Martha Albertson Fineman and Nancy Sweet Thomadsen
(1991). Briefforerunners of Chapters One and Eight appeared in the
Journal ofSocial Philosophy vol. 22, no. 1 (1991), and in Overcoming Racism
and Sexism, ed. Linda Bell and David Blumenfeld (Lanham, Md.: Row-
man and Littlefield, 1995), and a briefer ancestor of part of Chapter
Four appeared in Hypatia: AJournal ofFeminist Philosophy as a symposium
piece on Nel Noddings's Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral
Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
 1IE
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LIVElY
 c h a p e r o n e

LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE

P hilosophy, like art and religion, offers a kind of salva-

tion. It can remove us from the stress of material life
and give us the heart to go on. Yet philosophy is not
done in a material vacuum. It involves an apprentice-
ship of study with time off from other labor and
builds on prior generations' work, preserved in archives. European
philosophy and its descendants have been for two and a half milennia
the province of relatively leisured men who trace their intellectual
heritage to free men of ancient Greece. Although Plato admitted a few
women to his Academy, it has been for most of recorded history socially
privileged men who were apprenticed as philosophers and whose work
fills the archives.
Before the twentieth century the most significant transitions in the
development of European philosophy were its movements between
religious and secular homes, its coming under the dominance of Chris-
tianity for centuries, when much ancient philosophical work was pre-
served from destruction by Muslims and Jews, and then its breaking
relatively free of religious dominance and protection in the early mod-
ern period. These transitions showed in the topics explored, who be-
came apprenticed as philosophers, for which audiences they wrote,
styles as well as contents of their critiques, and which points of view
were represented in their writings.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the most significant tran-
sitions in the descendants of European philosophy may come from the
increasing access to academic education of people with social histories
of disempowerment: the working classes, Jews, people of color with
histories of oppression in white societies, women of all classes and eth-
nic backgrounds, people with disabilities, people living openly lesbian
or gay lives. Many from these groups do not always (or only) trace their
intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. As with earlier transi-
tions, the transition to this multifaceted pluralism can be expected to
Chapter One 2
show in the kinds of topics to which philosophers attend, the audiences
for whom we write, the styles as well as contents of our philosophical
critiques, the points of view we represent.
Among the welcome differences such changes could make in philo-
sophical ethics is an increased appreciation of the roles of luck in who
we are and who we can become, in the good lives available to us and the
evils we may be liable to embody. For, luck is often best appreciated by
those who have known relatively bad luck and have been unable to
escape steady comparison of their lot with those of others.

Moral Luck

Luck found a place in the philosophical conversations of eth-

ics in the mid-1970s. Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel's symposium
"Moral Luck" (which introduced the term) attended to examples of
individuals who took m~or risks with their lives, met with accidents, or
suffered reversals of political fortune.! In the 1980s Martha Nussbaum
explored connections between luck and ethics in Greek tragedy, and
the coherence of the concept of moral luck was given yet further sup-
port in essays by Margaret Walker.2 It was oftener challenged, however,
in the journals, where the question whether moral luck is a coherent
concept has been a subject of dispute. 3
"Moral luck" refers to such facts as that how we become good or bad,
how good or bad we become, and whether some of our choices turn out
to have been justified are matters into which luck enters substantially.
Some of these facts seem mundane. Yet controversies arise over what
they imply. Chapter Two defends moral responsibility against the skep-
ticisms of Williams and Nagel, with special attention to contexts of
oppression and abuse. The idea of responsibility, especially of taking
responsibility, is a continuing theme in ensuing chapters.
Williams calls the luck that enters into character development" con-
stitutive moral luck" and that which enters into the justifiability of par-
ticular choices "incident moral luck." Disputes in the journals about
the conceptual coherence of moral luck have fastened primarily on
incident luck, the luck of particular choices, largely ignoring constitu-
tive luck. Like the luck with which Martha Nussbaum and Margaret
Walker have been primarily concerned, however, the luck with which
this book is concerned is often constitutive luck, the luck of character
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 3

development. I tend to find incident luck of interest for its impact on

character.
In the history of philosophical ethics, the view that character de-
velopment is significantly influenced by luck was appreciated more by
Aristotle than by Immanuel Kant. For Aristotle, the good life was a
happy one. This meant that it was, among other things, a fortunate life.
Happiness is to be prized, not praised. But Aristotle's happy life was also
a life that was lived in accord with virtues, for which we are praised.
Aristotle acknowledged that happiness depends at least modestly on
the cooperation of "externals," such things as good birth, good health,
and good 100ks.4 This observation could mean simply that living in
accord with the virtues is not enough to make us happy, that our vir-
tuous choices need to be supplemented with external goods. Alter-
natively, it could mean that in order to live a life in accord with the
virtues, we need at least the modest cooperation of externals, things
beyond our control. Both readings are plausible, and both are sug-
gested by Aristotle's remarks. The view that acquisition of the virtues
depends in part on externals, however, implies constitutive moral luck.
For eventually, we come to externals over which we have no control,
and over which we could not even conceivably have control, such as the
circumstances of our birth and our early childhoods.
In modern philosophy, Kant's position has had greater influence
than Aristotle's. The position of Kant-no aristocrat-has been espe-
cially attractive to democrats and egalitarians because it holds that
good moral character, as a sense of duty, is accessible to everyone. Kant
presents that accessibility as the ground of human dignity.5 Persons, as
rational beings, have an absolute value, he maintains, because we give
ourselves a moral law from which we can determine our duties, and he
held that we can all act as duty requires, come what may. On this view,
our goodness (or badness) is entirely up to us. However unlucky we
may be, we still determine whether we meet the challenges life offers us
well or poorly.
Like Aristotle, Williams, Nagel, and Martha Nussbaum have taken as
paradigms of moral luck lives that began from a combination of gener-
ally privileged social positions. The more usual cases, however, are lives
with beginnings that are relatively disadvantaged along significant di-
mensions, such as having a socially disvalued gender, race, ethnicity, or
class, or a socially stigmatized disability, illness, deformity, or disorder.
Being socially disadvantaged along one or more such dimensions is not
Chapter One 4

enough to make one disadvantaged on the whole, as disadvantages in

one area may be compensated for by advantages in others. And often
the nature of one's position may not be readily visible. Still, the dimen-
sions of powerlessness take their toll. They impact the way we develop,
as do our "closets" if we choose to "pass."
In this book, I take as my paradigms the luck of middle- and lower-
class women who face violence and exploitation in misogynist and class-
hierarchical societies, oflesbians who face continuing pressure to hide
or self-destruct in societies hostile to same-sex intimate partnerships, of
culturally christian white women who have ethnic and color-privilege in
white christian and racist societies, and of adult survivors of childhood
abuse. Many of the issues, however, have parallels or analogues in the
cases of those socially disadvantaged or privileged in other ways.
Thus, I come closer to Kant's starting point than to Aristotle's, insofar
as my paradigms are the ordinary lives of ordinary people, lives that are
generally politically disadvantaged though sometimes also privileged in
limited ways. Although I have been deeply affected by Kantian liberal-
ism, I am skeptical of Kant's apparent assumption that the same basic
character development is accessible to everyone. Even ifhis optimistic
belief that everyone has opportunities to become good contains more
truth than some would admit, I doubt that the opportunities are the
same for everyone, that the level of difficulty is the same, and, conse-
quently, that the goodness available to us is likely to take the same forms.
Circumstances of oppression can illustrate the point. Economically
oppressive circumstances offer relatively little opportunity or encour-
agement to develop the virtue of liberality. Not only can oppression
make certain virtues difficult to develop, but the question arises in
view of the damaging nature of oppression whether those who are
oppressed are moral agents at all. In feminist philosophy, this has com-
plicated the question of how resistance by the oppressed is possible. 6
From where can the requisite strength of character and resourceful-
ness come? So let us turn briefly to the concept of oppression.

oppression

More than a decade ago Marilyn Frye called attention to pat-

terns suggested by the etymological roots of "oppression": pressing
against - reducing, molding, immobilizing. 7 Footbinding exempli-
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 5
fies all three. Less dramatically, contemporary middle-class and even
working-class ideals of femininity in the United States also reduce fe-
male development and mold it as they constrain female motility-
matters explored by Iris Young's discussion of "throwing like a girl."8
On a larger scale Marilyn Frye notes that oppressive social institutions
catch us in double-binds so that no matter what we do, it is wrong and
we are wrong. This situation systematically undermines the develop-
ment of self-respect. 9
In Justice and the Politics of Difference Iris Young carries the analysis of
oppression further by examining five of its "faces": exploitation, mar-
ginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence, sug-
gesting that different "faces" come to the fore in different historical
instances of oppression. 10 If exploitation and cultural imperialism are
salien t faces of slavery, marginalization and violence are often salient in
anti-Semitism and in antilesbian and antigay hostility. Power disadvan-
tages take many forms, some more damaging than others, and the
different forms may be interrelated in complex ways.
My awareness of oppression and how easily it can be hidden first took
shape in regard to religion. During the 1960s when I taught philosophy
of religion, I found that texts in that field often assumed that philoso-
phy of religion was simply philosophy of Christianity. My research into
Jewish history and religion revealed histories of oppression by Chris-
tians omitted not only from philosophy textbooks but from the entirety
of my public education and from the educations of most of my stu-
dents. In the processes of hiding and marginalizing, the textbooks and
educational curricula were continuing the oppressive exclusionary his-
tories that they failed to acknowledge.
By the mid-1970s I identified strongly with feminism in its radicales-
bian, gynocentric incarnations. Many patterns salient in the oppres-
sions of women and lesbians can be found in other dominated or op-
pressed groups as well, however. Consider, for example, Laurence
Thomas's identification of patterns of evil in American slavery and the
Nazi genocide. II Slavery and much of its subsequent legacy of rac-
ism illustrate oppression that has a salient face of exploitation. Anti-
Semitism and the genocide for which it helped prepare the way illus-
trate oppression with the salient face of marginalization leading to
concealment, eventually to elimination and obliteration. The exploita-
tion and elimination (or marginalization) patterns exist in tension with
each other, and there is overlap between oppressions characterized by
Chapter One 6

each. The European slave trade, for example, killed millions in the
process of exploitation and in order to exploit others, and marginaliza-
tion is a significant aspect of racism in the United States today, although
it is (tautologically) less visible to whites than is racist violence. Exploita-
tion is also among the patterns of anti-Semitism - Nazi doctors experi-
mented on Jewish prisoners and European Christians relied onJewish
moneylenders-although marginalization and worse have sometimes
been more salient faces ofJewish oppression. Under slavery, genocide
was subsidiary to exploitation and threatened to undermine it, whereas
in the Nazi genocide, exploitation was subsidiary to concealment and
elimination and could threaten to undermine them also. The two pat-
terns can also blend into each other in that, as Thomas argues, a people
exploited as slaves for seven generations may be utterly decimated as a
people with their own culture, language, social institutions, and so
forth. At this point, exploitation assumes the face of genocide.
The basic patterns of exploitation and elimination (or concealmen t)
are also discernible in other forms of racism and in the oppressions of
women, of lesbians and gay men, of workers, and of those who are
disabled. Many women, for example, are exploited for heterosexual
and domestic service as wives and as caretakers of the young, the old,
the sick, the disabled of both sexes. Lesbians and gay men, on the other
hand, have been hidden or killed. Prostitutes have been exploited and
either killed or led to premature deaths. Industrial workers, exploited
for productive labor in capitalist societies, have also been led to prema-
ture deaths. Those with mental disorders, on the other hand, have
been hidden in attics, basements, and "total" institutions, and, as is too
often the case with the physically disabled, their talents allowed to go to
waste or to atrophy.12
Exploitation is double-edged. To be useful to others, we must be
encouraged to develop qualities that can also be turned to our own
purposes. If our exploitation requires us to make judgments, we may
develop critical skills that interfere with the tendency to identify with
oppressors. Without the capacity for judgment, our utility is curtailed.
Exploitation thus sets limits to the "reduction" aspect of oppression
and provides a wedge for resistance. Yet, even in the worst of imagin-
able circumstances, people have resisted.
It may seem a priori that living constantly under the imminent threat
of death would utterly destroy one's moral agency, or at least one's
scruples. During my undergraduate days it was commonplace to hear
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 7

comparisons of Nazi concentration camps with Thomas Hobbes's state

of nature in precisely this respect. And yet, Holocaust survivors' nar-
ratives reveal an enormous variety of responses to atrocities that ex-
ceeded Hobbes's worst nightmares. Simon Wiesenthal's memoir The
Suriflower-with which I often begin my course in introductory ethics-
narrates his encounters in a concentration camp where it never seems
to occur to him to take anything but a moral approach to question after
question about what to do and whether his choices were the right
ones. 13 He did not find oppression an excuse, or even an occasion, for
moral insensitivity.
Following the lead of Marxist philosophers who took up the perspec-
tives of oppressed workers in the paid labor force, women in recent
decades have created courses in feminist philosophy, attending to the
narratives of women who have survived many forms of oppression.
Feminists began reflecting philosophically on concepts previously ig-
nored or treated flippantly, such as "gender," "lesbian," and "rape." In
the 1980s feminist philosophy became more pluralistic, more attentive
to the intersections of sex, race, and class, and more specific. In 1986
Hypatia: AJournal ofFeminist Philosophy became an independent journal,
offering special issues in such areas as feminist ethics, feminist episte-
mology, or feminist philosophy of science. 14 These developments and
others like them are bringing the data of histories of oppression into
the mainstream of contemporary philosophy.

Feminist Ethics and an Overview

Carol Gilligan's continuing articulation of the "different

voice" of women, the best-known influence in the development of femi-
nist ethics, has fostered and provoked a growing body of literature in
and on "care ethics."'5 Care ethics emphasizes the importance ofvalu-
ing and maintaining relationships of care and connection. Among the
most troubling aspects of care ethics has been its potentiality to valorize
one-sided caring relationships and abusive relationships and to neglect
women's needs to learn self-defense and to set boundaries in the face of
violence. 16 As with the voices of survivors of war atrocities, women's
voices even in times of so-called peace presen t a variety of responses to
the challenges of living under threats to life and limb. Judith Herman
compares women who are vulnerable to domestic violence and rape
Chapter One 8

with men in combat in terms of the traumas they sufferP These and
interrelated topics are discussed in Chapters Three through Seven.
Chapter Three takes up the question whether virtues are gender
related, with special attention to the work of Carol Gilligan. Here I
argue that although domestic contexts may call for different moral
sensitivities than the contexts of markets and governments, we also
need to consider whether the sensitivities women have developed in
domestic contexts are also responses to oppressive conditions. If so,
some of what we hear in women's voices may be right for those condi-
tions but not for better ones. It is also possible, however, that some of
the responses we hear are not good even in oppressive conditions.
Listening to women's voices with what Theodore Reik called "a third
ear" can sometimes reveal moral damage, such as a misplaced sense of
gratitude, as well as moral insights. 18 A challenge for feminist moral
philosophers has been to distinguish the insights from the damage.
Chapter Four discusses limits of care ethics, with special attention to
the work ofNel Noddings, who finds justice a relatively unhelpful con-
cept for ethics. 19 This chapter argues that in two major areas care with-
out justice is inadequate to respond to the dangers of certain evils. One
area is our relationships to strangers. The other is relationships of
intimacy. This chapter also argues, however, that theories of justice
need a greater variety of paradigmatic evils than the economic ones
that have dominated theorizing about justice in recent decades. In so
arguing, I draw on Nel Noddings's more recent work on women and
evil. 20
Chapter Five analyzes rape as a "protection racket" and terrorist
institution that sets a context for the social construction of female
desires to ingratiate ourselves with men. In this context the abuse of
women in heterosexual relationships is condoned, and the position of
women is conducive to the development of misplaced gratitude for
a male "protection" that is often little more than a withholding of
abuse. 21 This chapter also takes up briefly the feminist antipornog-
raphy campaign as aimed at combatting rape terrorism and argues
against recent attempts to defend pornography by appeal to the liberal-
ism ofJohn Stuart Mill.
Chapter Six, for which Chapter Five sets a background, examines the
concept of gratitude and its associated sense of obligation, with special
attention to the paradoxical idea of a "debt of gratitude." Gratitude is
supposed to be for something given freely, and yet if it was given freely,
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 9
how can it impose a debt? In unraveling this paradox, this chapter has
an eye to distinguishing between well-placed and misplaced gratitude,
and it has a longer-range objective of advancing the philosophy of
friendship.
One route to working out from under the protection racket has been
lesbianfeminism. In a misogynist society, women's need for protection
is real. The trick has been to get it without supporting our continuing
need for it. Lesbianism presents itself to many as a live option here. The
question whether being lesbian is a matter of luck or choice is a con-
tinuing topic of discussion, which I examine at length elsewhere. 22 I see
it as having elements of both. Chapter Seven takes up an ethical aspect
of that question under the heading of responsibility, returning to some
of the themes of Chapter Two, and argues that for purposes of taking
responsibility, being lesbian is better conceived as an erotic orientation
than as a sexual one.
Achievements similar to those of feminist philosophy characterize
recent developments by philosophers of color in the United States.
Within the past fifteen years, philosophers of color have produced
substantial bodies of inquiry attending to political issues of race and
ethnicityand taking up issues in ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics
from the perspectives of people of color.23 The Society for Blacks in
Philosophy was established in the early 1980s, and the American Philo-
sophical Association publishes a major newsletter, "Philosophy and the
Black Experience. "24 Like feminist philosophy, with which it overlaps,
this body of work is expanding philosophical agendas with issues that
previously received scant attention, such as connections of "race" with
such concepts as "nation. "25 Slavery, an institution for decades cited by
moral philosophers as a test case for utilitarian ethics, is finally begin-
ning to receive the systematic and detailed ethical examination that it
deserves as a topic of moral concern in itself.26
In the spirit of acknowledging both that white is a color and that it
has been socially privileged in the United States, the final chapter in
this volume reflects on the interrelated concepts of "race" and "eth-
nicity" from my perspective as a white woman with Anglo-Saxon protes-
tant and Celtic roots. This chapter reflects on moral stances toward
such categories, on their meanings, and on ways in which being inside
socially constructed ethnic and color categories becomes part of our
moral luck.
In the balance of this introduction, I comment on two features of my
Chapter One 10

philosophical orientation that characterize this book and many other

works in the recent, more pluralistic philosophical scene. They are
holism and historical particularism. I turn first to particularism.

Historical Particularism

By "particularism" I understand approaches to philosophical

issues that take explicitly as appropriate subjects of philosophical in-
vestigation, and as data for philosophical reflection, the experiences
of and concepts articulated by historically defined communities or groups,
rather than concepts or experiences that are presumed to be universal.
Particularists may concentrate on a particular culture, for example, or
a particular gender. Particularist projects do not pretend to be about
the whole world, life, or even human nature in general, although they
may turn out to have global significance. Nor do they pretend to be
about some aspect of life, of the world, or of human nature that can be
presumed even to interest everyone or to reflect everyone's experience
(although, again, it is possible that they may).
"Particularism" so understood does not imply nominalism, the meta-
physical view that only individuals (particulars) exist. Nominalists deny
the reality of universals, such as justice or goodness, maintaining that
although there are just acts and good things, justice and goodness are
not also things in their own right. Historical particularists need take no
stand on the reality or unreality of universals. Instead, as I understand
it, historical particularism is a practical orientation in project definition
and methodology. Practical- or methodological- particularism may
be readily confused with nominalism. But a practical particularist need
not be a nominalist. A methodological particularist can leave open
metaphysical questions concerning the reality of universals, because
the issue is over what is interesting and worthwhile, not over what exists.
The particularity of historically defined inquiries is not always ob-
vious, however. In setting particularist projects, feminist philosophers
often reflect on mundane distinctions that have not been part of the
traditional philosophy curriculum - distinctions that mark gender,
race, or social class, for example. Such reflection is easily seen as evinc-
ing an interest in human nature. For everyone is gendered and has
ethnic roots, and everyone experiences the effects of social class. And it
is true that some feminist philosophers have investigated gender as an
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 11

aspect of human nature. AlisonJaggar does this in Feminist Politics and

Human Nature, although she is also deeply concerned with differences
in the significance of gender for women and for men. 27 Yet others have
been more interested in reflecting on specifically female experience
than on gender as a category that applies to everybody. Marilyn Frye
and Sarah Hoagland, for example, reflect specifically on the experi-
ence of women and lesbians. 28 In reflecting on female experience, we
are self-conscious of our perspectives as female, not just human, and of
the fact that we are not giving equal time to the perspectives of men.
Recently, the prospect of carrying self-consciousness of our specific-
ity to its theoretical limits has raised troubling questions about the
subject matter and the perspectives of its theorizers. 29 If the realization
that there are no generic humans is what underlies one's focus on
women or one's self-identification as a woman, the realization that
there are no generic women soon may lead to a more specific iden-
tification, say, as a white woman. But as there are no generic white
women, either, we may specify further, perhaps as a middle-class white
lesbian. No matter how specific we get, there are always differences to
be noted among the members of our categories. Carrying the tendency
toward specificity to its theoretical limit would seem to require that we
simply point to particulars, without categorizing at all. But then, how
could we even talk about what moved us to point in the first place?
The perplexities of the tendency toward specificity are exacerbated
by the realization that the social categories that we find interesting to
explore are not static. What the category "woman" contains is not the
same as the contents of its ancestor category, wifman, which at one time
unambiguously designated a wife. 30 What "African American" refers to
is notthe same in the 1990s as it would have been in the 1890s (had that
been the term in vogue), prior to many immigrations from the West
Indies. Heracleitus (536-470 B.C.E.) insisted that changeability, rather
than permanence, was the salient fact of reality, dramatizing this in-
sight by insisting that he never stepped into the same river twice. Sim-
ilarly impressed by social change, some lesbians today are skeptical of
the identity "lesbian. "31
Not only the contents of our categories but also our vocabularies
change. Within my lifetime, U.S. citizens of African American descent
have classified themselves or have been classified as Negroes, colored
people, blacks, Afro-Americans, and African Americans. 32 Woman-
loving women have called themselves lesbians, female homosexuals,
Chapter One 12
Sapphists, amazons, dykes, queers, and outlaws. Even the same term
often has different shades of meaning and suggests different values in
different cultural contexts.
With identity terms, we can be very particular indeed about what we
want to be called. Particularizing seems to have no end. And as the
above discussions suggest, particularity - or specificity - has degrees.
"Woman" is more particular, or specific, than "human" but less specific
than "lesbian." It is only against a historical background of an alleged
focus on "humans" that a focus on "women" could even be identified
as "particularist."
There is a companion phenomenon of particularist audience. Femi-
nist philosophy is often addressed specifically to women (although not
necessarily to feminists) rather than to readers of undefined gender,
even when the author's intention is that men should also have access to
it. Growing bodies of feminist work are now often concerned with even
more specific communities of women, as in the case ofJoyce Trebilcot's
Dyke Ideas. 33 Such philosophy does not speak directly to all philosophi-
cal readers, although any might take an interest in it. Its data are not
the data of all our lives, but then, neither are the data of the philosophi-
cal traditions. Particularist authors may use the pronoun "we" in ways
that do not include all readers, in a deliberate response to the conven-
tion of using "we" for relatively privileged white men and "they" for
everyone else. Although the older uses of "we" continue to be appro-
priate in some contexts, in others it often alienates those of us who
cannot identify with references to "our" servants or "our" wives.
Does a particularist use of "we" then perpetuate exclusions in the
same way that we found objectionable when used by those dominant in
past traditions? It need not do so. As I argue elsewhere, it would be
disrespectful to create expectations of inclusion in readers, say, by pur-
porting to speak of the human condition and then to use language in
ways that in fact exclude many readers. 34 But if an author does not
create false expectations of inclusion, a particularist focus need not be
disrespectful. It can be salutary for some readers to have to realize that
they do not belong to the potential audience at the center of that
author's attention, that they are perhaps not even part of the audience
in that author's head. The deliberate and explicit self-consciousness
with which feminist philosophers often address women should not
create false expectations of inclusion among male readers, even if some
male readers find such expectations natural as the legacy of their his-
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 13
tory of having occupied center stage. At various points in this work, I
use "we" to refer to women, to lesbians, to philosophers, and to descen-
dants of Northern Europeans, relying on context to make as clear as is
needed for purposes at hand the scope of the "we."
It is, of course, both possible and in general desirable to take an
interest in the data of the lives of people unlike ourselves. Yet a special,
philosophical loss accrues to those who are routinely on the outside
looking in, those whose lives are either ignored or treated disrespect-
fully in philosophical arguments that invoke the data of daily life in
testing and developing ideas. A widely shared conception of philosophy
is as a Socratic project of coming to know ourselves. This is what many
understand by Socratic philosophy, meaning not the specific texts of
Plato's Socratic dialogues but rather the ideal suggested in some ofthe
earlier ones (such as Plato's Apology) that philosophy is a kind of self-
knowledge. 35 Insofar as philosophy is a Socratic project of coming to
know ourselves, reflecting solely on the data of lives that are not much
like ours does not readily develop our own capacities for philosophical
wisdom. If we have access only to philosophy that is based on the data of
other people's lives, the activity of philosophical inquiry is likely to be
far less engaging than it should be. Worse, empathy with some domi-
nant points of view is dangerous for some of us in that it can encourage
us to identifY with attitudes hostile to ourselves. When philosophers
uncritically invoke data embodying hostile or disrespectful attitudes
toward women, for example, women are probably better off alienated
than empathetically involved. 36 At any rate, such philosophy does alien-
ate many of us.
Particularism in philosophy offers the potentiality of making philoso-
phy a vehicle of self-knowledge for groups with histories of philosophi-
cal disenfranchisement. A question, then, is whether that means that it
can make philosophy a good thing for us. Historically, philosophy has
been not only a vehicle of self-knowledge but also a vehicle of self-
deception. Some of its vulnerabilities as a source of knowledge should
give us moral pause. It has presented men as though they constituted
the species and society as though it consisted of privileged men. In so
doing, it omits the perspectives of workers whose labor has made possi-
ble the leisure that philosophical investigation requires. The voices of
such laborers might have articulated points of view and aspirations at
odds with those embraced by, or sometimes even attributed to them by,
philosophers. Those who have lacked the leisure for philosophy might
Chapter One 14

also have exposed evils unacknowledged by philosophers whose in-

quiries their labors made possible.
My view is that a self-conscious particularism - one that does not pre-
tend to be universalist-is more likely to avoid solipsistic and narcissis-
tic arrogance and that it is thereby less liable to certain self-deceptions.
Yet to avoid arrogance, we need consciousness of more than self. It has
been characteristic of feminist particularists to be conscious of self not
in abstraction but in relation to others and to be critical of representa-
tions of ourselves by those with systematic power over us. Also, if philos-
ophy is not a luxury-as Ruth Ginzberg has recently argued that it is
not - and if we can manage to elicit and support it without creating and
supporting a relatively leisured class, it may reflect a more representa-
tive kaleidoscope of human activities and values. 37
A case of particularism in style is the practice, which I follow in this
book as I have followed it in others, of referring to women by both their
first and last names, even after the first reference, rather than simply
using patronyms after the first reference. 38 This practice maintains a
lively sense of gender. More important, it avoids identifying us by nam-
ing practices that have subordinated us by subsuming us under men.
There is no analogous reason to follow the same practice for men's
names.
I turn next to holism and then to the question of its relationship to
particularism.

Methodological Holism

Many feminist philosophers resist attempts to understand in-

dividuals in abstraction from their relationships to others. We tend to
contextualize ourselves in relationships of friendship, companionship,
cohabitation, coworking, and the communities, systems, or "wholes"
defined by these and by other significant relationships. What I here call
"holism" might perhaps also be called "relationism." Human relation-
ships - especially our earliest relationships to primary caretakers, in
which we have no say whatsoever - are a major source of luck in our
lives. But even later in life, we often have little to say about how others
respond to us. With whom we have occasion to form relationships is a
fact often delineated by factors beyond our control.
As with particularism, I adopt a methodolog;ical holism. It does not
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 15

commit me to the metaphysical view that individuals exist, or are intelli-

gible, only through their relations to others, although that is an inter-
esting and plausible idea. Holism in my work is a practical orientation
in project definition, a special concern with interconnections and the
wholes they create or disrupt.
Holism in much feminist thought has both a negative face and a posi-
tive one. The negative face consists in rejecting or at least questioning
hierarchical dualisms or dichotomies that have been central to centu-
ries of Northern culture: mind/body, reason/feeling, culture/nature,
civilization/wilderness, man/woman (often represented as "mascu-
line/feminine"), man/nature, and so on. The positive face has con-
sisted in searching out and exploring nonhierarchical interdependen-
cies and looking also for possibilities of decentralization of control and
for less preoccupation with control. 39
Consider first holism's negative face. Each side of the mind/body,
reason/feeling, culture/nature, and masculine/feminine dualisms has
its adherents. Socially, however, the lion's share of advantages - power,
privilege, and prestige - has accrued regularly to those who have been
identified with mind, reason, culture, and masculinity. The general
point of these dichotomies and other related dichotomies has been to
affirm control structures. These can become oppressive structures of
domination and subordination: mind over body, reason over feeling,
culture over nature, masculine over feminine, man over woman. A
devaluation of what is subordinated is often used to 'Justify" the domi-
nation. These values even turn up even in philosophy as a profession in
the opposition of "hard philosophy" (logic, philosophy of science, phi-
losophy of mathematics) to "soft philosophy" (value inquiry in the
areas of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, social and political
philosophy). Resistance to the implied "femininity" of "soft philoso-
phy" is at least one factor underlying the spectacle of some philos-
ophers' attempts to structure value inquiry through mathematical
formulae.
Historically, hierarchical dichotomies have been used against women
of many cultures, who have been identified with body, feeling, nature,
and the feminine. They have been used also by white societies to iden-
tify men of color with the feminine and with body, feeling, and nature.
The move to reject or at least question these hierarchical dichotomies
marks an interesting overlap of social protest philosophies, such as
anarchism, feminism, and antiracism, with the newly developing fields
Chapter One 16

of philosophical ecology and environmen tal ethics. This overlap can be

seen in the movements of social ecology and ecofeminism. 40
A characteristic form of the rejection of hierarchical dichotomies
leads us to the positive face of holism, which is also another major area
of overlap between social protest philosophies and philosophical ecol-
ogy. The strategy, in all these cases, has been, not to allow one side of
the dichotomy to swallow the other, but instead to emphasize and ex-
plore interconnections and interdependencies of mind and body, rea-
son and feeling, culture and nature in ways that undermine the nega-
tive valuations regularly attached to the body, feeling, nature, women
and in ways that expose questionable political purposes served by domi-
nation and by control of the body, feeling, nature, women. When we
look at interrelationships as constitutive of various systems, we are also
encouraged to ask whether a particular system is a good thing and
whether it is doing well.
Holism as such is not incompatible with hierarchies and dichot-
omies. Wholes and systems can certainly be defined by relations of
dominance and subordinance. From a functional point of view, hier-
archies often appear natural and desirable. Chains of authority, for
example, increase production efficiency. Military operations are diffi-
cult to conceive of without chains of command. If however, we evaluate
a community or interaction not solely in functional terms but also
in terms of phenomenological relationships between members of the
community or interaction and their responses to one another, domi-
nance and subordination present a different aspect. Hierarchies that
involve dominance and subordination encourage a preoccupation with
forms of control that alienate individuals from each other. Such aliena-
tion tends to block the empathy and identification required for bond-
ing. It interferes with appreciations that form the bases of mutual re-
spect. When people (and other animals) are known by proper names,
for example, instead of simply by their functions (as wives, slaves, ser-
vants, livestock), it is more difficult to think of them simply, or even
primarily, as beings who are likely to get out of control or to think of
them simply, or even primarily, as beings functioning at this or that level
of efficiency.
The chapters that follow reflect on the ethical consequences for
relationships of being positioned early in life on the disfavored end of
hierarchical dichotomies and to some extent try to envision what we
might be like in more egalitarian or nonoppressive relationships.
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 17
A Few Questiuns

A certain difficulty may present itself to thinkers who find both

holism and particularism attractive: it may not be obvious that holism
and particularism are compatible with each other. For a particular sug-
gests a part, something that is less than the whole. If we have a par-
ticularist focus, how can we claim to be at the same time holistic? How
can those of us who sometimes encourage boycotts, withdrawals, even
revolutions, any of which can be highly disruptive of systems, consider
ourselves holists?
The answer to this query requires us to draw some distinctions. A
whole (a system, perhaps a community) does not have to be the whole
of everything. It does not have to be the whole universe. Holism - at
least, methodological holism - does not imply that the best way to view
everything that exists is as belonging to or integrated into one gigantic
system. Nor does holism imply that every system is a good thing. Par-
ticularist feminist philosophers have been concerned with such wholes
as consciousness (considered as a unity of feeling and intellect), house-
holds, communities, lands (in Aldo Leopold's sense of the land as a
community whose members are animals, plants, soils, and waters), mul-
ticultural societies. These wholes are also historical particulars. They
are particular communities, identities, cultures developed in particular
lands. A particular community, system, or relationship may be poorly
constituted or well constituted, thriving or decadent. Withdrawing
from a poorly constituted whole is often a first step toward constituting
a better one.
These considerations suggest two further questions, one for particu-
larism and another for holism. I elaborate above on the question for
particularism: Is there any nonarbitrary point at which to stop particu-
larizing? Carrying particularity to its theoretical limit seems to reduce
us to inarticulate pointing. The question for holism is about hierarchies
and dichotomies: Can we eliminate them without defeating our own
ends as social critics? Some "dichotomies" are necessary to critical
reflection, for example, the "dichotomies" of right and wrong and of
good and bad. 41 Feminist holists will surely be the first to admit, or
rather insist on, the importance of evaluation. Yet evaluating seems to
rely on and support what may look, at first, like hierarchical dichot-
omies: the acceptable and the unacceptable, the justifiable and the
unjustifiable, and so on.
C hap t e TOn e 18
In response to the first question, why should we stop at a focus on
women (for example) when women also differ along many other di-
mensions, there is probably no good reason to carry methodological
particularism to its theoretical limit. Particularism has a historical impor-
tance, which sets limits to its value and makes a variety of "stopping
points" nonarbitrary. Particularism takes on importance against the
background of histories in which particular groups of people have been
marginalized or treated disrespectfully. Feminist particularists in fact
demonstrate lively interest in ethnic and other differences besides the
gender difference. Not every conceivable kind of difference among us
is historically significant, however.
In response to the second question, whether we can dispense with
hierarchies and dichotomies without defeating our own ends, not all
ratings and rankings govern or are correlated with distributions of
power. Holism, like particularism, is important against the background
of histories in which marginalization and disrespect have been damag-
ing, resulting in our underdevelopment or in internalized hostility to
ourselves. These kinds of damage do not result merely from employing
the distinctions of right and wrong or good and bad. The question
whether we can eliminate hierarchical dichotomies without defeating
our own ends as social critics is really the question whether we can get
along without value hierarchies or normative hierarchies. This ques-
tion, however, is grounded on a confusion. The distinctions between
right and wrong, or between good and bad, do not define hierarchies
in the relevant sense. They do not define a dominance order or a distribu-
tion of power. Judging that something is right or good, justifiable or
unjustifiable, does not assign to it any power whatsoever.

Some Conclusions and Future Directions

The growing academic consciousness of histories of racism,

sexism, and class oppression suggests that particularism and holism will
find places in philosophy for a long time to come. For me, feminist
particularism and holism have meant a departure from the kind of
philosophy with which I began as an undergraduate when I abandoned
the naive cultural relativism of my parents for Marcus Singer's General-
ization in Ethics and, following in a similar vein as a graduate student,
became immersed in John Rawls's magnificen t theory ofjustice. 42 It has
 LIFTING VEILS OF IGNORANCE 19
also been something of a move away from Kant and toward Aristotle
and Nietzsche, although not all the way.
Constructing principles ofjustice in Rawls's theory involved donning
veils of ignorance, pretending to a certain amnesia in which we were to
forget who we were (which I was only too happy to do) and abstract from
most of our knowledge of history (where I was already far less knowl-
edgeable than I should have been). A danger of this enterprise is that
even were the veil to screen out our knowledge of our histories, it would
not thereby inhibit the actual influence of those histories. If anything,
the influence of those histories may actually be aided by our very lack of
awareness or attention to them. The most successful veils may leave us
vulnerable to biases that we are ill-equipped to detect. That is not neces-
sarily a reason to give up on striving for the ability to attain the universal-
ity that the theory seeks. Rawls's more recent limitation of his theory of
justice to a political conception that does not embody a comprehensive
philosophical outlook but is intended to gain the support of an overlap-
ping consensus still emphasizes commonalities, although in a way that is
deeply respectful of differences. 43 Yet even this more modest concep-
tion of universality needs to be supplemented by other, more particular-
ist, endeavors, which, for many of us, are more pressing. In poorly
integrated multicultural societies plagued by ethnocentric racism and
androcentric sexism, many of us need to learn to identify and then peel
back veils of ignorance that we may not have known were already in
place, ignorance that can serve questionable political ends. Ethically,
we have ignored too much. Our identities are not transparent to our-
selves, not determimible a priori, Descartes notwithstanding. Coming
to know who we are, historically speaking, can be a difficult labor.
The ideals articulated behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance are framed
on the assumption that once they are accepted, everyone will for the
most part abide by them. They are principles for what Rawls calls a "well-
ordered society," which is a just society in which everyone has an ef-
fective sense of justice, in important respects the same sense of justice ,
and knows this about everyone else. 44 It is not clear how such principles
framed for this ideal society are to connect with ethical issues arising out
of histories of evil in contexts that are nowhere near just. It might seem
that we could frame principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance on
other assumptions than the assumption of perfect compliance, say, on
the assumption that they would apply in the context of a society struc-
tured by histories of deep injustice. After trying this experiment in
C hap t e rOn e 20
thinking about criminal justice, which Rawls has acknowledged belongs
for the most part to "partial compliance theory," I have come to doubt
that very much can be done along these lines behind a thick veil of
ignorance, although in Chapter Four I consider some plausible abstract
suggestions for a theory of basic evils. 45 For the most part, however, we
need to get into the particulars of histories of injustice, and these drag
us back to the world on the other side of the veil, or perhaps, they put us
behind much thinner veils. It is no accident that Rawlsian theorizers
behind the thick veil of ignorance operate mostly on assumptions of
strict rather than partial compliance or widespread noncompliance. In
discussing "the law of peoples," Rawls does give some serious attention
to the problem of noncompliance, treating the noncompliance of some
peoples as a problem regarding the limits of tolerance by others. 46 Yet
even here he does not get very far into the difficult questions about what
justice might require where those limits are exceeded.
A society in which ideals of justice are grossly violated is the one in
which we live (as Rawls also acknowledges). This continuing history
occupies center stage in my concerns. If philosophy is to be wisdom in
the conduct of my life, I need it to connect with this history and not
simply to offer me a fantasy escape from it. For this, it is not enough to
confront the inequities of the "natural lottery" from which we may
inherit various physical and psychological assets and liabilities. It is
important also to reflect on the unnatural lottery created by networks of
unjust institutions and histories that bequeath to us further inequities
in our starting positions and that violate principles that would have
addressed, if not redressed, inequities of nature.
As a legacy from the days of William James when libraries catalogued
philosophy together with psychology, the Harvard philosophy graduate
program had for many years a psychology requirement. Perhaps the
time has come for philosophy programs to institute a history require-
ment (although academic history is not free of bias, either). Much of
the data of the histories that philosophy needs are only recently being
archived, acknowledged as important, and made more generally visible
in the academy: histories of daily working-class life, women's histories,
histories of Jews in the Diaspora, histories of so-called Third World
peoples, Native American histories, Asian American histories, Mrican
American histories- histories that have been researched, critically
evaluated, and defined by historians who identifY and empathize with
the people whose stories they tell. 47
 c h a p e r T w a

RESPO NSIBILITY
AND MORAL LUCK

One's history as an agent is a web in which anything

that is the product of the will is surrounded and held
up and partly formed by things that are not.
- Bernard Williams, Moral Luck

The problem arises ... because the self which acts

and is the object of moral judgment is threatened
with dissolution by the absorption of its acts
and impulses into the class of events.
- Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions

Scepticism about the freedom of morality from luck ...

will leave us with a concept of morality, but one
less important, certainly, than ours is usually taken to
be; and that will not be ours, since one thing that
is particularly important about ours is how
important it is taken to be.
- Bernard Williams, Moral Luck

S hould it unsettle our sense of responsibility to realize

that how morally good or bad we are is not immune
to luck? In this chapter I support the view that it
should not, that appreciating the impact of luck on
our lives can add depth to our understanding of re-
sponsibility and increase our sense of morality's importance. One thing
that makes character valuable is that it prepares us somewhat for con-
tingencies. Fortunately, this does not require that it not have arisen
from contingencies itself.
C hap t e r Two 22
By "luck" I understand, following Bernard Williams and Thomas
Nagel, factors beyond the control of the affected agent, good or bad,
but not necessarily matters of chance. One person's luck may be an-
other's choice or even a result of social practice, predictable by those
in possession of the relevant information. We call it our (good or bad)
luck when we cannot predict it and it eludes our control. What makes
luck maral, however, is its involvement with our choices (or failures to
choose) to do what is morally right or wrong or with our having a moral
character-virtues, vices, integrity. The nature of that involvement,
and hence whether moral luck is real, has been a subject of dispute ever
since Williams and Nagel introduced the concept. l A plea for excuses
as capable of diminishing our responsibility surely seems to imply that
who we are or what we do is moral or immoral only insofar as it is up to
us. Thus "moral luck" has an oxymoronic ring. If something is a matter
ofluck, how can it also be moral?
The impact on me of realizing that our histories as agents are webs in
which all that is a product of our wills is supported by things that are not
is an ethical impact. It moves me toward humility and mercy, virtues that
acknowledge the unfairness oflife but also presuppose a morally struc-
tured context of interaction. In this chapter I explore that context,
presenting responsibility as an achievement, not a given.

The Problem

The moral nature of the impact of moral luck comes through

even in Williams's account of it. He acknowledges that "the limitation
of the moral is itself something morally important."2 Luck indicates a
certain absence ofjustice in who we are and what we can do. We do not
all have an equal chance to be good, and our goodness is less up to
us than our religious and moral traditions would have us believe.
On Nagel's account, luck renders moral responsibility ultimately in-
coherent by making nonsense of the idea that we are autonomous
agents. He also finds that we cannot give it up but appears to regard
that as a kind of irrationality with which we are presen tly stuck. 3
The challenge is to show how the importance and point of respon-
sibility can survive the realization that the quality of our character and
our deeds is not entirely up to us as individuals. I agree with Martha
Nussbaum that if our goodness is fragile, that makes it even more im-
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 23

portant. 4 As for the point of responsibility, it varies with one's perspec-

tive. Williams and Nagel tend to look down and back, from relatively
privileged standpoints and toward the past, focusing on such things as
praise, blame, regret, punishment, and reward-the last two, histor-
ically, prerogatives of the powerful exercised for social control. That
standpoint, however, may presuppose another more basic, a standpoint
of future-oriented agency. I propose to consider what emerges when we
look forward and up, toward the future and from the standpoints of
those struggling to put their lives together. From this perspective, we
are likely to think more of taking responsibility than of attributing it.
The point of taking responsibility is often to construct or to improve sit-
uations and relationships rather than to control, contain, or dominate.
Williams and Nagel illustrate moral luck with cases much discussed
in subsequent literature, which give an intuitive sense of what they had
in mind by moral luck. Williams offers us (1) (a fictionalized) Paul
Gauguin who left his wife and children, despite genuine concern for
them, to devote himself to painting, not yet able to tell whether he
would do anything great; (2) Anna Karenina, who left her marriage,
her social life, and the son she loved for a future with Vronsky, her lover,
unable to foresee that the new relationship could not support the
weight it had to carry; (3) a negligent lorry driver who hit a child who
ran into the street; and (4) an equally negligent driver who hit no one
(because no one ran into the street). To these Nagel adds (5) the
concentration camp officer who "might have led a quiet and harmless
life ifthe Nazis had never come to power in Germany" by contrast with
(6) someone "who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina" but
"might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not
left Germany for business reasons in 1930. "5
Williams contrasts incident luck with constitutive luck. Incident luck
enters into the way particular actions turn out. Constitutive luck enters
into the development of character. For either we may be liable to praise
or blame. But Williams finds that incident and constitutive luck prob-
lematize morality in two different ways. Incident luck undermines the
idea that we can always determine before we act which of our choices
are justifiable. Constitutive luck undermines the assumption of equal-
ity regarding our capacities for moral agency. Many years ago Williams
explored the moral ideal of equality.6 Since then he has focused more
on results andjustification.
My interest is primarily in constitutive luck -luck in character de-
C hap t e T Tw 0 24

velopment. However, luck in justification is relevant insofar as charac-

ter development depends on particular choices. Where Williams's and
Nagel's examples are most convincing, the luck they illustrate is both
incident and constitutive in that certain of the agents' justifications (or
lacks thereof) depend on who they become consequent upon their
choices. The cases motivating my inquiry, however, differ from theirs. I
am interested, from the agent's forward-looking perspective, in the
implications for taking responsibility for oneself of a history of bad
moral luck, such as comes with a history of child abuse or a heritage of
oppression. Taking responsibility here is likely to involve consciously
developing an integrity that does not develop spontaneously. This, I
argue, is not the same as developing autonomy. The idea is not to
develop boundaries between ourselves and our environments, although
some boundaries may be necessary as means. Rather, the idea is to
develop such things as reliability and bases for self-esteem. For both,
interpersonal relationships can be critical. Being overly concerned
with boundaries may hinder the development of needed interpersonal
relationships.
I begin from the idea, first brought home to me in reading John
Dewey and later reinforced by studying Aristotle and Nietzsche, that we
are born not responsible (or "free") but at most with potentialities for
becoming so, realizable to a greater or lesser extent with luck and hard
work.? How hard the work may be pardy a function of social privilege,
which is also luck, from the standpoint of those doing the work.
The remainder of this chapter has five main stages, followed by a
conclusion. In the first I return to the two perspectives and distinguish
several dimensions of responsibility. The section following that pre-
sents taking responsibility for oneself as developing integrity rather
than autonomy. The next one looks at responsibility for consequences
as governed by higher order principles that refer to basic moral norms
central to moral integrity. Here I argue that, although Kant's meta-
physics of morals is challenged by the idea of moral luck, Kant's princi-
ples of imputation, and similar higher-order principles, can be used to
defend the reality of moral luck against skeptics. The fourth section
develops the idea that human interaction in basic social institutions
and in relationships with significant others is our major source of moral
luck. The fifth takes up survivors' resistance to childhood abuse and to
political oppression, suggesting an analogy between multiple person-
ality and the fragmentation of oppressed communities. Resistance to
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 25
oppression in both cases illustrates the importance as well as the reality
of taking responsibility for ourselves in the face of bad moral luck. I
center taking responsibility for ourselves as a basic case underlying our
ability to take responsibility for other things in any but superficial ways.

Dimensions of Responsibility

The Two Perspectives

Writing nearly three decades ago in a book on responsibility,

Herbert Fingarette said, "I am concerned especially with two essential
dimensions of responsibility: One is that of acceptance, of commit-
ment, care, and concern, and of the attendant elements of choice and
of the creativity in choice; the other dimension is that of the 'forms of
life,' initially socially given and ultimately socially realized, which con-
stitute the form and content of responsibility."8 The orientation I have
in mind in the idea of taking responsibility is, like Fingarette's, basically
forward-looking. My interest here is in his first dimension, that of ac-
ceptance, commitment, care, and concern. By contrast, most essays
on responsibility in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy
look backward. They are preoccupied with punishment and reward,
praise or blame, excuses, mitigation, and so on. This is true, for exam-
ple, of the entry in Paul Edwards's Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy.9 Two nota-
ble exceptions are Joyce Trebilcot's essay on taking responsibility for
sexuality and the first chapter of Martha Nussbaum's study ofluck and
ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. to Williams briefly takes up a
forward-looking orientation in commenting on the inadvisability of
what John Rawls has called "life-plans," or "rational plans of life. 1I
Nagel, in The View from Nowhere, offers as a substitute for autonomy
something that sounds like taking responsibility, in a forward-looking
sense: trying "to live in a way that wouldn't have to be revised in light of
anything more that could be known about us." t2 But for the most part,
both Williams and Nagel seem concerned with attributions of respon-
sibility for what has been done or has occurred rather than with takings
on of responsibility, which can be for what has not yet occurred or has
not yet been done.
The backward-looking orientation embodies a perspective of obser-
vation-what Williams calls "the view from there" as opposed to "the
 C hap t e r Two 26
view from here." The "view from there" is characteristic of an admin-
istrator and, to some extent, of a teacher or therapist. It is basically a
third-person perspective, although we can learn to take this perspective
also on ourselves. The forward-looking orientation embodies a per-
spective of agency, focused on what is not yet completed or does not
yet exist. The two perspectives often are associated with different kinds
of judgments. Attributions of responsibility, made from the observa-
tion perspective, ground judgments of desert, whereas taking on re-
sponsibility from the perspective of agency may involve judgments of
one's worthiness (or fitness) to do so and of the worthwhileness of
doing so.
In arguing that moral responsibility may be ultimately unintelligible,
Nagel contrasts an objective standpoint- "the view from nowhere"-
with a subjective standpoint, "the view from here." This sounds some-
thing like the contrast between the perspective of observation and that
of agency ("the view from there" as opposed to "the view from here").
Yet the two distinctions are not identical. The view "from nowhere" is
depersonalized, whereas the view "from there" need not be. As Peter
Strawson argues in his essay on resenUnent, ordinary interpersonal
interaction is not depersonalized. IS Nor need our third-person judg-
ments of others be depersonalized. Nagel's "view from nowhere" is
supposed to yield objectivity. However, the view "from there" (the per-
spective of observation) need be no more objective than the view "from
here" (the perspective of agency) , even though the language of object
and subject can seem right to describe the two orientations. From
"there," the agent whose responsibility is in question becomes an object
of observation (although not necessarily depersonalized) and respon-
sibility may be attributed. From "here," the agent whose responsibility
is in question is the subject and responsibility may be undertaken. Again,
of course, one can take an observation perspective on oneself, in addi-
tion to taking the perspective of agency, although it is difficult if not
ordinarily impossible to maintain both at once. (As we will see, multiple
personalities do just that.) What is important is that observation need
not move us from a world of agency to a world of nonmoral natural
events.
It may appear that the forward- and backward-looking orientations
illustrate what Carol Gilligan calls perspectives of care and justice. 14
Autonomy is central to her '~ustice perspective," from which we praise,
blame, punish, and reward, whereas interpersonal relationships (a ma-
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 27

jar source ofluck) are central to her "care perspective." To the extent
that care requires forward-looking responsibility, the moral ambition
of escaping luck may be less prevalent than Williams and Nagel have
thought. Perhaps what needs transformation is a morality of auton-
omy-what Carol Gilligan calls a '~ustice orientation." There may be
something to this idea, and yet this picture of the division between
justice and care is too simple (a matter on which the next two chapters
have more to say). For, responsibility with a forward-looking orienta-
tion is ambiguous between a care-taking sense and others, such as ac-
countability and management, which can involve considerations ofjus-
tice. I turn next to such ambiguities in the concept of responsibility.

A mbiguities of "Responsibility"

"Responsible" can describe an agent either as having certain

capacities or as having certain virtues. It can mean either having the
capacity for moral agency, which we presume of people, generally, or
having integrity, including the virtues of conscientiousness and hon-
esty. A responsible person in the second and nonredundant sense is
reliable, has good judgment, gives matters due consideration, and the
like. Such virtues make us worthy of taking on responsibilities. To have
the capacity is merely to be able to do such things. Yet the distinction is
not sharp. Being able, here, is also being good at, to some extent.
Worthiness, in this context, suggests superior ability. We develop re-
sponsibility as a virtue by first taking responsibility in ways that outrun
our apparent present worthiness to do so and then carrying through
successfully. Luck is involved both in the motivation to take respon-
sibility and in our ability to carry through. Where that seems unfair, we
may be able to take the unfairness into account, morally, in some of our
evaluations.
That our motivations and carryings through are embedded in factors
beyond our control does not imply that there is no control after all.
Even the embeddedness of my computer software in a world that out-
runs its controls does not imply that the software does not really con-
trol anything ar that we are always arbitrary to pick out the software
rather than environmental conditions as relevantly responsible. We are
sometimes right to blame the program, although not morally, of
course - because it lacks the sensitivities and abilities of a person. Com-
C hap t e T Two 28
puter programs can be responsible for a variety of things. But they
cannot take responsibility. They cannot (yet) become responsible for
more than they were designed for. (Mine cannot-as far as I know.)
So let us look at the idea of taking responsibility. In taking respon-
sibility, we locate ourselves as morally relevant centers of agency. Dif-
ferent sorts of agency suggest different senses, or dimensions, of taking
responsibility. The following seem worth distinguishing: (1) the admin-
istrative or managerial sense of responsibility-undertaking to size
up and organize possibilities comprehensively, deciding which should
be realized and how; (2) the accountability sense of responsibility-
agreeing to answer or account for something, or finding that one
should be answerable, and then doing so; (3) the care-taking sense
of responsibility-committing oneself to stand behind something, to
back it, support it, make it good (or make good on one's failure to do
so), and following through; (4) the credit sense of responsibility-
owning up to having been the (morally) relevant cause of something's
happening or not happening, taking the credit (or blame) for it. Ini-
tially, I also distinguished an obligation sense of responsibility - accept-
ing or taking on obligations and fulfilling them on one's own initiative.
But that seems needlessly redundant in view of the first three senses,
any of which might be redescribed in terms of obligations. There are
different kinds of obligations worth distinguishing in relation to these
different kinds of responsibilities - formal and impersonal obligations
as opposed to informal and personal ones - which I take up in Chapter
Six in discussing the paradoxical idea of a "debt" of gratitude.
Although the above four senses of responsibility are interrelated and
overlapping, only the last, the "credit" sense, is basically backward-
looking. The first three are basically forward-looking. Each begins with
an undertaking. Each has a second stage, follow-through. These two
stages give rise to another ambiguity of "responsible." The judgment
that someone took responsibility can be withdrawn if the person fails to
follow through. ("I took responsibility for raising you when I adopted
you." "You did not; you were never there when I needed you." Both
claims can be true.)
Further, all four senses of "taking responsibility," including the
backward-looking credit sense, require some initiative from the agent
(different in each case). This is the "taking" part. Agents are more
responsible when they take responsibility in a sense that shows initiative
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 29

than when they do not. Initiative-taking is contrasted with such alterna-

tives as being ordered, told, or asked to do something, or having some-
one else suggest it, but not with such possibilities as having the idea
suggested by a fortuitous combination of events that one observes.
Such observations are not thought to undermine initiative but, rather,
to be occasions for it.
Williams's and Nagel's skeptical views concerning moral responsibil-
ity appear to be based on consideration of the fourth sense (the credit
sense). Justice in punishments and rewards invokes this credit sense.
But retributive justice is only a small part of morality. A basic lack of
justice in our ability to be moral may, in fact, often undermine the
retributive justice of punishments and rewards. From the point of view
of justice itself, perhaps we should often take such justice (that of
punishments and rewards) with more than a grain of salt. I believe we
often do and for just this kind of reason.
Instead of taking responsibility freely, we sometimes find ourselves
with it. We may be given responsibility, assigned it, inherit it, and then
accept or refuse it. Acceptance here may also exhibit a certain initiative
and thus be referred to as taking responsibility, although it exhibits less
initiative than free undertakings. Ethical norms govern all of these
activities and practices. We refer to that for which we have responsibil-
ity as our responsibilities, sometimes as our obligations. In the forward-
looking senses, when we take responsibility for something, there is no
assumption that we produced it. We may embrace or even identify with
what we admittedly did not bring about, such as our ethnic heritage, on
which Chapter Eight has more to say.
The forward-looking senses of "taking responsibility" are more basic
not because praise or blame are due only depending on whether we fol-
low through on voluntary undertakings but because we presuppose at
least a minimal capacity in others to take responsibility in the forward-
looking sense when we praise or blame them. We assume that they can
take responsibility for themselves and their actions, in a general way-
that they can manage themselves (in some respects), for example, and
can make good on (some of) their failures - or at least that they could
at the time that they acted. When we are persuaded that someone is not
capable of such things, we tend to withdraw praise or blame. When we
think others have lost such capacities through their own foolishness, we
may feel frustrated that there is no longer anyone to blame.
C hap t e r Two 30

Autonomy and Integrity

Autonomy

Williams set the stage for exploring moral responsibility with-

out the illusion of transcending luck. His attitude seems ambivalent
between skepticism about the value of morality and curiosity about how
appreciations ofluck might transform it. Often, his skeptical side domi-
nates. My interest is in supporting the value of morality without the
illusions.
To explore responsibility without the illusion of transcending luck,
the perspective of agency in interpersonal relationships is a good place
to begin. In the Anna Karenina story the relevant luck has its source in
such relationships. The Gauguin story also involves interpersonal rela-
tionships (Gauguin's relationships with his wife and children), but they
are not the source of the luck that Williams discusses in considering
whether Gauguin was in some sense justified in his choice to abandon
his family (although that luck could be discussed, too).
Responsibility in relationships necessarily involves luck, because it is
partly up to others how relationships go and what they bring out and
develop in us. Choosing relationships is choosing risks. Significant rela-
tionships affect who we become. They affect our basic values, our sense
of who we are, our commitments, even our abilities to live up to those
commitments.
In affiliating with others, we give up some autonomy, in the sense of
independence from other agents. But we do not necessarily thereby
give up some moral integrity- although we can do that, too, depend-
ing on the character of our affiliates. In affiliating our boundaries relax.
The subject of action is often a "we," fluid in duration and content.
Agency tolerates fuzziness in boundaries. Yet we may retain certain
basic commitments and values and thus our individual integrity. Affilia-
tions that do compromise our integrity are subject to moral criticism.
Some sorts of autonomy, then, are unnecessary for morality.
In resisting Carol Gilligan'S proposal of two ethics, care and justice,
which assigned autonomy to the justice ethic and initially assigned rela-
tionships to the care ethic, Thomas Hill found three kinds of autonomy
that need not be compromised by relationships.15 One is autonomy as
impartiality in certain kinds of judgment. Another is autonomy as an
area within which an agent can decide free of others' interferences. The
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 31
third is autonomy as an agent's freedom from the internal division that
comes of being subject to one's own blind impulses and unexamined
prejudices. The third sounds more like integrity than autonomy. The
clearest is the second, that of areas of decision-making, which defines a
kind of independence from others. As Hill points out, none implies that
we are truly ourselves only when acting impartially, that our moral
principles are independent of contingencies, that they admit no excep-
tions, that they govern only our wills and not our feelings; nor does any
imply "that self-sufficiency is better than dependence, or that the emo-
tional detachment of a judge is better than the compassion of a lover." 16
Nagel has tended to think of luck as "external contingencies." For
autonomy in at least Hill's noninterference sense, the distinction be-
tween external and internal does seem important. Applied to "con-
tingency," however, "external" is either redundant or misleading. It is
redundant if we understand "contingency" as external (to the agent)
by definition. If we do not, two problems arise. One is that interaction
makes what is external to each agent unclear, although it does not
necessarily make their responsibilities unclear. What another does to
me is not always something that just happens to me as opposed to
something I do. Others' behavior can respond to mine; I may provoke,
invite, or otherwise elicit it. But their responses can still be my luck.
This is because the distribution of responsibility in interaction is fre-
quently governed by norms regarding initiation and response. I may be
lucky that you come to visit me and also partly responsible for it, if I
invited you. On the other hand, my misfortune in being assaulted may
not be my responsibility, even though my carrying a wallet or being on
the street unaccompanied was among the causal conditions. If I am
within my rights, I am not ethically responsible for the assault. To at-
tribute responsibility we often need to know whether an agent violated
justified norms. If so, consequences may be imputable specifically to
that agent, despite the involvement of others.
The other problem with the view of luck as an external contingency
is that luck can be clearly internal, as in the Gauguin case. We cannot
always foresee what will emerge from within. Gauguin could not know a
priori whether he would find in himself the talent, originality, and
perseverance of a great painter. The external/internal metaphor for
luck is thus misleading. A more relevant distinction is between what is
and what is not contingent to our moral agency, regardless whether it is
internal or external to ourselves.
C hap t e T Tw 0 32

Integrity

Nagel's concern with externality reflects a concern about

luck's threats to autonomy. Williams, however, has been more con-
cerned about its threats to integrity. The difference may be brought out
as follows. Nagel has focused on the fuzziness of boundaries between
agents and their environments, treating other agents as part of the
environment in the same way as material objects or events in nature.
His skepticism regarding responsibility turns on an apparent arbitrari-
ness, from an observer's point of view, of distinguishing at a given time
what does or does not belong to an agent and thus between what was
done by the agent and what was produced by external factors. Williams,
on the other hand, focuses on changes and developments within the
agent, presupposing a workable sense of the agent's boundaries at a
given time. What Williams finds problematic is the agent's identity
over time, as potentialities unfold and the agent's values mature and
change. Such developments present interesting problems for deter-
mining and fulfilling responsibilities, although they are not the same as
boundary problems. Integrity -literally, wholeness, completeness, un-
dividedness-involves considerations of consistency, coherence, and
commitment, whereas autonomy involves considerations of depen-
dence and independence.
Williams's skepticism regarding the advisability of planning in ad-
vance for one's life as a whole turns on the vulnerability to luck of our
very identity. Because who we become is not immune to luck, our
knowledge from here of what will be in our interests in the future is
limited. Such limitations can threaten one's moral integrity-as a par-
ent, for example (as in the Gauguin case). Contingencies of our de-
velopment inaccessible at the moment of critical choice threaten our
integrity when they interfere with our carrying through on obligations
and commitments.
In taking responsibility for ourselves, we do participate in construct-
ing our identities and thus in constructing some of the conditions of
our own integrity. On Lynne McFall's analysis, however, integrity (with-
out qualification) is not simply a matter of internal consistency or even
coherenceP It requires an identity to which certain basic moral values
and commitments are central. It is thus consistency or coherence with
an identity that includes a certain content. She points out that we
cannot betray commitments central to our identities without feeling
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 33

that we are not the persons we had thought we were. Such commit-
ments can be to other people as well as to projects vulnerable to re-
verses of fortune.
Not all of the contingencies identified by Williams and Nagel
threaten an agent's integrity. Those of the lorry drivers may not, for
example. Here we have negligence rather than choice, and the acci-
dent may not playa central enough role in the unlucky driver's life. Nor
is it necessarily moral integrity that is threatened or supported. Gau-
guin emerged with a self-defining commitment that he could stand
behind and thus with a kind of integrity, although not integrity without
qualification (in Lynne McFall's sense). He found that he could live
with his guilt and go right on painting. But he may not have utterly lost
his moral integrity, either, despite this spectacular lapse in his moral
career. It is conceivable that his character even improved on the whole
as his morale soared. Anna Karenina's choice, in contrast, was a disas-
ter. She could find no way, by herself, to make it good. She gave up her
son and a life of relative freedom for a relationship that she ultimately
could not e~oy. Her integrity was so deeply undermined that she lost
all sense of her worth and ended her life in a somewhat incoherent
vengeful effort at stimulating Vronsky's grief.
To develop and maintain integrity, we need to discover, assess, and
sometimes make changes in our values, traits, and capacities. Luck
enters at several points. The Gauguin and Anna Karenina cases illus-
trate luck of opposite kinds in choices instrumental to the relevant
discoveries. To determine whether it makes sense to hold an agent
responsible, we need to know whether that agent's luck made the de-
velopment or maintenance of integrity impossible or impossibly diffi-
cult. To assess the moral justifiability of one agent's holding another
responsible, we may also want to know how the latter's luck compares
with that of the former.
Since some of our most deeply ingrained values and traits begin in
early unchosen relationships with significant others, we may have diffi-
cult work to find their roots, assess them realistically, and come up with
a tolerably coherent set. Further, since our development can be highly
unpredictable, it is likely to be a matter of luck if we do not find our-
selves later in life committed to responsibilities that it made good sense
to undertake only in terms of values we have since abandoned. Appre-
ciating the sources of our values and traits, the shared nature of our
responsibility for them, and the roles of luck in our having the particu-
C hap t e r Two 34

lar chaotic aggregate that we have can lighten the project of getting to
know ourselves, even introduce humor. In this way it can have some of
the same consequences as taking morality less seriously. What is taken
less seriously, however, may be not morality but more specifically, indi-
vidual autonomy. Perhaps Williams should have concluded that appre-
ciating moral luck makes us take autonomy less seriously, from a moral
point of view.

Kant on Imputation

Williams and Nagel attribute to Kant the idea that morality is

immune to luck, presumably on the basis of Kant's famous remark that
a good will lacking power to accomplish its purposes still shines like a
jewel by its own light ("in a mire of contingencies," as Margaret Walker
puts it).IS Kant's metaphysics of morals does include the idea of an
agency that is not subject to empirical causality. There are many rea-
sons to doubt the coherency of this view. But Kant also does, in effect,
acknowledge a certain role of luck in determining our responsibilities,
an important wedge for the insertion of moral luck, however inconsis-
ten t that may be with his other views. His brief remarks on responsibil-
ity-or, as he calls it, "imputation" -acknowledge luck in what can be
imputed to us. And what can be imputed to us can have implications for
obligations we then come to have, which we mayor may not be able to
fulfill. Anna Karenina, for example, had an obligation to protect her
son from some of the worst consequences of her decision to leave her
husband, and ultimately she was unable to fulfill that obligation.
Kant's principles of imputation are higher-order moral principles in
that they presuppose and refer to more basic principles of right and
wrong, which determine whether an action was "due" or not. At the
end of the general Preface to his Metaphysic ofMorals, Kant asserts:

The good or bad effects of a due action, like the effects fol-
lowing from the omission of a meritorious action, cannot be
imputed to the subject (modus imputationis toliens).
The good effects of a meritorious action, like the bad ef-
fects of an unlawful action, can be imputed to the subject
( modus imputationis ponens) .19
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 35
Kant's principles are sketchy and incomplete. They do not say, for
example, what others are justified in doing to those to whom conse-
quences can be imputed or what new obligations one may incur as a
result of such imputation. Yet what they sketch is part of what is needed
in a theory of moral responsibility. There is an implicit acknowledg-
ment of luck in our responsibilities insofar as the consequences to
which Kant refers include those the agent neither foresaw nor in-
tended. Although he uses the language of "can" and "cannot," he is
not articulating mere logical possibilities. These principles are put for-
ward as moral principles determining what can be rightfully imputed.
Imputation involves not only the assigning of credit or blame but
also the determining of forward-looking responsibilities. If bad conse-
quences of my behavior are imputable to me, I may thereby acquire the
responsibility to compensate others for damages. Applied to Gauguin
and Anna Karenina, Kant's imputation principle for "unlawful action"
(in the moral sense of "law") makes each responsible for bad conse-
quences of their choices, as they chose to violate obligations already
undertaken.
And what of the bad consequences of a meritorious action? Or of
undertaking a risky one that was not required? We can become respon-
sible for consequences here as well, although Kant does not mention
these cases. In his infamous essay, "On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies
from Benevolent Motives," in which he defends telling the truth to a
would-be murderer about the presence in your house of an innocent
fugitive whom you had, presumably, undertaken to protect, Kant tacitly
appeals to his imputation principle for "unlawful actions" (the princi-
ple that consequences can be imputed to an agent who acts wrongly).
An imputation principle regarding the voluntary undertaking of risks
not wrong in themselves would have served him better. For, consider
what he says:

If you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning

a murder, you are legally responsible for all the conse-
quences .... It is possible that whilst you have honestly an-
swered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended
victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unob-
served, and so not have come in the way ofthe murderer, ...
whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house. and he
C hap t e T Two 36

had really gone out (though unknown to you), so that the

murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on
him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of
his death. 20

Kant is not simply reporting here on positive law but is taking a position
on how the liar ought to be judged, as a matter of justice. That view
would accord with his second imputation principle if we were to con-
cede the wrongness of the lie (which probably most of us would not; it is
easier to defend the view that telling the truth here would be wrong).
Kant's conclusion about responsibility presupposes, rather than estab-
lishes, that the lie was wrong. Although that presupposition is not plau-
sible as the case stands, Kant's conclusion about responsibility for the
consequences gains in plausibility if we suppose that the liar had the
option of remaining silent regarding the fugitive's whereabouts with-
out, in effect, communicating an answer to the question. That is, sup-
pose the lie were in itself not wrong but merely risky, that it was not
necessary to protect the fugitive, although there was a chance that it
would. IfI lie in such a case, I assume a risk (against which I would have
been protected, morally, if my lie were morally required). If luck is
against me, I become responsible in this instance for another's death,
not just causally but morally, in that I may incur responsibilities to
survivors as a result.
Apparently taking off from Kant's infamous essay and increasing
along precisely those lines the plausibility of Kant's conclusions,Jean-
Paul Sartre gives us another example of moral luck. In his powerful
short story "The Wall" a political prisoner is about to be shot (at
the wall) for refusing to divulge the whereabouts of his collaborator,
Ramon Gris.2l In a last-minute attempt to divert his executioners from
finding Gris, the prisoner invents a story that Gris is hiding in the
cemetery. Unbeknownst to him, Gris has in fact lost his asylum and
needing a new hiding place, has moved to the cemetery, with the result
that the authorities find him by following the prisoner's directions. The
prisoner is then freed as an informer (and thereby unwitting betrayer
of his cause) instead of dying a hero. "Traitor" is too strong a judg-
ment. But was he innocent of Gris's death? I do not think so.
Yet another horror story of moral luck, illustrating the same princi-
ple, is Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, in which a sled crash intended as a
double suicide instead maims both parties for life, spiritually as well as
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 37
physicaIIy.22 Ifwe grant that the suicide would not have been wrong in
itself, this story portrays another moral risk. Unlike the lorry driver
examples, it will not do here simply to conclude that the disaster's
improbability justified its risk. The improbability of the disaster may
have justified the conclusion that the risk was probably justifiable,
which is another matter. That conclusion acknowledges moral luck.
Ethan Frome seems to have acknowledged it. At any rate, in the story he
accepts the responsibilities of caring for both his wife and his one-time
beloved, although the temptation to suicide could easily be far greater
after such an accident than before.
Such stories offer tough cases for critics unconvinced of the reality of
incident moral luck. Critics point out that luck in Williams's lorry
driver example determines whether anyone has evidence to blame the
driver but not whether the driver is really culpable. 23 One critic, Hen-
ningJensen, also points out that resulting damage not within the risk
created by the faulty character of the agent's act should not subject the
agent to censure. 24 Both points are well-taken for that kind of case. Yet,
the driver, presumably, had an obligation to be on the road (we might
take that as a metaphor for making a living), which inevitably involves
some degree of risk, and thus something like Kant's first imputation
principle comes into play, namely, the principle that absolves us from
responsibility for the bad consequences of those of our actions that
were morally "due" (required). As "The Wall" and Ethan Frome show,
however, we cannot always avail ourselves of this kind of excuse from
responsibility for consequences not entirely of our own making. Nei-
ther the prisoner nor Ethan Frome was obligated to act as he did.
By Kant's second imputation principle, both Gauguin and Anna Ka-
renin a incur responsibility for bad consequences of their choices by
virtue of acting contrary to their obligations. Gauguin was luckier in
that he was at least able to make something of himself, even though that
did not compensate his family. Anna Karenina was deeply unlucky. She
became an instrument of her own deterioration, even though, causally
speaking, it was hardly all her doing. If her husband Alexey Alex-
androvitch, her lover Vronsky, some of her former society friends, and
sexist social norms were also responsible, that is a separate point. Her
responsibility is determinable somewhat independently of others', in
terms of the risks of her own choices.
The cases of Ethan Frome and Sartre's prisoner are importantly
more like those of Gauguin and Anna Karenina than like that of the
C hap t e r Two 38
unlucky lorry driver, from a moral point of view. Like the driver, Ethan
Frome and the prisoner chose in the absence of knowledge of the
consequences. Yet, unlike the driver (and like Gauguin and Anna Ka-
renina), they could not cite obligations in justification for proceeding
as they did in the face of relevant unknowns.
The claim that good luck might morallyjustify such choices as those of
Gauguin or Anna Karenina needs qualification. Whatever the further
results, the fact is not altered that others have been wronged. Paradox-
ically, in consequence of such wrongs an agent's moral career and
character may actually improve. A new relationship or environment
may bring out better things in the agent even though prior obligations
conflict with the choices initiating these changes. Thus we may find the
choices of Gauguin and Anna Karenina assessable adequately, even in
moral terms, only in retrospect. Whether others are wronged in the
immediate situation is only part of a fuller moral assessment of the
agent that also includes how the agent's character and moral career
develop. There may be no simple way to do justice to the complexities
of such an assessment,just as there is no simple way to do justice to the
assessment of conduct that is morally wrong although motivated by
admirable moral concerns.
In a perceptive critique of Nagel's essay on moral luck, Margaret
Walker (then Coyne) makes good sense of the idea that major life
choices may be open only to retrospective justification.

The agent is not a self-sufficient rational will fully expressed

in each episode of choice, but is a history of choices ... for
whom episodes are meaningful in terms of rather larger
stretches.... We ought not be surprised that ... pivotal epi-
sodes which give sense to large segments are adequately
judgeable [sic] only in retrospect. 25

We can take on responsibilities long before we are in a position to know

whether what we are doing is justifiable in terms of its relations to other
parts of our lives. This suggests that what is at stake in moral justifica-
tion may be not just an action butthe agent. Some judgments of whether
an agent is justified may resemble Aristotelian judgments of eudaimonia
(commonly translated "happiness" - "happy" in the sense of "fortu-
nate") about which Aristotle even wondered whether we needed to
consider what happens after the agent has died. 26 An important point
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 39

for present purposes is that when we have or take responsibility for

something that turns out badly, that typically gives us further respon-
sibilities. Since the process of responding to our previous choices (and
failures to choose) can go on indefinitely, it may be impossible to say
whether a person is '~ustified" until that person can no longer choose.
Although Kant admitted luck in the shape and complexity of our
moral careers under his principles of imputation, and although he also
recognized that gender and ethnicity introduce elements of luck into
character development, he did not appreciate the implications of such
admissions for his metaphysics of moral agency.27 He presented striving
for moral perfection as though a morally complete self were present
each moment, flexing its will like an invisible muscle in a material
vacuum.

Interpersonal Relationships as Sources ofMoral Luck

Because of the ease of sliding from the perspective of agency,

within which we often excuse agents on the basis of nonmoral events, to
a perspective from which we see only a nonmoral world of events, Nagel
found "moral responsibility" an ultimately incoherent concept. Yet at
the same time he found it to be a concept that we cannot help using. 28
He has not sought to abandon it. Rather, his account invites attempts to
show that moral responsibility is more than a superficial idea.
One such attempt is the essay by Margaret Walker, mentioned above,
in which she analyzes the concept of luck in relation to agency, arguing
that luck and agency actually involve each other. "These notions," she
writes, "are full members of a cluster of mutually sustaining concepts-
the agency-matrix-which sort, and so stand (or fall) together."29 On
her account, "For something to appear as good or bad luck to us re-
quires that it be unforeseen or unpredicted (but it need not be of an
unforeseeable or unpredictable kind in principle, or ultimately); and
that there is some agent to whom it stands in a particular way, in two
respects. It must not be imputable to the agent as the agent's immedi-
ate issue, and it must bear favorably or unfavorably on the plans, de-
signs, intended outcomes and payoffs, or projects of that agent. "30 To
this we might add that what is central to something'S nature is not part
of its luck, for it is not then contingent with respect to that thing.
This analysis brings out the relativity of something's status as a piece
Chapter Two 40

ofluck. My luck may be your responsible (or irresponsible) behavior. As

Nel Noddings observes, "how good I can be is partly a function of how
you-the other-receive and respond to me."31 In their abstract ac-
counts, Williams and Nagel identify luck with contingencies both exter-
nal and "natural" in a sense that contrasts with "moral." Of their
examples, however, only the Gauguin case turns on nonmoral ("natu-
ral") contingencies-namely, the talent and determination requisite
to greatness-and they are internal to the agent. They belong to Gau-
guin's capacities for agency, although not for moral agency (and thus
remain contingencies with respect to his moral agency). The luck of
Anna Karenina and of the German citizens, however, which also belong
to the realm of agency, is not entirely "natural" in a sense that contrasts
with "moral." This is because it consists largely of unforeseen interper-
sonal interactions, with consequences for who the interacting agents
become. To the extent that who they are when they choose is thus
problematic, it is also problematic whose luck is in question. Presum-
ably, it is the luck of Anna Karenina or the German citizens, at a particu-
lar point in time, the luck that they have such futures. The negligent
lorry driver's bad luck is also not "natural" in a sense that contrasts
easily with "moral." Although clearly external, this luck consists in the
act of another, namely, the child who ran out into the street. 32
None of these contingencies leads us out of the realm of agency to
the world of mere cause and effect. They lead us back to the worlds of
other agents, who may be victims (or beneficiaries) of still others, and
so on. The literature on child abuse is a good example of such histo-
ries. 33 Luck central to the plots of ancient Greek tragedies that are
discussed by Martha Nussbaum also consists primarily in the actions of
others. Hecuba's character, for example, degenerates in consequence
of her discovery, after she has been enslaved and her daughter Polyx-
ena sacrificed, of the murder of her youngest son by the man with
whom he was left for safekeeping. 34 Recognizing moral luck does not
require what Nagel calls "the view from nowhere." All we need is the
"view from there." Focusing as Nagel does on relationships between
acts and events is neither necessary nor sufficient for coming to terms
with moral luck. It is insufficient because as long as agents are formed
and modified through interaction with other agents, there is bound to
be moral luck within the world of agency. And it is unnecessary if the
most important sources ofluck do tend to lie in human interaction and
development.
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 41

Obvious m,yor sources of constitutive moral luck are relationships

with significant others (parents, lovers) and relationships structured by
basic social institutions (educational, economic). The point of taking
responsibility for institutions and relationships is often to resist evils,
such as those of oppression and abuse. The point of taking respon-
sibility for oneself is often to avoid complicity in such evils. In looking at
how bad luck is sometimes met and even overcome in a highly self-
conscious way perhaps we can see more clearly the development of
responsible agency and why it matters.

Dppressiun and Childhood Abuse

Women's oppression and childhood abuse are intertwined his-

torically. Both are morally damaging, and the damage of one can appar-
ently lead to that of the other. Oppression makes some of our choices
difficult, others tempting, attractive, easy. It sets up child abuse by de-
fining wretched conditions of childcare, making targets for sexual
abuse of those who are fragile - the feminine, who are taught to be
childlike, and real children-and insulating caretakers from account-
ability. Although it is morally problematic for beneficiaries of oppres-
sion to hold its victims responsible for bad conduct, victims have re-
sponsibilities of their own to peers and descendants. Overcoming and
resisting our own oppression require us to take responsibility for situa-
tions for which others could not reasonably hold us responsible (in the
credit sense), despite our complicity. Thus activists often prefer the
term "survivor" to "victim," to emphasize activity rather than passivity,
while at the same time retaining a sense of appropriate attributions of
responsibility in the backward-looking, credit-and-blame sense. 35
Taking responsibility is often complicated for the oppressed by moral
damage they have sustained. One's character and values can change
dramatically in the process of liberation. Some changes are even con-
stitutive of liberation. In becoming liberated we discover and create
"truer" values, even "truer" selves. We may discover the value of honor,
for example, and cease to identify with the perspectives of those who
put us down. Such resistance can come only from within. Liberation
cannot come simply from outside. But how is it possible for us as dam-
aged agents to liberate ourselves from the damage? And how can we act
for our futures, not knowingjust whom we may liberate?
C hap t e r Two 42

When I think about this, I find that it helps to apply to oppressed

individuals strategies analogous to those that an oppressed group uses
in developing responsible agency. What is needed, first of all, is a kind
of internal unity, integrity. Oppression splinters us (both within our-
selves, as individuals, and from each other, within a group) by putting
us constantly into double binds. A damaged individual who has splin-
tered into several personalities, identities, or personality or identity
fragments may be importantly analogous to an oppressed group. Even
those of us who have not splintered that far are likely to be sites of
seriously warring inclinations, moods, likes, and dislikes elicited by the
double-binds of oppressive institutions.
An oppressed group (such as a group of women or members of a mi-
nority religious or ethnic group) takes responsibility for resisting its op-
pression by addressing, first, its internal hostilities (hostilities of mem-
bers of the group toward other members), substituting strong internal
bonds and cooperative networks. This requires internal communica-
tion, discovery of shared experience, learning about the sources of
internal hostilities and how they function to mold members of the
group in the interests of outsiders and to keep them preoccupied with
basic day-to-day survival. Establishing internal bonds requires members
of the group to discover what is of value in themselves independently of
service to outsiders. Resistance also requires coming up with internal
resources and reserving them for internal use, severing intimate con-
nections with a hostile environment, learning to say no to external
would-be controllers and to take the consequences. By such means, a
group moves toward becoming a community. Its members may get into
position to resist their oppression, to refuse to be molded, reduced,
and immobilized, or marginalized, disempowered, exploited, and so
forth. Their need for autonomy in relation to a hostile environment is
relative to their history of oppression. Such autonomy does not imply
that they will not be affected by what is outside. Rather, they will be
affected differently. They will develop their own protection systems
against outside dangers wherever possible, for example, instead of rely-
ing on outside protection, an example discussed further in Chapter
Five in connection with rape terrorism.
In th.e case of some adults who were severely abused as children, the
analogy between an oppressed group and a morally damaged individ-
ual is striking. If some who dissociate into multiple identities or frag-
ments do so as a way to cope with stresses of abuse, they can also be
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 43

like oppressed groups of people in the internal-or "horizontal"-

hostilities and tensions they manifest. Just as some members of op-
pressed communities are often dangerously hostile to others, some
personality fragments can also be dangerously hostile to others. Such
internal war is counterproductive with respect to resisting outside op-
pression, although it may be the best a young person (or members of a
group) can do at a given time to counteract depression and survive to
an age at which more creative strategies become possible.
As a result of the recovered memory debates, the topic of multiple
personality and its relation to childhood abuse has become even more
controversial than it already was. 36 It already was controversial among
psychiatrists who disagreed with each other on the question whether or
not multiple personality is induced by suggestion by therapists. Now it
is controversial among a wider public who disagree with each other
about the trustworthiness of memory claims made by personalities or
fragments, regardless how those personalities or fragments originated.
The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R) states under "pre-
disposing factors" to multiple personality that "several studies indicate
that in nearly all cases, the disorder has been preceded by abuse (often
sexual) or another form of severe emotional trauma in childhood. "37
The fourth edition more cautiously states that individuals with "dis-
sociative identity disorder" ("multiple personality disorder" in the pre-
vious edition) frequently report "having experienced severe physical and
sexual abuse, especially during childhood" and that "controversy sur-
rounds the accuracy of such reports. "38 Both editions find the condi-
tion diagnosed three to nine times more frequently in adult females
and find more personalities or identities in females than in males. 39
The hypothesis that a misogynist social environment is often implicated
is both difficult to resist and difficult to prove.
Regarding the validity of recovered memories, I take seriously, for
purposes of publicity or legal action, the need to corroborate reports of
abuse. Why suppose that memories here - unlike everywhere else-
are infallible? But also I find that in many discussions of such reports,
the independent evidence looks strong.
In published "multobiographies," as Ian Hacking calls them, of
those who have been identified, or have identified themselves, as multi-
ple personalities, there are often narratives of childhood sexual abuse
perpetrated by trusted caretakers. 40 Hacking is skeptical of a causal
Chapter Two 44

connection between abuse and dissociation even where there is no

reasonable doubt of the reality of either abuse or dissociation. Unlike
some skeptics, he does not doubt the reality of either widespread child
abuse or the experience, independent of therapeutic suggestion, of
multiple identities. Yet, if dissociation is a response in the sense of a
creative solution to the stresses of abuse, it should not be surprising
that studies do not reveal it to be simply a causal effect of abuse. For
responses in this context are actions taken by agents who can see them-
selves as choosing from among various ways of responding. The search
for a causal connection comes from what Strawson might call a de-
personalized point of view. Understanding dissociation as a response
comes from a personalized one.
It is plausible that multiple personality, like the hostile divisions
among members of an oppressed group, may have different sources,
one of which is childhood abuse. For present purposes, however, it
matters less whether the abuse is real in just the ways that an agent
reports it than that she has such memories. Such memories are them-
selves a source of stress. What matters even more is the damage to
integrity that can come from dissociation and subsequent horizontal
hostility. Reading multobiographies of women some of whose person-
alities or fragments recall childhood abuse and others of whose frag-
ments seem to identify with the abuser calls to my mind the experience
of feminist consciousness-raising in the 1970s. Many of us, who did not
think of ourselves as dissociated (however alienated we might have
been), found that we had learned to identify with perspectives that
were not our own, perspectives opposed to our own best interests. In
the process of rejecting these identifications, we were not always right
about the particular abuses we thought we had suffered from individ-
ual men. Yet what was important was the true realization that most
of us had suffered those kinds of abuses from men and from male-
dominated institutions. Identifying with their perspectives on ourselves
seemed to us, in retrospect, to have been a coping strategy. Our ability
to describe in that way what we did also revealed to us that we had, as
individuals, more than one perspective and that some of our perspec-
tives conflicted with each other. Seeing such phenomena as responses
to external abuse makes a certain sense of them. But they present
practical moral problems for anyone who has such experience, regard-
less of their source. Whatever the source of dissociation, fragments that
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 45

are at war with each other interfere with the possibility of effective
resistance to real future dangers.
In multiple personality there appear to be several centers of con-
sciousness (from two to more than a hundred) with varying degrees of
mutual awareness and communication, in some cases, no communica-
tion or mutual awareness at all. Some appear to take a perspective of
observation on the one "in charge of the body," who takes the perspec-
tive of agency and may have no awareness of other personalities or
fragments of herself who are "watching." Amnesia (part of DSM-IV's
diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder) presents obvious
problems for reliability. The often conflicting styles, temperaments,
desires, and scruples of different identities can also present major prob-
lems for one's ability to function as a social agent.
DSM-IV presents dissociative identity disorder explicitly as an integ-
rity problem: "Dissociative Identity Disorder reflects a failure to inte-
grate various aspects of identity, memory, and consciousness." But
whose integrity problem is it? On the answer to this question DSM-IV
appears to be in agreement with the philosopher Stephen Braude in
assuming, or positing, some underlying psychic agency who has the
integrity problem. 41 The analogy of an oppressed group not yet a com-
munity suggests a potential agent, however, rather than an underlying
actual agent. In either case, the practical task is to produce appropri-
ately responsible agency.
In dysfunctional multiples, some personalities exploit the naivete of
others, especially of the one usually identified in the literature as the
host. When in trouble, they may withdraw, leaving a perplexed am-
nesiac to take the consequences. Morally, a multiple (or even a frag-
ment) who exhibits such behavior lacks integrity. Instead of taking
responsibility, the dysfunctional multiple backs off. Her values, as those
of a fragmented being at war with herself, are mutually inconsistent. No
one is sufficiently in charge for her to be reliable, although she may be
clever and many of her fragments or personalities highly skilled at
"passing," having learned how from an early age.
In the case of the woman known as Sybil (and in many others), the
therapist took reintegration as a goal, understanding reintegration as
achieved when there is one unified sense of identity with no serious
amnesia. 42 In the case ofTruddi Chase, however, narrated by several of
her ninety-two personalities, the therapist deemed such reintegration
Chapter Two 46

impossible because the fragment who might have been identified as the
"host" had she been available (the one from whom the first others had
split) was reported by the others as having "died," that is, as having
ceased to have direct access to the external world, to be in charge of the
body, at an early age. 43 Instead of reintegration, her therapist proposed
the goal of cooperation among the remaining personalities, which they
eventually accepted.
Fragments of a dysfunctional multiple, like the individuals in an op-
pressed group, cannot take responsibility effectively alone. Whatever
one does is likely to be undone by others. Some sort of integration is
needed to interrelate differently and thereby cease complicity in one's
own oppression or in maintaining one's own distress. This requires that
individuals, or fragments, learn to listen to each other and respect each
other's point of view, to bond with each other instead of doing each
other in, to learn as much as possible about the history and sources of
internal hostilities and relevant external exploitations.
Ordinary acquisition of integrity, like the integration of a multiple,
also requires reconciling values, perceptions, and commitments. It re-
quires internal bonding - being committed to care for ourselves as well
as respecting ourselves, distinguishing between friendly and hostile
points of view on ourselves and within ourselves, recognizing the differ-
ences between being valued for ourselves and being valued only for
what we are to others.
For a survivor of abuse who experiences herself as multiple the ac-
quisition of integrity can have a life or death importance. Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina ended her life in part because she could not or would
not accept responsibility for the life to which her choice led. Some
multiples live in fear of being murdered by a personality or fragment
whose values and commitments may be wildly disregarded by others.
Some fragments with such murderous intentions, ,apparently, have the
illusion that they will survive the murder. Even where the importance is
not life or death, integrity is important to morale and to the possibility
of self-esteem and pride. Having certain kinds of commitments and
living up to them both define who we are and form a basis for valuing
ourselves.
It may be objected that the analogy between the integrity of a group
and that of an individual is unsound, because an adult is supposed to
have one unified sense of identity, whereas a group is supposed to have
 RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL LUCK 47

recognizably different members, each with senses of their own identi-

ties as individuals and not just as parts of the group. Yet a group can also
become an agent in its own right, as when it becomes a community.
And it is difficult to clarify the assumption that normal adults are sup-
posed to have just one unified sense of identity if that means anything
more than that they are not supposed to have serious amnesia prob-
lems or be deeply torn apart by their conflicting inclinations and val-
ues. Communities are not supposed to have serious communication
gaps, either, or be seriously torn apart by conflicting interest groups.
Even without amnesia, as individuals we may easily have more than one
set of personality traits and values, which we may not bother to inte-
grate unless circumstances call for it. Different interactions and en-
vironments actualize different and sometimes dissonant sides of our-
selves. Taking responsibility for oneself need not presuppose the goal
of eliminating internal difference or divergence. The goal instead may
be, as in the case of the Troops for Truddi Chase and in the case of
pluralistic societies, cooperation or commitment to shared basic moral
values, such as honesty and respect.

Conclusion

By looking at the contrived acquisition of responsibility (and

at choices to abdicate responsibility) in response to bad moral luck,
I mean to give substance to the idea that understanding moral luck
can add depth to our understanding of moral responsibility. Potenti-
alities for becoming responsible may be realized without much self-
consciousness in a moderately favorable environment. Agents are then
in a favorable position to enter into durable positive relationships and
to resist threats,of harm to themselves and their communities. Under
such conditions, autonomy may be less important than friendly inter-
dependencies.
What develops without much self-consciousness under moderately
favorable conditions may be stunted or damaged by oppression or
abuse. The development of responsible agency then may require the
deliberate construction of friendly space and a monitoring of what is
permitted inside. The need for such autonomy, unlike the need for
integrity, is thus seen as specific rather than universal and as having as
Chapter Two 48
its background a hostile environment from which separation is neces-
sary for healing and growth. Such autonomy may be a prerequisite to
integrity.
Responsible agency is not defined simply by autonomy, however.
Morally responsible agency includes the integrity of having basic moral
commitments and sticking by them. Responsible agency does not nec-
essarily dissolve with an appreciation of our interconnections with the
environments that produce and sustain us. Rather, it dissolves when
internal connections are broken or inadequately developed. Friendly
external bonds can play an important role in establishing and main-
taining good internal connections. It may be our luck to have to, or not
to have to, work hard or self-consciously to develop and preserve such
bonds.
Nor is the importance of morally responsible agency diminished by
differences among us in the ease or difficulty of developing it. For the
importance of morality does not rest simply on the extent to which it
enables us to take credit for self-manufacture. Its importance lies, in
part, in grounding the will to resist such things as abuse, exploitation,
and oppression.
 c h a p e r T h r e e

WOMEN'S VOICES
AND FEMALE CHARACTER

P asts we inherit affect who we can become. As gen-

de red beings in a society with a history of patriarchy,
women and men inherit different pasts, and conse-
quently different social expectations, lines of com-
munication, opportunities, barriers. If these things
influence character development, they make gender part of our moral
luck. This chapter takes up female moral luck in misogynist society. I
understand female character not as one type of character but as a
family of character possibilities that are understandable in terms of
one's social positioning as female.
The idea that virtues (and presumably faults) may be gender-related
is suggested by Carol Gilligan's work on female moral development,
although she does not frame her hypotheses in terms of virtues and
vices. In her influential book In a Different Voice she reports hearing two
different moralities in the voices of women and men. She describes
them as an ethic of care (or response) in the case of many women and
an ethic of justice (or rights) in the case of most men.) She does not
hold that either gender, or either ethic, is superior to the other on the
whole but only that each centers different values and concepts. This, in
turn, suggests that each gender may have different characteristic vir-
tues (and, presumably, faults). Although she finds the voices empiri-
cally correlated with women and men, she says these voices are "charac-
terized not by gender but theme."2 Yet the empirical correlations are
interesting for ethics given that ethical theorists have been until re-
cently almost exclusively relatively privileged men.
The correlation is not simple, however. In an essay published five
years after In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan refines her account of the
voices' distribution. She notes that although nearly all interviewees
could readily understand and enter into the spirit of both justice and
care orientations, they could not enter into both at the same time and
C hap t e r T h r e e 50

that most tended to have a focus on, or preference for, one or the other
as the one that felt more natural, more like the "right" one. In a study
of eighty "educationally advantaged North American adolescents and
adults," she found that "two-thirds ... focused their attention on one
set of concerns, with focus defined as 75 percent or more of the consid-
erations raised pertaining either to justice or to care," that men and
women "were equally likely to demonstrate the focus phenomenon
(two-thirds of both sexes fell into the outlying focus categories)" but
also that "with one exception, all of the men who focused, focused on
justice" while "the women divided, with roughly one third focusing on
justice and one third on care."3 In other words, apparently, the focus of
half of the women who focused was on justice. Still, if representative,
her findings would be significant in that were only North American
educationally advantaged men studied, the care focus could be missed
altogether.
The European educationally advantaged ,creators of much, if not
most, modern ethical theory sound like the men in Carol Gilligan'S
studies. 4 She may be right to emphasize differences in theme more
than gender if the gender correlation gains its significance from so-
cial and political histories. That it does so appears to be supported by
Sandra Harding's finding that the voices of Mrican men have more in
common with Carol Gilligan'S care ethics than with the justice ethics
heard in the voices of European American men. 5 Joan Tronto concurs,
noting that "a more telling finding [than the gender correlation] is
that the differences Gilligan found between men and women may also
describe the differences between working and middle class, white and
ethnic minorities, and that a gender difference may not be prominent
among other groups in the population besides the relatively privileged
people who have constituted Gilligan's samples."6 Ifwe distinguish gen-
der as a social construction from sex as a biological category, however,
attending to the gender correlation of Carol Gilligan's voices within
societies that have histories of misogyny may be a good way both to
expose biases in ethical theory and at the same time to gain deeper
understanding of what has gone ethically wrong in those histories.
The two moralities as Carol Gilligan heard them differ in how they
represent the self, relationships, and moral dilemmas, in where they
find the greatest dangers, and in how they resolve conflicts. The care
voice speaks of conflicts of responsibilities where the justice voice
speaks of conflicts of rights. The care voice resolves conflicts by the
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 51

method of inclusion. The justice voice uses methods of fairness, such as

balancing claims or taking turns. Care encourages contextual thinking,
narrative style. Justice encourages categorical thinking, applications of
abstract principles. The justice voice finds aggression the major source
of hurt. The care voice finds it in failures of response. The care voice
defines the self through weblike networks of relationship. The justice
voice defines the self in terms of individual achievement, understand-
ing relationships hierarchically. Studies of their fantasies seem to show
women who speak with the voice of care seeking safety in affiliation but
men who speak with the voice ofjustice finding it in independence.
On the question of how these two patterns are related to each other,
Carol Gilligan's views have changed. Her early idea was that at maturity
members of each sex came to appreciate truths available to the other
all along and that the two perspectives were then integrated: women
with a care perspective found that it is important to include themselves
in the range oftheir care (and thus to insist on rights for women); men
with a justice focus found that it is not enough to restrain their aggres-
sion but also important to extend themselves in caring ways. "Develop-
ment of both sexes would therefore seem to entail an integration of
rights and responsibilities through the discovery of the complemen-
tarity of these disparate views."7 Mter further interviews, however, she
seems to have dropped the complementarity idea, putting in its stead
the idea that justice and care offer alternative gestalts, like the famous
duck-rabbit. We can conceptualize morality either way, she finds, but
not both ways at once, and each gestalt has a place for everything found
in the other one, but a different place. s
In allowing interconnections between the concepts of justice and
care, the new view seems a theoretical improvement. Yet the inability to
take both perspectives at once remains troubling in that we may need
sometimes to resolve conflicts between the claims of rights and those of
personal attachment. How can we judge ethical conflicts between con-
siderations ofjustice and care if we cannot hold them in mind without a
priori subordinating considerations of one sort to those of the other?9
As Marilyn Friedman argues in looking at cases, neither a priori rank-
ing is plausible. IO An inability to entertain both perspectives at once
may suggest the presence of something other than justice and care-
such as an oppressive relationship - skewing both perspectives.
Carol Gilligan's finding of gender-bias in her (late) colleague Law-
rence Kohlberg's conception of human moral development is implic-
C hap t e T T h Tee 52

itly similarly critical of contemporary philosophical ethics. Kohlberg's

stage analysis of moral development traces the growth of a sense of
justice more or less as John Rawls understands the sense of justice. I I
The stage that Kohlberg long regarded as highest is an orientation to
principles of justice and welfare governing relationships on a formal,
impersonal basis. Like his predecessorJean Piaget, he presentedjustice
as evolving from and replacing an ethic of personal relations. Yet per-
sonal relationships are not left behind in the lives of most adults. Nei-
ther considered the form moral maturity might take in informal, per-
sonal relationships, such as those of Anna Karenina with her husband,
their son, and with Count Vronsky. Nor has modern philosophical eth-
ics paid serious attention, until very recent decades, to personal rela-
tionships and their dilemmas. If something like Carol Gilligan's hy-
pothesis were true, we might expect a bias in ethical theory toward
justice, rights, and abstract action-guiding principles, given the history
of sexism. Such biases are in fact evident in the ideal contract and
utilitarian ethical theories that have dominated modern European and
American philosophy for more than two centuries. Yet these kinds of
theories have not agreed with each other on the priority ofjustice, nor
have they always been dominant.
An ethically more modest hypothesis -less exciting, perhaps less
romantic-also found in Carol Gilligan's work but often not distin-
guished from the '~ustice and care" hypothesis, is that the respon-
sibilities of the different kinds of relationships that have been the focus
of the choices of women and men in sexist societies yield different
ethical preoccupations, methods, priorities, even concepts. A focus on
differences in context and relationship is characteristic of the writings
on women and care by Annette Baier, Virginia Held, Sarah Hoagland,
and Joan Tronto.12 In patriarchies, more of the responsibilities of cer-
tain personal and informal relationships are assigned to women and
more of those of formal and impersonal relationships defined by social
institutions to men. Drawing on different senses of responsibility distin-
guished in the previous chapter, I propose in the final section of this
chapter to substitute for the justice and care hypothesis a more modest
hypothesis connecting different senses of responsibility with the dif-
feren t voices. Even if ideals of justice do have special connections with
some kinds of responsibilities and ideals of care have special connec-
tions with others, framing the hypothesis in terms of responsibilities
may encourage more questioning ofthe justice of background distribu-
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 53
tions of responsibilities and their impact on the development of caring
dispositions.
A significant advantage of the more modest hypothesis is that it will
put us in a better position to identify moral damage resulting from and
perpetuating sex oppression. When people find it necessary to affiliate
with "protectors," for example, their affirmations of those affiliations
may have little to do with love, though the language of love be the
language of their discourse. Women's care-taking is often unpaid or
underpaid labor performed from a variety of motives. Even more likely
to be mistaken for a caring virtue is women's misplaced gratitude to
men who take less than full advantage of their power to abuse or who
offer the privilege of service in exchange for "protection." Women
have assumed care-taking responsibilities as a debt of gratitude for such
"benefactions," a matter explored further in Chapter Six.
Misplaced gratitude is one kind of moral damage women have suf-
fered. There are others. Feminist thinkers are understandably reluc-
tant to address publicly women's reputation for lying, cunning, deceit,
and manipulation. But, are these vices, one may ask, if they are needed
for self-defense? They are surely not virtues, even if they are justified
from the point of view ofjustice. Those who tell just the right lies to the
right people on the right occasions may have a useful and needed skill.
But it does not promote human good, even if it is needed for survival
under oppressive conditions. Human good may be unrealizable under
such conditions. Lying blocks the trust of friendship. Adrienne Rich,
exploring the idea of honor among women, noted long ago how dis-
ruptive lying is of trust. 13 Even though you are confident that I will lie to
you only when I am justified, if you believe I am often justified, how can
you rely on me?
Thus we need to be sensitive to the possibility that members of a
sexist society give voice to vices or survival strategies (for which there
would be no systematic need in a good social environment) disguised
by the honorific language of "justice" and "care," which enables them
to pass for virtues. Histories of oppression make it important to hear
between the spoken words, to listen with a "third ear." The privileged
are liable to arrogance with its blindness to others' perspectives. The
oppressed are liable to low self-esteem, ingratiation, affiliation with
abusers (for example, so-called female masochism), as well as to a ten-
dency to dissemble, fear of being conspicuous, and chameleonism-
taking on the colors of our environment as protection against assault.
C hap t e r T h r e e 54
Histories of exploitation lead many women to identify with service, to
find our value in our utility or ability to please. Moral damage among
both privileged and oppressed tends to be un selfconscious, mutually
reinforcing, and stubborn. When our identities are at stake, oppression
is hard to face. Beneficiaries face guilt issues and are liable to defensive-
ness. The oppressed face damage to an already precarious self-esteem
in admitting relative impotence.
It may also be our moral luck to develop special insights and sen-
sitivities, even under oppressive institutions. Divisions of responsibility
may divide opportunities for moral insight by distributing differently
the decision-making experience that develops it. That, however, is
partly an empirical hypothesis and cannot be evaluated by the methods
of philosophy alone.
The remainder of this chapter has three parts. The first offers a
review of past philosophical traditions concerning justice, care, and
women. The second contrasts the kind of feminist critique represented
by Carol Gilligan with that of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is utterly skepti-
cal of the idea of "women's virtues." Here I argue that correcting sys-
tematic misperceptions of women by men, as Carol Gilligan's work
does, is not enough to vindicate women's characters, nor, therefore, to
lend much support to the "corrective hypothesis" that women's values
and aspirations can deepen and correct defects in dominant views of
ethical thinking. Drawing on senses of responsibility distinguished
in the previous chapter, the third part explores a way of reconceiv-
ing the two perspectives that makes the "corrective hypothesis" more
plausible.

Women,justice, and Care: Philosophical Traditions

The thesis that women and men have different ethics is not
without precedent. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (a feminist who preferred
to be identified as a sociologist) argued in 1898 that domesticated
women develop an ethic of altruism that eventually has a civilizing
influence on men, who need it because they develop an ethic of egoism
in the competitive world of the marketplace. 14 Nor is it only feminists
who have put forward such ideas. Kant and Schopenhauer, each mis-
ogynist in his own way, maintained that women and men are good in
different ways that resemble Carol Gilligan's care and justice orienta-
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 55
tions. In ancient philosophy, however, where friendship received more
philosophical attention, care was less associated with gender, and con-
nections between justice and care received more emphasis.
The concept of obligation turns up in Aristotle's ethics under the
heading of friendship rather than in the book onjustice, which is where
one would expect today to find that concept. In the opening chapter of
his first book on friendship he observes:

When [we] are friends [we] have no need ofjustice , while

when [we] are just [we] need friendship as well, and the
truest form ofjustice is thought to be a friendly quality. 15

Apparently referring to these remarks a few chapters later, he says:

Friendship and justice seem, as we have said at the outset of

our discussion, to be concerned with the same objects and ex-
hibited between the same persons. For in every community
there is thought to be some form ofjustice, and friendship
too; at least men address as friends their fellow voyagers and
fellow soldiers, and so too those associated with them in any
other kind of community. And the extent of their association
is the extent of their friendship, as it is the extent to which
justice exists between them. 16

Aristotle's modern translator, Sir David Ross, warns the reader that
"Bks. 8 and 9, on friendship, do not form an essential part of a treatise
on ethics, and certainly so full a treatment of it seems out of place; it is
not improbable that these two were originally a separate treatise."l7
These two books offer the most sustained discussion of friendship in
the history of philosophy prior to the twentieth century. One may
wonder where Ross thought such a discussion did belong.
What does it mean to say that friends do not need justice although
justice needs friendship? On this view friendship is fundamental, un-
derlying even justice. This is plausible if "friendship" in this context
means simply goodwill, a concept Aristotle discusses explicitly only in his
books on friendship. If ''justice'' here refers to legal recourse, the claim
that friends do not need it may be sound as an ideal, if not as a general-
ization. Friendship relies on trust, leaving much to discretion. Rules are
often less useful here. This does not imply, however, that fairness is
C hap t e T T h Tee 56
unimportant. On the contrary, one's responsiveness where enforce-
ment is not forthcoming is a greater test of one's fairness than where
there is possible recourse to sanctions. Without a well-developed sense
of fairness, friendship is thin and legal recourse may be needed.
Aristotle's view appears to have been that good friendship requires
a fine-tuned sense of reciprocity. Regarding "unequal friendships"
(among which he includes husband and wife), he thought complemen-
tarity might compensate for an impossibility of reciprocity in kind.
However unsatisfactory that solution, he was at least aware of a problem
here. In her early work Carol Gilligan observed that at mid-life men
come to see the value of intimacy, whereas women tend to have seen it
all along. This suggests a serious reciprocity problem when one con-
siders the implications for the quality of heterosexual intimacy prior to
mid-life or for the judgment of those who valued it.
Modern European ethical traditions have been far more ready than
ancient ones to separate justice and care. Notoriously, Sigmund Freud
criticized women's sense of justice as deficient. IS As Carol Gilligan ob-
serves, the same behavior underlying this common criticism of women
by men is often cited in modern times under different descriptions as
evidence of women's "special goodness" -caring, sensitivity, respon-
siveness to others' needs, appreciation of the concrete particular. 19
Both the criticism and the praise are part of a dominant tradition in
modern Northern moral philosophy.
Kant and Schopenhauer, for example, found virtues gender-related,
with assessments of this purported fact differing less than one might ex-
pect, given their differing conceptions of morality. "The very thought
of seeing women administer justice raises a laugh," says Schopenhauer,
in his "prize" essay, On the Basis of Morality. "They are far less capable
than men of understanding and sticking to universal principles," al-
though "they surpass men in the virtues of philanthropy and lovingkind-
ness [Menschenliebe], for the origin of this is ... intuitive."2o On women
and principles, he followed Kant, who had exclaimed, "I hardly believe
the fair sex is capable of principles," speculating that instead "Provi-
dence has put in their breast kind and benevolent sensations, a fine
feeling for propriety, and a complaisant soul."21 Within the terms of
Kant's own moral theory, the implication was that women's virtues are
not moral. This appears to have been his ideal for women, not some-
thing he saw as a problem.
Schopenhauer's views on women, rather than Kant's, have become
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 57
notorious, thanks to Schopenhauer's vitriolic essay, "On Women,"
which mocks sexist ideals of female beauty: "Only the male intellect,
clouded by the sexual impulse, could call the undersized, narrow-
shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged sex the fair sex. "22 Al-
though he believed character was inborn, we can read Schopenhauer's
attacks on women today as an indictment of femininity rather than of
women, if we distinguish between gender concepts (femininity and
masculinity) as social constructions and sex concepts (femaleness and
maleness) as biological categories. Nothing comparable can save the
relevant views of Kant.
At the age of forty, Kant took up the topic of women in a work seldom
read by moral philosophers and in a chapter announcing itself as on
"the interrelations of the sexes." "Women will avoid the wicked not be-
cause it is unright, but because it is ugly," he observes, after remarking
that "the virtue of a woman is a beautiful virtue" and "that of the male
sex should be a nobte virtue. "23 Traits identified here as women's virtues
were identified in the previous chapter of the same work as merely
"adoptive virtues" and contrasted there with genuine virtues. "Adop-
tive virtues" are not based on principle, although they can lead to (out-
wardly) right actions. Kant's view was that one with "adoptive virtues,"
such as sympathy and complaisance, is goodhearted, but that only one
who is virtuous on principle "is a righteous person. "24 Kant's ideals for
women are those we might expect for domestic pets. His "adoptive
virtues" sound like developments of what he eventually called, in his
work on religion, "predispositions to animality" by contrast with "pre-
dispositions to humanity. "25
Kant's theoretical value distinctions should have enabled him to of-
fer an unprecedented critique of sexism, one unavailable to John
Stuart Mill, who later attempted such a thing within the more limited
conceptual framework of utilitarian ethics. In his Groundwork Kant dis-
tinguishes relative value, or "price" -in Mill's terms, "utility" -from
absolute value, or "dignity," a concept for which Mill's ethics had no
very coherent place (which, fortunately, did not stop him from appeal-
ing to it in argument). What has a price can have substituted for it
something of equivalent value. What has dignity has no price, no equiv-
alent. 26 Only morality and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality
have dignity, according to Kant. He presents as the very essence of im-
morality treating persons as though they have merely a relative value.
Kant might have used this idea to expose the immorality of conven-
C hap t e r T h Tee 58
tional valuations of women instead of endorsing those valuations. In-
stead he comes close to the view that women have price whereas men
have dignity.
Because Kant does not reduce beauty to utility, his view of women
may not be quite that crass. 27 Yet beauty is not an absolute ("uncondi-
tioned") value, according to Kant. At least, that its value is not absolute
is implied by the view of the Groundwork that only morality and human-
ity insofar as capable of morality are absolutely good. Kant understood
beauty to be a disinterested value. But there is no incompatibility be-
tween taking an interest in beauty and the enjoyment of beauty being
disinterested in the sense that it does not consist in the satisfaction of
(prior) interests. If, as his discussion suggests, Kant really took female
value to lie in women's capacity to satisfy men's interests in beauty, he
did fall into the position that-in his own unsurpassable terminol-
ogy-women have price rather than dignity. Late in life when Kant
returned to the topic of women in his Anthropology, he was no longer
commenting on women's beauty but, rather, on our usefulness in curb-
ing men's sexual impulses, for which purposes Providence had en-
dowed us with sharp tongues and manipulative skills.28
Schopenhauer assessed female character by a different conception
of morality from that of Kant. He found Kant's "adoptive virtues" to be
genuinely ethical, holding that compassion is the motive that gives
moral worth to actions, that it underlies both justice and what he called
Menschenliebe (which [Link]. Payne translates as "philanthropy").29 Of
these two virtues, justice and Menschenliebe, he found justice the more
important. Thus in finding that women have more Menschenliebe and
that men have more justice, he found women morally inferior. His view
that either of these traits is a virtue is paradoxical, however, given his
profoundly hostile attitude toward humanity. The greatest paradox of
Schopenhauer's ethics is that he valued so highly compassion for be-
ings whom he found contemptible.
Had Schopenhauer not rejected the Kantian concept of absolute
value, he might have avoided that paradox. He might have held, in
disagreement with Kant, that one of the things that gives humanity
absolute value is the capacity to care, or certain forms of it, that this is
what makes humans worthy of sympathy and compassion, as Kant had
held that the capacity for a certain sort of respect is what makes us
worthy of receiving that respect.
Something like this criticism that a wiser Schopenhauer might have
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 59

made of Kant's theory of moral character is suggested by Carol Gilli-

gan's attempt to vindicate the moral development of women in the face
of the Kantian moral theory that is presupposed in the Kohlbergian
literature on moral development. 30 Not love of humanity, however, but
the capacity for affiliation is what Carol Gilligan claims to hear in wom-
en's "different voice." Something in what she hears seems ethically
important and sound. "Women," she notes, "try to change the rules in
order to preserve relationships" while "men, in abiding by these rules,
depict relationships as easily replaced. "31 The sense of relationships as
not replaceable recalls Kant's insistence that what has dignity cannot
have an equivalent put in its place. However, relationships are valued in
Carol Gilligan's care ethics as particulars, not as instances of general
kinds, and through them, individuals seem to be valued also in their
particularity rather than for what they have in common with human
beings generally.
To sustain the view that the capacity for love is part of moral charac-
ter, we need an understanding of this capacity that is comparable in
sophistication to Kant's understanding of the capacity to act on princi-
ple. Just as not every passionate attachment to principle is valuable,
neither is every passionate attachment to people. Kant appreciated this
point in regard to principles. In a little-known passage from the same
work in which he discusses women's "beautiful virtue," he says:

Among men there are but few who behave according to

principles - which is extremely good, as it can so easily hap-
pen that one errs in these principles, and then the resulting
disadvantage extends all the further, the more universal the
principle and the more resolute the person who has set it
before himself. 32

This danger did not deter Kant from the search for attachments to
principle that are valuable in themselves, a search that led him to his
famous Categorical Imperative: Act only on that maxim through which
you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. 33
Perhaps we should not be deterred either from searching for interper-
sonal attachments that are valuable in themselves. Virginia Held has
argued recently that one of the things that distinguishes the relations of
parents to children is that the value of the relationship tends to lie at
least partly within the relationship itself rather than in some ulterior
Chapter Three 60

object to be achieved. 34 And yet, as the next section indicates, the obsta-
cles to finding absolute values in women's voices in patriarchal society
are formidable.
The most powerful criticism of care ethics in modern philosophy
comes from Nietzsche, who targeted the ethics of Christian charity as a
"slave morality. "'5 The Gospels of the Christian New Testament present
the disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees over the value of the
law as though it were a conflict between love and justice. Yet, Nietzsche
heard this "love" as a fantasy of the weak who are unable to exact the
justice they would rather have if they could get it. "Love" also becomes
a euphemism here for such things as service to others and meddling
diversions from one's own misery. In an age when Harriet Taylor and
John Stuart Mill had argued, following Mary Wollstonecraft, that the
character defects of powerless uneducated women were likely to cor-
rupt the characters of their husbands and sons, Nietzsche saw "slave
values" in democratic society as generally corrupting those who would
be better off valuing power and autonomy.36 On his view, justice origi-
nates in the ethics of those who value power and autonomy, whereas the
ethics exalting sympathy, pity, and "love" has its source in a sour grapes
movement by the impotent rabble.
I find Nietzsche's critique of morality more interesting than many of
his positive ethical views. His accounts of both justice and friendship
leave much to be desired, as he failed to appreciate such elements as
reciprocity and attachment, which seem more essential to justice and
friendship, respectively, than the power he exalted. However, we should
take seriously in relation to women's voices in patriarchal society ques-
tions analogous to the critical questions he raised about Christian care
ethics.

Women andAffiliation: Some Problems

I think ofthe views of Kant and Schopenhauer, and others like

them from the academic canon, as "the patriarchal view." Feminists
have criticized the patriarchal view from different angles. Like Carol
Gilligan, some defend female character as "different but also valu-
able," arguing that the theories by which we appear deficient are faulty.
I think ofthis as "the rosy view," because it makes everyone look good.
Other critics, like Mary Wollstonecraft, reject so-called female good-
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 61

ness as a euphemism for vices in women that make it easier for men to
control US. 37 In 1792 in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she argued
that women in sexist society become morally deformed, neither loving
nor just. Contrary to what the title of that work suggests, it was not really
about rights but about female character. The intention, apparently, was
to defend the education of women and girls to prepare us for equal
rights with men. Noticing similarities between the vices of women and
those of relatively powerless men in military service, she disagreed with
her contemporaries Jean Jacques Rousseau and Kant on the gender-
relatedness of virtues. Her view was that duties might vary but virtues are
the same for everyone. She ridiculed the idea that men who were ac-
countable to no one and women who were powerless, abused, and
uneducated each have special kinds of goodness. I think of Mary Woll-
stonecraft's view as "the skeptical view." As she understood it, the prob-
lem with female and male character, as they are most readily distin-
guished in a sexist society, is not that they are incomplete or simply
"different" but that they are warped from the start.
However mutually incompatible they appear, the protests of Carol
Gilligan and Mary Wollstonecraft both seem right. Although I have
wanted to find more truth in the rosy view, it seems to me utterly critical
not to deny the truths of the skeptical view. And yet that view sounds
something like the Kohlbergian position that Carol Gilligan has crit-
icized and against which she has wished to defend the voice of care.
As with Nietzsche, I find Carol Gilligan's critique more persuasive
than some of her positive hypotheses about the two voices. She exposes
important misperceptions of women in her disagreements with Kohl-
berg, Freud, and others regarding what she calls the justice perspective,
which she finds inadequate as a picture of human moral development.
First, according to Kohlberg's moral stages, women can easily appear
more concerned with approval and more conventional than men when
what we are actually doing is exhibiting a concern for maintaining
relationships. In maintaining relationships, we respect points of view
different from our own and attempt to empathize with them. This does
not imply that we agree with those views. In the interests of social
harmony, we often do not express disagreement. Second, Freud found
women to have "weak ego-boundaries," poor self-definition, problems
with separation and autonomy, and a weaker sense of justice, at least
"legal sense." He concluded that women are deficient in moral reason-
ing. Carol Gilligan turns the tables on him, suggesting that, on the
C hap t e T T h Tee 62

contrary, men may have a problem with connection and, further, that
this problem may be responsible for violence in men's fantasies about
intimacy.38 Finally, in response to the claim that women's sense of jus-
tice is deficient, Carol Gilligan points out that often women resolve
conflicts by other methods than ranking or balancing claims. We may
use the method ofinclusion, for example, which she illustrates with the
story of two four-year olds overheard at play.

The girl said: "Let's play next-door neighbors," "I want to

play pirates," the boy replied. "Okay," said the girl, "then you
can be the pirate that lives next door. "39

Carol Gilligan's sympathetic and insightful readings of women's re-

sponses are not totally inconsistent with the skeptical view, however.
With a weaker power position and institutionalized dependence on
men for protection against male assault and for employment, promo-
tion, and validation, women are given reasons to seek "approval," usu-
ally male approval. Such approval is granted for obedience to conven-
tions requiring affiliations with men, respect for their views, empathy
with them, and so forth. There is no need to suppose that women value
approval or conventionality for its own sake (or that we confuse "right"
with "conventional" or "approved"), nor that we value these relation-
ships in themselves. Many women learn early to be prudent. Many are
convinced that this exchange is what heterosexual love is about, since,
after all, convention requires women to affiliate with masculine protec-
tors out of "love." How many such attachments are the product of what
Adrienne Rich calls "compulsory heterosexuality," the result of orien-
tations molded at an age when our powers of assessment are morally
undeveloped?40
Similar problems exist for the issues of self-definition and autonomy.
Given women's inferior political position together with the lifelong
message that a woman "alone" is "asking for it," we should not be sur-
prised that "studies show" women seeking to create and maintain af-
filiations. Not just any affiliation does the trick, however. Many women
are terrified of lesbian connections and disdainful of interracial ones.
But we learn early that identifying ourselves in relation to men (of the
same class and race or ethnicity) as sister, mother, wife, or lover can
reduce threats of assault. It does not follow that we do not know well
where our boundaries end and those of men begin. We learn our places
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 63

early. Yet we pay a price in obligations assumed by so "defining" our-

selves (a matter taken up further in Chapter Six on the obligations of
gratitude). In modern ethics reciprocity is associated primarily with
justice, and yet, failure of reciprocity is a major cause of the break-up
of friendships among political peers (that is, those whose power over
one another is more or less balanced). Relationships in which wom-
en's choices are circumscribed by social coercion are not good can-
didates for representing women's values fairly or well, for they leave
open the question what women would say in a more egalitarian social
environment.
On the basis of fantasy studies, Carol Gilligan suggests that violence
in men's fantasies is rooted in their fear of intimacy.41 This merits fur-
ther comment. She reports that in studies where subjects constructed
stories in response to pictures, women tended to find safety in intimacy
and danger in isolation whereas men tended to find danger in intimacy
and safety in independence. Yet the examples of intimacy that she cites
are heterosexual. We should be skeptical about the conclusion that
women find safety here. Perhaps they find less danger than in imagined
alternatives. The conclusion about men's fears may clarify why, if it is
amplified and made more specific. The weblike relationships women
construct are informal, even personal, but not always intimate. Like the
nets women supplied in response to a picture of trapeze artists, wom-
en's relationships with women are often for safety and protection-
networks of connections, not sexual unions. These networks are not
the relationships that men in the study seemed to fear. They seemed to
fear sexual, or potentially sexual, heterosexual intimacy. Both sexes'
fantasies are compatible with both sexes' fearing heterosexual inti-
macy, each for different reasons. Women have reason to fear both isola-
tion and intimacy, although we are taught to fear isolation even more.
Networks are often cushions against the violence of intimate relation-
ships. Where men do not construct such networks, perhaps they do not
have a similar need. When they fear heterosexual intimacy, they usually
have the power to avoid it.
Ifwe are to examine fantasies for clues to our senses of danger, what
about women's rape fantasies? Women are reluctant to articulate these
fantasies and not always because they reinforce stereotypes of female
masochism. Rape fantasies are not only of attack by rapists but also of
attack on rapists, killing rapists, maiming them, and so forth. Intimacy
has not cured the violence in women's lives. It has given the violent
Chapter Three 64

greater access to their victims. Rape is one of the most underreported

crimes in large part because it is committed more readily by acquain-
tances and intimates than by strangers. 42 Domestic battery is a major
issue in misogynist environments. Men's fears of rejection and entrap-
ment by women in this context are not misplaced. Men's fantasy vio-
lence may betray their appreciation of implications of misogyny if what
they fear is women's historically well-grounded fears of men, which
predictably issue in the tangle of women clinging to men for protection
and acceptability while at the same time withdrawing sexually, engag-
ing in manipulation, daily resentful hostilities, and eventually fantasies
of widowhood.
Women's failure to value separation and autonomy is a genuine prob-
lem. But the problem is political, not simply psychological. Women are
systematically penalized for not being available on demand to children,
relatives, spouses, lovers. A good example of women's moral luck may
be that as a result of our political inability to end bad relationships, we
have not learned to discriminate well between good ones and bad ones
but have learned instead to assume responsibility for maintaining what-
ever relationships "fate" seems to throw our way. The great danger, as
well as the great strength, of the method of inclusion is its presumption
that there should be a way to satisfy everyone.
Inclusion brings us again to the sense ofjustice. Justice is not only a
matter of ranking, taking turns, or balancing claims but also of recog-
nizing deserts, which often elicit sympathy or antipathy. Sometimes
everyone does deserve to be included. Although inclusion is an alterna-
tive to balancing claims, it is not necessarily an alternative to justice.
The difference principle, in Rawls's theory of justice as fairness, could
favor inclusion over competition or taking turns. This principle directs
that basic social institutions be so arranged that those least advantaged
are as well offas possible. 43 Ifa more inclusive solution were more to the
advantage of those least well-off, the difference principle would favor it.
If methods of inclusion are among the methods of justice, however,
women's reputation for a weak sense of justice may be undeserved in
proportion to the accuracy of Carol Gilligan'S observations. Where in-
clusion is unjust, it is unclear what can be said to recommend it.
The truth that women's moral responses are often misread does not
yet sustain the view that women's responses embody virtues or values
that can deepen and correct dominant ethics. Often our reasonings
reveal survival strategies or even vices. Still, the corrective potentialities
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 65

of the data of women's lives, ifnot women's voices, may be genuine. To

show how, I turn next to a look at those data as giving us a domain of
basic informal and personal relationships.

Two Kinds ofResponsibilities and

Two Kinds ofRelationships

In her earlier writings Carol Gilligan spoke of "an ethic of

care" as "an ethic ofresponsibility," understanding responsibility as a
capacity for responsiveness. The Kohlbergian tradition that she crit-
icized accepted the Rawlsian view that the business of justice is to dis-
tribute rights. Hence, she also spoke of the "justice perspective" as
a "rights perspective." However, two different views are conflated by
these equations. One view is that women develop a care focus and men
a justice focus. The other view is that women develop a responsibility
focus and men a rights focus. Something like the "responsibility and
rights" thesis may be more promising than the '~ustice and care" thesis,
if we rephrase it as a thesis about two kinds ofresponsibilities correlated
with two kinds of relationships, only one of which tends to center on
rights. It may also be true that ideals ofjustice have a special applicabil-
ity to the kinds of responsibilities and relationships that tend to center
on rights and that ideals of care have a special applicability to relation-
ships that do not center on rights. But if we do not begin from the as-
sumption that the ideals of justice and care already structure each fo-
cus, we may be better positioned to ask ethical questions about what we
hear in each case, about what ideals should be considered applicable.
The substitution of a "different kinds of responsibilities" hypothesis
(or a "different kinds of relationships" hypothesis) for the '~ustice and
care" hypothesis seems compatible with a direction that Carol Gilli-
gan's own thought has taken. In essays written after In a Different Voice,
she has emphasized power and attachment as yielding two ways of
defining relationships and two ways of defining responsibilities. Al-
though she retains the language of justice and care, she no longer
contrasts rights with responsibilities or presents only care as having a
relationship focus. Rather, she hears the two voices as occupied with
different relationships and different responsibilities.
When we speak of relationships without qualification in a social con-
text, often we mean personal relationships, informal affiliations. Sup-
C hap t e T T h Tee 66

pose that instead of a "care focus" we were to speak of a focus on

informal and personal relationships (or on the informal and personal
aspects of relationships). And suppose that instead of a '1ustice focus"
or "focus on rights" we were to speak of a focus on formal or impersonal
relationships (or on the formal or impersonal aspects of relationships).
Each kind of relationship gives rise to different kinds of responsibilities.
That we can hear a "different moral voice" in a focus on the informal
and personal- certainly different from the one that has dominated so
much of modern ethical theory-is plausible even ifit is not always the
voice of "care" and even if the voice from which it diverges is not always
that of '1ustice." We also need room to consider, ethically, whether
certain kinds of relationships ought to be formalized and whether oth-
ers may have become too formal.
The voice of informal and personal relationships, as noted at the
beginning of this chapter, has not been very vocal in modern ethical
theory. Paradigmatic ethical problems for most of modern ethical the-
ory have been the problems created by distributions of power, not
those presented by affiliation and attachment. Contractarian, utilitar-
ian, and even intuitionist ethics all tend to reflect administrative practi-
cal wisdom and a focus on control that is formal and impersonal. Ideal
observers and veils of ignorance give versions of the perspective of an
administrator (who may be a member of a board rather than a lone
administrator). This point of view is epitomized by John Rawls's theory
of justice, the on-going fascination with the prisoners' dilemma, and
consequentialist paradoxes concerning nuclear deterrence.
The data of modern ethical theory come mostly from the lives of
those who focus their attention primarily on public worlds of law and
commerce, as do the basic concepts: right (or duty, from law-the
world of rights) and good (or interest, from commerce-the world of
goods). Yet these same lives are also embedded in personal and in-
formal relationships, without which the worlds of law and commerce
could become relatively meaningless. Philosophers dissatisfied with the
dominance of impersonal and formal relationships in the data of ethi-
cal theory have begun in the last few decades to turn their attention to
friendship, which belongs to the area of personal relationships and in-
formal practices - sexual intimacy, kinship, and a variety of networks. 44
As Annette Baier has observed, historically men have been able to take
for granted a background of such informal and personal relationships
with women for the reproduction of populations, women have had less
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 67
choice than men about participating in these relationships, and men
have had material stakes in not scrutinizing such relationships mor-
ally.45 But, then, it should be added that women have also had material
stakes, different ones, in not scrutinizing such relationships too closely.
Responsibility in administration is a matter of supervision and man-
agement, accountability and answerability, primarily the first two of the
four senses of responsibility that I distinguish in Chapter Two. That is
not at all what Carol Gilligan meant in attributing originally to women
an "ethic of responsibility." What she had in mind was, instead, respon-
siveness to needs, the idea of taking responsibility in the sense of look-
ing after someone - which I distinguish in Chapter Two as the third
sense, the care-taking sense of "taking responsibility" (to which I re-
turn in Chapter Seven). Here, the focus is on well-being, rather than on
control. When the focus is on well-being, responsiveness comes to the
fore. The administrative point of view is not noted for its responsiveness
to needs.
According to Rawls, 'justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as
truth is of systems of thought," and justice is specifiable by principles
defined from his thoroughly impersonal "original position" (for pro-
posing principles of justice) with its "veil of ignorance" (of particular
facts).46 The primary subject of social justice, he finds, is "the basic
structure of society," which consists of major social institutions that
"distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division
of advantages from social cooperation." Included in the basic structure
are "the political constitution and the principal economic and social
arrangements" as well as "legal protection of freedom of thought and
liberty of conscience, competitive markets, private property in the
means of production, and the monogamous family. "47
As Susan Moller Okin has pointed out, Rawls seems ambivalent about
whether the family is to be understood as part of the basic structure of
society, which he understands as public, or whether it is a non public
association, to which principles ofjustice for the basic structure do not
apply.48 She argues convincingly that principles of justice for the basic
structure of society ought to be applied to the family and that families
are rightly regarded as belonging to that basic structure. Although I
agree with both positions, I want to raise a different question: Isjustice
the first virtue of the family? The claim that justice is the first virtue of
institutions sounds less controversial when made of markets and gov-
ernments than when made offamilies. Even more generally, one could
Chapter Three 68
ask: Does the basic structure of society consist entirely or even pri-
marilyofinstitutions that govern the distribution of rights to the advan-
tages of social cooperation? Such an account of the basic structure
renders invisible the background of informal and personal relation-
ships which, as noted by Annette Baier, sustain such things as markets
and governments.
Susan Moller Okin is right that the family is, historically, part of the
basic structure of society as we know it. I say "as we know it" so as not to
beg the question whether an ideal society would include the family in
its basic structure. The considerations that led Rawls to identify formal
institutions as basic to society should lead us also (or perhaps instead)
to identify as socially basic certain informal and personal relationships,
such as those of lovers and the relationships between children and
their early caretakers. These relationships have had the kind of first-
rate importance that Rawls in A Theury ofJustice attributes to institutions
that he identifies as belonging to the basic structure of society even
though the relationships we have with our "significant others" are in
many, perhaps most, ways not suitable subjects of impersonal admin-
istrative control and their point is not only, or even especially, to dis-
tribute the advantages of social cooperation. Perhaps this accounts for
some of Rawls's ambivalence about the status of family.49 Some of its
aspects are formal, regulated by law. Yet it is not obvious that these
are the most important aspects. In any case, family relationships have
tended to possess three critical features that Rawls cites as characteristic
of basic institutions of society. First, they have been important to our
"starting places" in life. Second, they have been critical to the develop-
ment and maintenance of our senses of self-esteem and self-respect. 5o
And third, they give rise to special responsibilities.
Consider, first, the idea of "starting places" in life. Rawls notes that
people born into different social positions have d~fferent expectations
because basic social institutions work together in such a way as to favor
certain starting points over others, and he also notes that these inequal-
ities, which tend to be deep, are not justifiable by appeal to merit or
desert.51 This is surely true. Yet it is not only in economic terms that
starting points have profound effects. Personal relationships with early
caretakers are an emotional starting point. Those who do badly as care-
takers, even though they violate no rights, may do life-long harm. We
have no more choice over these emotional starting points than over the
class or economic position of our caretakers. The perspectives of chil-
 WOMEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 69

dren and the caretakers of children is not just a "rights perspective,"

although it is certainly a "responsibility perspective."
Consider, second, the effect of basic informal and personal relation-
ships on self-esteem and self-respect. The social basis of self-respect in a
just society, according to Rawls, is a certain publicly affirmed distribu-
tion of basic rights and liberties. However, self-respect and self-esteem
also have roots in primary personal relationships, in the sense we de-
velop of ourselves in such relationships as beings who are capable of
faithfulness, understanding, warmth, empathy - in short, as having the
qualities we should want in a personal affiliate, not only the qualities we
should want in a "fellow citizen. "52 Our sense of these things may be
fragile, if our initial affiliations were impoverished. Even with a good
start, our sense of ourselves as having these qualities can be under-
mined later in abusive primary relationships and in an emotionally
misogynist social context. 53 If the connection with self-esteem is among
the definitive conditions of the ethical importance ofjustice in institu-
tions, it might equally be considered among the definitive conditions of
the ethical importance of the responsibilities of basic informal, per-
sonal relationships.
Finally, like the relationships defined by basic rights, informal per-
sonal relationships give rise to special responsibilities. However, these
responsibilities are not closely correlated with rights. Others cannot
usually bring claims against us if we fail. The differences between these
two sorts of responsibility, or "obligations," as we often call both, are
explored in detail in Chapter Six in connection with the paradoxical
idea of a debt of gratitude. Kant attempted to capture some of these
informal responsibilities with his concept of "imperfect duties" (which
he later called "ethical duties" by contrast with "juridical duties") .54
A promising idea that I find in the hypothesis that women's voices
can deepen and correct modern ethical theory is that they may direct
our attention to informal and personal relationships that raise issues
not fruitfully recast as issues in the ethics of control. Acknowledging
that informal, personal relationships are as basic as any in our lives does
not imply that women have more or better knowledge of the ethics of
such relationships, although we may. What women more clearly have
had is more than our share of the responsibility for maintaining these
relationships and less than a fair share of the responsibilities of par-
ticipating in and defining formal institutions.
With these ideas in mind, I return briefly to Carol Gilligan's discov-
C hap t e r T h r e e 70
ery that although her interviewees could readily enter into either the
"care" or the "justice" perspective, they could not entertain both per-
spectives simultaneously. That phenomenon suggests that something
other than justice and care is at work in each gestalt, perhaps the per-
spectives of dominance and subordinance, perspectives that would
surely be difficult if not impossible to entertain simultaneously. A world
in which oppression and its legacies are widespread is a world in which
most people learn the perspectives of domination and subordination.
Perhaps most of us would tend to find one of these perspectives some-
what more "natural" than the other, at least in certain situations, and it
would be understandable why one could not adopt both perspectives
simultaneously, as one cannot be both dominant and subordinate in the
same relationship at the same time.
Now, however, there appears to be another possible explanation for
the difficulty of holding both perspectives simultaneously. If in one
perspective we attend to formal and impers<'mal relationships (or as-
pects of relationships) whereas in the other we attend to informal and
personal ones, we would need to perform different acts of mental ab-
straction, or focus, for each. It may be difficult, or even impossible, to
attend in detail to what each perspective reveals, or to maintain simulta-
neouslya lively intuitive feeling for each. However, it also seems impor-
tant that we be able to balance against each other the claims of morality
from each perspective. Although the claims of impersonality may be
peripheral to a focus on the personal aspects of a relationship, that may
not settle definitively their moral importance in a particular case. We
may need to be able to take a higher order perspective in which we can
balance such things in a larger picture than either yields by itself.
Jung Chang's book Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, a family saga
and personal memoir of growing up in Mao's China, illustrates how the
two perspectives might work together in individual lives. 55 In this mem-
oir, the highly principled stances ofJung Chang's father come repeat-
edly into conflict with his personal responsibilities to his family, respon-
sibilities that are prioritized by her mother, with whom Jung Chang
appears, initially, more sympathetic. Her father refuses again and again
to use his connections as a government official to obtain such basics as
medical care for members of his family on the ground that members of
other families are just as important and because he aspires to remain
above the corruption in officials that he sees as responsible for so much
injustice in China's past. Jung Chang's mother, in contrast, is forever
 WO'MEN'S VOICES AND FEMALE CHARACTER 71

responding to the needs of individuals (not only members of her own

family). Yet, as the story unfolds, each parent comes gradually to appre-
ciate the other's point of view and to see how each has a stake in the
other's point of view. Each grows in consequence with the result that he
becomes not only more caring but also more just and she not only more
just but also more caring.
 c h a p e r F o u r

CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS

I n one sense caring is more basic to human life than jus-

tice: We can survive without justice more easily than we
can survive without caring. However, this is part of the
human tragedy because, in another sense, justice is more
basic: Life can be worth living despite the absence of
caring from most people in the world, perhaps even from most of the
people we know, but in a densely populated high-tech world, life is not
likely to be worth living without justice from a great many people,
including many whom we will never know.
The view that caring is the fundamental moral attitude and that
justice is not a very important moral idea has been espoused in dif-
ferent ways by the philosopher of education Nel Noddings and by the
lesbian philosopher Sarah Hoagland.! In cultures dominated by Chris-
tianity, a certain strain of popular thinking also embraces this view.
Sarah Hoagland's skepticism regarding the value of justice is based on
the views that justice, duty, and obligation presuppose social antago-
nism and that because they develop ethics as social control in contexts
of social antagonism they are not promising concepts for lesbian ethics.
Nel Noddings's work, addressed to a wider audience, seems to take its
inspiration, in part, from a distaste for the distancing of an ethic of
principle. Neither cites religion as a ground of their views. I discuss
Sarah Hoagland's position elsewhere. 2 Here I take up Nel Noddings's
groundbreaking and influential work on caring, and as representative
of thinking about justice, I continue with the work ofJohn Rawls. 3 They
share a concern with resisting evils, often the same evils. Each more or
less ignores the other's point of view.
My primary concern regarding a care ethic is its inability to address
major evils if it does not accord justice a serious place. 4 Yet I also worry
that a justice ethic will not be well-positioned to identify major evils ifits
theorizers fail to draw on the experience of the oppressed. One appeal
of care ethics has been its ability to enlist moral agents in identifying
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 73
with the experiences of the oppressed, as in our society caregivers are
often women or people of color with histories of oppression, and those
for whom we care standardly include children, the aged, and the ill, all
highly vulnerable to oppression. This ability needs to be integrated
with the values ofjustice.
Evil is an ambiguous concept. In the singular it often refers to mo-
tives or character traits. That is not a sense with which I will be especially
concerned. In the plural, it often refers to what is suffered or endured.
The evils I have in mind in this chapter are suffered, endured, risked,
and so forth. Thus I often refer to "evils" in the plural. Ultimately,
however, I do not want to abstract from human agency. My concern
with evils is from the points of view ofthose who suffer from what others
do (or fail to do). It is in this sense that Laurence Thomas identifies
American slavery and the Holocaust "vessels of evil. "5
Consider everyday evils of two kinds: (1) evils that strangers inflict on
strangers and (2) evils that intimates inflict on intimates. Each tends
to raise different problems. Issues of racism and sexism can illustrate
some of these differences. On one hand, resting all of ethics on caring
threatens to exclude as ethically insignificant our relationships with
most people in the world because we do not know them and we never
will. Regarding as ethically insignificant our relationships with people
remote from us is a major constituent of racism and xenophobia.
On the other hand, resting all of ethics on caring also seems in
danger of valorizing abusive intimate or personal relationships, callous
and cruel ones as well as abusive ones that sheerly exploit our capacity
to take another's point of view. Care ethics threatens to exacerbate the
positions of women and other caregivers in a sexist or otherwise op-
pressive society. But many abusive relationships are more cruel than
exploitative. Evil treatment is not simply a matter of misuse or abuse in
the sense of wrongful exploitation. Some evils involve practices or be-
haviors that have no legitimate uses whatever.6
Nel Noddings's "feminine approach to ethics" is something like
Carol Gilligan's "care perspective." However, Nel Noddings's approach
is more philosophical, elucidating norms and concepts, whereas Carol
Gilligan's is more psychological, oriented to empirical studies. In her
view that a care ethic is superior to an ethic of principle Nel Noddings
goes further than Carol Gilligan, who has been more interested in
rehabilitating care as a worthy subject of academic inquiry than in
criticizingjustice. On the gestalt hypothesis, Carol Gilligan's care ethics
Chapter Four 74

has places for the concerns ofjustice, although not the central places of
the justice perspective. Thus, in Carol Gilligan's care ethics, justice is
subsidiary, which brings that perspective or voice close to Nel Nod-
dings's care ethics. A main philosophical difference between them is
that Carol Gilligan is pluralistic and Nel Noddings monistic with re-
spect to viable forms that ethics can take.?
As Virginia Held and others have pointed out, mother-child relation-
ships and family living present ethically interesting paradigms in that
at their best, these relationships are neither entirely contractual nor
entirely voluntary and yet they clearly impose moral responsibilities. s
Chapter Three expresses caution about how we listen to the voices of
women in coercive contexts. By relationships that are not voluntary, I
do not have in mind in this chapter coercive ones. Many relationships
are neither voluntary nor coerced. We did not choose them, but nei-
ther did anyone else, nor need they be the product of socially coercive
institutions. Relationships to parents, for example, are not forced but
yet are ordinarily nonvoluntary in that we did not choose them. Al-
though we can choose to sever relations with a parent, often that would
not be reasonable. Analogous things might be said of some of our
relationships to neighbors who arrive after we did. Where a close rela-
tionship is not entirely voluntary but is a source of fortune, good or
bad, it is a likely source of moral luck. Our character evolutions are
influenced by interpersonal relationships, especially with significant
others. Thus, in tracing implications of ethical interdependence for
individual character, Nel Noddings notes that "how good I can be is
partly a function of how you-the other-receive and respond to me"
and that "our own ethicality is not entirely 'up to us' " because "like
Winston in Nineteen Eighty-Four, we are fragile; we depend upon each
other even for our own goodness. "9 In this I find that she is right. Parts
of the tale of Anna Karenina also illustrate the point. Nel Noddings's
insight seems often overlooked by those whose focus has been on jus-
tice in formal relationships.
One may recall, however, that what Rawls calls the basic structure of
society into which we were born is not something that we chose (al-
though we can make choices that will affect it for the next generation)
and that a major motivation of his theory ofjustice has been his appre-
ciation of the involuntariness of our basic starting points in life, which
have a great effect on the rest of our lives. FollowingJean:Jacques Rous-
seau, Rawls seems to see inequalities offortune in the "natural lottery"
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 75
as something like a natural i~ustice (although he says they are not
really injustices), to be redressed, to some extent, by social justice. At
any rate, social justice on his view is to regulate the ways in which and
the extent to which we are allowed to profit from such fortune. Thus,
justice is not distinguishable from care simply by the voluntariness or
lack thereof of the relationships in question. It seems in fact to be
Rawls's intention to take account in a central way of nonvoluntary
aspects of our situations.
Two differences are worth noting, however. First, in Rawls's theory,
one's starting place in society and the luck it involves are primarily
economically conceived. One's luck in being born into a certain family
is acknowledged in the theory basically as one's luck in being born into
a certain economic class. This ignores one's luck in being born to
abusive parents, who may be, after all, economically well-endowed. As
Susan Moller Okin argues, attention to parent-child relationships has
the potentiality to expand the conception of "starting points" even for
a theory of justice. 10 In particular, it has the potential to expand it
beyond the economic conception that has dominated not only Rawls's
theory but most contemporary philosophical theorizing about justice.
Second, and perhaps more important for purposes of this chapter, in
Rawls's theory, as in Rousseau's thinking about the social contract, the
point of attending to nonvoluntary relationships, such as the family, as
starting points seems often to be to make up for something bad about
them in relation to various ulterior ends that one may come to have. II
The point does not seem to be to improve their intrinsic value. Yet, as
Virginia Held notes, an important aspect of such nonvoluntary rela-
tionships as mother-child and other family relationships is that much of
their value is intrinsic to the relationship rather than subservient to
ulterior ends. Her interest, and that of such theorists as Nel Noddings,
is often in evaluating and improving the ethical quality of such relation-
ships considered in themselves. In this regard, care ethics has seemed
to them, as to many feminist philosophers, to hold special promise.
Much sophisticated philosophical work has been done on the con-
cept of justice during the past half century. The superficial justice
of even-handed application of rules (regardless of their content) has
been distinguished from a deeper justice manifested by rules that treat
persons as equals and as possessors of a certain dignity. To appreciate
persons as equals, the capacity for taking up their perspectives seems
requisite, a capacity also agreed to be a significant element in caring.
C hap t e r F 0 U r 76
Citing Rousseau, Rawls presents the sense of justice as building on
capacities for love and trust. 12
Philosophically sophisticated work is only recently begun on the con-
cept of care. Of the philosophical work being done here, Nel Nod-
dings's is among the most sustained, detailed and well-illustrated with a
wide range of examples. I3 In Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and
Mural Education she offers a phenomenological exploration of caring
and being cared for. As she observes, "care" has many meanings, not
the least of which is "a burdened mental state, one of anxiety, fear, or
solicitude about something or someone. "14 One virtue of her analysis is
that it explains how burdensomeness can become a liability of caring.
In common parlance, meanings of "care" range from "being con-
cerned about" ("interested in," even "minding") to affectionate emo-
tional bonding. "Do you care whether ... ?" simply asks whether you
attach any importance to something. "Care" in a sense meaningfully
distinguished from '~ustice" is more specific. To possess the virtue of
justice is, of course, to care (be concerned) about such things as equal-
ity and fairness, and thereby, about persons. What, then, is distinctive
about care as a virtue? In the search for a response to this question, Nel
Noddings's work is especially helpful.
On her analysis, activating the disposition to care requires real en-
counters with individuals. It is personal, and in this respect, contrasts
with justice, which is paradigmatically impersonal. Nel Noddings pre-
sents one's ethical responsibility to care as the responsibility to meet
those whom one encounters as "one-caring" - at least, to meet some of
them that way (the question which ones eventually turns out to be an
unanswered problem). The attitude of one-caring has at least three
basic elements. IS The first, which she emphasizes most, is motivational
engrossment- "displacement" - in another, whereby we take up an-
other's perspective. Second, there is a regard for, or inclination toward,
the other; one-caring is "present to" the other. This seems less a matter
of attachment than of availability, being there for another. It sounds
like what Sarah Hoagland calls "attending."16 And third, there is an
action component, a disposition to certain activities, such as protection
or maintenance. Nel Noddings emphasizes this element least. 17
To have a ready way of referring to this conception of caring and
distinguishing it from more abstract ones, I call it the encounter sense of
caring. Not all encounters are caring. But the conception of caring
most naturally distinguished from justice does involve a relationship to
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 77
a particular other. The concept of relation as a particular connection is
basic to Nel Noddings's idea of caring. As she puts it in her second
book, Women and Evil, "A relation, in the perspective I adopted in Car-
ingand will maintain here, is any pairing or connection of individuals
characterized by some affective awareness in each," and "It is an en-
counter or series of encounters in which the involved parties feel some-
thing toward each other."18
Because the action component, which suggests care taking or care
giving is the one least emphasized by Nel Noddings - because her inter-
est lies primarily in the emotional, attitudinal elements-caring, on
her account, is not primarily a matter of providing services or meeting
material needs. 19 A care ethic built on this conception of caring might
thus seem relatively invulnerable to being used to valorize oppression,
perhaps invulnerable to Nietzsche's critique of Christian care ethics as
a "slave morality." However, that is not clear. The first two elements-
the inclination toward and motivational engrossment-are often im-
portant to meeting emotional needs and open the carer to profound
exploitation, manipulation, and oppression. An ethic of care in the
encounter sense may be more problematic for women than for anyone
else, given women's socialization to identify as providers of emotional
support and women's historic roles in heterosexual relationships and
families as the primary emotional glue holding things together.
In the history of modern philosophy, these emotional aspects of
caring have received very different evaluations. A Kantian tradition
questions whether what Kant called pathological caring (caring based
on feeling) is a moral virtue at all, on the ground that the emotional
responses involved do not proceed from choice. Another tradition
found in David Hume and Arthur Schopenhauer treats justice as a
derivative virtue, based on more fundamental virtues associated with
care, such as sympathy and empathy. Nel Noddings reverses the Kant-
ian position, questioning whether justice is a virtue. On her view justice
is a poor substitute for caring. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, found
justice more important than Menschenliebe (see Chapter Three) appar-
ently only because of his low estimation of men's capacity for empathy,
although he found compassion indirectly at work even in justice. Once
we learned abstract principles of justice, he thought, compassion did
not, fortunately, have to be activated in individual cases. This distancing
from the sense of what Seyla Benhabib calls "the concrete other" is
precisely what troubles Nel Noddings. 20
C hap t e r F 0 U r 78
My worry about care ethics is not that caring does not proceed from
choice. Often, I believe, it does or could, and even where it does not, it
need not be forced. Nor is my concern simply that for whom we care is
often a matter ofluck. That fact can raise questions ofjustice, but it may
also be important to care for many to whom luck has attached us. My
concerns are with the bases of choices we can make about whether to
care or continue to care, for whom to care, and how to treat those
for whom we do not care, including those for whom we have chosen,
rightly enough, not to care.
The remaining sections of this chapter consider in more detail why a
care ethic without an important place for justice is ill-equipped to ad-
dress evils of our relationships with strangers and with intimates and
then considers how well a Rawlsian conception ofjustice is equipped to
do so. In concluding, I propose building into a theory of justice an
explicit acknowledgment of the basic evils that often seem to motivate
care ethics, evils characteristic of oppression.

Our Relations with Strangers

Resisting evil, understood as refusing to participate in it, is a

project that concerns Nel Noddings deeply. In Women and Evil she
favors the idea that "evil is overcome not by a violent overthrow but
rather by a steady refusal to participate in it. "21 It is clear from her
discussions of death, illness, poverty, war, terrorism, and torture that
she is profoundly concerned with resisting evil, avoiding it, and where it
is unavoidable, mitigating its effects. 22 Looking at evil phenomenologi-
cally and through the experiences of women, she finds that the basic
things we fear (in old age as in infancy) are pain, separation, and helpless-
ness. 23 She attempts an account of such evils as torture and war in those
terms. I return to that below. For the present, it will be enough if we can
agree on some such examples of evil.
Consider our ethical relations with most people in the world, who are
strangers to us and always will be. In the sense of "caring" delineated
above, it is entirely reasonable to take the position (as Nel Noddings
does) that no one should try to care for everyone. That prompts two
further questions. First, what ethical notions are relevant to our rela-
tionships with strangers, persons whose lives we may significantly affect
through our actions (or inactions) although we will never know them as
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 79
individuals because we will never encounter them? Second, out of the
billions of people in the world for all of whom we cannot possibly care
(in the encounter sense). which ones should not be strangers to us? In
other words, for whom should we care?
Consider the question what ethical concepts apply to our relations
with strangers. Where we have no responsibility to care for others in the
encounter sense, we still have responsibilities to refrain from doing
them harm - to be careful, in a sense that does not require encounters
with those for whose sakes we ought to take care. Technology extends
our actions' effects far beyond the range of our encounters. Through
environmental carelessness or use of nuclear weaponry, we can affect
drastically, fatally, people we would never know as individuals.
Nel Noddings has agreed that being careful in this way is important. 24
And yet, being careful in relation to the welfare of others unknown to
us is not caring in the encounter sense. It may draw on some of the
same capacities, such as our ability to enter imaginatively into perspec-
tives different from our own. But it does not require the psychological
interaction with specific others that Nel Noddings specifies as what she
means by "connection." Here is a place where justice is helpful in that
it directs us to be heedful of the effects of our deeds on everyone
impartially, not just on those for whom we happen to care. This is no
small concession, when we consider how many more people may be
affected by our sense of impartial concern than can possibly be affected
by our ability to care in the encounter sense.
Keeping the focus on the individual, however, Nel Noddings at-
tempts to anticipate this kind of objection with respect to some strang-
ers and to devise a method by which our concerns can extend beyond
the range of our immediate neighbors without simply adhering to a
rule. By means of what she calls "chains" of connection, she holds that
we can be prepared to care for others currently outside our circles of
connection - such outsiders, for example, as our children's partners-
to-be. 25 "Chains" are defined as "personal or formal relationships."
"Personal or formal relationships," however, are not defined, and the
"chains" offered as examples suggest differing interpretations. One
example is the intimate partner of one's child, for whom one may be
prepared to care because of one's child for whom one already cares.
This example suggests that a "chain" has as a connecting link an indi-
vidual whom one has encountered who has in turn encountered still
others whom one has not (yet) encountered. 26 This makes sense of the
ChapterFoUT 80

metaphor of a "chain" in that the individuals known to us link us to

others. Their caring is thus linked to our caring. Yet, to restrict ethics to
such connections in a nuclear age would be preposterous. Such chains
do not extend the range of caring far enough.
Another example offered to illustrate "chains of connection" is a
teacher's future students who are simply potential placeholders in a
formal relationship of teacher-student. 27 This example extends inter-
personal connections further, but it does not make sense of the chain
metaphor. On this model, a teacher is connected to potential students,
but, by what? What is the "chain"? What are its "links?" Present stu-
dents need not know future ones (in most cases will not). My present
students may be connected chainwise with future students through me,
but it is my basis for caring about those not currently my students that is
in question. What links a teacher with future students appears to be the
job (teaching), which is institutionally defined. But that introduces
abstractions and departs from the idea of a phenomenological encoun-
ter. If the teacher-student relationship need only be institutionally de-
fined, there need be no personal encounter between teacher and stu-
dent even in actual teacher-student relationships, and in fact, students
are often fairly anonymous to teachers.28
Still, if the basic idea is that an indefinite number of others who are
presently strangers might enter into a relationship with me that I cur-
rently have to others, perhaps we have an answer to the question about
ethical relationships between strangers for a care ethic: Those who are
presently strangers are potentially not strangers. But it is not clear what
that is supposed to imply.
Either the potentiality for real encounters will be realized or it will
not. What are our responsibilities if those potentialities are not real-
ized, as they never will be with regard to most people in the world? What
is the significance of our preparedness to care for them? Does the
existence of a potential relationship mean that potentially we have
ethical responsibilities to those who are at present strangers? Or does it
mean that because of that potentiality, we have such responsibilities
now?
If the existence of a potential relationship that will never be realized
implies that we have ethical responsibilities toward those strangers now,
then, again, it appears that caring for them does not require an en-
counter. Nel Noddings and sympathetic interpreters suggest that we
are to imagine an encounter, "attempt to visualize concrete subjects"
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 81

and in doing so "consider real persons" about whom we already care. 29

However, if an imagined encounter can substitute for a real one, we do
not have the kind of connection that involves mutual psychological
awareness. The element of motivational displacement, then, does not
connect with the particularities of actual individuals. We have, instead,
an abstraction based on the particularities of other individuals we
have known or the abstraction of an analogy: Be prepared to do unto
strangers as you would do unto those for whom you (already) care. But
this is a principle, perhaps a variant of the Golden Rule, which sounds
like a way to express the fundamental principle of formal justice that if
it is right for one person to be treated in a certain way, then it is likewise
right for any (relevantly) similar person in (relevantly) similar circum-
stances to be treated in the same way. 30 Yet, an important motivation for
an ethic of care in the encounter sense was to avoid the abstractness of
principle and connect concretely with others. In the case of our rela-
tionships to permanent strangers, whatever ethical responsibilities we
have appear still to be defined by abstract potentialities, even specula-
tions. But if they can be acceptably defined by such abstractions as
these, then why not by other abstractions such as those of other rules
and principles?
Further, if we have responsibilities now toward those who are only
potentially related to us, how are those responsibilities related to the
ones we have toward those for whom we currently and unambiguously
do care in the encounter sense? Are our responsibilities to potential
"cared-fors" less important just because the relationships are only po-
tential? Yet those strangers are actual people and the effects we had on
them would be real, even if our encounters with them remain potential.
From the point of view of justice, whether such potentialities were
actualized often seems an irrelevant contingency. Suppose I teach a
large lecture class in which I know only some students individually, as I
am able to recall only some of their faces or only some ask questions or
come up after lecture or come to my office. Yet all pay tuition and my
responsibility is to teach them all. Some responsibilities (in addition to
being careful not to harm them) I have equally toward those I never
come to know individually, such as the responsibility to make myself
heard even by those in the back of the classroom.
On the other hand, if a potential relationship implies only that po-
tentially we have ethical responsibilities to strangers, are we free to take
steps that would insure the unrealizability of that potentiality? Is that
C hap t e r F 0 U r 82

or is it not ruled out by the idea of being prepared to care? With re-
spect to potential responsibilities, the issue of abortion comes naturally
to mind. But an embryo or fetus is a potential person, not an actual
stranger. Perhaps the embryo or fetus is not a stranger, however poten-
tial its personality, although in the sense of "relationship" that Nel
Noddings has defined, it could be argued that no one yet can have
relationships with it (because no one has yet encountered it).31 The
abortion issue is more complicated than the stranger issue in that it
seems to present two kinds of potentialities: a potential relationship
with a potential person. My concern here is simpler: If we have only
potential ethical responsibilities to actual people who are strangers to
us, that would seem to imply that we are, strictly speaking, free now to
prevent the actualization of such potentialities, subject only to whatever
restrictions might be imposed by our responsibilities to those whom we
have encountered. There is room here, logically, for a distinction be-
tween responsibilities to strangers and responsibilities regarding strang-
ers. However, if the point of such a distinction were to make respon-
sibilities regarding strangers dependent on responsibilities to those for
whom we care, again it seems to reduce ethics to an unacceptably
parochial affair.
Another question regarding "chains of connection" is which rela-
tionships linking us to strangers count as ethically significant. "Formal
relationships" suggests kinds of relationship, as opposed to particular
relationships. But then, which kinds? What is the source of the "form"?
Nel Noddings's examples suggest institutionally defined relationships,
such as marriages and relationships defined by educational institu-
tions. However, as in the case of teaching, such relationships need not
include phenomenological connections, that is, individual personal
encounters. Further, if "formal relationships" were institutionally de-
fined, we would need justice to evaluate the relevant institutions. Some
institutions arbitrarily exclude entire groups of people. If our formal
relationships to others were only those defined by such institutions, it
would follow that we had no formal relationships to people who were
excluded and therefore no ethical relationships to them, either, unless
we were connected by personal relationships. But that is not plausible.
Yet, if "formal relationships" are not institutionally defined, how are
they defined? What is the "form"?
Nel Noddings notes that her" ethic of caring locates morality primar-
ily in the pre-act consciousness of the one-caring."32 It thus seems the
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 83
opposite extreme from act-utilitarianism, which takes consequences to
be everything. If the idea of "chains" of connection between our pres-
ent circles and potential cared-fors fails to extend our ethical concerns
to strangers whose lives we can impact significantly, it seems unable to
encompass responsibilities regarding possibilities of destroying or ruin-
ing the lives of billions of real people in other parts of the world toward
whom the pre-act consciousness of one-caring may not be a live pos-
sibility for those who possess such destructive powers. Yet the existence
of such real possibilities has produced major moral [Link] in the twen-
tieth century. The restriction of caring to potential cared-fors whom
one is somewhat more likely to encounter might explain why Japanese
rather than German cities experienced nuclear destruction from the
United States in 1945. But such an explanation sounds xenophobic or
racist. Analogous observations hold with respect to (other) environ-
mental crises.
In considering the cases of bus drivers, airline pilots, and air traffic
controllers, each of whom may actually encounter few of those whom
they affect, Nel Noddings says, "In such enterprises I behave responsi-
bly toward others through proficient practice of my craft."33 This re-
sponse may take care of my responsibility to make myself heard in
lecture even by those sitting in the back of the room. It will not do,
however, as a general response if the responsibilities in question are
conceived simply as defined by the "craft" or the job, if the job is taken
as a given and not itself treated as subject to ethical evaluation. The
Nazi doctors also proficiently practiced their crafts, which was, ethically,
part of the problem rather than its solution. 34
To be concerned to avoid participating in war, ecological destruc-
tion, and other cultural evils, we need not care in the encounter sense
about potential victims. We need not be there for them in a way that
evokes their conscious recognition of our conscious states or our con-
scious recognition of theirs.
Nel Noddings characterizes her "feminine approach" to morality as
that of "one attached," by contrast with a "masculine approach" which
is "detached. "35 This is a source of problems in regard to strangers. By
definition, strangers are those to whom we are not attached in the
intended sense, and yet our choices can impact heavily on their well-
being. "Too often," she notes, "principles function to separate us from
one another." As we will see, in her later work, she regards separation a
basic evil. And yet, if by "separation" is meant "absence of connection"
C hap t e r F 0 U r 84

where a connection is understood as involving an encounter, we do not

need principles to separate us. Everyone is already separated from most
people on earth and inevitably so given how many we are and the limits
of our personal resources. Since we can seriously affect far more people
than we can encounter personally, we need an ethic that applies to our
relations with people with whom we are connected only by relations of
cause and effect as well as to our relations with those with whom we are
connected by personal and potential encounters. Phenomenological
encounter is not the only ethically significant connection. Because we
intrude on each other's lives in many ways, we need to consider many
kinds of connections and the conditions under which they can be good
or bad. We also need to take seriously questions about establishing
connections that are at present too rare, such as intercultural connec-
tions, especially where a history of injustice underlies the connections
that fate appears to throw our way or render highly improbable.
With regard to the claim that principles too often function to sepa-
rate us, it is also worth noting that there is a sense in which princi-
ples need not abstract from special connections with particular others.
Whether they do depends on the content of the principle. The princi-
ples that it is good to honor parents, to value familial ties and relation-
ships with intimates, and to be grateful to benefactors presuppose and
apply to special connections with particular others. What some have
found objectionable about acting on principle may have more to do
with the content of certain principles than with the idea of abstrac-
tion. 36 The problem may be the blindfolded woman with scales and
sword, the idea ofjustice and its impartiality. Social justice, insofar as it
involves the idea of equality, is definable to a great extent indepen-
dently of the motivations and consciousness of particular agents. This
presents problems for any ethic that is defined solely in terms of the
motivations or conscious states of agents.
Part of the point ofjustice, as Rawls has observed, is to make possible
cooperative relationships among large numbers of people and among
people who are not personally attached to one another but who nev-
ertheless stand to gain mutually by working out shared arrangements
for such things as the use, maintenance, production, and protection of
resources. Justice applies to interactions among those who have a stake
in securing certain common advantages by mutual cooperation. The
need for cooperation among people who are not bound to each other
by ties of affection is especially important in a society plagued by rac-
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 85

ism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. In a poorly integrated multi-

cultural society dominated by phobic stereotypes, opportunities for
interracial caring relationships are not what they should be. In such a
context, if one's ethical repertoire is exhausted by caring in the en-
counter sense, what remains to operate with respect to many of the
interracial consequences of one's conduct? Normally, this is one place
for justice and respect for others. As Nina Simone put it in "Mississippi
goddam," the point is not whether you "live next to me" but whether
you support "my equality. "37
A responsibility that seems prior to caring in the encounter sense is
the responsibility not to perpetuate unjust practices that block oppor-
tunities for encounters that foster caring. Such practices are a major
evil confronting many of us daily. One may argue, as Nel Noddings
does, that it is sometimes justifiable to fear the proximate stranger and
to limit our encounters with others for the sake of the caring relation-
ships we already have. However, that concern invites the question how
we came to have the caring relationships we already have. The concern
to limit our encounters needs to be balanced by a responsibility to
create opportunities for caring relationships where such opportuni-
ties do not spontaneously present themselves, owing to past injustices.
Creating such opportunities is not the same as trying to initiate caring
under existing conditions. It can be presumptuous to try to initiate
caring relationships with those from whose oppression one has bene-
fited. Nina Simone's "You don't have to live next to me ... " may be an
understatement of "I'd rather you didn't-I'd rather have political
equality." In a pluralistic society with a history of racism, respect can be
more basic than caring in that it is a precondition of the welcomeness
of certain kinds of caring relationships.

Persunal Relationships and Problems ofAbuse

If a care ethic threatens to exclude too much by ignoring our

responsibilities to strangers, it also threatens to include too much by
valorizing relationships better dissolved. Elevating caring into an ethi-
cal ideal threatens to valorize the maintenance by carers of relation-
ships from which a carer would do better to withdraw at least in the
sense of ceasing to be "present to" the other and available for emo-
tional support. The care ethic also threatens to valorize unwanted in-
C hap t e T F 0 U T 86

trusions generally into the lives of others, which is a common kind of

occasion of the demand for justice. Issues of injustice often involve
wrongful boundary crossing rather than failures of connection. 38 This
is true, for example, oftheft, assaults, battery, and rape. Although one
might argue that when such offenses are committed against strangers,
the very absence of connection can make the commission of the of-
fense easier (at least, psychologically), no such argument is available
regarding such offenses committed against intimates.
As I write this, the local newspaper is carrying a headline story on
domestic abuse, quoting the district attorney as saying that in the past
year, "fully one-fourth of all arrests were for domestic crimes" in the
city in which I live. 39 And yet domestic abuse is still considered a highly
underreported crime. Partner battery is one kind of abusive relation-
ship in which the parties know each other. It has a special importance
in a society that makes it often impossible for the abused to escape and
that supports, facilitates, and even enforces abusers' continued access
to victims and often penalizes survivors who fight back when they have
no help.
Not all bad relationships are evil or even abusive. In many ordinary
exploitative intimate peer relationships, one partner accepts but fails to
reciprocate the other's caring, without the excuses of infancy, very old
age, or disability, and yet the nonreciprocating partner may not be
overtly hostile or prevent the other from withdrawing. In relationships
that I consider clearly abusive, there is not only a lack of reciprocity in
caring but also the presence of hostile control and often violence or
credible threats of violence. These are evils.
Abusive partners are not continuously abusive. They can also be
charming and share spontaneously their aspirations and valuations
with partners whom they also abuse, and they may be charming not
only when they are trying to make up after an assault. On Lenore
Walker's cycle theory of domestic violence, such spontaneous respon-
siveness is part of the "hook" that she suspects helps keep battered
partners trying to make the relationship work instead of trying to
leave. 4o It is also confusing to battered partners, who cannot see bat-
terers as nothing but batterers.
Referring to a famous burning bed case, Nel Noddings has argued
that if we must exclude from our caring someone for whom we have
cared, we thereby act under a "diminished ethical ideal. "41 By this, she
does not mean that leaving is never the best option; she finds that,
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 87
regrettably, sometimes it is. The best one can do here may not be very
good. This kind ofjudgment is important to recognize. In the previous
chapter I argue that although lying may be a justifiable and even life-
saving skill under oppressive institutions, it is not conducive to human
good. Such judgments embody acknowledgments of moral luck. It can
be one's moral luck to be able in some circumstances to act at best
under a "diminished ethical ideal." But it is also important to note
some ofthe things that such a judgment does not imply and to consider
more specifically when such a judgment does and does not apply to
cases of withdrawing care.
Having to cut off someone you have loved is prima facie nothing to
celebrate. There are different possible reasons why. Having loved the
person in the first place may reflect poorly on one's ability to judge
character. But then it is having loved the person, not leaving, that is
occasion for regret. There it would not be plausible to say that in leav-
ing one acted under a diminished ethical ideal. On the contrary, it
sounds as though one's ideals expanded. Alternatively, one might re-
gret the way that the relationship developed. The death of the relation-
ship could be something to grieve if it showed initial promise. Yet even
here, what are diminished may be simply our possibilities for continued
growth in a relationship rather than ideals guiding our choices.
A more natural way to interpret the idea of acting under a dimin-
ished ethical ideal makes use of the idea of "moral remainders." Where
there is ethical cause for regret, we have what Bernard Williams calls a
"moral remainder" in the sense that even after we have done the best
we can, there are things that will never be made right. 42 Some ethical
conflicts - some hostage cases, for example - cannot be resolved with-
out wronging someone (say, inflicting or permitting the infliction of
undeserved harm that does not benefit the victim) even when those
conflicts are resolved in the best way possible under the circumstances.
In such situations, our ethical possibilities are diminished in relation to
what they would be ideally. Here, the very ideals under which we act are
compromised, usually as a result of the previous bad choices of others.
Simply withdrawing from an abusive relationship need not involve
such a remainder. Just as failing to reciprocate caring is not necessarily
abusive, ceasing to care for abusers does not necessarily wrong them.
Even killing in self-defense need not wrong one's assailant. Burning
bed cases, however, raise the question whether killing an abuser who is
not at that moment engaged in an assault can count as justifiable self-
C hap t e T F 0 U T 88

defense. Here, the violence necessary for escape is arguably made nec-
essary not only by the assailant's behavior but also by the failures of
others who could have intervened helpfully but did not. Killing as a way
out may thus seem at once excessive from the point of view of what the
assailant deserves (in some cases, although not in others) but also re-
quired from the point of view of the victim and what circumstances
make necessary to preserve her life. Logically, both could be right. In
such a case the best the victim may be able to do is to act under a
diminished ethical ideal.
This does not imply, however, that she is not growing ethically in the
process. In ending the relationship, she may feel as though she is cut-
ting off a part of herself. And yet she may be growing ethically in
overcoming a sexist training to put others' needs consistently ahead of
her own and to doubt her own judgment. Here, the complexity of the
ideals involved may defy encapsulation in simple judgments. The in-
creased richness of her ideals seems what enables her to recognize and
refuse to accept bad relationships, freeing herself up for better ones.
Yet, the means available to her for acting on that recognition may
require acting under other ideals that are diminished.
Burning bed cases are not a problem only for care ethics. They are
also a problem for justice. They illustrate situations that are aggravated
by the injustices of others, defining a set of options for victims none of
which may be thoroughly just to everyone affected. This is an area
where morality may require the institution of practices designed to
reduce the likelihood that such situations will arise. Without privacy
conventions that support widespread toleration of domestic abuse,
there would be fewer occasions for burning beds.
Where the best one can do as an individual is to identify the least
unjust option, acting under a "diminished ethical ideal" is an appropri-
ate way to describe the case. Still, many cases exhipit no such complex-
ities. Many ethical conflicts are resolvable without remainder. One can
often leave a bad relationship without harming others or without ex-
posing them to worse harm than they deserve. Where there are no
"moral remainders" in the sense that no one is wronged, I find no
plausible rationale for the idea that leaving is acting under a "dimin-
ished ethical ideal."
Getting stuck in the "pre-act" consciousness of the attitude of one-
caring can be ethically disastrous. It can confuse observers with respect
to the question who is abusing whom, leaving us with the impression
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 89

simply of conflict. Abusers often complain when frustrated that they are
abused, since they are not getting what they want. Also, caring, even
when we do not do much, can have the consequence of supporting
people in projects of which we may explicitly disapprove, insofar as our
emotional support makes it easier for them to do as they will. It can be
difficult to decide when we can no longer support a friend or kin whose
projects we find immoral. Many readers have disagreed with Nel Nod-
dings's apparent intuitions about how to respond to one's racist aunt
Phoebe, who has done one many kindnesses over the years, or to in-
quiries about one's mobster neighbor with whom one has had friendly
relations. 43 There may be moral remainders whatever one does in such
cases, although many of us would give more weight to protecting the
innocent than to maintaining the personal connection, however disap-
pointed we might be to lose the connection. Whether it is lost is a
function not only of our choices and of the "pre-act" consciousness of
our caring attitudes but also of theirs.
The case of abusive relationships suggests a significant moral gap in
the encounter sense of caring. In its zeal to avoid an excessive individu-
alism that does not give relationships their due, Nel Noddings's ac-
count does not explicitly include the idea of valuing individuals (in-
cluding oneself) for themselves. Motivational displacement is not the
same thing. We can enter into the perspectives of others, whether we
value them or not, out of sheer necessity for survival, the necessity to
anticipate others' needs in order to be a good servant or slave, for
example. 44 Women learn well how to do this with men; slaves learn to
do it with masters. To be ethical we need to preserve in ourselves, as well
as value in others, a certain spiritual integrity as choosers who can
accept or reject a relationship. Otherwise, we risk becoming tools, ex-
ploitable for evil projects that others devise. With a capacity for "moti-
vational displacement" - receiving others into oneself - but lacking in-
tegrity one is in danger of dissolving into a variety of personalities,
changing one's colors (values) like a chameleon in changing environ-
ments. Women know this danger intimately, and likewise those whose
personal safety has regularly depended upon how well they were able to
"receive others into themselves."
A more abstract way to put the point is in terms of the higher order
nature of the capacities exercised in caring. Thus Max Scheler argues
that what he calls "fellow feeling" cannot be a fundamental moral
value. "The ethics of sympathy," he maintains, "does not attribute
C hap t e T F 0 U T 90

moral value primarily to the beingand attitudes of persons as such" but

"seeks to derive it from the attitude of the spectatur" and in so doing
"invariably pre-supposes what it is attempting to deduce" because "the
sharing of another's pleasure can only be moral when the latter is itself
mural, and warranted by the value-situation which evokes it."45 The
concept "spectator" may be too passive for the present context. "At-
tender" may come closer. But the point remains, even if we substitute
"engrossment" for "sympathy." Being engrossed in and present to oth-
ers cannot be a fundamental value. But the experiences capable of
engrossing us and capturing our attention may exhibit values that are
fundamental. In the next and final section, I take up some experiences
that may be considered basic evils and propose that a theory of justice
would do well to take them explicitly into account.

Evils andJustice

Doesjustice address the evils of racism and sexism better than

an ethic of care in the encounter sense? Justice offers the advantages of
impartiality and universal concern. But is it too unfeeling and abstract
to be helpful, as Nel Noddings and others have complained?
Rawls presents justice first of all as a virtue of institutions, concerned
with how their rules distribute the benefits and burdens of social coop-
eration. Thus his principles of justice presuppose value judgments
about what is distributed. Accordingly, he includes as background a
theory of "primary goods" to measure the value of the benefits and
burdens of social cooperation. In A Theury ofJustice he describes pri-
mary goods as what anyone can be presumed to value, regardless what
else they might want. 46 In Political Liberalism the account is made more
specific, and less intuitive, as those goods necessary to develop and
exercise our moral powers for a sense ofjustice and for a conception of
the good. 47 But in both works the list of primary goods is basically
the same: "rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and
wealth" and "a sense of one's own worth. "48 He proposed in A Theory
ofJustice that we think of these goods as instrumental, with one excep-
tion, namely, the "sense of one's own worth" (also referred to as "self-
respect" and as "self-esteem").
But what about things that should be "distributed" to no one?
Things that no one should have to suffer, no matter what anyone else
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 91

wants? And what about what everyone can be presumed to want to

avoid, no matter what else they may want? Both ideas suggest the con-
cept of evil. Yet they are distinct ideas. Suppose we call what everyone
can be presumed to want to avoid (no matter what else they want) basic
evils. They are thus analogous to primary goods. Still, I think they are
worth distinguishing from the more general idea of basic goods, for
reasons that I will indicate shortly. If basic evils are what everyone can
be presumed to want to avoid, let us then think of evil treatment as what
no one should have to suffer, no matter what anyone else wants. I
propose, below, a way to use the idea of basic evils to define evil treat-
ment. For now, let us say that an institution, practice, or behavior is evil
when it authorizes or consists in administering evil treatment. What
makes oppression and many forms of racism and sexism evil and not
just bad treatment is that they treat people in ways that no one should
be treated, no matter what it does for anyone else.
To enable us to identify evil treatment, principles ofjustice may need
as part of their background a theory of basic evils. We might think of it
as a complication of the theory of primary goods, perhaps renaming
them primary values. No doubt Rawls means his primary goods and the
idea of a social minimum to do this job. But they do not yet seem well-
designed to enable us to distinguish between evil treatment and in-
justices that are comparatively less serious.
The reason appears to be that Rawls presents his theory of justice as
an idea theory, meaning that its principles are constructed on the
assumption that most people will abide by them most of the time, that
the society in which they are to take effect is "nearly just," more or less
"well-ordered" in the sense that its members have effective senses of
justice and know this about each other. He does not regard criminal
justice as part of ideal theory but finds that it belongs to nonideal
theory, which would be designed on assumptions of the only partial
compliance or noncompliance of members of the society in which it
was to take effect. In a well-ordered society, or one that was nearly just,
there would be no serious need to guard against the evils of misogyny
and race hatred - such things as rape, the sexual abuse of children,
domestic battery, or lynching. Attending to deep injustice, rather than
simply to the ideal case, focuses us first on evils, on what it is most
important to avoid, rectify, and prevent.
Here is where the work of Nel Noddings and Iris Young may be
helpful. In Women and Evil Nel Noddings presents as basic evils pain,
C hap t e r F 0 U r 92
separation, and helplessness. She came to this view by examining wom-
en's experiences, looking for what we most fear. These three basic evils
provide her framework for examining war, torture, terrorism, poverty,
illness, and death - all matters with which justice should be concerned.
With certain modifications, I find her view of basic evils plausible and
important. When used in defining the idea of evil treatment, it goes a
long way toward explaining the status as evils of what Iris Young identi-
fies as "the five faces of oppression": marginalization, powerlessness,
exploitation, violence, and cultural imperialism. 49 The concepts ofba-
sic evils and evil treatment also are important to punishment theory, as
we need to be concerned that in trying to prevent evil treatment, we do
not engage in it ourselves.
However, I want to modify Nel Noddings's basic evils a bit in view of
difficulties mentioned above in discussing care. Scheler's critique of an
ethic of sympathy would also apply to a conception of evil as pain,
separation, and helplessness, if those concepts were not made more
specific. For like sympathy, separation and helplessness are relational
concepts and their values connected with the values of their relata.
When pain is a higher order mental state, having as its object a belief
that mayor may not justify a painful awareness, its value depends on
that belief. Nel Noddings's view is not that separation, pain, and help-
lessness are necessarily evils. Rather, her view is that they are prima facie
evils in the sense that they always need to be justified. 50 Yet even this
may be false.
The value of separation, for example, is not always a function of
circumstances. Whether a particular separation is even prima facie bad
depends on who is separating from whom or from what, not just on
circumstances. Further, if separation is meant as the opposite of con-
nection, it may be too specific in that it presupposes prior connections.
However, human isolation - being unconnected with others, socially
outcast-is prima facie an evil. Thus, the first modification I would
make is to substitute "isolation" for "separation," understanding isola-
tion as a matter of degree. The isolation of a human being from others,
or refusing to alleviate such a condition however it may have come
about, is something that always needs justification. An institution that
inflicts or refuses to alleviate severe isolation without justification is
rightly considered evil. These are examples of evil treatment.
Similarly with helplessness. To be helpless is to lack needed help for
some action or activity. The disvalue of the helplessness depends in part
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 93

on the value of the action or activity in relation to which one is disabled,

not just on circumstances. Without such organizations as the SS, Adolf
Hitler would have been helpless to carry out his ambitions, which
would have been good. Under no circumstances would help for such a
project be good and thus the value of Hitler's (hypothesized) helpless-
ness would not be a function of his circumstances but, rather, of his
project. However, impotence, the inability to act, is prima facie an evil.
My second modification, then, substitutes "impotence" for "helpless-
ness," again understanding impotence as having degrees. What distin-
guishes degrees of impotence from the relativity of helplessness is that
it is a more general condition; impotence is disablement for all sorts of
things. As with isolation, rendering someone impotent or refusing to
alleviate impotence however it may have come about, always needs
justification. An institution that inflicts or refuses to alleviate it without
justification is thereby evil. These are also examples of evil treatment.
Pain is perhaps the most plausible candidate for a basic evil. Yet even
the prima facie disvalue of pain depends on what hurts. Nel Noddings
includes psychological as well as physical pain. Some psychological
pain, such as depression, generalized anxiety, or nameless terror may
be "lower order" in that it does not presuppose other more specific
psychological states as its object. Usually, however, psychological pain
suggests such higher order sufferings as grief, embarrassment, shame,
guilt, and the like. These experiences are higher order in that they have
as their object another psychological state, such as a consciously held
belief.51 Whether higher order psychological pain is even prima facie
bad depends partly on this object. Suppose, for example, that my pain
is guilt and its object is a truly reprehensible deed. Such pain is prima
facie good. 52 Yet prolonged or severe physical (or lower order psycho-
logical) pain is prima facie an evil. My third modification, then, is to
specify severe or unrelieved physical (or lower order psychological)
pain as a basic evil, understanding again that there are degrees. Inflict-
ing or refusing to alleviate such severe pain always needs justification.
An institution that does so without justification is thereby evil. These
are further examples of evil treatment. In each case, I understand
justification in such a way as to allow that the inability to alleviate basic
evils serves as ajustification for not doing so.
These are not the only basic evils, but they are a good beginning.
Being deprived of, or prevented from developing, Rawls's final primary
good, self-respect, is also a good candidate for a basic evil. One may
 C hap t e r F 0 U r 94

rightly lose a certain amount of self-respect upon appreciating the im-

morality of one's own conduct. However, that kind of loss can also be
part of the basis for a renewed self-respect. As I cannot conceive of a
justification for depriving persons of basic self-respect, I am inclined to
say without qualification that an institution that does so is evil.
The first element of a definition of punishment is usually the idea of
inflicting evil on an offender. Pain, isolation, and impotence have been
inflicted on offenders as punishment, restraint, or both. If punishment
is justified, however, it must not be itself evil treatment. It is difficult to
justify complete isolation, impotence, or severe pain even as punish-
ments. Yet lesser degrees of these evils are routine in discipline of
children and in penal systems that rely on imprisonment and for disci-
pline within prisons, on solitary confinement and refusal to supervise
personnel who beat inmates. Appreciating the suffering of these things
as basic evils should make the justifiability of punishment more contro-
versial than it has been. Refusal to supervise inmates who rape other
inmates is an evil that may seriously compromise the self-respect of
victims, about which the next chapter has more to say. To whatever
extent systems of punishment compromise the basic self-respect of
those punished, they are evil and should be changed or abolished.
Basic evils are major ingredients in social oppression as Iris Young
analyzes it: Marginalization isolates groups and individuals; powerless-
ness is impotence; violence paradigmatically is painful. Rawls's theory
of justice is superb at explaining the evil of exploitation as a face of
oppression. What Iris Young calls cultural imperialism sounds like it
includes an assault on the development of self-respect. What makes
oppression evil is that the human behavior responsible for the inflic-
tion of or refusal to alleviate these basic evils is so grossly unjustified.
There is often even no pretense of justification. Isolation, impotence,
pain, and assaults on self-respect are also central to the oppression
of individuals in intimate partner battery and child abuse. Batterers
not only hit, and incest perpetrators not only rape. Both also isolate
their victims. The violence of domestic assault and rape not only in-
jures physically but also commonly results in the impotence of post-
traumatic stress. The suddenness of violence takes its victims off guard
during episodes and keeps them in a state of constant fear between
episodes. The result is victims, or survivors, who lack confidence in
themselves as moral persons.
Iris Young suggests that we begin with domination and oppression as
 CARING, JUSTICE, AND EVILS 95

our paradigms of injustice. 53 Whereas Rawls focuses on the ideal case,

she focuses on some ofthe worst. Yet ifjustice is, in Rawls's words, "the
first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought," a
theory ofjustice should enable us to identify oppression and say what is
wrong with it. 54 Rawls's theory was formulated with at least one ex-
tremely oppressive historical phenomenon in mind: hereditary slavery.
Most seem to agree that his theory explains better than alternative
views, such as utilitarianism, what is wrong with slavery. Slavery is unjust
economic exploitation, and that is certainly part of what is wrong with
it. Its inequalities violate Rawls's difference principle, in that they are
not to the greatest benefit of those least advantaged (slaves). Yet that
understates the case against slavery almost as much as pointing out its
inefficiency. As Rawls also notes, the "offices" of hereditary slavery-
positions defined by the rules - are not open to everyone under condi-
tions of fair competition. (Slaves had no opportunity to be masters.)
This also understates what is wrong. From the perspectives of its victims,
what is primarily wrong with slavery is that it is oppressive: violent,
disempowering, marginalizing, genocidal, an instrument of domina-
tion that destroys human potential and human culture on a phenome-
nal scale, often wantonly. Its violation of Rawls's first principle of jus-
tice, that "each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of
basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same
scheme for all," comes closer to what is fundamentally wrong. 55 Yet
even that is highly abstract. Filling it out in terms of primary goods
yields yet another understatement: Slaves lack the basics that everyone
can be presumed to want whatever else they might want. That is true,
but it seems more to the point to say that they suffer evil treatment.
In Political Liberalism Rawls presents the primary goods as citizens'
needs, mentions that his list may be expanded, and explicitly mentions
the possibility of including freedom from physical pain. 56 Failure to
satisfy a need suggests evil more readily than does failure to provide
goods. Rawls's intention appears to be that basic liberties, supple-
mented by a social minimum below which no one would be permitted
to fall, would free us from evils such as bodily assault and poverty. This
reminds me of the utilitarian's faith that injustice will not turn out to be
useful in the end. Perhaps so. But banking on it makes me nervous.
In answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section,
whether justice ethics is better positioned than care ethics to respond
to the evils of racism and sexism, I conclude that there is hope here if a
C hap t e T F 0 U T 96

just society is understood as one in which oppression is not tolerated

and oppression is understood in terms of basic evils. One need not
encounter those who are liable to suffer basic evils in order to be con-
cerned to design social institutions so as to avoid, prevent, alleviate
them, and so forth.
Schopenhauer and more recently Virginia Held and others have
held that justice is a moral minimum and that a fuller ethical view would
go beyond justice to include caring. Something like this also seems to
have been Kant's view in that his perfect duties, which take precedence,
sound like duties of justice, and some of his imperfect duties, which
allow the agent a certain latitude and discretion, sound like respon-
sibilities of moral caring. Schopenhauer and Nel Noddings, however,
also seem to regard justice as a substitute for caring in many contexts
where caring would be ideal but is unrealistic to expect. I suspect that
something like the opposite of these ideas may be true. The demands
of perfect justice may be so great that perhaps the best we can do in
many contexts is to assume responsibilities of caring where we are able,
although justice would be ideal. So far from providing a moral mini-
mum, perfect justice seems to me to demand more than most of us are
willing to contemplate seriously-which is all the more reason to focus
on basic evils and on how to avoid, prevent, and remedy evil treatment.
 c h a p e r F v e

RAPE TERRORISM

I n an essay entitled "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problem-

atic" Bat-Ami Bar On argues that terrorism forms the
terrorized, that it "produces people who are psychologi-
cally and morally diminished," and that "it is, there-
fore, cruel."l Part of women's moral luck in misogynist
societies is to be formed - or seriously exposed to the risk of being
formed - by rape terrorism. Where it does not corner us into acting
under a "diminished ethical ideal," to use Nel Noddings's phrase, it
seriously restricts our mobility and thereby our experience and de-
velopment. A raised consciousness about rape as a terrorist political
institution may enable us to move beyond understanding as our only
options those defined by this institution and may motivate us to com-
bine with each other to undermine it.
Rape is a set of interrelated terrorist institutions. The one that I
discuss in this chapter is a protection racket whereby women are com-
pelled to seek the protection of some men against others. Martial rape
often does not fit this pattern, although it may belong to a different
protection racket whereby some men are compelled, by means of ter-
rorizing women to whom they are attached, to seek the protection of
other men. 2 Gang rapes, such as those Peggy Sanday uncovered in her
research on fraternity gang rape, may be part of a training for war, or
perhaps a substitute for it. 3 The rape terrorism discussed in this chapter
might be called "civilian rape" in that it is committed even during times
of so-called peace. However, Harvard psychiatristJudith Lewis Herman
(who uses the term "civilian rape") maintains that the "shell shock" in
World War I combat survivors was the same post-traumatic stress disor-
der as is experienced by female survivors of domestic violence. She
concludes that women and children subject to civilian rape and domes-
tic violence are in a war.4 The term "domestic rape" is ambiguous in
that it can suggest either "civilian rape" or the more specific area of
family violence. Not surprisingly, there is no convenient term to de-
C hap t e r F i v e 98

scribe the subset of practices discussed in this chapter. The point to

note is that the patterns this chapter explores are not the only ones,
although they are widespread. They seem to me very basic patterns in
that other forms of institutionalized rape, such as rape in men's prisons
and martial rape, can often be understood as variations on them. 5
Interestingly, women's prisons exhibit a different phenomenon with
respect to same-sex relationships, an apparently friendlier one that
sociologists have called "familying" whereby women who fall in love
with other women adopt each other's friends as "mother," "father,"
sister," and so forth, complete with "incest" prohibitions. 6 I do not
know whether this custom includes protectionism.

How Bad Is Rape?

A feminist critic in the United States once argued that "while

rape is very bad indeed, the work that most women employed outside
the home are compelled to do is more seriously harmful insofar as
doing such work damages the most fundamental in terests of the victim,
whatJoel Feinberg calls 'welfare interests,' whereas rape typically does
not. "7 This judgment takes rape to be simply an individual act, ignoring
its relationship to institutional rules and thereby its terrorist impli-
cations. Rape as an institution has severe consequences not only for
women raped but also for women terrorized into compliance and even
for their daughters. It underlies women's willingness to do whatever
work men find suitable for women to do. So understood, rape does
indeed damage women's fundamental interests, although information
on it is less public than (other) information on working conditions in
the paid labor force.
The term "terrorism" as used in the public media suggests a kind o(
political activity, usually with international significance, focused on the
powers of states or other territorial governments. 8 The restriction to
territorial politics, however, ignores the terrorism of sexual politics. Eth-
ically, that exclusion is arbitrary and irresponsible. It maintains the
invisibility of routine violence against women, underlying visible sex-
ist stereotypes. Rape and family violence, overlapping terrorist institu-
tions, form a backdrop to the daily lives of women in sexist societies.
The philosophical significance of recognizing rape as terrorism is
twofold. On one hand, philosophical discussions of terrorism are en-
 RAPE TERRORISM 99

larged by it and our understanding of terrorism's workings is deepened

by including the data of terrorist sexual politics. For they exemplify
profoundly institutionalized forms of terrorism that tend to be over-
looked in media portrayals of the terrorist as a mad individual. At the
same time, the meaning and significance of rape and domestic battery
can be clarified in relation to women's oppression by appreciating their
terrorist implications, and the meaning of feminine character in a mis-
ogynist society can be better appreciated by understanding the terrorist
context out of which it develops.
My first aim here is to elucidate what it means to call rape insti-
tutionalized terrorism. I do not attempt to support empirical claims
about the facts of rape. Crime reports are one source of statistics, and
yet it is generally agreed that rape is highly underreported. There is no
consensus on how highly underreported it is, or even on how it should
be defined. The analysis in this chapter should, however, clarify the
significance of such lacks of consensus. In any case, it is philosophically
interesting that without disputing facts many do not yet apply the con-
cept of "terrorism" to rape. Recognizing rape as institutionalized ter-
rorism is yet another step in clarifying what is wrong with it and how bad
it is in relation to other forms of violence and abuse. 9 It is also impor-
tant that we learn to resist rape's terroristic potentialities, which attach
to the institution regardless of whether they also attach to a particular
rape.
The claim that rape is a terrorist institution involves two views that
some may find surprising. One is that rape is an institution. The other is
that it is a form of terrorism. I take up these ideas in that order. For it is
important to understand rape as an institution in order to show how it
works socially as a form of terrorism.

Rape as an Institution

To my knowledge, the earliest extended feminist discussion of

rape as a practice is that of Susan Griffin in her 1971 essay in Ramparts
magazine, "Rape: The All-American Crime," a classic used in training
manuals for rape crisis centers from coast to coast.1O She also refers in
that essay to rape as terrorism. The same year a much shorter essay,
"Rape: An Act of Terror," by Barbara MehrhofI and Pamela Kearon,
published in Notes from the Third Year, gave explicit recognition in detail
Chapter Five 100

to the terroristic aspects of rape. ll Although these theorists do not

make explicit use of the concept of an institution, the idea is implicitly
there, in one case in the allusion to All-American sports (as sports
exemplify institutions) and in the other, in the idea of an extra-legal
social structure designed to place "woman qua woman" "outside the
protection of the law."
Rape is an institution not in the sense that it names an organization,
such as the SS, KGB, FBI, or CIA, but in the sense that war and punish-
ment are institutions. It is a fairly elaborate practice, with many histor-
ical embodiments and variations. As the institution of war includes the
practice of punishment, both can include practices of rape. Following
John Rawls, I use the terms "practice" and "institution" more or less
interchangeably here and mean by both a form of social activity struc-
tured by rules that define such things as roles, moves, positions, pow-
ers, and opportunities, thereby distributing responsibility for conse-
quences. 12 The more established a practice is, the more natural it seems
to refer to it as an institution.
Many participants in the institution of rape appear not to think of
themselves as participating in an institution or practice, a matter to
which I return. Rather, they encourage each other to think of their
behavior as natural, at least self-originating, or, at its most complicated,
as a response to provocation by women.
A practice can take root, become institutionalized, so firmly that it is
not necessary for anyone to supervise the operation as a whole. Individ-
ual participants find that they have their own good reasons, or failing
that, excuses, for what they do. Such institutions form the core subject
matter of what Kate Millett called "sexual politics."13 "Sexual politics"
does not refer simply to the politics of the state (or any other territorial
political body) with respect to sexual activity, although it includes that.
Nor is it concerned only with sexual behavior. "Sexual politics" refers
to social norms that create and define distributions of power among
and between members of the sexes, considered as such. Historically,
rape has been a major sexuo-political institution.
"Rape," like "punishment," is ambiguous. It can refer to a specific
kind of act, abstracted from its institutional setting, often (not neces-
sarily) violent and painful. The same term can also refer, however, to an
institution governing that act, an institution defined by rules that estab-
lish roles and positions, distribute responsibilities and opportunities,
and create or withdraw power. 14 In the institution of punishment, some
 RAPE TERRORISM 101

rules prohibit behaviors and specify penalties for offenses. Others gov-
ern the processes of policing, arrest, detention, and trial. Only some
participants in the institution of punishment actually administer penal-
ties. One may be hard put to say how much responsibility a particular
individual participant bears for the punishment, or release, of any ac-
cused individual. Yet communities supporting and benefiting from
such institutions can be held responsible and can take responsibility for
the institution and its operations. The same holds true for rape.
Although there is controversy over the goals of punishment, most
grant that deterrence of would-be criminal offenders is a legitimate
aim. Whatever the justifying goals of the institution as a whole, they
need not correspond with the intentional aims of participants at every
stage or in every role. 15 They need not, in particular, correspond with
the aims of those who administer penalties. Often, more specific rules
of the institution offer incentives (such as salaries) sufficient to moti-
vate individuals. Ordinarily, one supposes, those who administer penal-
ties do it for the money, although there is room also for sadism. Still,
they participate in the practice to the extent that their behavior is
guided and evaluated by its norms, even if they are not themselves
motivated by the overall goals served by the practice, and even if the
guiding and evaluating is largely done by others who have power over
them.
Analogous observations apply to the institution of rape. Just as deter-
rence from crime is a major task of punishment, the subordination and
subservience of women to men is a major task of rape. Just as with
punishment, the threat is what does most of the work. 16 Not all who
support or follow the rules carry out or even witness particular acts of
rape. As with the infliction of punishment, many who support it would
rather not have to witness it. Those who do commit rape may have
private motives of their own, such as revenge on other men. As with
those who abide by the law, not all who follow the rules of rape need
have the long-range aims or consequences of the practice "in mind" as
they do, although they often do have more specific rules in mind, even
if most would not describe what they have in mind as "rules." In the
case of punishment, it may be primarily judges and juries, formal and
informal, backing the rules in particular cases, who have the large-scale
purposes "in mind." Similarly, in the case of rape, it may be primarily
judging observers who have more large-scale purposes in mind as they
judge. For the most part, however, the rules become "second nature,"
C hap t er Fi vel 02

like the rules of grammar, and those guided need not be aware of the
rules as learned norms. There is also room for controversy about the
extent to which female compliance with male desire is due to the threat
of rape. As with the relationship between punishment and compliance
with the law, there is more than one story to be told here.
An ostensible difference between punishment in modern demo-
cratic states and rape is that punishment as defined (if not as practiced)
by modern democratic states, as a temporary or permanent withdrawal
of certain rights, is meant to be humane, not terrorist. This has not
always been true of state punishments. In a democracy punishment is
supposed to play the role of a stabilizer, providing people with a mutual
assurance of general obedience to their common laws, thus making it
rational for individuals to comply. It is supposed to be what people
might well propose be carried out against themselves, should they fail
to live up to their commitments, as a gesture of good faith and in
recognition of their common liability to temptationP Rape is not. It is
not a liability to which one might reasonably submit, fantasy notwith-
standing. Some rapes are less brutal than others. Yet rape is not meant
to be humane, regardless of how it is done.

Rape as Terrorism

Stereotypes of the terrorist as mad bomber or airplane hi-

jacker present terrorism as public, often idiosyncratically motivated re-
bellion, and focused on the power of state governments. The terrorism of
rape does not fit that model. It is not entirely public. It is not focused on
the power of state governments. It is not ordinarily a form of rebellion.
Much about rape is clandestine. Its concern is sexual politics, rather
than territorial politics. Laws officially prohibit rape. Yet constant dan-
ger to women offers men a ready source of material services in ex-
change for "protection." Barbara Mehrhof and Pamela Kearon ob-
served in 1971 that "rape laws are designed to protect males against
the charge of rape."IB Governments certainly have been better at pro-
tecting certain men from accusations of rape than at protecting most
women from rape.
Critics of popular views of terrorism, such as Jonathan Glover (and
earlier, Emma Goldman), have rightly challenged the idea that terror-
ism is perpetrated only by enemies of the state. Glover writes: " 'Our'
 RAPE TERRORISM 103

cause is usually supported by the resistance, by the underground, or by

freedom fighters, while 'their' cause is often supported by terrorists.
The use of the word 'terrorism' is often so loose and so loaded that it is
tempting to abandon it."19 Recognizing the existence of state terrorism
helps us to realize that terrorism is not always public. Historically, state
terrorism has often been carried out by secret organizations and ac-
companied by public disavowals on the part of government bodies.
When terrorism is thought of as public, it may be tempting to admire
terrorists somewhat for courage and honesty or alternatively to deplore
their manifest lack of shame. Thus Annette Baier asks: "Does the fact
that the killing is done openly, with an eye to publicity, make it better or
worse than killings done quietly and with attempted secrecy? ... The
person we call a terrorist (as distinct from the assassin) typically does
her violence in the public eye. "20 It may be neither courage nor lack of
shame, however, so much as necessity dictated by the terrorists' goals
that determines whether a particular instance of terrorism is public or
private. Terrorists working in the public eye aim to terrorize a certain
public. Showing that they do not fear punishment can be necessary to
succeed in terrorizing a government or other powerful body. Terrorists
who are already relatively powerful (such as an established state govern-
ment) need not make that point. They may have more to fear from
publicity. For publicity could reveal that those terrorized into com-
pliance were not acting voluntarily.
Terrorism is distinguished less by its ends or by the character traits it
manifests than by its process. It is a tactic used to gain control of situa-
tions, or to fix or shift a balance of power, public or private. Terrorism is
a shortcut to power or authority, a resort of the relatively powerless or of
those unable to justify their uses of power to a public.
If humane forms of deterrence threaten penalties to which one
might reasonably be prepared to submit in the event of one's evi-
dent disobedience, terrorism often manipulates target populations
into compliance with demands they should reject, if rational, under
calmer conditions. Terror as a tactic is an alternative to persuasion and
argument, which are slower and riskier, and to humane forms of deter-
rence, which are also riskier and often more expensive. The work of
Emma Goldman and Jonathan Glover on state terrorism suggests that
terrorism is distinguished from the formally defined public threat of
legal punishment in modern states more by the nakedness of its appeal
to the motive of terror than by the political status of its perpetrators.
ChapterFive 104

Terrorism involves planned or systematic manipulation. Terror-

panicky and heightened fear - makes us vulnerable to manipulation.
We feel an urgent need to act before it is too late. Thus we are in a poor
position to reflect or get things in perspective. We are in a poor position
to be prudent or just. Our attention is riveted by the threat of disaster
and what we can do to prevent it. We are thus not so likely to pay
attention to the terrorizer's situation, options, motivations, or aims,
except as they define what we must do to avoid disaster. We feel our
options narrowed to the point of almost no control. 21 There is a danger
for the terrorist of going too far, of freezing us instead of merely ter-
rorizing us, with the result that manipulation becomes impossible. Ter-
rorists, like other torturers, develop sensitivities and skills to avoid this
consequence.
Like other terrorisms, rape has two targets, in this case "bad girls"
and "good girls," those expendable ("throw-aways") and those to
whom a message is sent by way of the treatment of the former. 22 Women
and girls to whom the message is sent may not directly confront men or
boys they perceive as rapists. Some may not often Jeelterrorized by rape.
It does not follow that they are not victims of terrorism. When terrorism
is successful, the second target population (to whom the message is
sent) need not experience continual terror. Women successfully ter-
rorized, and others socialized by them, comply with men's demands. As
reward and inducement to continue, they are granted "protection"
that they may feel they have "earned." The feeling of "earned protec-
tion" gives a sense of control. Daughters of terrorized mothers may be
shielded for a long time by being "properly brought up."
Women whose encounters with violence are most immediate and
most traumatic are not always most liable to manipulation by fear of
violence. Survivor rage can overcome fear. Having faced the apparent
worst, some women become dedicated to noncompliance. Like their
sisters who did not survive, such women and others who have been
tortured or mutilated may be useless to men except to send a message
to other women to try thereby to secure their services: This is what will
happen to you if you are not "good," if you fail to do as we say.
An allegedly obsolete meaning of "rape" is "to carry off forcibly," a
kind of theft. Rape has historically been treated by men as a crime of
theft against other men. That idea is not totally obsolete. Men still often
regard the rape of a woman as an offense against her guardian - the
theft of something (the woman's "honor") that has a monetary value, a
 RAPE TERRORISM 105

prestige value, or both. From the guardian's point of view, rape is a

source of anger, indignation, resentment, even bitterness, but not of
terror. It is only from the point of view of women (or of men treated
as women) that rape is terrifying. Omnipresent fear of rape controls
women's mobility. Rapes of prostitutes, lesbians, and other women with
no male guardians - and so having nothing to "steal" - receive even
less legal uptake than rapes of women who have male guardians. Yet
the terror of rape is a fact of daily life for prostitutes, lesbians, and
others who have no male guardians. These are among the expendables
("throw-aways") liable to being used to send a message to women more
likely to be compliant.

The Protectiun Racket

Feminists aside, philosophers have said little about rape. This

could be surprising, considering how much they have said about vio-
lence against men. Except for accusations invented by European Amer-
icans to '~ustify" lynchings of Mrican Americans, rape has not been,
until recent years, even an issue-that is, discussable. 23 Men have of-
ficially acknowledged that rape is wrong, but so obviously wrong that
what was to discuss? Feminists have had to make an issue of rape.
Since Susan Griffin's essay on rape as the "all-American crime," it has
become commonplace among feminists to regard rape as the linchpin
of a male protection racket in misogynist societies.

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men.

This is not unlike the protection relationship which [orga-
nized crime] established with small businesses in the early
part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection
racket which depends for its existence on rape. 24

Rackets create danger in order to sell "protection." Historically, orga-

nized crime expanded its power base by securing service and payment
through terrorist means, from bombings to individual torture and mu-
tilation. Historically, also, rape and the threat of rape have secured
women's services for men who have represented themselves as protec-
tors while they terrorized other women or supported other men who
did.
C hap t er Fi vel 06

In an essay with the memorable title, "Coercion and Rape: The State
as a Male Protection Racket," Susan Rae Peterson argues that rape is a
state-sponsored institution. 25 Rape is a "Rawlsian kind of 'practice,' "
she says, a "form of activity specified by a system of rules which define
offices, rules, moves, penalties, defences, and so on, and which give the
activity its structure. "26 If a state fails to protect women against rape
but succeeds in protecting at least certain classes of men against rape
charges, she argues, it supports a "racket." I would go further and say
that a state supports a racket even when it does penalize rapists, if it is
responsible for the continued threat of rape.
Offers of "protection" are offers that women have dared not refuse.
If we refuse the bargain - refuse to pay protection and insist upon
moving about without a guardian - we are held responsible for dangers
we meet in response to our self-assertion. When we are raped, we hear
that we brought it on ourselves, as Hegel said of the punishment visited
on a criminal by the state. 27 For we could have stayed home or gone out
with a guardian. Our position is in some ways worse than that of the
buyer from the crime syndicate. For our success in eliciting offers of
protection, the need for which we learn in early childhood, requires
that we comport and decorate ourselves in precisely those ways that are
said to bring on and intensify the dangers from which we are to be
protected. We hear that not to groom ourselves in this way is not to care
about our appearance. Belatedly, we find that a male guardian can
often protect us from no one but himself, and we are surely at his mercy
there. The protectorate tends not to recognize rape by guardians or by
males to whom we have once been accessible. Because access, a major
face of power, is controlled by the protectorate, those who pay protec-
tion are unable to control the need for protection. 28

Rape Mythology Undermined by Amir's Research

Important to rape as a terrorist institution is the myth that

rapists are weirdos lurking in the bushes or stalking beautiful innocent
(or naughty) women who walk alone. According to this myth, rape
serves only the perverse desires of madmen, always mysterious strang-
ers. In 1971 sociologist Menachem Amir published a study of 646 rapes
reported in Philadelphia for the years 1958 and 1960, which did much
to discredit this madman myth and the "irresistible impulse" theory
 RAPE TERRORISM 107

of rape as well. 29 Amir found that the majority of the rapes he stud-
ied were planned, not spontaneous (in gang rapes, 90 percent were
planned; in pair rapes, 83 percent; in single rapes, 58 percent), that
nearly half the rapists were personally known to the women they tar-
geted, that a high proportion of rapes occurred in the homes of either
the perpetrator or the women targeted, and that 43 percent involved
multiple rapists. 30 Defending his situational-as opposed to psychologi-
cal- approach to studying rape, Amir reports that "studies indicate
that sex offenders do not constitute a unique clinical or psychopatho-
logical type; nor are they as a group invariably more disturbed than the
control groups to which they were compared. "31 It appears that men
convicted of rape are no more mentally disturbed than other men. It
does not follow, of course, that other men are not mentally disturbed,
or even that they do not rape. On the contrary, such studies raise the
question how common rape is among men who regard each other as
normal, even respectable.
Amir's research is a turning point. Prior studies focused on the psy-
chologies of rapists and of the women they targeted, assuming that
individual rapes had sufficient explanations in individual psychological
eccentricity. Patriarchal tradition blames, ultimately, the women in the
case - the woman targeted for rape, the rapist's mother, the rapist's
wife or "girlfriend" -and reserves sympathy for rapists, who "have a
problem." Amir focused on situational aspects, rather than individual
psychologies: where the rape was done, when, how, and what were the
prior relationships, if any, between the perpetrators and the women
they targeted. His findings upset popular mythology about who rapists
are, whom they target, and where and when they do it.
Imaginatively, it is a short step from finding social patterns, under-
stood as statistical generalizations (which is how Amir understood
them), to identifYing social norms defining an institution by which peo-
ple guide and evaluate their behavior.32 The alternative to separate ex-
planations of individual rapes is not necessarily a conspiracy, although
Amir's study certainly turned up enough conspiracies. A more inter-
esting alternative is that of a sexuo-political institution, the rules of
which, learned by example and precept, are presented as though they
were empirical generalizations about women and men, anthropologi-
cal claims about female and male nature.
Combining Amir's research with Susan Griffin's protection racket
theory and the view of Barbara Mehrhof and Pamela Kearon of rape as
C hap t eT Fi vel 08
an act of terror yields the idea of rape as a terrorist institution. This is a
relatively optimistic view. It demystifies rape. It does not rest on conjec-
tures about the mysteries of male biology but presents rape as learned
behavior. It suggests that rape, like slavery, can be abolished, however
inconceivable that may seem to those whose material well-being and
sense of self-esteem now depends on its existence.

Doublethink and Clandestine Outlaw Institutions

Although they may be supported in various ways by the state,

rackets are outlaw institutions. That is, the behavior central to them
is officially illegal. Outlaw institutions involve clandestine operations.
The sense in which agents carrying out clandestine operations partic-
ipate in institutions generating the operations can be problematic.
Some agents are clear that they are committing, condoning, or sup-
porting rape, but not that it is part of a political operation. Other
agents seem unclear about whether what they did was rape. Many do
not care.
The clandestine nature of the institution is part of the explanation
why many do not imagine that they are taking part in an institution.
Some, manipulated by others, may not be aware of roles they play.
Secret terrorism authorized by institutions that have governing bodies
can help us get a fix on how terrorist policing institutions work. Partici-
pants in secret state practices or crime syndicate operations act with
varying degrees of awareness that they are participating in a large and
complex institution. Institutions with clandestine operations launder
evil deeds like dirty money, passing them through a series of agen ts with
ever-clecreasing information about what is being done and why. Agents
who administer violent deaths and torture are sQmetimes paid or co-
erced outright. But sometimes they are punished, instead of rewarded,
by those whom they have served, as a public disavowal of responsibility
by the latter. Unpunished rapists may be like hangmen doing the dirty
work of others who while not admiring them for it nevertheless make
certain that they are enabled to do on doing what they do.
What George Orwell called "doublethink" is a common institutional
tool ofmanipulation. 33 "Doublethink" makes a thing seem its opposite,
as when "peace-keepers" becomes the term for weapons. The rules of
rape use doublethink to shield participants from having to recog-
 RAPE TERRORISM 109

nize rape when doing so might be counterproductive. Consequently,

women often find it impossible to convince others that a rape was really
a rape. The problem is not, as it is so often presented, that there is a
slippery slope from polite refusal to teasing seduction on women's part.
The problem is that women's wills in rape situations become irrelevant.
Despite clear demonstration of undisputed, unwanted violence, the
rules of rape can block recognition that a rape was committed, espe-
cially when the assailant is no stranger to the woman he targets. 34
Consider the following case, known to me personally from a little
more than a decade ago. I choose it because it is not unusual and so is
helpful in making a general point about rape. A female university stu-
dent did not understand until fully a week later that she had been
raped by the male student with whom she went home to study, even
though she was well aware that he forcibly detained her, threw her to
the floor, pinned her in place by methods that I will spare you, and
sexually penetrated both ends of her body, causing her physical i~uries
and loss of blood. How could she not know that she was raped? She was
apparently in shock afterward. But that was not why. The problem was,
as she put it, that she went voluntarily to his apartment, in response to his
invitation. Women who do this hear that they have "asked for it." This
woman heard that not only from her assailant but also from the home-
town law enforcement officer to whom she first reported the rape, at
her mother's insistence, after returning home to recuperate.
In the city where the assault actually took place, police have been
taught not to disregard a rape charge for that kind of reason. Hearing
this from the rape crisis hotline, the student went to the district at-
torney. Nearly two years later, I watched the jury return a verdict of "not
guilty." The defense attorney denied only that the woman had withheld
consent. He argued that because she was angry (by then, she was)
instead of ashamed (she no longer was), his client had probably made
her feel rejected and that she had probably invented the rape charge as
revenge.
The thing to notice is what makes it standardly impossible to answer
the question what really happened and how this impossibility functions
in a terrorist practice. Doublethink turns rape into something the per-
petrator and target did together or into an "event" that "happened
between us," as the man in the above case put it to the woman who later
charged him with rape. This is achieved by rules defining "consent," or
rather, defining it out of existence.
Chapter Five 110

The Rules

The first rule ofinstitutionalized rape, still embedded in older

legal definitions, is that husbands cannot rape their wives. Or, alter-
natively, husbands are permitted to rape their wives with utter impu-
nity. Notice that it does not matter which way you put it. The idea gets
across. The rule permits husbands carnal access regardless of their
wives' wills. Many of the rules of rape are unwritten, although this first
one is still found explicitly in jurisdictions not yet affected by feminist
criticism. As a result ofliberal feminist criticism, some jurisdictions now
use the language of "sexual assault," breaking down the possibilities
into degrees of seriousness, and have abandoned the term "rape." Yet
many of us retain the term "rape" because it conveys, in a way that
"sexual assault" does not, who historically has assaulted whom and who
continues to be the main target.
When rape is defined as forcible carnal knowledge by a man of a
woman not his wife, nothing a man does to the woman married to him is
allowed to count as "real" rape. Ifwe understand "forcible" in its ordi-
nary sense, this is doublethink. Wives can be sexually forced, "accessed"
against their wills. It is not rape only if wives are normatively disabled from
withholding consent.
This is an example of rules that define categories of women who are
not allowed to count as rape targets, at least for certain men. No matter
what the men do to them, it is not really rape, because the rules give the
woman's status itself the value of consent. Other such status examples
are prostitutes, women who are not "virgins" (including women pre-
viously raped), and women who have had past voluntary sexual rela-
tions with a particular man (where nothing he does to her afterward
counts as "real" rape).
Another kind of rule gives female appearance, rather than status, the
value of consent. Consider the rule that women who dress or move
"provocatively" are "asking for it." There are basically two ways for
women to "provoke" male sexual aggression. First, there is the "sexy"
way, where our clothes and manner accent femininity. Second, there is
the "castrating bitch" way, where our clothes and manner manifest,
rather, a refusal to make a feminine or "sexy" display of femaleness,
and we consequently need to be "taught our place." It might seem,
then, that the implication is that women should wear nothing. Yet
 RAPE TERRORISM 111

we hear that this is the most "provocative" of all- except when it is

disgusting.
Most interesting, perhaps, are the situational rules, such as the rule
that a woman alone is "asking for it." There are three ways of being
alone. First, there is the straightforward, ordinary sense of being unac-
companied by anyone at all. But, second, women who are accompanied
by other women are represented as being "all alone," which sounds
even more alone than before (although it is often the safest situa-
tion).35 Third, a woman may be alone with a man. "Alone with" sounds
like a self-contradiction. Yet the description is apt. A woman alone with
a man is physically present with someone - as the female student was
physically present with the male student in his apartment-who is not,
however, presumed to be with her in the sense of being on her side. The
alternative to these three ways of being alone is to be accompanied by
a guardian-who can, of course, do anything he pleases without its
counting as rape.
The above rules confer the value, or part of the value, of consent
upon a woman's status, appearance, behavior, or situation. Still others
confer that value simply upon the female body itself and upon its invol-
untary experience. Contemporary patriarchal society treats the female
body itself as provocative. There are rules to the effect that a woman
who is sexually aroused is willing and that one who experiences plea-
sure is likewise willing. As empirical generalizations, these claims are
false. But they are not simply false empirical generalizations. They are
political norms, redefining "consent" and thereby the meaning of
"rape."
Yet another rule is that consent once given cannot be withdrawn. 36
We have already seen this implicitly in the cases of some statuses, such
as marriage, that may be acquired through consent. But it also comes
into play on an ordinary date if a woman wishes to change her mind in
the course of an evening. Contrast this with accepting an invitation
to have lunch together. If I no longer feel like eating when the time
comes, I may just keep you company or drink something while you eat.
It is difficult to imagine wanting a companion to eat anyway, just be-
cause she agreed to earlier, if she no longer wants food when the time
comes. Force-feeding as a way of handling such disappointment would
hardly be found natural or excusable. Yet the rules of rape legitimize its
analogue regarding sex.
Chapter Five 112

Related to the rule that consent once given cannot be withdrawn is

the rule that men once sexually aroused are no longer responsible for
their conduct. As an empirical claim, this is less plausible than the
analogous claims would be about men who are hungry or thirsty. For
self-gratification is readily obtainable in the case of sexual arousal. The
claim that sexually aroused men are no longer responsible for their
conduct makes sense, however, once we recognize it as not an empirical
claim but a political norm. Men sexually aroused are, by the rules,
absolved of responsibility for their behavior.
Considered one by one, most of the rules do not ask the impossible.
They thus create the impression that failing to meet their requirements
is avoidable. Yet looking at the requirements only one by one and draw-
ing such a conclusion is like looking at the individual bars of a cage and
concluding that since no one of them could possibly confine anyone,
there is no trap.37 In the ways that they work together, the rules of
institutionalized rape leave no alternatives by which women can be
genuinely secure against sexual violation by men. Trying our best to live
up to them still leaves us at the mercy of men (as men have long
believed they were at the mercy of their God), who can always find a
"violation" if they wish, but who may spare us if we are evidently trying
to be "good," that is, if we are sufficiently deferential. Curiously, the
result has not been to rob most women of motives for trying to please.
Inexperienced women may not appreciate the incoherence of the big
picture. But even experienced women often see no better alternative
than trying to please those in power, accepting the humiliating position
of being "wrong" no matter what, and striving by ingratiation to reduce
the likelihood of abuse.
The most blatant rule, summing up the spirit of institutionalized
rape, is that when a woman says no she means yes. What must she do or
say, then, to mean no? Nothing she says counts for much. Historically,
she was expected to resist physically to her utmost, which has also been
a turn-on for the rapist. If both no and yes mean yes, neither means
anything. The net result is that women are politically disabled from
withholding consent to male sexual access.
While most rules make it impossible for women to withhold consent,
a few do just the opposite: girls cannot give consent - clearly, a political
norm, not an empirical claim. Likewise, the unofficial racist rule that
white women cannot consent to black men is a transparently political
norm. Like the others, these rules also divorce consent from the will.
 RAPE TERRORISM 113

But their functions are different. Rules that disable women from giving
consent enable some men to control other men by marking certain
females as off limits to them. Such rules may seem to offer women real,
if limited, protection. However, white racist rules have been designed
to protect the "purity" of white people, not to protect women. In so
doing they control white women as well as men of color, barring both
from interracial relationships. Jailbait rules, which might also seem to
offer young women some real protection, are designed to protect fe-
male marriageability against theft by potential guardians. Yet such rules
have not protected girls from abuse by adult men in their homes.
Rules that disable women from withholding consent help to make
sense of myths about rape that are otherwise puzzling and even mutu-
ally contradictory although simultaneously believed. For example, rape
is popularly considered both normal and impossible. When I was an
undergraduate, one of my philosophy professors told the 'Joke" in
lecture that it was impossible to rape a woman because a woman with
her skirt up can run faster than a man with his pants down. The myth
that it is impossible to rape a woman usually is understood to mean that
no man could physically succeed with a woman who really did not
consent. Taken empirically, this claim appears to deny that women are
forced at gunpoint or knifepoint or by gangs to submit to acts to which
they would otherwise not submit. But guns, knives, muscles, and so
forth are irrelevant to the question of consent. It was sufficient that
the woman either was or was not wearing clothes that highlighted her
femaleness, that she was alone either with or without other men or
women, that she said either yes or no, and so on. If it is impossible to
rape a woman, that is because the rules of rape discredit her refusals.
They thereby make a certain sense of the myth that only a mentally
disturbed or retarded man would commit rape, that the act is not
normal. Unless he is a victim of racism, a man would almost have to be
mentally disturbed or retarded not to be able to fit his behavior under
some rules or other whereby nothing he did would count as rape.
Because of those rules, however, rape also appears normal, because it is
very ordinary. For, women who are unable to withhold consent are also
unable to give it.
The rules also make sense of male paranoia regarding women falsely
crying "rape." Offhand, this paranoia is puzzling, considering how
much rape goes unreported and how women have been treated when
they did report it. However, since the rules do not meaningfully dis-
Chapter Five 114
tinguish between women who really do consent and women who do
not, it should not be surprising that men wonder whether women have
any way to make that distinction in reporting what men did to them.

Stupping Rape: MiU's Liberalism, Femininity, and »hat', Wrong

with Terrorism

It is commonplace among feminists that preventing rape

should not be women's responsibility. Preventing rape should be the
responsibility of those who commit it, support it, or are served and
empowered by it. Women's energies are needed for healing, mutual
support, and getting on with our lives. Yet women surely have an inter-
est in avoiding rape and rape terrorism. 3s Exposing the rules of the
institution is helpful toward this end, suggesting strategies of avoid-
ance, such as separatist experiments communicating that women who
say no mean no and demonstrating that women together are not alone.
Self-defense instruction for those of us raised to be physical cowards
and incompetents can be valuable, even life-saving, in the short run.
Yet, although it helps to counteract terrorism by instilling confidence,
belated self-defense instruction does little to address the institutionaliz-
ation ofrape. 39 Women's transit organizations, rape crisis centers, and
battered women's shelters, all heavily dependent on volunteer work,
confront the protection racket directly by offering alternative sources
of protection so that women need not seek protection from those who
create or benefit from the existence of the danger. The critic who
found women's working conditions more harmful than "typical acts of
rape" could still make the point that if women cease to value the "sex-
ual purity" that has made rape, historically, reduce women's value to
men, there is one less thing to JearfrQm rape. Reassessing the significance
of rape is one among many strategies for avoiding rape terrorism.
Despite the belief that preventing rape should not be women's re-
sponsibility, many women are in fact taking aggressive steps to combat
it, in addition to learning to avoid it. The most popularly controversial
strategies of combatting rape are probably the feminist attacks on me-
dia propaganda that set up women for rape by conveying to men the
message that women like to be manhandled and by encouraging girls
and young women to develop positive fantasies of being raped. Pornog-
raphy is a major vehicle of this propaganda, not only dirty books and
 RAPE TERRORISM 115

magazines but also pornographic scenes sprinkled commonly through-

out fiction, modern theater entertainment, and commodity adver-
tising. A little more than a decade ago a low-budget, documentary
film entitled Rape Culture showed scenes glorifying rape from popular
movies in the United States, including Gone with the Wind, Straw Dogs,
and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 40 In each, rape is presented as
thrilling and fulfilling for a woman. Scarlett O'Hara is never more
radiant than the morning after Rhett Butler rapes her. In Straw Dogs the
rapist beats up a woman and drags her about by the hair before he
finally rapes her, and at the moment of penetration, her agonized face
melts into ecstatic pleasure. These scenes remind us how women learn
to develop the kinds ofrape fantasies that facilitate actual rape.
One may wonder whether such rape fantasies fit the idea of rape as a
terrorist institution. Some, of course, clearly do. Not all rape fantasies
are of being raped; many (as noted in Chapter Three) are of killing the
rapist or getting various sorts of revenge. Yet even the fantasies encour-
aged by pornography fit the idea of rape terrorism. The word "rape" is
not used in the scripts of the film scenes mentioned above. Rather,
these films present the rapist as a woman's protector. The fantasy that
pornography teaches women to enjoy is of rape by a "prince" who then
protects her from other men, who are sources ofterror. The "prince" is
the "good rapist," although even he was a source ofterror prior to the
act.41
Since at least the late 1950s many philosophers have defended por-
nography by appeal to the liberty principle ofJohn Stuart Mill, a use of
that principle that Mill seems not to have foreseen. 42 His liberty princi-
ple is that interference in someone's conduct (other than by persua-
sion and argument), whether by the state or by an individual, is not
justified except to prevent that agent from harming yet others. He
interprets "harm" as injury inflicted without the informed consent of
those on whom it is inflicted. Mill applied his principle to religious and
political censorship as well as to undefined "experiments in living," but
he did not explicitly apply it to such things as pornography or prosti-
tution. Those who make the latter applications tend to assume that
viewers, users, and those participating in the production and exchange
of pornography or in prostitution are not harmed in the relevant sense,
as long as they are consenting adults, and that no one else need be
harmed because no one else need be involved.
Mill himself, however, was not content to rest his evaluations ofwom-
Chapter Five 116

en's choices at this level. In The Subjection o/Women Mill argues that the
fact that adult women seem to consen t to certain arrangements, such as
marriage without the possibility of divorce or being denied the political
franchise, is not sufficient to conclude that they are not harmed by
those arrangements. 43 He gives several reasons why not: One is that
what is interpreted as consent (frequently, only a refusal to protest) is
often motivated by the realistic fear that protest will bring reprisals.
Another is that so-called consent often is no more than a ranking of
alternatives in the construction of which the chooser had no part, none
of which is tolerable but one of which must be chosen and is therefore
chosen as least intolerable of a set of bad options. Still another is that
many desires and ambitions underlying so-called consent are socially
constructed by practices that stifle rather than foster women's develop-
ment. In pursuing such questions as "Why are there no great women
artists?" and "What if women don't want to vote?" Mill was led to in-
quire into the foundations of women's apparent consent to exclusion-
ary practices and into the social processes by which ill-founded views of
women's nature are constructed. His liberalism is, in principle and in
practice, significantly shaped by these inquiries. Studies of the clan-
destine and domestic terrorism to which women have been subjected
for centuries would be more in keeping with Mill's social ethics than
defenses, in the name of his liberty principle, of the sale and inhumane
portrayal of women who consent, or appear to consent, to such things.
In the essay on liberty Mill also has important things to say about
character. He argues that individuality is "one of the elements of well-
being," understanding this to require the development of our "fac-
ulties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity,
and even moral preference" and the development of strong, energetic
natures. 44 He maintains that "it really is of importance, not only what
men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. "45 Applying
the same points to women, we can see some of the costs of rape terror-
ism to female development.
Bat-Ami Bar On, in her essay on why terrorism is morally problem-
atic, points out first of all that terrorism produces fearful people. Fear-
ful people become contracted; their sense of agency is diminished and
thereby their sense of themselves as deserving of respect. Citing the
work of Leo Lowenthal, Marilyn Frye, and Kathleen Barry, she explains
how terrorism "interrupts the causal relation between what people do
and what happens to them."46 Comparing terrorism with torture, she
 RAPE TERRORISM 117

argues that it produces an alienation from self and a sense of self-

betrayal. She concludes that what is most importantly wrong with ter-
rorism is not that it violates the conventions of just war (although
it does) but that it is cruel to the terrorized in that it erodes their
selves and breaks theirwills. 47 It is, in short, evil treatment, radically evil
treatment.
Her description of the character of those shaped by terrorism
sounds, abstractly and in unadorned language, like a description of
feminine character as it develops in a rape culture. Women have been
mocked by men since the time of Socrates for a lack of courage, strong
will, initiative, integrity, self-respect- the very things Mill found impor-
tant to the development of what he called "individuality" as "one of the
elements of well-being." It is not enough to call attention to the fact
that there are many women of whom these things are not true and that
there are also male cowards. It is important to note the patterns and
search for explanations of them. Many male cowards are survivors of
other oppressive practices. What is so disheartening about most por-
nography, even so-called soft core pornography and even when it is
produced by women who apparently give their consent to be used in its
production, is that it presents to the public this fragile, compliant femi-
nine character in very young women as a sexual turn-on. Finding plea-
sure in such portrayals calls to my mind the idea of finding pleasure in
the "music" produced by the brass bull of the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas
(early sixth century B.C.E.). The bull's "singing" was produced by the
screams of victims roasting inside. 48 One would hope that, for the most
part, only those ignorant of what they were hearing could enjoy it, that
sadists like the tyrant are rare. Likewise, one would hope that only those
unappreciative of the history of rape terrorism could find the por-
nography that glorifies its end result a source of pleasure. And yet, Bat-
Ami Bar On also finds that terrorism forms the terrorizer as well as the
terrorized, with the result that it produces not only fearful people but
also cruel ones. 49 Mill did not support the practice of abstracting from
histories of cruelty in order to experience pleasure. Nor should we.
 c h a p e r s x

GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION

T he ravages of terrorism discussed in the last chapter

are not the only forms of moral damage that women
have sustained. I mention in Chapter Three the mis-
placed gratitude many women experience toward
"protectors" who may do no more than refrain from
abuse. There I rely on an intuitive sense of what was misplaced about
such gratitude. In this chapter I offer an ethical analysis of gratitude
and its affiliated sense of obligation, assuming the burden of distin-
guishing between well-placed and misplaced gratitude. In so doing, I
also explore the views of some influential philosophers on the ethics of
gratitude.
Gratitude is a more important topic than we might think were we to
judge solely by the attention devoted to it in the past by moral philos-
ophers. 1 Perhaps it is especially important for those who have most
needed others' services. A reason why it has not received more atten-
tion may be that those writing on it have not experienced that need
acutely or in a sustained way. Further, one might think gratitude less
important than other topics because it may seem only a matter of how
we feel, whereas often action seems more urgent than feeling. Grati-
tude is, however, intimately bound up with action by way of its special
sense of obligation - a sense that often seems paradoxical. The para-
dox of debts of gratitude is a cen tral focus of this chapter.
The sense of being obligated through gratitude toward protectors
has played a large role in shaping the lives of women in rape cultures.
But the ethics of gratitude is also important to the ethics of friendship
generally. In particular, it is important to understanding the ethics of
friendship between parties who are distinctly unequal in power. Those
who are relatively powerless may develop a certain misplaced gratitude
to those with power over them - gratitude for ordinary decencies, for
less abusiveness than was possible, and, as I note, even for genuine
benefactions. Recognition of misplaced gratitude is all but nonexistent
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 119

in philosophical literature. Gratitude is almost always contrasted there

simply with ingratitude as a fault. Perhaps undeserved gratitude seems
harmless or even beneficial to others and therefore not cause for con-
cern. But it can indicate a misjudgment of others, a lack of self-respect,
or both.
The remainder of this chapter is divided into four sections. I begin by
noting a paradox about debts of gratitude. The first section looks at the
debtor paradigm of obligation as the source of this paradox. This para-
digm appears incongruent not only with gratitude but with informal
and personal relationships generally. The second section examines in
greater detail the problems suggested by the paradox of a "debt of
gratitude" and considers the relevant views of Kant, Aristotle, and
Hobbes. I conclude that Hobbes's natural laws of gratitude are more
promising with respect to resolving the paradox than the accounts
found in Kant and Aristotle, and that Hobbes's natural laws seem to
invoke an alternative to the debtor paradigm of obligation. Building on
Hobbes's account, the third section proposes a trustee or guardian
paradigm of obligation as more congruent with gratitude and friend-
ship than the debtor paradigm. In this paradigm obligations are not
closely correlated with others' rights but nevertheless define ethically
significant relationships between individuals.
In clarifying the contrast between the paradigms of the debtor and
the trustee, I develop further the distinction between formal and infor-
mal obligations introduced in Chapter Three in the discussion of Carol
Gilligan's discovery of different moral voices. There I suggested that
what Carol Gilligan is inclined to call the voice of care may be better
understood simply as a focus on personal and informal relationships
(or aspects of relationships) and that what she is inclined to call the
voice of justice may be better understood simply as a focus on more
formal and impersonal relationships (or aspects of relationships). Each
kind of relationship gives rise to obligations. Here I argue that the
trustee model congruent with gratitude tends to fit informal obliga-
tions and that the debtor model is more natural for many formal or
impersonal obligations.
The final section of this chapter uses the trustee paradigm to clarifY
how gratitude can be misplaced by those who are relatively powerless
(such as women in a misogynist society or people of color in a white
racist society) in relation to benefactors who have power over them. I
also consider the possibility that" debt of gratitude" may accurately re-
C hap t e r Six 120

fleet the complexity of relationships to powerful benefactors. Being

able to assess the obligations felt by the relatively powerless is important
to evaluating women's voices, to the project of sorting out what wom-
en's voices may have to offer moral theory and what it would be better
for women to overcome.

The Debtor Paradigm of Obligation

The idea of a debt of gratitude is paradoxical. If that for which

gratitude is due was neither for sale nor on loan but was in some sense
gratis, what sense does it make to feel indebted for it? How can one
repay such a debt without transforming the transaction into one in
which there is no room for gratitude? What kind of debt is this?
Friedrich Nietzsche cited the economic contract between buyer and
seller as an ancestor of the moral concept of duty.2 He found an origin
of guilt in the debtor-creditor relationship. Guilt (in German, Schuld,
which also means "debt") is an unpaid debt. To avoid guilt we pay our
debts, what we owe, do as we ought. Perhaps economic history can also
illuminate debts of gratitude. The anthropologist Marcel Mauss found
entire economies structured around the "gift" relationship.3 Such
"gifts," however, are as paradoxical as our debts of gratitude.
Being in debt is only one paradigm of obligation. For non utilitarian
theories of right, however, it has become the paradigm ethical relation-
ship. Kant treated moral obligation as a supreme indebtedness, an
owing of duties to someone or other, if only to ourselves. When we
cannot specifY what must be done to carry out the duty or the party to
whom the duty is owed (as in the case of the "duty of benevolence") ,we
have an "imperfect duty," an imperfect debt. 4 No one is entitled to
collect it. We owe it nonetheless. Fulfilling obligations on this paradigm
is a matter of settling accounts. Moral problems become conflicting
debts: Payment of one interferes with payment of another. And so a
central problem, if not the central problem, of the descendants of Kant-
ian ethical theory has become the determination of what we really owe
in such cases. For, according to Kantian and post-Kantian moral eco-
nomics, we cannot really owe what we cannot pay-with perhaps one
exception: a debt of gratitude. 5
A morally good person on this paradigm is a competent, scrupulous,
even imaginative moral book balancer whose basic concern is to stay as
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 121

much as possible "in the black." Theorists disagree on the fundamental

principles of moral book balancing - even whether there are any - but
widely agree that keeping the books tidy is either the most important
business of life or else that without which the rest of our businesses
matter little. Moral book balancers take this task seriously. Some think
only conscientious balancers deserve happiness. Few are confident of
the requital of such desert. Still, the worthiness to be happy is a power-
ful source of pride. The books can be balanced, more or less, without
further incentive.
Those delinquent in their payments are guilty and may be forced to
pay their debts through punishment, which is thought also to encour-
age a more businesslike attitude for the future. And what a future.
Moral book balancers cannot look forward to the day when all their
debts are paid off. There is always the "ought" and "ought not," no
matter how many payments have been made. One cannot even get
ahead by overpaying. Supererogatory conduct releases no one from
those perennial perfect debts. 6 And what a perfect debt it is that one
can pay and pay and yet continue to owe. Nor may one avoid incurring
debts. It is said belong to one's human nature to be so liable.
Is it any wonder that moralists are sometimes despised? It can be
insulting to be reminded of our debts. Taking the initiative with pay-
ments is a major source of pride remaining to a debtor. Who would rob
us of that by reminding us what we owe?
The Kantian sense of obligation is a sense of duty. If duties are debts,
for what are they owed? Perhaps Elizabeth Anscombe was right that
much modern ethics is the remainder of a Divine Law-giver morality
with the Law-giver absent. 7 On the Divine Law-giver theory, we could
say for what we were indebted. Without the Law-giver, we seem left with
duties traceable neither to benefits received nor to goods taken, dam-
aged, or consumed. We think everyone due minimal decencies from
everyone. Thus we seem forever each other's debtors-an odd rela-
tionship: debtor-debtor, not debtor-creditor.
In these respects, debts of gratitude and John Rawls's "duties offair
play" (discussed near the end of the next section) make more sense. 8
Here we feel indebted for benefits received. Yet the sense of obligation
associated with gratitude has its own peculiarities: Although it often
brings out the debtor in us, it fails to make clear the nature of the debt
or how we are to pay it. And we may come to feel deeply indebted to
friends. Yet it is said that friends do not worry about book balancing.
C hap t e r Six 122
The debtor paradigm works best for relatively formal obligations.
It presents problems for informal and personal relationships. These
problems infect ethical theories structured around the debtor para-
digm. Some moralists - Kant, Henry Sidgwick, W. D. Ross - speak of
duties of gratitude, for example. 9 Thus they find a place for right and
wrong responses to a benefactor or friend. An awkward place. Yet how
else is the fault of ingratitude to be acknowledged? And what better way
to guard against it than to prescribe activities-requiting benefits, re-
turning favors, and so on - as one's duties of gratitude, which any con-
scientious person can dutifully carry out?
But if being befriended imposes a debt, and debts are to be paid,
then what is awkward about duties of gratitude? Well, sometimes these
"debts" are not to be paid too quickly. That can be ungracious. Some-
times it seems they are not to be paid at all but only acknowledged. Or,
is that how one pays them? (Like paying respect?) What kind of debt
can one sometimes pay simply by acknowledging it?

The Debt of Gratitude

There are at least two problems regarding debts of gratitude.

,
One is what it means to pay such a debt, even whether it is, literally,
payable. The other is that payment, however explained, is supposed to
be from a sense of gratitude, not from a sense of duty. Doing it from the
sense of duty seems to betray an absence of gratitude. JO Yet, how can it
be inappropriate to acknowledge or pay a debt from a sense of duty?
Consider the motivational problem first. A duty to be grateful sounds
like ajoke. Do we also owe comedians debts of laughter? Perhaps the
comparison is offensive. Debts of gratitude are borne solemnly. We
seldom hear jokes about them. This suggests, however, that the obliga-
tion does involve not only what we do but also the spirit with which we
do it.
According to Kantian ethics, I can conscientiously fulfill my obliga-
tions even if my heart is not in it. That is often true. Yet I also think I can
be obligated to be a good sport, a good colleague, a gracious host. I am
not obligated to give a mere show of these things. I am supposed to be
these things "from the heart," which seems impossible ifI feel bound.
Or, can the heart itself be bound? Bondage of the heart sounds like
loyalty. So let us consider how the heart might become bound.
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 123
To be grateful, must I not first be in some measure gratified? I can
hardly be bound to be that. That is, I can hardly be bound to be grati-
fied by others. And if I gratify myself, I have only myself to thank. To
deserve my gratitude others must succeed in gratifying me somewhat.
There is luck here, if only in the "fit" between us. Whether others
succeed in gratifying me is not simply a function of their efforts or
intentions, nor of mine.
The basis of debts of gratitude may yield a clue to what is owed and
thereby to how, if at all, it is payable. I may owe a debt of gratitude as the
result of a gift, a favor, a rescue, support and encouragement, recogni-
tion, sympathy, any number of things people do for me or give me
beyond what they owed me. My gratitude rightly dissolves if I find the
deed was done for a reward or for some other ulterior motive (although
the sense of obligation may remain). In an illuminating paper on this
topic Fred Berger said that gratitude responds to another's benevolence,
more specifically, to the valuing of oneself presupposed in another's
benevolence: Gratitude acknowledges and reciprocates that valuing,
thereby demonstrating that one does not value the benefactor merely
as useful for one's own ends. ll
It should be noted, however, that gratitude need not be deserved to
be in order. Gratitude is not always to someone, although it is for some-
thing. I may be grateful that the weather "cooperated" with plans for
the picnic, or that the highway patrol officer was distracted as I sped by,
without being grateful to anyone for either event. It was this kind of
gratitude that Nietzsche embraced as a sign of health. My interest,
however, like Berger's, is in deserved gratitude.
Berger's account is an excellent beginning. But he did not take on
the question what it means to be obligated in such a context. Of course,
the debtor in us does not surface for every little thing - being given the
time of day, for instance. (Is saying "thank you" paying a debt?) It
comes out for important things and for things done out of special
concern. But here come the difficulties. Sensitive benefactors may want
their beneficiaries not to feel indebted to them, for it alters their rela-
tionships. In the Talmud, on account of such alterations, the highest
form of alms-giving is said to be when donor and recipient are un-
known to each other. 12 In the Talmud, also, however, alms-giving is said
to be inferior to kindnesses or benevolences as forms of charity, and in
the latter, the benefactor and beneficiary are usually known to each
other. 13 Here it is clearest that one is not to pay-even that one could
Chapter Six 124

not. Caring is not for sale; we must not put a price on another's con-
cern. Nor is one to pay for a gift, which makes reciprocal gift-giving
delicate. To pay is to reject as a gift what was offered, which can be
unkind if not the result of misunderstanding. Yet, even after expressing
appreciation or reciprocating, one may feel indebted. What is the
meaning of this feeling indebted?
Aristotle, Hobbes, and Kant suggest answers to this question. Neither
Aristotle nor Kant, however, offers an answer congruent with gratitude.
Kant thought that, literally, one never could pay such a debt, that is,
that one never could pay it o1f:14 Perhaps, then it sbould not be surpris-
ing that Kant's account does not fit well with gratitude. Eternal debts
may weigh more heavily than temporary ones, and heavy debts under-
mine gratitude. Both parties' positions seem unenviable: If it is futile
to try to payoff the debt, it is also offensive to make much of it, and
givers might anticipate this. How, then, can caring impose such debts?
How does a thing of joy become a burden for-ever? Or, so it sometimes
seemed to Kant.

If! accept favours, I contract debts which I can never repay,

for I can never get on equal terms with him who has con-
ferred the favours upon me; he has stolen a march upon me,
and if! do him a favour I am only returning a quid pro quo; I
shall always owe him a debt of gratitude, and who will accept
such a debt? For to be indebted is to be subject to an unend-
ing constraint. I must for ever be courteous and flattering to-
wards my benefactor.... I may even be forced to using
subterfuge so as to avoid meeting him. But he who pays
promptly for everything is under no constraint. 15

In the Doctrine o/Virtue Kant did caution that one is "not to regard a
kindness received as a burden one would gladly be rid of (since the
person so favoured stands a step lower than his benefactor, and this
wounds his pride)" but that one should "accept the occasion for grati-
tude as a moral kindness - that is, an opportunity given one to couple
gratitude with love ofman."16 Thus he shrank from accepting the im-
plications of his own accoun t of the nature and basis of gratitude. That
account, however, betrays a different attitude.
Kant was in a bind. For he also held we have an imperfect duty of
benevolence, exercise of which puts others in debt to us. l ? He consid-
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 125
ered it meritorious to carry out this duty, although also contrary to
one's duty to oneself to accept favors unnecessarily. IS It almost seems
that benefactors have more basis for gratitude to willing beneficiaries
for providing occasions for meritorious benevolence.
Kant analyzed the benefactor-beneficiary relationship as an inequal-
ity of love and respect. The benefactor, he said, stands in a relation-
ship of love to the beneficiary ("moral love," not "pathological love"),
whereas the beneficiary stands in a special relationship of respect to the
benefactor, but not one of love. 19 He also analyzed friendship as equal
mutual love and respect. 20 The astounding implication appears to be
that ideal friends never actually help each other. To do so would ruin
the friendship. Apparently, each should realize that the other stands
ready to help and hope that help is never needed.
Kant accepted this implication for material favors but, oddly, missed
it for the emotional support offered by a listener who can be counted
on not to betray confidences. Mutually exchanging confidences is what
he thought ideal friends do instead of "favors." Apparently he thought
good friends never have occasion for gratitude to one another: Love is
never having to say, "Thank you." Something has gone wrong.
Although Kant's views depart from common sense, even common
sense recognizes some debts as unpayable. Consider that unpayable
debt of gratitude to a wife, frequently encountered in academic book
prefaces of a couple of decades ago. Why was the debt unpayable? It is
clear if she had died or if misfortune prevented him from reciprocating.
Such "debts" seem unpayable not in principle but only contingently.
But often she was still alive and typing. Yet, unpayable in principle may
be exactly what is meant. (The pun is appropriate: He may have felt he
was paying interest forever, never reducing the principal.) The point is
not that the debt was too large for his means but that it felt undischarge-
able, unforgivable, in terminable, like a perfect duty - owed forever.
An unpayable debt of gratitude may leave one feeling forever guilty,
and, therefore, unworthy. Consider Nietzsche's account of the Chris-
tian's relationship to God. In assuming the penalty for their sins, God's
Son left the rest of His children an eternal debt of gratitude. It would
have been nobler, said Nietzsche, to assume the guilt. 21 The holy Chris-
tian God, unlike the noble Greek gods, plunged His children further
into debt, by the same token preventing their ever paying it off. Similar
logic, perhaps, explains the unpayableness of the debt of many men to
women for not holding them to a reciprocation of services, thereby
Chapter Six 126
earning eternal (unpayable) "gratitude." They might have done better
to exchange confidences.
Aristotle also had views about the discharge ability of obligations to a
benefactor. But they leave no more room than Kant's for gratitude.
According to Aristotle, a noble person "is apt to confer greater benefits
in return; for thus the original benefactor besides being paid will incur
a debt to him, and will be the gainer by the transaction."22 Emerson's
way of putting it was: "You cannot give anything to a magnanimous
person. Mter you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his
magnanimity."23 Noble people, said Aristotle, are ashamed of receiving
benefits. Instead of gratitude, we have here a game of One-Up, as never-
ending as the game of revenge (perhaps even a relatively benign form
ofit).24 A good example of One-Up is found in Ruth Benedict's account
of the custom of the potlatch among the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island.
The shame feared by the Kwakiutl is clearly not of receiving gifts, how-
ever, but of being unable to make an even greater return (so as not to
end up in another's debt).
Ultimately, Kant's position is the same as Aristotle's. Both were trou-
bled by the threat to one's pride posed by indebtedness. Both proposed
to resolve the problem by repayment. Kant defined gratitude as "hon-
oring a person because of a kindness he has done us" and maintained
that gratitude is "a holy duty," that "the obligation with regard to it
cannot be discharged completely by an act in conformity with the obli-
gation (so that no matter what he does, the person who is under obliga-
tion always remains under obligation)."25 Thus, the beneficiary pays
tribute eternally in the coin of respect, thereby excelling in humility-
One-Up again, with a Christian twist.
Both philosophers distinguished repaying a benefactor from paying
a seller and from repaying a loan, thereby making some progress with
the paradox of a debt of gratitude. Both answered the first problem
mentioned above, namely, the problem of what it means to pay a debt
to a benefactor. But neither preserved the spirit of gratitude in doing
so. Aristotle's magnanimous beneficiary preserves, rather, the spirit of
competition, and Kant's account preserves the spirit of Stoic discipline.
The problem appears to be the sense that indebtedness threatens
one's pride. Aristotle's focus is on the benefit, a symbol of power. For
moral book balancers, pride rests on spiritual credit. Kantian gratitude
appears to be a credit-giving that allows the giver to earn credit by
giving it. But this is not what gratitude is.
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 127
"Giving credit" is ambiguous. In "giving credit where credit is due," I
may simply acknowledge a source. Pride keeps me from taking credit
for others' achievements. I may not intend gratitude, although I may
also not be eager to clear up ambiguity concerning that fact. I may not
be merely indicating a source, however. I may also be giving credit in
the sense of paying tribute, honoring, or praising.
Yet, gratitude is not praise. Anyone - beneficiary or not - can praise
an admirable effort or achievement. In giving the Good Samaritan
credit for helping the stranger, I pay tribute (hats off) but do not
acknowledge a debt of gratitude. Only the stranger, if anyone, has such
a debt. (If others also feel grateful, perhaps they identify with the
stranger.)
In defining gratitude as "honoring a person because ofa kindness he
has done us," Kant confused gratitude with giving credit in the sense of
praising. The basis of this honor, he said, is a certain "priority of merit:
the merit of having been the first in benevolence. "26 Except for the part
about being first, Kant's account so far seems to agree with Berger's.
But how is it that the merit of benevolence provides a basis for grati-
tude? Kant saw it as a purely objective merit. His valuation of the bene-
factor's good will was independent of the empirical fact that someone
actually benefited from it or even that someone actually valued it. Any-
one can respect Kantian merit. From Kant's account of the nature and
basis of gratitude, it is impossible to see why only a beneficiary or in-
tended beneficiary (if anyone) becomes obligated. Berger's account,
on the other hand, relates the desert basis of gratitude to the fact that
someone has been gratified in such a way that without appropriate
acknowledgment, the latter might appear to value the benefactor only
as someone who happened to be useful. If Berger was right, being first
seems not in itself important, although it may be evidence of the rele-
vant valuation. And that seems right.
The view of gratitude as praise for taking the initiative may underlie a
common embarrassment about receiving gratitude, especially for any-
thing done out of love. Praise for that reveals that what was done was
not appreciated for what it was. Those who deserve our gratitude are
better prized than praised. The credit we give acknowledges that their
good will was of value to us, that they pleased us, for example. It is not an
entirely objective assessment of their character.
Kantian gratitude lacks warmth. Yet its coolness matches the cool-
ness of Kantian benevolence. At least, whatever heat there is seems not
C hap t e T Six 128
to be directed toward the other in either case. The benefactor is only
acting from duty, albeit imperfect duty. And so, perhaps, praise is what
the Kantian giver deserves.
Good deeds, however, are not commonly thought to deserve even
eternal praise. Why might Kant (and not only Kant) think that one's
responsibilities to a benefactor are eternal?
The idea that a debt of gratitude is forever may stem from the truth
that the nature and duration of a beneficiary's responsibilities may be
determined more by the benefactor than by the beneficiary. There is
an interesting bit of luck here, although which determinations are the
lucky ones defies generalization. Some obligations to a beneficiary may
last as long as the benefactor does not abuse the beneficiary's good will.
Carrying them out need not terminate them. To see this, let us con-
sider what they are.
Hobbes has a modest account in his natural laws of gratitude. In De
Cive 3:8 he says: "[You are to] suffer not him to be the worse for you,
who, out of the confidence he had in you, first did you a good turn
[, and] [you are to] accept not a gift, but with a mind to endeavour, that
the giver shall have no just occasion to repent him of his gift. "27 And in
the Leviathan 15, he says: "[One who] receiveth benefit from another
of mere grace [is to] endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reason-
able cause to repent him of his good will."2B These "laws" need inter-
pretation with stories about what counts as accepting a benefit and
what counts as reasonable cause for regret. They seem more promising,
however, for happily resolving the paradox of a "debt" of gratitude
than the accounts of Kant and Aristotle.
They do not require us to reciprocate a favor, for example, unless
failure to do so makes it reasonable for another to regret doing the good
turn. Some responsibilities are naturally carried out in relation to still
other persons: A hitchhiker may pick up future hitchhikers, for exam-
ple, or a student give help and encouragement to newer students. Not
doing so might give their benefactors reasonable cause to regret the
relevant good turns. Another more serious cause for regret is taking
unfair advantage of one's benefactor, using the benefit to put the bene-
factor at a disadvantage. Here "cause for regret" may understate the
case. Such betrayals can seem treasonous. A beneficiary's responsi-
bilities not to do such things may last indefinitely.
In this respect, a beneficiary'S responsibilities differ from those of a
borrower or contractee. The borrower's responsibility is to return what
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 129

was borrowed, the contractee's to fulfill the contract. Once done, it

matters not, as far as the obligation is concerned, whether the creditor
or other contractees reasonably regret the transaction. It may mat-
ter from some points of view, but not to whether the responsibility is
discharged.
Carrying out the Hobbesian responsibilities need not demonstrate
gratitude, any more than repaying a loan need demonstrate honesty.
However, the Hobbesian responsibilities cohere well with gratitude;
one can act from a sense of their significance and yet preserve the spirit
of gratitude. They are too abstract to be readily enforceable. They
require judgment and discretion from the beneficiary. If gratitude is
naturally demonstrated in carrying them out, perhaps that is enough
to justify Hobbes in caIling his formulae laws of gratitude.
The responsibility that Hobbes describes is more abstract than but
still very much in the spirit of the "duty of fair play" that Rawls
said is correlative to the right defined by H.L.A. Hart's "mutuality of
restrictions";

When any number of persons engage in a practice, or con-

duct ajoint undertaking according to rules, and thus restrict
their liberty, those who have submitted to these restrictions
when required have the right to a similar acquiescence on the
part of those who have benefited by their submission. 29

Thus the duty of fair play is the duty to acquiesce in restricting one's
liberty according to the rules when one has benefited from the similar
acquiescence of others. Rawls adds that the rules in question are just
and that one benefited voluntarily (or at least without protest) as parts
of a jointly sufficient condition of incurring the duty offair play.30 In
''Justice as Fairness" Rawls thought Hobbes had confused gratitude
with fair play.31 The content of the "duty of fair play" is apparently
specified by the rules of the practice and correlated with others' rights.
Responsibilities of gratitude, however, are relatively unspecific. The
benefactor does not have a right to one's acting in accord with them but
only deserves it (or does not). Perhaps, however, it is only in formal
practices that fair play is a response to rights. In informal practices,
such as hitchhiking, without well-defined rules and penalties for non-
compliance, the compliance of others may be an appropriate basis for
gratitude. It may be more realistic here to speak of deserts than of
C hap t e r Six 130

rights. 32 For informal practices there may be no difficulty with the idea
that failure to "play fair" manifests ingratitude. The question suggested
by the paradox of the debt of gratitude is, rather, whether playing fair
can manifest both gratitude and a sense of obligation. An affirmative
answer seems to require an alternative to the debtor paradigm of obli-
gation, to avoid the problem of endangered pride. Hobbes's gratitude
is a response to ajudgment implicit in the benefactor's deed that sup-
ports the beneficiary's self-esteem. His account explains why only a
beneficiary or intended beneficiary (if anyone) becomes obligated.
Hobbes said the benefactor had confidence in the beneficiary. Such
transactions seem likely to be mutually gratifying, not to pose a threat
to the beneficiary's pride.
Hobbes's laws of gratitude suggest the idea of a trust. This, in turn,
suggests an obligation that is not strongly correlated with rights on the
part of others, which is also the kind of obligation needed generally in
Hobbes's state of nature. To see what this means, let us consider the
concept of obligation.

The Trustee Paradigm and lriformal Obligation

Contractual bonds are not the only ethically significant inter-

personal ties. Where they exist, there may be others that run deeper. A
debtor may have cause to be grateful for the extension of credit. Does
the debtor then owe two debts? Moral book balancers may say so and
consider that paying interest takes care of the second debt. If so, the
case is altered. For then there seems no basis for gratitude.
A bond more coherent with gratitude and friendship than that of the
debtor is that of a trustee or guardian, especially one who is not under
contract. Owing gratitude is more like having accepted a deposit, than
like having taken out a loan. In taking out a loan, I am extended credit.
My position is inferior to that of my creditor in that I am subject to
nonreciprocal constraints-at least sensible creditors so arrange mat-
ters. By contrast, in receiving a deposit, I already have credit. I do not
have to prove myself; myjudgment is relied upon. Deposits are a source
of pride. As a beneficiary, I can regard myself as the "trustee" of an-
other's good will or concern. I cannot literally return another's good
will (although that is what we say), but I can reciprocate it.
If I am a trustee or guardian, I am obligated. lowe it to those whose
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 131

trust I have accepted to act responsibly on their behalf. But I am not

thereby a debtor. My position is not characteristically inferior. Within
the relationship I am to a great extent not subject to constraints, de-
spite the fact that I am under obligation. To be penalized for serious
abuses, I must be relieved of my position. Carrying out the obligations
of a trustee or guardian does not necessarily result in their discharge; it
may have no tendency to terminate the obligation. If someone has de-
posited something with me for safekeeping, I carry out my responsibil-
ity as long as I keep the thing safely, and who knows when or whether
the other will return for it? We do not always tie down these things,
although we can.
Like Kant's "imperfect duties," these responsibilities tend to be ab-
stractly defined. They allow room for latitude. They call upon discre-
tion and judgment to a greater extent than what Kant called "perfect
duties" (and later called ''juridical duties" by contrast with "ethical
duties") .33 They are fulfilled satisfactorily if others have no reasonable
cause to regret the trust.
Let us distinguish here between an obligation as a bond (ligature), on
one hand, and, on the other, a duty, as a kind of responsibility the
discharge of which can fulfill an obligation (an obligation "content," so
to speak; what is due). Strictly speaking, it is duties that are owed;
obligations are not owed but are the bases of duties. Duties are often
correlated with others' rights. But not everything that we owe is such a
duty. We can owe what others only deserve from us without having any
right against us. Deserts can create ethically significant ties, desert of
gratitude, for example.
If I fail to carry out a duty to others who had a right against me, they
may justifiably feel wronged. One is not surprised if they complain
about it. They may remind me, apply pressure, in some cases compel
me to perform or insist upon compensation. Such things do not com-
promise their self-respect but, if anything, vindicate it. We say they are
within their rights. If I violate others' rights, lowe them at least an
explanation, often more. Their interest is primarily in the thing to be
done, and the obligation is satisfied when it is done or adequate com-
pensation made.
Actual constraint is not called for until the obligated party fails to
perform. It is not all right to prod people to fulfill their obligations
when they have not had a chance to do so on their own initiative. In one
sense a debtor is a transgressor - as in "forgive us our debts [tres-
Chapter Six 132

passes] as we forgive our debtors [those who trespass against us],"

hardly a request to be released from one's obligations but only from the
penalties of having defaulted. Likewise, "paying one's debt to society"
suggests punishment by the state, not obedience to it.
The responsibilities of trusteeship and guardianship are not closely
correlated with others' rights, even when the trustee or guardian is
under contract. If Hart was correct that rights correlated with others'
duties are justifications for interfering with the freedom of others, obligations
do not always involve such rights. 34 It is one question whether I have an
obligation and another whether anyone can justifiably hold me to it.
Even where my obligation creates the presumption of such a right in
others, they can promise not to hold me to it, thereby surrendering
their justification for restricting my freedom but not thereby terminat-
ing my obligation.
In not being held to our obligations, we are treated as more responsi-
ble. "I won't hold you to it" means that if you don't do the thing, I won't
compel you or insist upon compensation or explanations or put pres-
sure on you or even complain. Now your responsibility is increased-
not in that you "owe" more but in that you are now entirely responsible
for getting yourself to do the thing. (This needs qualification, however;
even though Ihave promised not to exercise my right against you, I still
have the right, and others, such as the state or my children, may be
justified in acting on my behalf.)
Genuinely to release others from an obligation is to change the pre-
sumption that their failure to act in certain ways would wrong someone.
One may be released from a promise or have a debt forgiven. This is
communicated better by "Forget it," than by "I won't hold you to it."
Honors systems impose tremendous obligations, and one is not to for-
get them.
In some cases when others are not justified in holding one to an
obligation, they may have, as we say, "a right to expect" but not a right
simpliciter. It still can reflect poorly on the obligated person not to do
the thing without adequate explanation or compensation. When oth-
ers rely on us to carry out responsibilities without constraint, we are
likely to feel an even greater sense of obligation.
Hart's account of the bond of obligation did not accommodate these
facts. He said that the bond of obligation is like a rope tied around the
obligated party, the ends in the hands of another who is free to use
them or not. 35 This image captures the idea of being under constraint
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 133

to fulfill an obligation, but not simply having one. Being obligated does
not necessarily imply that others are free to pull strings.
The bonds characteristic of our relationships to friends, former
friends, neighbors, kin fit the pulling strings model poorly. Yet we refer
to them as obligations and as responsibilities. These are the obligations
(responsibilities) to which women refer so often when speaking with
what Carol Gilligan calls "the voice of care. "36 Like the debtor-creditor
bond, these obligations have bases in the histories of the persons so
related. Ideals of universal sisterhood and brotherhood attempt to re-
gard everyone as so bound. But these ideals are problematic. Although
belief in God the Father makes some sense of universal siblinghood,
even believers reinvent distinctions between those to whom one has
special obligations and others.
The bond between the doer and receiver of a favor is such a special
relationship. One may need to ask permission to do a favor. The other
may not wish to become obligated. People can wonder why someone
wants to do them a favor. If others want to help me only because they
see me as unfortunate, I may be offended rather than grateful, feel
pitied rather than cared for. Such help is not gratifying. It is otherwise if
others wish to help me because of something about me that would
make it regrettable if I should not receive help. Then I am not identi-
fied simply as an unfortunate but as someone worth helping. I may be
happy to be obliged. If we can accept anything done out of love, it is
not, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, because that is a way of receiving it
from ourselves but because love supports our self-esteem.37
In complaining of a tendency in moral philosophy to extend "obli-
gation" to cover anything that one "ought," morally, to do, Hart re-
minded us that outside the profession of philosophy "obligation" re-
fers to special relationships.38 Richard Brandt also reported evidence in
ordinary language of such a use of "obligation," which led him to
distinguish two basic contexts in which the concept of obligation has a
place: the context of promises or agreements and the context of accept-
ing benefactions. 39 The latter seems fundamental in that willingness to
accept another's word manifests a good will that does not itse1frest on
respect for contracts or promises. Such good will is, or can be, a bene-
faction. Promises and agreements ground duties correlated with rights,
while accepting benefactions grounds responsibilities in relationships
that are often highly informal.
However, Hart's tendency, natural to a philosopher of law, was to
C hap t e r S j x 134

recognize only relatively formal obligations, namely, those closely corre-

lated with rights on the part of others. The debtor is a paradigm of
formal obligation; friendship, a paradigm of informal obligation. In
becoming a benefactor one characteristically befriends another. The
obligations offriendship are not closely correlated with rights, but they
are still special, ethically significant relationships. Perhaps most of our
obligations, in the sense of special relationships to specific individuals,
are of the informal sort.
Formality applies to definition and structure. It facilitates control,
provides assurance. Concern about control suggests a lack of trust and
confidence or inability to predict and plan. Within boundaries, for-
mality is a matter of degree. An obligation may be well-defined in some
respects-such as the amount of money to be repaid-but not in oth-
ers, such as the time of repayment. The latter unspecificity, however, is
sufficient to hinder enforcement of the obligation and so gives a good
reason for classifying it as informal.
Formality is not the same as legality. Both legal and extra-legal rela-
tionships give rise to obligations of varying degrees of formality. The
mutual obligations of spouses, for example, are relatively informal, de-
spite the formality of the status of spousehood. Obligations of outside
parties to a married couple, considered as such (as a married couple),
tend to be more formal than most of the obligations of spouses to one
another. Thus, marrying formalizes certain obligations with outside
parties and substitutes informal for formal ones to one another; di-
vorce cancels certain formal obligations with outside parties and sub-
stitutes certain formal ones for informal ones to each other.
The obligation of a beneficiary to a benefactor is relatively informal
even when it is legally defined. As in marriage, legally defining the
relationship - for example, in wills, trusteeships, and insurance pol-
icies and in medical donor-donee relationships - ties down outsiders'
obligations to respect it and substitutes certain informal obligations for
formal ones between benefactor and beneficiary. Procedures by which
these relationships are instituted and dissolved tend to be more well-
defined than the responsibilities within the relationships. The threat of
dissolving the relationship may be the major sanction of its internal
responsibili ties. 40
In paying a debt, I discharge that obligation. I am no longer bound to
my former creditor; that special relationship is concluded. By contrast,
living up to informal obligations tends to confirm, or reaffirm, the
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 135
special relationship involved rather than to bring it to a close. As I live
up to my obligations to friends and associates, we become closer friends
and associates. Our ties deepen, become stronger. This may be the
most important difference between formal and informal obligations.
Often we think those to whom others are informally obligated are
not entitled to complain of the latter's failures, that it would reflect
poorly on them to do so, although perhaps not that it would reflect
similarly poorly on still others to do so on their behalf. Complaining on
one's own behalf may be too much like complaining of one's own
judgment. Francis Bacon put this and related points well, in pointing
out important services that friends can render.

How many things are there which a man cannot, with any
face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege
his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man
cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number
of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's
mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's
person hath many proper relations which he cannot put off.
A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but
as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend
may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the
person. 41

These sensitivities tend not to arise where our obligations with another
are formal.
Yet another difference between formal and informal obligations is
that paying the penalty for defaulting on a formal obligation is sup-
posed to restore one to (informal) good terms with others. In the case
of informal obligations, however, the chief "penalty" is alienation. A
delinquent debtor remains a debtor, but a poor friend is close to not
being a friend at all. There is a form of alienation for debtors, however:
bankruptcy. Although formally institutable by the delinquent, this step
may have the informal consequence ofthe former debtor's inability to
obtain future credit.
Social obligations tend to be informal, although the possibility of
taking a debtorlike attitude toward them makes them ambiguous. In
accepting a return dinner invitation, for example, one may wonder
whether the intent was to discharge the obligation or to cement a
C hap t er Six 136
friendship. This seems a desirable ambiguity on the whole. It allows us
to treat social obligations as (mere) formalities if we wish. Debt-paying,
balancing accounts, can be an important defense against unwanted
intimacy, a defense women lack in relation to men in sexist dating
practices.
The obligation to follow etiquette is an informal obligation of polite
society, which is a bit confusing because the requirements themselves
are highly formal (well-defined). A clue to the informality of the obliga-
tion to attend to etiquette is that the penalty for disregarding it is
estrangement from polite society-which may explain why some peo-
ple are more devastated by their breaches of etiquette than by their
violations of some moral obligations. For concerned members of polite
society, these rules achieve the requisite predictability without sanc-
tions other than the threat of alienation. Miss Manners says one is not
to correct others on etiquette unless they request it; this is itself a
requirement of etiquette. 42 Etiquette is not only formal but also imper-
sonal, like justice.
When we choose to regard an obligation of gratitude as imposing a
debt, perhaps we are regarding it as like the bond of a debtor to a
creditor who has said, "I won't hold you to it." This has an important
consequence: If the debt were paid, the special relationship by which
one had incurred it would be terminated, and yet one would be on
good terms with the other.
It is a disadvantage to be in debt. We do not incur debts for their own
sake. We may take on debts for the sake of building a credit-rating,
which presupposes that we expect to pay them off. Debts are not or-
dinarily a source of pride, even if paying them off is. One's self-respect
demands that one do what one can to payoff one's debts, to conclude
relationships that subject one to nonreciprocal constraints. We prove
ourselves reliable and maintain self-respect in extricating ourselves
from such relationships.
This clarifies why a benefactor may be offended at one's feeling in-
debted. The benefactor may feel rejected. It is as though one had said
that one would prefer to conclude the relationship, that it is not a
source of pride or joy.
The paradigm of trusteeship, like that of the debtor, is economic and
often legal. Trustees may be book balancers (as when they are in charge
of finances) but they need not be (as when they are in charge of chil-
dren). Guardianship suggests the economy of the house rather than
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 137
the marketplace, and so perhaps less book balancing. As metaphors
these paradigms, too, have limits. We do not ordinarily solicit deposits
or charges, whereas it is not uncommon to ask favors. And we benefit
others by accepting deposits or trusts, whereas we are benefited in
accepting favors. A trustee or guardian is someone to whom others may
be grateful, whereas a beneficiary is, presumably, grateful to others.
Yet even these things are not totally surprising. We are grateful to
those willing to become obligated to us, who can regard such relation-
ships as a source of pride or joy. On the debtor paradigm, the original
favor doer seems without basis for gratitude for a return favor; what is re-
turned does not even seem describable as a favor. It is a joke to say we are
gratified to see people pay their debts - we are relieved, sometimes im-
pressed. Gratitude itself, however, is among the things for which grati-
tude is felt. Those "happy to be obliged" thereby gratify us as well. Max
Scheler maintains that "love (once it is somehow perceived), evokes a
loving response. "43 Something like that seems true of gratitude.

Misplaced Gratitude and the Debt of Gratitude

With these distinctions in mind, let us return to the gratitude

of those who are relatively powerless and in need and to their "debts of
gratitude" to those more powerful who are able and willing to help
them out.
The trustee paradigm helps clarify misplaced gratitude. Relatively
powerless people are unlikely candidates for "trusteeship." The" confi-
dence" of the powerful in them is not likely to be of a kind that en-
hances their self-esteem - "confidence" that they will not rebel against
injustice, for example. Historically, from the protection racket of rape
cultures to the "white man's burden," the powerful and privileged have
imposed their guardianship on the relatively powerless, for whose disem-
powerment they have often been also responsible. Yet they have also
often felt that those who fell under their protection should be grateful
for such" care. " If these guardians were trustees, they were each other's
trustees, not trustees of powerless of whom they took charge.
Even when all this is true, there is more to be said. The benefactions
of the powerful often are truly manifestations of generosity rather than
calculated investments. Generosity differs significantly, however, from
benevolence, kindness, and charity.44 Recall that on Fred Berger's ac-
C hap t e r S j x 138

count, gratitude is a response to benevolence, specifically to benevolence

that embodies a certain valuing of the beneficiary. It is not a response to
generosity as such. Generosity is liberality, which, when a virtue, is a
matter of knowing when to give (to let go) and being good at doing
that. 45 Those who are generous are not, as such, overly concerned with
conserving resources, nor even with being able to satisfy their own
needs or wishes, and in the same way, they are not particularly con-
cerned about the needs or wishes of others, either. There may be no
real confidence reposed in the recipient of generosity, no judgment
especially supportive ofthe recipient'S self-esteem. When the powerful
are generous, it may be simply that they enjoy giving. Their generosity
supports their self-esteem by demonstrating their wealth and power.
Generosity can be accompanied by insensitivity to others' wishes with
regard to becoming obligated. Certainly the very powerful can afford
not to care whether others are obligated or not.
Still, there is a sense in which gratitude regarding such benefactors
need not be totally misplaced. Provided they were not the cause of our
need, we may be grateful that even insensitive benefactors are there
without being grateful to them. And we may incur informal obligations
to reciprocate where we can, even if we rightly do not find that they
deserve our gratitude. But to think that we owe "benefactors" who
disregard our wishes not to become nonreciprocally obligated, who
would place us in need and eliminate all other sources of help, or that
we owe "benefactors" who would even voluntarily support those who
maintain us in such need is to misjudge them and to fail to respect
ourselves. We misjudge benefactors when we infer their benevolence
simply from their generosity. Genuine benevolence as a concern for
others' well-being is incompatible with disregarding their willingness to
become obligated. Those who lack such regard thereby lack respect.
And a willingness on our part to become obligated to others despite their
lack of respect for us raises the question whether we lack self-respect.
To those who are powerful it may seem natural that others should
want to serve them and gain status through the association. It also may
seem natural to the powerful that others should be grateful, insofar as
gratitude is a happy recognition of sources of good fortune. Those who
are powerful, at any rate, have no general interest in rejecting the
gratitude of others, nor in discouraging their sense of obligation.
Where gratitude is genuinely due another, the "debt" in a debt of
gratitude refers to responsibilities gratefully incurred. I have argued
 GRATITUDE AND OBLIGATION 139

that such responsibilities, unlike literal debts, are informal and the
metaphor of a debt therefore misleading. The metaphor of a trust
comes closer to capturing the obligation involved. This metaphor is
helpful in assessing our informal obligations to others insofar as it
directs us to consider whether we are, indeed, trust-holders for them or
whether, on the contrary, they have either found or placed us in cir-
cumstances that left us little choice but to "trust" them with all that we
have and all that we are. 46 If, after all, it is others who hold our trust, it is
they who should first of all feel obligated to us. Perhaps we may judge
our reciprocal obligations by how well they honor theirs.
One may wonder, however, if "debt" is inapt for obligations of grati-
tude, why "debt of gratitude" is what we say. Perhaps we are careless
with language. But there is a more interesting possibility. It is possible
to hear the metaphor of a "debt of gratitude" as ambivalent or ambig-
uous rather than simply as paradoxical. Gratitude manifests pleasure,
even joy. But debts are burdens. As Emerson noted: "The law of bene-
fits is a difficult channel. ... We wish to be self-sustained. We do not
quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being
bitten. "47 One may be grateful for the opportunity to get out of diffi-
culty by incurring an obligation and yet not find the resulting relation-
ship with the benefactor gratifying. Or one may not yet know whether
the relationship will turn out to be gratifying. Perhaps "debt of grati-
tude" captures the combinations of attitudes and feelings appropriate
to such circumstances-in one case, being happy and obliged; in the
other, suspension between that and being happy to be obliged. Only the
latter seems a promising beginning of friendship.
 c h a p e r s e v e n

WHAT LESBIANS DO

Character - the willingness to accept responsibility

for one's own life - is the source from which
self-respect springs.
-Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

A paradigm case of taking responsibility

for one's sexuality is coming out as a lesbian.
-Joyce Trebilcot, Dyke Methods

I f gender is a source of moral luck for those of us raised

with the legacies of patriarchy, it may seem that sexual or
erotic orientation is likewise a source of moral luck, given
the heterosexism of patriarchies. There is certainly luck,
good and bad, in finding others of one's sex erotically
attractive. Although there is at present no consensus on the question
whether there exist genetic predispositions to this experience, surely
luck is involved in whether our early erotic experiences are painful or
pleasant, whether we find them rewarding or the opposite. J Incalcula-
ble social energy has been expended on stifling and h'iding same-sex
erotic intimacy and pair-bonding, cultivating [Link] intimacy,
finding diversions from erotic temptation in socially accepted celibacy. 2
It has been easier for most lesbians or gay men to pass as heterosexual
than to pass as the other sex, even though some have done both. 3
Although there is surely luck in the success of such endeavors, that is
not what this chapter explores. The luck that interests me here is that
involved in recent attempts by lesbians who embrace femaleness to take
responsibility publicly for a lesbian erotic orientation. Although some of
what I say applies also to gay men and to people whose commitment is
heterosexual, their positions in heteropatriarchy differ enough from
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 141

those oflesbians that not all of what I have to say about lesbians will also
apply to them.
Coming out as a lesbian, in the context of heteropatriarchy, is a
paradigm of taking responsibility for oneself. Taking responsibility is,
in general, a source of self-respect. Taking responsibility for oneself can
be a [Link] source and support of one's self-respect. This is why many
with socially stigmatized identities come out and why others - outed,
discovered, or prompted initially to come out for other reasons-
embrace that identity publicly.
The expression "coming out" has an older and a more recent mean-
ing. I intend the more recent meaning when I use the expression. In
the older sense, one came out by entering into an overtly lesbian rela-
tionship (hardly a public one}. "Coming out" in the 1950s meant "get-
ting involved for real" as opposed to merely fantasizing. This sense
lingers on in the expression "bringing [someone] out" as applied to
making love with a woman who has not previously made lesbian love. In
the years prior to World War II, according to George Chauncy, "coming
out" - a play on the debutante's being formally introduced to the het-
erosexual society of her cultural peers - referred to gay men's formal
presentation to gay society at drag balls. "Gay people in the prewar
years," he says, "did not speak of coming out of what we call the 'gay
closet' but rather of coming out into what they called 'homosexual so-
ciety' or the 'gay world,' a world neither so small, nor so isolated, nor,
often, so hidden as 'closet' implies."4
In the more recent sense of the expression, however, coming out is a
usually informal individual act of communication, an identification of
oneself as lesbian or gay to one or more others, although it can also be
done in a formal and public way. Asking to whom a lesbian is out is not
asking who her lovers are but, rather, to whom has she identified herself
(or to whom she has been identified) as lesbian. Being "outed" is being
exposed, involuntarily. Coming out is often done in self-defense or for
political reasons - to make extortion impossible, to make oneself acces-
sible to others like oneself in order that combination for political pur-
poses be possible, and so forth. It might be thought that the more
recent sense includes the older one, at least in the sense of becoming
involved in a real (as opposed to imaginary) relationship. But it is
not clear that that is so. Perhaps neither sense presupposes the other.
Women have entered into overtly lesbian relationships without admit-
ting to themselves that that is what they were doing, certainly without
C hap t e T S eve n 142

embracing a lesbian identity. And women sometimes embrace lesbian

identities today on other grounds than experience with relationships
commonly recognized as lesbian. Some identifY as lesbian celibates.
Both senses of coming out, however, presuppose certain kinds of
social contexts in which "lesbian" has recognized meanings. Here is
where we find the luck that interests me. To be able to take respon-
sibility for our identities as lesbian, we need social cooperation. As
noted in Chapter Four, Nel Noddings observed that how good one
individual can be depends greatly on how others receive what that
individual does. 5 Although she did not appear to be thinking about
social norms when she made that observation, how others treat us is
often relevantly describable only in terms of social norms. Whether I
am even able to take responsibility for myself can depend on the exis-
tence of certain socially shared norms. I often feel that I am lucky to live
at a time when the meanings of "lesbian" are in as much flux as today.
Because of the current fluidity in the meanings of such terms as "les-
bian," coming out in the more recent sense enables us to challenge
common understandings of what lesbians do. The title of this chapter is
meant to be ambiguous: one of the things many lesbians do is take
responsibility for ourselves. I get to other things that we do later.
Until recent challenges to courts' refusals to allow lesbian adoption
and child custody, lesbian feminism has had little to do with taking
responsibility for reproductive institutions. From the perspective of
human reproduction, it appears puzzling, even downright perverse,
that lesbian relationships have been generally dealt with in law and in
psychiatry as though they were sexual. In this chapter I argue that for
purposes of taking responsibility for ourselves, lesbian relationships are
better conceived as erotic than as sexual. Understanding coming out as
taking responsibility for erotic rather than for sexual intimacy removes
certain conceptual bases for regarding such behavior as perverse or
even deviant.
There are three possible confusions that I wish to dispel at the outset.
First, it is no part of my argument that lesbian relationships charac-
teristically are or should be more spiritual than physical or more spir-
itual than heterosexual relationships. However physical, sensual, or
orgasmic, I argue that they need not be and probably should not be
considered sexual. Second, I am not advocating that lesbians refuse
responsibility for reproduction. My thought is, rather, that taking re-
sponsibility for reproduction should be a project conceptually distinct
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 143

from taking responsibility for erotic intimacy. Third, I am not rejecting

identity politics. I am skeptical specifically of the politics of sexual iden-
tity where "sexual identity" can include an orientation toward mem-
bers of the same sex as lovers or intimate partners.
The remainder of this chapter has three sections. The first section
takes up the care-taking sense of taking responsibility introduced in
Chapter Two and distinguishes it from other senses in relation to com-
ing out, so as to avoid a certain misunderstanding. The second section
examines the social construction of sexuality as the institutionalization
of activities surrounding reproduction together with activities that have
come to be associated with reproduction by way of socially constructed
norms. The final section distinguishes the erotic from the sexual and
argues that, in certain respects, eroticism offers lesbians a better stand-
point than sexuality for taking responsibility for intimate relationships.

Taking Responsibility

In the con text of relatively formal obligations, in which obliga-

tions give rise to duties correlated with others' rights to whatever we
have a duty to do, responsibility is a triadic relation of the form, "A is
responsible to B for x," or "B can hold A responsible for x," where "N'
and "B" range over persons and "x" ranges over actions or events. The
interest of moral philosophers in this kind of responsibility has been
primarily in the assignments of such things as credit and blame, punish-
ment and reward, and in some parties holding others to certain con-
duct, if only requiring them to justiry or explain themselves. If A is
responsible to B for x, then B has a corresponding right against A
regarding x. So understood, taking responsibility is about recognizing
justified limits to our freedom set by the rights of others. It is about the
distribution of social control. The accountability and credit senses of
taking responsibility fit this pattern. And that for which we take respon-
sibility in these senses is usually an action or event, paradigmatically
something we have done or failed to do.
Responsibility can be taken for things, for beings, and for states of
affairs, as well as for actions or events. Where the object of responsibility
is not an action or event but is something that has a welfare, or requires
upkeep or maintenance, or is an ongoing venture that can succeed or
fail, the responsibility relationship may be simply dyadic, of the form,
Chapter Seven 144
"A is responsible for x." The administrative and care-taking senses of
responsibility often fit this pattern. Obligations of the administrative
and care-taking responsibilities often fit the trustee model, as devel-
oped in Chapter Six, better than the debtor model. This may not be
obvious, however. The trustee model of obligation may seem triadic, in
that one party A holds something x in trust for another party B. How-
ever, what A held in trust in the examples under consideration in Chap-
ter Six was B's goodwill. This x is not detachable from B. Thus the
relationship is basically dyadic. A is responsible for something about B,
but B does not have a claim against A in regard to it. A trustee relation-
ship can be triadic; I can hold your funds in trust, for example, in which
case you certainly can have a claim on me for them. But a trustee
relationship need not be triadic. It can be dyadic, as in the case of
obligations of gratitude, where what I hold in trust is your goodwill. In
that case I take on the responsibility to see that your goodwill was not
misplaced.
Gratitude is not the only example of informal obligation for which
the trustee model is more appropriate than the debtor model. Taking
responsibility for oneself is another case in which one takes on a trust.
In this case, one entrusts oneself with the care of oneself and takes on
the responsibility to make oneself good. This has nothing to do with
regarding oneself as answerable to anyone else. That would be taking
responsibility in the accountability sense. What I have in mind by taking
responsibility for oneself in coming out as lesbian is not a matter of
justifying oneself to others or even of justifying oneself to oneself. It is
not really about justification. It is about care-taking and about pride. It
is a matter of taking charge of oneself and undertaking to make some-
thing of oneself.
When we take responsibility for things, beings, or states of affairs-
for what has a welfare-our focus is on such things as development,
maintenance, protection, care-taking, and supporting, rather than on
interpersonal control or limiting freedom. If you take responsibility for
the house and I take responsibility for the car, each of us is concerned
with the care of the thing in question, regardless of whether we can also
hold each other answerable and regardless of whether anyone else can
hold either of us answerable. As the work of Carol Gilligan and Nel
Noddings indicates, modern moral philosophers have paid far less at-
tention to responsibility as care-taking than to responsibility, as holding
people answerable and as the correlative ofrights. 6
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 145

Taking responsibility for something with a welfare requires the abil-

ity to do such things as influencing, guiding, shaping, maintaining,
developing, defending, protecting, supporting. These activities can in-
volve exercises of control. But control in this context is a means to the
further end of well-being. When responsibility is conceived as a tradic
relationship, as the correlative of rights, the parties' interest in control
is not simply as a means to something further. Where rights are at stake,
the parties involved have an interest in maintaining a certain distribu-
tion among themselves of control over each other. There is a focus on
control here as important in its own right.
Joyce Trebilcot points out that taking responsibility for something
does not require that we identifY ourselves as its author, originator, or
cause. 7 We may identifY ourselves, rather, as backers, supporters, main-
tainers, developers, protectors. In so doing, we become committed to
the value of that for which we take responsibility-not necessarily to
its success (although that is a possible value), but to making something
of it, maintaining, or protecting it and to making good on failures to
do so.
Taking responsibility in this sense is captured by the metaphors of
standing behind, backing, supporting, all of which convey the ideas of
giving or being prepared to give added substance to something and
being committed to its value. In supporting ourselves, we enter into our
own development in a positive way. We may not have been behind a
thing to begin with, but we can stand behind it now and for the future.
Such undertakings reveal something of our character in revealing our
commitments, what we value, and what we are prepared to do about it.
They not only reveal character but also are partly constitutive of it.
Because coming out as lesbian has been conceived by feminists in
terms of taking responsibility for ourselves, many of us have not been
happy with the popular liberal view that toleration is the appropriate
response to variety in physically intimate relationships, which is usually
defended on the ground that individuals' predilections in such matters
are no one else's business. In coming out as lesbians we have been
prepared to stand behind our intimate relationships in as public a way
as heterosexuals do in marrying - although we have not necessarily
been prepared to stand behind them as permanent relationships, and
many of us would not be eager to place in the hands of law power to
enforce them. Both lesbians and gay men are likely to view coming out
as a major step in the development of character. The liberal toleration
Chapter Seven 146

view suggests that physically intimate relationships outside of marriage

are nothing that one could or should stand behind. Ignoring them is an
act of toleration whereby a point is made of overlooking what might
otherwise prove troublesome. Tolerating is a way of excusing, and ex-
cusing presupposes something unfortunate to be excused. From the
liberal point of view, coming out, then, looks like a display of bad taste,
or at least, ingratitude to the liberal spirit of others if not an offense
against public decency. On the other hand, if co~ing out is understood
as an act of taking responsibility, the tolerant reception is what looks of-
fensive. Toleration here communicates a negative value judgment to-
gether with a decision not to regard the agent as responsible, an atti-
tude bound to be received as condescending under the circumstances.
Although taking responsibility involves being committed to the value
of something, we can sometimes take responsibility for what turns out
badly as well as for what turns out well. The value to which we are
committed need not be pragmatic, and failure is not necessarily incom-
patible with goodness. We may be committed to the value of something
as an embodiment of ideals we believe in, despite its lack of success. But
if the way in which I am taking responsibility is by identifying myselfin a
certain way, then a certain success is required: I do not manage to
identity myself to others in a particular way if they fail to or refuse to
recognize me in that way.
Also, taking responsibility for something need not commit one to the
idea that the thing is good throughout. If I take responsibility for my
life, for example, I take responsibility for bad parts of it as well as for
good parts. I do not deny that there are bad parts. Nor do I merely own
them as mine. It means such things as that I am committed to not being
defeated by them and to such things as repairing or compensating for
damage I do, seeking to understand the causes, converting misfortune
into opportunities for positive development - in general, to exercising
care (not to be confused with caution) in the way I lead my life. Taking
responsibility, in this sense, requires faith and hope. It is incompatible
with cynicism and despair.
Taking responsibility for oneself is also a matter of degree. It would
be silly and arrogant to take responsibility for everything that we are
and do. Nor is it possible. One has to be in a position to stand behind
something.
When are we in a position to back something, to stand behind it?
Being in a position to stand behind something requires being able to
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 147
carry out tasks that constitute backing it, making it good. Except for my
ability to defend a thing's existing or realized values, I am unable to
stand behind something when I cannot affect it and when I can neither
repair nor compensate for the damage it does. As will become appar-
ent, my abilities to do some of these things may require social coopera-
tion. They may require that my action receive a certain uptake on the
part of others. But also part of what it can mean to be in a position to
back something is that backing it would be a good thing for me to do,
that it would be worth my while. I am not in a (good) position to back
something that is not already good unless I can make something tolera-
bly good of it without expending more effort than it is worth.
In an essay on self-respect for Vogue magazine, Joan Didion presents
being responsible for oneself as taking a certain attitude toward one's
choices. "People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes,"
she writes. "They know the price of things. If they choose to commit
adultery, they do not then go running, in an excess of bad conscience,
to receive absolution from the wronged parties, nor do they complain
unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment of being
named co-respondent."8 Being responsible for yourself, here, looks
like being willing to lie in the bed you have made.
Joan Didion seems, in this passage, to understand being responsible
as a kind of acceptance. More than acceptance, however, is required to
distinguish taking responsibility from resignation. Taking responsibil-
ity involves the added idea of backing, and that involves the judgment
that the thing in question is worth backing. Taking responsibility for
oneself even as an adulterer involves, I should think, an ability and a
readiness to do something about the harm, if any, that it caused others,
independently of rights they might have to compel one to do so.
For political activists or dissenters, matters are more complex than
for agents who simply face failures to act in accord with their own better
judgment. Joan Didion's discussion considers choices within a social
framework that is not itself under criticism by the chooser. By contrast,
Joyce Trebilcot, as a social critic, was concerned not only about individ-
ual choice but also about the framework. Political activists may be un-
willing to accept much that follows upon their choices because of the
context within which those choices were made. Often they feel that
others, who support that context, should take responsibility for some of
those consequences.
For a political activist, taking responsibility can be an ambitious and
Chapter Seven 148

risky business. Taking responsibility in the context of practices that we

reject requires doing it at the level of meaning and definition. This is the
predicament of feminists with respect to intimate relationships.
Lesbian relationships are popularly understood as sexual relation-
ships. To explain what it would mean to take responsibility for oneself
as lesbian at the level of meaning and definition, I need to throw into
question the understanding of lesbian relationships as sexual. For that
purpose, I distinguish between sexuality as an institution-a set ofprac-
tices defined by social norms - and sexuality as behavior and experience
that falls under norms of the institution of sexuality, which define or
redefine that behavior and experience as sexual. 9 An analogy may help.
Consider taking responsibility for one's crime. Should we not distin-
guish between taking responsibility for the act performed and taking
responsibility for its criminality? That distinction seems unimportant
only if we already stand behind the relevant laws and institutions. If I
stand behind the law, my choice to disobey it is either backsliding or
part of a strategy to improve or correct the law. Taking responsibility for
my choice is at the same time a way of backing the law and the system to
which it belongs. However, if I do not stand behind the law, taking
responsibility for disobeying it is another matter. Although I may not be
free to act as though the law did not exist, neither am I required to try
to improve it. But then I must be able to rely upon meanings of my
conduct that are independent of the legal categories imposed on it.
Analogously, it becomes important to distinguish between taking re-
sponsibility for our intimate relationships (fantasies, feelings, behavior,
and so forth) and taking responsibility for their sexual meanings if we do
not stand behind the institution of sexuality that is the source of those
meanings. If we are not in a position to redefine sexual social norms,
our so-called sexual identities are substantially beyond our control.
This is generally true of lesbians in patriarchal society. We are not in a
good position to take responsibility for our sexual identities. This is one
reason, although as I point out it is not the only one, for lesbians to
refuse responsibility for sexual identity. Refusing responsibility for the
sexual meanings of our identities as lesbians does not, however, imply
refusing responsibility for ourselves as lesbians, as long as there are
other possibilities where we can have some influence.
In her analysis of taking responsibility for our sexualities,Joyce Tre-
bilcot suggests that a way in which we might go about it is to choose
carefully whether to participate in activities currently defined by social
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 149
sexual norms. 10 For example, a heterosexual woman might choose not
to marry any of her lovers. Choosing whether to participate in such
activities, however, is not sufficient to give us control over our identities.
For the meanings of our choices depend greatly on others' responses to
us. Their responses determine which norms will actually take effect.
Refusing, on principle, to participate in heterosexual courtship, inter-
course, or marriage is ordinarily considered, within the institution of
heterosexuality, to be deviant, at the very least, to require justification.
That institution defines lesbians as women who make perverted sexual
choices. To the extent that the meanings of our choices are determined
by the responses of others among whom we live, we seem inevitably to
"participate" in sexist and heterosexist institutions as long as we live
among their supporters.
Ifwe live in a heterosexist society, then, we need to take responsibility
for ourselves not just at the level of choosing to accept or reject options
defined by prevailing practices but at the level of practices themselves.
This requires changing the meanings of what we do. Taking respon-
sibility here requires successfully imposing on rituals and relationships mean-
ings that we can stand behind.
Even if we do this; many others will continue to employ their own
definitions of us, as some fundamentalist Christians today, for example,
persist in defining adherents of other religions as sinners or heretics.
Yet their definitions do not negate our responsibility-taking as long as
they do not prevent us from standing behind our own definitions. To
do that we need to be able to make something of them, give them
effect, implement them.
What is required for us to be able to stand behind our own defini-
tions? To come out as a lesbian requires a context. Not only is a closet
presupposed from which to escape, but also there must be places to go,
other than into the courts or the psychiatrist's office. To come out
successfully, we need a certain range of receptions. Comings out need
confirmation. Otherwise we succeed in coming out only as exhibition-
ists, deviants, criminals, unrepentant sinners, and so forth - not that it
is necessarily a bad thing to do that, but to make out why, we need also
to come out as something more. When others (not only lesbians) con-
firm the self-image of those of us who come out, they, too, take a cer-
tain responsibility for the meaning of "lesbian" in their offers of such
support.
The need for social uptake in changing meanings suggests a certain
C hap t e r S eve n 150

moral problem in a society in which the existing meanings of "lesbian"

are deeply negative. The objection is that we risk exposing those we love
to victimization by others in a society that does not yet recognize the
changes we would institute. It is absurd to think that you can change
the meaning of something just by intending a different meaning when
you use it yourself or with your friends. The question arises whether I
am recommending something like that here with respect to the exist-
ing sexual meanings oflesbian intimacy.
It is one thing merely to intend our actions to have certain meanings
and another for them actually to have those meanings. Our freedom to
act on meanings we can stand behind partly depends on our success in
changing meanings. Since that is a social success, not an individual one,
there is genuine moral risk here. There is a risk that the requisite
validation will not be forthcoming or will not be sustained and that,
consequently, one will not be able to take responsibility for the relation-
ships in question. For an appropriately responsive community is not
entirely within anyone's control.
It may be objected that my taking responsibility requires me only to
try, not to succeed, because I can embrace the values I find in my
relationships whether others recognize them or not. If! am right in my
understanding of what it means to take responsibility, however, it is not
just a matter of mentally embracing something. What is at stake here is
one's ability to provide a kind of support. I do not offer real support as
long as everyone else can write off my attempt as perverse.
It is true that in coming out, lesbians may risk exposing others to
harm. However, to evaluate that, we must consider the alternative. It is
not as though we can responsibly just wait until social conditions ap-
pear propitious. For those conditions may be creatable only as the
result of others, whose situations are relevantly similar, taking the risk
in advance of any such appearance. Some have argued that in such a
situation, it would be morally wrong not to take the [Link] For the
consequences of everyone similarly situated not doing so are disastrous
for many. Yet I find more truth in the idea that there is truly moral risk
here and that it may be possible only in retrospect to assess with any
confidence the morality of taking or foregoing such a risk.
Thus, taking responsibility for ourselves involves moral luck. There is
luck involved in the validation requisite to successfully creating mean-
ings. Insofar as taking responsibility for ourselves and our character
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 151

involves imposing meanings on our lives that we can stand behind, that
luck becomes a kind of moral luck.
The meaning of "lesbian" is currently undergoing change from a
popular medico-legal conception as a sexual identity to a feminist con-
ception that is now in many respects unclear. The clarification I want to
propose involves distinguishing the sexual from the erotic. It is, I be-
lieve, coherent with much contemporary lesbian feminist practice, al-
though there is at present no common agreement on vocabulary to
describe what is occurring. Despite our widespread continued use of
the language of sexuality, it seems to me that we rightly back many
relationships as lesbian that are not clearly sexual in any sense of "sex-
ual" worth our support. To clarify that, I turn next to the concept of
sexuality.

Sexuality

Should we stand behind lesbian relationships as sexual rela-

tionships? Should we stand behind lesbianism as a sexual identity?
What is at stake in these questions?
"Sexuality" is ambiguous among at least the following:

(I) femaleness or maleness (a heavily physiological concept)

(II) the institution of sexuality (a heavily political one)
(III) instances of behavior falling under the norms of (II),
which relate that behavior to (I).

The question whether to stand behind lesbian relationships as sexual

is in part about the sexuality of what lesbians do. The concept of sexual
behavior is systematically ambiguous, thanks to the physiological and
political meanings of sexuality.12 "Sexual behavior" seems to have a
narrower and a wider sense. The narrower (physiological) sense refers
to behavior characteristically instrumental toward or controlling of
physiological reproduction. The wider (political) sense includes be-
havior falling under norms of the historical institution of sexuality,
norms defining correct and incorrect behavior for females or for males
in a variety of contexts. Such norms define what Kate Millett called
sexual politics, insofar as they create and distribute forms of power. 13
Chapter Seven 152

Perhaps all, or nearly all, physiologically sexual behavior is also sexual

in the political sense. That is, perhaps all or nearly all such behavior is
covered by sexuo-political norms. But not all sexual behavior in the
political sense is also physiologically sexual. The institution of sexuality
relates behavior in a great many ways to reproduction, and not only to
physiological reproduction but also to social reproduction, the repro-
duction of culture, institutions, ways of life. In so doing, it structures
adult intimacy.
Taking responsibility for sexuality, then, is at least ambiguous be-
tween taking responsibility for behavior that is instrumental toward or
controlling of physiological reproduction, on one hand, and on the
other, taking responsibility for behavior that has been defined ("con-
structed") as sexual by social practices. If taking responsibility for one's
sexuality is understood to include taking responsibility for one's sexual
identity, it is taken at least partly in the second way.
I question the wisdom oflesbians' taking responsibility for our sexual
identities, not only because we are in a poor position to influence the
institution of sexuality but also in the way that I would question the
wisdom of sodomites' taking responsibility for their criminal identities.
Social norms that define sexual identities define too much else in the
process. They develop the concept of sexual identity in such a way that
"homosexual" inevitably sounds perverted. We should, where we can,
take responsibility for our reproductive potentialities and also for our
intimate affiliations. But why take responsibility for sexual readings of
our intimate affiliations? Why tie responsibility for physiological repro-
duction to relationships of playful adult intimacy? Viewing intimacy
through the lens of sexuality amalgamates these otherwise distinct
projects.
Sexual identity is a hybrid concept, partly physiological, partly politi-
cal. According to John De Cecco and Michael G. Shively, of the Center
for Research and Education in Sexuality in San Francisco, sexual iden-
tity has four components: (1) biological sex (assigned at birth), (2)
one's conviction of being female or male (referred to as one's "gender
identity"), (3) femininity or masculinity, as defined by social norms,
and (4) sexual orientation. Sexual orientation, in turn, is broken down
into at least four factors: (1) erotic fantasies, (2) emotional affiliation,
and (3) sexual behavior.14
Of the four named components of sexual identity, only the first,
namely, biological sex (femaleness or maleness), seems uncontrover-
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 153

sially genetically determined. Even that claim needs qualification with

respect to individuals of indeterminate sex who are nevertheless classi-
fied as either female or male. It is a question for feminists whether any
of the other factors is worth preserving. In a philosophical feminist cri-
tique of transsexualism, Janice Raymond has argued that what Shively
and De Cecco, following Robert Stoller, call "female gender identity,"
namely, one's "conviction of being female," is better understood as
one's sense of being feminine, that is, as identifying with the family of
psychosocial characteristics normatively associated with being female
in a sexist society-which is what contemporary American feminists
have usually meant by "female gender" as distinct from "female sex." 15
If Janice Raymond is right, the conception of the preoperative male-
to-female transsexual as a woman trapped in a man's body assumes
that real women are determined by conformity to sex-role stereotypes,
which feminists find oppressive. This criticism has implications for
male-ta-female transsexuals with respect to taking responsibility for
their sexuality. IfJanice Raymond is right, the meaning of the "woman"
that the male-to-female transsexual wants to be is not something that
anyone should stand behind. Consciousness-raising is a better solution
than surgery.
Perhaps Queer Theory with its ideas on "gender bending" and mul-
tiple genders can find ways to make sense of male-to-female transsexual
surgery as something other than a (presumably unwitting) endorse-
ment of sexist stereotypes. I have yet to see it done. The case is different
for a female-to-male transsexual, given the patriarchal history ofidenti-
fying human traits as male. The preoperative female-to-male transsex-
ual may find for good reasons that her sense of herself as human does
not sit right in a female body in the context of patriarchy. She may not
have internalized, even unwittingly, sexist norms of masculinity in her
desire to be thoroughly male. But she may find it psychologically impos-
sible to dissociate from femininity the femaleness of her birth body.
The very notion of an identity defined in part by way of sexual orien-
tation is, according to historians of sexuality of the past couple of
decades, a relatively recent phenomenon. Labeling persons "homo-
sexuals" as opposed simply to marking individual acts as sodomitic or
sapphic apparently dates only from the late nineteenth century. Ac-
cording to Jeffrey Weeks's history of homosexual politics in Britain, the
term "homosexuality" was coined in 1869 by a Swiss doctor, Karoly
Maria Benkert, and did not enter English currency until the 1890s. 16
C hap t e T S eve n 154

Formerly, the act of sodomy was prohibited by secular and ecclesiastical

law, and the prevailing assumption was that such an act might be com-
mitted by any man. As Michel Foucault tells it, with the nineteenth-
century medicalization and psychiatrization of sex, the former sod-
omite criminal or sinner "became a personage, a past, a case history,
and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and
a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious
physiology."!7 By this he did not mean that people simply discovered
that homosexual agents had certain sorts of histories and lifestyles. The
idea was, rather, that as people defined themselves through the artic-
ulation of social norms, they were thereby "constructing" identities for
themselves and others and were even constructing who they, and oth-
ers, had been.!S
Thomas Szasz has argued similarly that psychiatrists have simulta-
neously "discovered" and "created" the mentally ill. The category of
mental illness, understood as a basis for commitment to a total insti-
tution, he maintains, has functioned in recent times the way the cate-
gory of heresy functioned during the Renaissance. He presents both
"witch" and "homosexual" as identities of deviance defined by way of
social norms and considers the homosexual a paradigm modern-day
heretic.!9
Joyce Trebi1cot's account of coming out as a lesbian is in a certain
respect similar to Foucault's account of the creation of the homosexual
identity and to Szasz's account of the creation of the mentally ill. She
says it is not simply a discovery but at once a discovery and a creation. 20
By contrast, many contemporary gay liberationists have held that sex-
ual orientation is beyond anyone's control (so far) and have exhibited
more often than feminist lesbians a lively interest in the possibility of
genetic explanations. 2! They have tended to deny individual respon-
sibility, arguing that laws attempting to regulate sexual orientation and
therapies attempting to alter it are irrational and unfair. The social
construction of sexuality, however, suggests an alternative to this line
of criticism of the law and psychiatry. If Foucault is right, the medical-
ization and psychiatrization of sex, understood as historical events,
created forms of power by defining new relationships. To combat
the distributions of power defined by those relationships, perhaps we
need to reject the sexual institutions through which they have been de-
fined. If "lesbian" were not politically sexualized, coming out as a les-
bian might be compatible with rejecting rather than affirming one's
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 155

(socially defined) sexual identity in the sense set out by Shively and
De Cecco. Even the term "lesbian," unlike the term "homosexual,"
comes from the history of erotic poetry, not from the history of medi-
cine or psychiatry, and "gay" has likewise a popular folk history associ-
ated with music and romance. 22
What purposes are served by regarding so-called sexual orientations
as sexual in any other sense than that indicating the sexes of the parties
involved? What purposes are served by regarding love-making as sexual
behavior?
Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud saw embracing sexuality as
overcoming squeamishness about the body. Yet embracing the body
does not require embracing a sexual interpretation of its erotic plea-
sures. At issue for women is a history of being defined and devalued by
what has been called our sexuality, either our utility for reproducing
patriarchy or our utility for phallic play (recreation). The twentieth-
century sexual revolution shifted the emphasis from reproduction to
recreation and attempted a revaluation of the recreation from a frater-
nal, rather than patriarchal, perspective but did little to contest a phal-
lic definition of intimate relationships.
Many rightly question applying the concept of love-making to sex as
fraternal recreation. What has not been questioned, however, is the
wisdom of viewing erotic behavior as sexual. The homophile movement
of the 1950s came close to doing so with its emphasis on the love, rather
than the sexuality, of same-sex partners. However, the love emphasized
by the homophile movement was not clearly enough erotic. For homo-
philes, the important distinction was between love and sex, but not
particularly between the erotic and the sexual, although perhaps it had
the potentiality for that development.
Insofar as the erotic is a powerful bonding agent, it is worth ponder-
ing the implications, for maintaining the structure ofheteropatriarchy,
of conflating it with sexuality. I want to challenge the association of
women's intimate bonds with behavior interpreted as variations on or
deviations from phallic play or insemination. From the latter points
of view, lesbian relationships inevitably appear deviant, substitutes for
"the real thing," as perversity in reproductive behavior.
There is a sense in which lesbian relationships could become
straightforwardly sexual without being deviant or perverse. With a dif-
ferent social construction of reproduction, lesbian relationships could
certainly take on positive reproductive forms, participating in the re-
C hap t e r S eve n 156

production of society through giving birth and rearing children. Many

lesbians in fact do this, although their careers as reproducers are cur-
rently precarious, given present social norms governing reproduc-
tion. 23 To be in a good position to assume responsibility for our repro-
ductive potentialities we need a social reconstruction of reproduction
worth standing behind. The point is generalizable. To be in a good
position to assume responsibility for ourselves, we need to participate
in a social reconstruction of ourselves that we can stand behind.
It is not my intention to claim that humanity, or even sexuality, is
entirely socially constructed. That it is socially constructed in part,
however, is what makes it possible to take the kind of responsibility that
I am writing about. To some extent we construct ourselves in that who
we are is partly determined by social interaction, typically in accord
with social norms, which are themselves constructed by social interac-
tion and revisable by different interactions. 24
According to a well-known labeling perspective in sociology, social
construction, or definition, occurs on three levels: interpersonal reac-
tions, collective rule-making, and organizational processing. 25 All three
are involved in the social construction of sexualities. Instead of collec-
tive rule-making, I think of norm construction. Norms often empower or
disable by defining roles and relationships. Instead of organizational
processing, I think of rituals, understanding by "rituals" what Nietzsche
referred to as "the custom, the act, the 'drama,' a certain ... sequence
of procedures. "26 Rituals are often given meanings by social norms.
Nietzsche also observed that what endure in the institution of punish-
ment are the rituals (the "drama," he called it) -perhaps such things
as arrest, inquisition, trial, beheading, incarceration, flogging. Less en-
during are what Nietzsche called the rituals' "meanings," the purposes
for which they are used, such things as prevention, deterrence, re-
venge, reform, expulsion, or a compromise with revenge. The same
may be true of sexuality. What endure may be the various rituals re-
ferred to as "having sex" -rituals of copulation, sodomy, other so-
called sexual acts. Such rituals have borne a variety of meanings, even
religious ones. One feminist response to the institution of rape has
been the inclination to say that rape is not sex, meaning that the point
of the act is not to gratify the desire for sexual pleasure but, rather, such
things as putting women in their place or getting revenge on other
men. Yet it is undeniable that many of the rituals involved in rape are
the same rituals involved in "having sex."
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 157
Taking a similar approach to "revenge" in his book The Wanderer,
Nietzsche describes words as "pockets into which now this and now that
has been put and now many things at once. "27 He regarded words and
rituals as having lives of their own, so to speak, with meanings that come
and go. This seems at least as true of "sex" and the rituals we call
"sexual" as of "revenge" and the rituals we call "punishment."
What does it mean to "have sex?" In the sense of "sex" that refers to
one's femaleness or one's maleness, one "has it" all the time. But "hav-
ing sex," of course, refers to behaviors that are not inevitable. "Having
sex" is a practice defined by the historical institution of sexuality, rather
than determined by the physiology of human reproduction. Sexuality
as an institution has a genealogical history, an evolution, like punish-
ment. Nietzsche also observed that "all concepts in which an entire
process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which
has no history is definable."28 Taking this seriously suggests that what
has a genealogy is better understood through its relationships to its
many ancestors than through the search for an essence. If "having sex"
is defined by an institution that has a genealogy, it may consist in engag-
ing in ancient rituals that are now governed by social norms that relate
them to human reproduction. To impose a sexual meaning on such
rituals is then to interpret them by way of the norms of an institution
that also structures reproduction.
It might be objected, however, that the analogy with punishment
breaks down. There is no such thing as plain punishment, prior to
social practice. Yet, it has seemed to some that there is such a thing as
plain sex, on a par, perhaps, with plain eating and drinking, not yet
defined by social practice. 29 Lunching and dining are defined by social
practices, but one can eat or drink without lunching or dining. Is there
not likewise just plain having sex, prior to its social constructions?
The difficulty is to say what it is. There are, of course, sexual organs,
as there are digestive organs. But so-called sexual behavior is not under-
stood as necessarily involving organs. Nor is all behavior that involves
sexual b9dy parts sexual behavior. In law and psychiatry, it seems taken
for granted that lesbian genital love-making is sexual behavior. If les-
bian love-making were genital, that would seem a comprehensible-
although not decisive - reason to regard it as sexual. But if "having
sex" is enacting certain rituals involving external genitalia, or rituals
preparatory to those or analogous to them, it can be argued that "hav-
ing sex" is a phallic concept that cannot be applied without distortion
C hap t e r S eve n 158

to lesbian love-making. 30 For women have no external genitalia. Les-

bian love-making is never, strictly speaking, genital. What are inaccu-
rately referred to as women's external genitalia are (1) the menstrual
canal (neither generative nor an organ), (2) the clitoris, an organ that
generates only pleasure (thus not generative in the requisite sense),
and (3) the labia (like the menstrual canal, neither organs nor genera-
tive). These parts are, of course, female, and so "sexual" in the same
sense as a full beard, vaginitis, menstruation, menopause, and hot
flashes, none of which enters into the definition of behavior as sexual
behavior.
Women's physically orgasmic pleasures have their physiological
source in the clitoris, which makes no contribution to reproduction at
any point in the life cycle and which continues to function long after
reproduction has become impossible. Clidoridectomy does not impair
reproductive capacity.31 What the clitoris is good for is pleasure. The
role it plays in human relations appears thus to be a bonding role, not a
reproductive one.
It may be objected that the clitoris plays a role in reproduction inso-
far as it provides pleasure during a reproductive act and thereby facili-
tates reproduction. There is no correlation, however, between clitoral
pleasure and conception. It is therefore misleading to say that such
pleasure facilitates (physiological) reproduction. What it facilitates is
bonding and perhaps love-making, only one of the rituals of which is
ordinarily requisite to reproduction.
Classification of the clitoris as a genital organ betrays a phallic bias:
Either the clitoris is misperceived as a little phallus or its pleasures are
viewed as a byproduct of copulation or as analogous to those of penile
ejaculation - commonly, if mistakenly, identified with male orgasm. 32 If
the clitoris is not a genital organ, then its involvement in love-making
does not offer a reason to consider that love-making sexual, at least not
on a genital conception of sexuality.
Not all conceptions of sexual behavior have a genital focus. Freud
offered an account of infant sexuality as polymorphously perverse,
meaning that nearly any part of the body can be "sexualized" by be-
coming a focus of repeated vigorous muscular activity, such as sucking,
with the result that a tension is regularly created there which needs to
be relieved and can be relieved by muscular activity, such as sucking or
pulling or rubbing. 33
But what does it mean to call this production and relief of tension
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 159
sexual? Freud seems to have thought the energies involved were sexual
energies. But that only pushes the question back a step: What does it
mean to identify energies as sexual?
Two kinds of answers suggest themselves: either their sources are sex-
ual or their directions are sexual. Nongenitally focused conceptions of
sexual behavior, such as Freud's, attempt to define sexual behavior in
terms of either motivation or teleology rather than in terms of body
parts. The search for a common motivation, however, has proved as
futile as the search for other common denominators. The likeliest tele-
ological candidate is the purpose of furthering the life of the species. 34
By this criterion, however, research into health care, ecology, and en-
vironmental ethics may be clearer instances of sexual behavior than
lesbian love-making.
For Aristotle sexual pleasure is pleasure in certain kinds of touch-
ing. 35 This view is similar to Freud's and enters into a popular notion of
sexuality today. It is this kind of view to which I turn next. The view of
sexuality as touching for pleasure probably confuses the sexual with the
erotic. Disentangling the erotic from the sexual is an important step in
taking responsibility for lesbian relationships, even if some ultimately
want also to move beyond the erotic.

The Erotic

"Erotic" is popularly employed as a euphemism for "sexual,"

especially in the context of art and pornography. However, the mean-
ings of "erotic" and "sexual" are distinct. "Sexual" is either a biological
concept or a sociopolitical one elaborated on it. "Erotic" is not a bio-
logical concept. "Erotic" refers to certain emotional capacities or to
social constructions elaborated on them. The erotic refers to a capacity
or set of capacities for pleasurable excitement of certain sorts. The
difficulty is to say what sorts. The following seems at least one such: the
susceptibility to juyful surprise in intimate discovery or disclosure by way of
touching. The relevant discoveries are dis/ coveries of another; the rele-
vant disclosures, dis/closures of oneself. Desires and fantasies may be
understood as erotic when they are desires for or fantasies of such
experience. Autoerotic behavior can be understood as erotic by way of
the fantasies it involves.
I want to focus on the idea of touching as a central element of the
C hap t e r S eve n 160

erotic. Only what is particular and embodied can touch and is touch-
able. Erotic communication is thoroughly carnal. Although carnal, it
need not be skin to skin, however. It can occur by eye contact and even
by the spoken and written word. Still, it is not touching in the requisite
sense unless the party touched feels the touch. I am touched, in this
sense, when someone moves me, succeeds in reaching me, makes me
feel something.
Although carnal, the erotic need not be sexual. Connections of sex-
ualitywith the erotic are more contingent than is ordinarily assumed. It
is the political institution of sexuality that construes erotic playas
a sexual invitation. Thomas Nagel'S essay "Sexual Perversion," which
some critics have claimed never gets around to sex, takes for granted
the context of this institution of sexuality, according to which the erotic
play he describes is construed as a sexual invitation. 36 By way of institu-
tional norms erotic play has come to be associated with sexuality. What
eros and sexuality have in common, apart from such norms, is a histor-
ical association with rituals in which physical touching and its attendant
pleasures are central. The touching required for physiological repro-
duction, however, is not the same kind of touching as enters into the
definition of erotic interaction. For physiological reproduction, nei-
ther party need feel anything. (This may be literally true with some
forms of artificial insemination.) Numb eroticism, on the other hand,
is a contradiction in terms (although insensitivity in eroticism is not).
The erotic makes no reference to gender. There is no reason why
it should occur more frequently heterosexually than homosexually.
There are, however, good historical reasons why same-sex eroticism is
likely to be healthier than heterosexual eroticism. Under current sex-
ual politics, parties to heterosexual eroticism are almost inevitably very
unequal in political power. In same-sex eroticism, at least one major
source of political inequality is absent. The problem is not the bare
existence of a power inequality. Serious problems arise when such in-
equalities in a relationship actually become part of what is erotically
exciting about it. When this occurs with inequalities that are due to
oppressive social institutions, those damaged by such institutions may
be drawn into supporting them for the sake of the pleasure derived
from the relationships those institutions make possible. Where women
are damaged by misogynist institutions, heterosexual eroticism con-
tains this danger. Part of what many women find exciting about hetero-
 WHAT LESBIANS DO 161

sexual relationships is the very power differential that has resulted from
practices oppressive to women.
Similar dangers arise for same-sex intimacy when it is sexualized in a
sexist context. The sexualization of same-sex intimacy consists in apply-
ing norms of the institution of sexuality to the parties to same-sex
intimate relationships. Doing so risks attaching erotic excitement to
damaging inequalities of power or to fantasized inequalities realizable
only by way of oppressive practices.
Erotic interaction is a powerful bonding agent. A brief interchange
can have one hooked for years. This is not true simply of the rituals of
sex. Sexual behavior can also be a powerful bonding agent over time
but not just overnight. A consequence of eroticizing sexual (reproduc-
tive) interaction in the context of oppressive sexual politics is that it sets
up women for becoming locked into damaging long-term relation-
ships. If lesbian love-making is then regarded as another kind of sex-
uality, there is the risk of importing the same values into lesbian love-
making. Sexuality, as a phallic institution in a sexist society, is laden with
associations between inequality and erotic pleasure. It may be impossi-
ble to purge sexuality of those associations without a much wider non-
sexist reconstruction of society. Meanwhile, the erotic offers, at least
potentially, an alternative to the conception of lesbian relationships as
sexual.
One may wonder whether "eros" has a better history than "sex." In
Plato's dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, eros leads to what
Freud called sublimation, a turning away from the body.37 Further, the
contemporary pornography scene, notorious for its misogyny, catersJo
an emotional high that bears more than a family resemblance to what I
understand by "erotic." If my understanding of erotic experience is
correct, however, there is no special reason to associate the erotic with
rejection of the body. And if pornography is just eroticized oppressive
sexuality, what is wrong with it is first of all the oppressive sexuality,
which eroticism only makes worse by getting participants hooked on it.
My understanding of the erotic leaves open the question whether
what is discovered or disclosed in erotic experience is good or bad and
also whether the discovery or disclosure is itself desirable or not, on the
whole - for example, whether it is obtained by means employed with or
without the consent of the parties involved, and so on. I do not claim
that erotic relationships are necessarily good. My claim is, rather, that
C hap t e r S eve n 162

the conception oflesbian relationships as erotic avoids a certain phallo-

centrism and, thereby, the popular horror of their conception as sex-
ual. It offers, in those respects, a more coherent standpoint for the
feminist enterprise of taking responsibility for intimacy.
A large part of one's intent in coming out as a lesbian is to reject the
charge of perversion. The idea is not to embrace some perversions as
good things, after all, but to support one's identity and relationships as,
at the very least, no more perverted than other intimate relationships
that already have society's blessings. s8 The conception of lesbianism as
an erotic, rather than sexual, identity removes a certain conceptual
basis of the charge of perversion. The health and success of erotic
interaction as an emotional exchange is in no way contingent upon the
sexes of the parties.
What the erotic captures about lesbian relationships is emotional
intimacy, excitement, and a certain appreciation of our bodies. Les-
bians should also be able to participate in reproduction as fully as
anyone. Apart from the institution of sexuality, the lesbianism of a
relationship implies little about the potentialities of such participation.
The lesbianism of a relationship has to do, rather, with what turns us
on, what excites us, what we appreciate in women. What turns us on is a
source of the driving energies of our lives. Coming out as a lesbian is an
important part of taking responsibility for what turns us on and thereby
for what drives us. This is fundamental to taking responsibility for our-
selves. It is a choice to embrace intimate attachments that we can stand
behind. In a homophobic and misogynist society that is ripe for revolu-
tion, coming out as a lesbian potentially emancipates our intimate rela-
tionships from their historic ties to reproduction and phallic recre-
ation. It thereby potentially emancipates us from important forms of
our historic complicity in perpetuating the machinery of sex oppres-
sion. We may need to reject sexual identities in order to do it.
 c h a p e r E g h

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

P eople of (nonwhite) color and white people in the

United States do not, in general, have the same con-
sciousness of race, nor do the many peoples of color
share the same consciousness of race. White people
tend to have the privilege of not noticing things to
which people of color are forced to attend regularly. William Julius
Wilson has argued that race is declining in significance in the explana-
tions of inequalities in the United States today.! Even if he were right
about new introductions of inequalities for blacks in relation to whites,
it would not follow that race was declining in significance for other U.S.
peoples of color, nor for relations among them. Nor would it follow that
consciousness of race is or should be declining in significance, because
our pasts have not been undone. That people of color were becoming
freed up from race consciousness at the same time that white people's
consciousness and self-consciousness of race was growing sounds like a
fantasy of poetic justice. For white people, justice may require an in-
creasing consciousness of race, consciousness of a different sort from
that of a racist society. This chapter is written from my perspective as a
white woman raised, in a basically monocultural village of the heart-
land, with the privilege of not noticing a great deal. My conscious-
ness of race over the past two decades has been increasing, changing,
deepening.
Like the concepts of sexual orientation and gender, the very concept
ofrace is controversial. Worlds are imaginable in which none of these
concepts structures social relations. In 1945 Ashley Montagu argued,
on the ground that behaviors cannot be meaningfully correlated with
biological ancestry, that there are no races. 2 Although the language of
race persists and many conceptualize racial difference through para-
digms of gross morphological difference (in hair, skin, bone), the view
is discredited that members of the most generally socially recognized
racial groups are significantly more likely to share genes with each
C hap t erE i g h t 164

other than with members of other groups. 3 According to Anthony Ap-

piah, "Every reputable biologist will agree that human genetic vari-
ability between the populations of Mrica or Europe or Asia is not much
greater than that within those populations."4
Like erotic orientation and gender, race is a highly institutionalized
concept, or family of concepts. 5 Even if race, like baseball, were institu-
tionalized throughout, in the sense that apart from social institutions
there would be nothing for the concept to mark, racialized social dis-
tinctions are so deeply enmeshed in our histories that we can hardly
ignore where we are located in their terrains if we wish to take respon-
sibility for who we become as social and political beings. Social con-
struction does not make races unreal, even if it makes them wrong and
unnatural.
The challenge at the present time may be to acquire a race con-
sciousness that can be helpful for resisting racism. But what kind of
consciousness is that? What does taking responsibility for ourselves re-
quire of us in relation to how we are racialized? That, I think, depends
on who we are. Many white people have needed to unlearn the arro-
gance of equating humanity with whiteness, whereas many people of
color have reason to wonder how anyone could possibly make such a
mistake. Yet there are levels of consciousness and many things of which
to become conscious - many racial identifications, many aspects of
race and its institutionalization, many points of view on race, and being
targeted by racism is no guarantee that one will become conscious of all
such nuances. I begin by sketching three points of view, each of which
has seemed to me at one time or another compelling. They are what I
call the internal view of W.E.B. Du Bois, the external view of Marilyn
Frye, and the interactive view of Maria Lugones.
W.E.B. Du Bois, in his 1897 essay "The Conservation of Races, " offers
a positive outlook on race from an internal point of view, that is, from
the point of view of people who have been racialized by the hostile
projects of others. Although he seems in that essay prepared to recog-
nize broad scientifically based racial classifications (black, white, yel-
low) - a view he later rejected - the objects of his concern even then
were more specific groups defined sociohistorically rather than scien-
tifically. In answer to his question, "What, then, is a race?" he writes:

It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common

blood and language, always of common history, traditions
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 165

and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily

striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or
less vividly conceived ideals oflife. 6

Du Bois was writing in a context in which the leading alternative

among relatively progressive thinkers to revaluing black culture was an
assimilation of black peoples to white. Appiah has argued that Du Bois
had to have been relying on a scientific concept of race, after all, be-
cause in order to identity individuals as having a common history, it is
necessary to have some criterion for identifYing them first indepen-
dently of that history, and what criteria are left besides those of a scien-
tific understanding of race? Citing as analogousJohn Locke's problem
in trying to define personal identity by way of shared memories, when
the only way to identity a memory as shared is by having an independent
criterion of identity for the person being the same person at different
times, Appiah argues that "sharing a common group history cannot be
a criterion for being members of the same group, for we would have to be
able to identity the group in order to identity its history. "7
Yet why can we not identity individuals as members of the same group
by way of their traditions, if we understand those traditions as partly
constitutive of the identities of those who share them? There may be no
way to identify a merely psychological memory apart from someone
who has it. But traditions - objectified memories - take on lives of
their own. They become embodied in social institutions. We may be
able to identify a tradition or institution independently- that is, with-
out knowing all who participate in it - and then discover who is con-
nected with whom (and is thus a member of the group constituted by
that tradition or institution) by finding out who actually does partici-
pate in that tradition or institution. Discovering the identity of paren-
tally transmitted traditions can offer evidence that one is intergenera-
tionally connected with others who were practitioners of those same
traditions, a matter to which I return at the end of this chapter. The
questions are not thereby settled, of course, whether those connections
should be recognized as imposing special responsibilities and whether
the tradition or institution in question is worth supporting.
David Theo Goldberg disagrees with Appiah's view that "the only
contestant for criterion of racial membership is the false belief in bio-
logical heritability," arguing that popular usage also supports cultural
interpretations of race. B It appears that Du Bois held such a cultural
Chapter Eight 166

interpretation. 9 If Goldberg is right that "race" is a "family resem-

blance" concept, we can expect to find in popular usage more than one
understanding of it, represented by different paradigms (including
some constructed around false beliefs). Still, there may be important
truth in Appiah's claim that, "History may have made us what we are,
but the choice of a slice of the past in a period before your birth as your
own history is always exactly that: a choice." 10 And yet such choices may
not be entirely free but may be constrained by moral and political
considerations.
Taking the point of view of racialized Mrican Americans, Du Bois
argues in his 1897 essay that there are cultural potentialities that a race
may need many generations to fulfill and that, given time, the fulfill-
ment of those potentialities can make a significant contribution to
[Link] He might have held this to be true regardless of how nega-
tively the concept of race originated in the unfriendly projects of oth-
ers. Thus, he suggests the possibility of nonracist uses of the concept of
race, that is, nonracist uses other than simply the use of "race" to ac-
knowledge or address its racist uses by others. His plea for the conserva-
tion of races can be read as supporting the taking on of responsibility
for one's race. The plausibility of his view that there is, sociohistorically,
a Negro race (to use his term) whose preservation is at stake seems to
me to rest on whether a case can be made out for identifying a coherent
body or family of traditions as constitutive of so vast and diverse a group
as he seems to have envisioned.
In contrast to Du Bois and other Pan Mricanists, Marilyn Frye offers,
in her essays on being white and female, a thoroughly negative picture
of race, treating the concept as imposed on peoples by outsiders whose
interests were to mark them for domination, set them apart as inferior,
prohibit intermarriage, and so on. 12 Although racializers also become
racialized, I think of this picture as giving an external view of race
because of the origins of the concept on this view, the idea that "race"
was applied first of all to those regarded as "other." Acknowledging
that it is probably not in her power to abolish her race, Marilyn Frye's
aim has been to achieve the next best thing by disaffiliating from it, that
is, being disloyal to what she calls "whiteliness," where "whiteliness" is
to color as gender is to sex. Seeing no positive use for the concept of
race except to identify historical distinctions wrongfully introduced
and institutionalized, her response is to withdraw in the only ways avail-
able. This is similar to the response I support in the previous chapter
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 167

for lesbians in regard to the concept of sexual (as opposed to erotic)

identity, in that it disavows responsibility for one's racial identity rather
than taking on responsibility for it.
In a series of essays that address issues arising from cultural con-
frontations and interpenetrations, Maria Lugones's work suggests yet
another dimension of the construction of race, that of interaction. 13
She stresses the interactive nature of racism in a way that suggests that
the concept of race also develops interactively, regardless how it origi-
nates. To whatever extent race is a product of racism, asJoel Kovel has
argued, the interactive character of race would seem to follow, if racism
is an interactive phenomenon. 14 Her work also suggests that an interac-
tive solution is required to address racism satisfactorily, that it is not
enough either for beneficiaries of racism to withdraw as individuals
from supporting racist practices or for targets of racism to try to put the
most positive possible future construction on what has been done his-
torically. Applied to the idea of taking responsibility, the suggestion is
that we who have been differently racialized are in some sense responsi-
ble together, interactively (however different our moral roles), for who
we have become and that to end racism, we will need to take respon-
sibility together, interactively, for who we are going to be.
Thus, in commenting on Lorraine Bethel's poem, "What Chou
Mean We, White Girl?" she says, "white/anglo women theorizers did
not really hear an interactive demand," but "what they heard was a radi-
cal attack on the activity of white women theorizing," which "seemed to
them to undermine fundamentally the possibility of any theorizing to
the extent that it requires generalization. "15 This hearing of Lorraine
Bethel's question, she speculates, is what has generated "the problem
of difference" as conceived in contemporary white/ anglo feminist the-
ory, namely, the problem of "how to generalize without being guilty of
false inclusion."16 And this "problem of difference," she argues, is the
wrong problem for those concerned about racism.
The right problem, she finds, is the more concrete one of not seeing,
not noticing, the differences. Asking, "What would it be to be noticed?"
she answers, speaking as a woman of color to white feminists:

We are noticed when you realize that we are mirrors in which

you can see yourselves as no other mirror shows you .... It is
not that we are the only faithful mirrors, but I think we are
faithful mirrors. Not that we show you as you really are; we just
C hap t erE i g h t 168

show you as one of the people you are. What we reveal to you
is that you are many- something that may in itself be fright-
ening to you. But the selfwe reveal to you is also one that you
are not eager to know for reasons that one may conjectureP

She goes on to conjecture that a reason white people block identifica-

tion with the self mirrored by people of color is that knowing that self
would require "self-conscious interaction" and a different sense of re-
sponsibility. Continuing to address white feminist theorizers, she says:

Not all the selves we are make you important. Some of them
are quite independent of you. Being central, being a being in
the foreground, is important to your being integrated as one
responsible decision maker. Your sense of responsibility and
decision-making are tied to being able to say exactly who it is
that did what, and that person must be one and have a will in
good working order. And you are very keen on seeing your-
self as a decision maker, a responsible being: It gives you
substance. IS

My preceding chapter develops a somewhat interactive interpreta-

tion of taking responsibility for one's erotic orientation, calling atten-
tion to the luck required in social receptivity for a lesbian to succeed in
coming out as she wants to. The interaction in question, however, is
more limited than that envisaged by Maria Lugones in that it does not
really depend on inclusion of heterosexual parties but appeals only to
interaction among lesbians (although heterosexuals could also parti-
cipate). Maria Lugones appears to envisage interaction across racial
boundaries, not only among people of color, but also including anglos.
If there is luck in being able successfully to take responsibility for one's
erotic orientation, as argued in Chapter Seven, there is even more luck
in being able successfully to address racial oppression interactively as
Maria Lugones envisages. For success depends not only on what many
do in groups that have been able to rely on each other's support but
also on what many do in groups some of which have treated others
badly.
The views of race as internally, externally, and interactively con-
structed need not be regarded as alternatives. Each of these philoso-
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 169

phers has had his or her purposes for stressing differen t aspects of race
and racism. There may be ways of fitting them together as complemen-
tary elements of a comprehensive view.
If "race" has internal, external, and interactive aspects, "racism"
connotes first and foremost negative external views or practices, that is,
negative views of or negative practices in regard to members of another
group. Like "sexism," "racism" refers to oppressive behaviors, policies,
and attitudes ranging from unwitting support of insensitive practices by
the well-intentioned to fanatical hatred and institutionalized murder. 19
"Racism" appears to be a contraction of the earlier "racialism," sug-
gesting the verb, "to racialize," which, in turn, suggests social con-
struction. 20 Appiah has adopted the term "racialism" to refer to the
belief that there are biological races, a belief that he finds not yet racist
(although false) .21 This use may be confusing, for "racialist" easily sug-
gests "racializer," and yet being race conscious is not racializing. It is
one thing to make something a matter of race and another to acknowl-
edge it after the fact. Mter five centuries of Euro-American racializing
of Africans, Asians, and Native Americans, we can hardly proceed as
though racial categorization were no more than a fantasy.
For Du Bois, however, race consciousness was not only about oppres-
sion. He took issue with the integrationists regarding possible sources
of pride and on what there might be of value in the preservation of
races for Mrican Americans and for humanity in general. He was not
thinking first of all of holding whites accountable for their oppression
of blacks. He was concerned here with the development of black talent
and genius.
The American Heritage Dictionary speculates that the word "race" may
come from the Latin, ratio, meaning "a reckoning, account."22 What
"accounts"? What "reckonings"? Rendered by whom to whom? One
possible answer is that the "reckonings" or "accounts" were rendered
to conquerors regarding the conquered, that in this way histories of
conquest and enslavement are embedded in the concept of race. This
interpretation supports the view of race as a construction externally
imposed, as in Marilyn Frye's understanding of the concept, that is,
applied first to others. Another possible answer, however, is that the
"reckoning" or "account" refers to one's own record of one's ances-
tors, handed on to one's descendants, documenting their heritage.
This interpretation suggests an internal view of race, that is, a concep-
C hap t erE i g h t 170
tion applied first of all to oneself. This interpretation is also compatible
with a negative view, however, insofar as it may be combined with chau-
vinism and hostility toward outsiders.
Alternatively, one may hear, as Orlando Patterson suggests in his
discussion of the "natal alienation" of slaves, a different internal con-
ception of "race" embedded in the "deracination," uprootedness, of
peoples who have been cut off from their heritages and homelands. 23
Here, "race" suggests "roots," which might be of many kinds, and is
derived by way of the Old French desraciner from the late Latin radi-
cina. 24 If deracination is a source of the contemporary concept ofrace,
it offers us a picture of the exposure or discovery of a people's roots in
the process of their destruction. This is an interesting metaphor in that
roots tend to be destroyed when they are pulled up and exposed. This
metaphor might also yield, however, a positive interactive understand-
ing in that healthy roots, ordinarily invisible, are embedded in a soil or
other natural environment by which they are nourished.
"Race" was sometimes used by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Du Bois's
contemporary - in her classic Women and Economics to refer to a people
who share a lineage and a social history.25 This might be an interesting
idea conceived as applying to oneself if individual races were not de-
fined too broadly - if they were not, say, reduced to four or five in the
world. Neither she nor Du Bois does so. They usually identifY races not
by color but by nationality or geographic origin. When races are de-
fined so broadly that one can list them on the fingers of one hand,
intraracial differences become more significant than interracial differ-
ences, and it strains the imagination to think of such groups as sharing
a social history.
Among social critics, ethnicity is often embraced as positive, while race
arouses suspicion and skepticism. Yet the differences are not always
clear or obvious. 26 Both suggest birthplaces and birthrights. Both races
and ethnic groups may become dispersed through the homelands of
others. Like "national," "ethnic" may suggest geographic origins. 27
Like "race," it suggests heritage. But "race," unlike "ethnicity," sug-
gests the physical as well as the sociopolitical. Thus, Pierre L. van den
Berghe has defined "race" as "a group that is socially defined but on the
basis of physical criteria" and ethnic groups as "socially defined but
on the basis of cultural criteria."28 According to this distinction, what
Du Bois called races in 1897 sound more like ethnic groups (although
it is difficult to suppose that he really meant to put all Africans and
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 171

Mrican Americans into one ethnic group). Because the social heritage
of race is commonly one of oppression or privilege, it is plausible that
races are products of conquest, a way of maintaining social hierarchy
and of preventing intermarriages that would entail property dispersals
and consequent power dispersals. Because the heritage of ethnicity,
on the other hand, tends to include such things as language, litera-
ture, religion, cuisine, and humor, ethnicity seems more internally
constructed.
In Europeanized parts of the world, "race," unlike "ethnicity," sug-
gests color. "Ethnic" is sometimes a euphemism for "racial" where it is
thought impolite (or impolitic) to refer to color (as "erotic" in "erotic
art" can be a euphemism for "pornographic" where it is thought im-
polite or impolitic to refer directly to sex). In the United States, "eth-
nic" is popularly used (misused) to refer to anything not white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant (WASP), as in the "ethnic" section of the library,
"ethnic" restaurants, and so forth, as though WASP were not ethnic. If
one accepts van den Berghe's distinction between race and ethnicity,
WASP is a hybrid of race (white) and ethnicity, with ethnicity identified
two ways: by linguistic origin (anglo) and by religious connection (Prot-
estant). Thus, when "ethnic" is used to refer to groups other than
WASP, it can refer either to nonwhite races or to nonanglo ethnicities.
Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America offers chapters on Irish, Germans,jews,
Italians, Chinese,japanese, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and blacks, iden-
tifying only blacks by color and including from white Protestants only
Germans. 29
"Ethnicity" suggests culture, especially folk culture, produced by
people who share a history that is usually tied to a geographical terri-
tory. In the case of jewish ethnicity, the shared history is tied to a
religion or, at least, a body of texts. Either way leaves it open whether co-
ethnics share biological ancestry or color identification. Ethnic groups
sometimes fall within socially recognized racial groups and in other
cases cut across them. If race is associated with color, ethnicity cuts
across it in the case ofjewish blacks and whites but falls under it in the
case of whites who may be Italian or German.
Du Bois treated Slavic as a race within which there are Russian and
Hungarian ethnicities. But is "Slavic" a racial identification? or an
ethnic one? Like Anglo and Semitic, Slavic names a language group,
which, as a cultural phenomenon, suggests ethnicity. According to
the Oxford English Dictionary, however, the term "slave" comes from
 C hap t erE i g h t 172
the medieval Latin sciavus, which was identical with the proper name
"Sclavus" applied to the Slavonic populations of central Europe who
were reduced to servility (and sold by Germans, according to Milton
Meltzer), and "the transferred sense is clearly evidenced in documents
of the 9th century. "30 Perhaps Slavic peoples were racialized by the prac-
tice of slavery, even though there was no color difference between them
and their captors. That is, perhaps Slavic peoples did not identifY with
one another as members of one group until the category of being
inferiors was imposed on them by their captors, as may be also true
of Mricans sold as slaves by Europeans. But if so, neither of van den
Burghe's categories quite seems to apply: What unites members of the
group marked for slavery may be neither culture nor color (or other
physical characteristics) but their not belonging to the group or groups
of their captors and those regarded as peers by their captors (at least,
those not considered for enslavement). Or, there may be only a thin
cultural identification, as in speaking related languages.
The apparent asymmetry of external and internal construction be-
tween race and ethnicity is reflected in vocabulary. There is no noun
"ethnicism" corresponding to "racism." Instead, there is "ethnocen-
trism," referring to one's (friendly) attitudes regarding one's own eth-
nicity and only by implication, if at all, to one's attitudes toward others.
"Racism," on the other hand, refers first of all to (hostile) attitudes and
practices toward other races, only by implication suggesting arrogance
regarding one's own. The structures of the concepts of race and eth-
nicity thus seem opposite. There are, however, terms such as "ethnic
prejudice" (and more specific terms, such as "anti-Semitism") and
"race supremacist" for attitudes running the other direction in each
case.
Maria Lugones once argued that ethnocentrism need not be racist,
meaning that it need not involve a negative attitude toward others and
that it need not be a bad thing. In her early essay, "Pedagogy and
Racism," she offers the analogy of a mother saying that her child is "the
most beautiful in the world," meaning simply that the child is the
center of the mother's attention but not intending objectively the com-
parative value judgment that the words seem to imply. If ethnocentrism
were the analogue of this, it would be, presumably, a healthy pride and
joy in one's own culture. However, in "Hablando cara a cara/Speaking
Face to Face" she offers a revised conception of ethnocentrism as basi-
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 173

cally arrogant, arguing that an absorption in one's own culture (like a

mother's absorption in her child) is not necessarily ethnocentric (ar-
rogant). Yet she retains the idea that ethnocentrism - although arro-
gant-is not necessarily racist. Ethnocentrism becomes racist, she ar-
gues, when it involves the idea of the racial state, when the culture in
regard to which one is arrogant is racist. 31 So understood, "racist ethno-
centrism" is not redundant but combines the orientations of racism
and ethnocentrism.
Because histories and ancestries crisscross and their boundaries are
arbitrary and vague, racial identifications are bound to be in a certain
sense arbitrary, regardless of their motivations (which need not have
been arbitrary).32 They may be more arbitrary than ethnic identifica-
tions if one's ethnicity- enculturation - is less liable to multiplicity
than one's genealogy. It may seem as though an individual's ethnicity is
liable to serious multiplicity, in that biculturalism is common, especially
among the oppressed in ethnocentrically racist societies. However, bi-
culturalism need not involve identifying with or identifying as a member of
both cultures. It may simply be a matter offacility in negotiating one's
way in two cultures. People bicultural in that sense might think of
themselves as "'world'-travelers," as Maria Lugones uses that term,
without identifYing themselves as belonging to all of the "worlds" in
which they have learned to travel well. By "'world'-traveling" Maria
Lugones understands a "willful exercise" of a certain flexibility, sponta-
neously acquired by members of a minority in an oppressive society, in
shifting from one construction of life in which one is at home, al-
though many others are outsiders, to other constructions of life in
which some of those former outsiders are at home, or more nearly at
home and in which one may figure oneself as an outsider. 33 "World"-
traveling, as she presents it, develops new aspects of oneself, even
new "selves." It seems not, however, to create new ethnic identities, per-
haps because one's ethnicity has a historical element that remains un-
changed by "world"-traveling and perhaps also because one may not
identifY with both worlds or others may refuse to acknowledge such an
identification.
Neither one's race nor one's ethnicity seems reducible to one's loyal-
ties, however. An interesting question is what significance, if any, one's
self-identification has for one's racial or ethnic identity, especially if
one's ancestry or one's cultural heritage is evidently recently mixed. 34
Chapter Eight 174

Recall Appiah's view that "the choice of a slice of the past in a period
before your birth as your own history is always exactly that: a choice. "35
To what extent can one choose a racial or ethnic identity?
As I note in Chapter Seven, John De Cecco and Michael Shively's
analysis of "sexual identity" includes one's self-identification (or sense
of oneself) as female or male as one offour components of one's sexual
identity. If there is an analogue in the case of racial identity, perhaps it
is most evident in the case of people of recently "mixed race" who
choose to identify with ancestors whose heritage is not suggested to
others by their physical appearance.
Identifying someone as a member of a certain race may suggest ei-
ther that they do identify with a certain ancestry and history, or that the
speaker thinks they should identity with it, perhaps for political rea-
sons. From a political point of view, the latter sort of view need not be
arbitrary, even if the relevant biological ancestry is evidently mixed.
Even if self-identification is an element, however, it is often not decisive
for the social identity one comes to have, as many Europeans ofJewish
descent discovered under Hitler's Nuremberg laws and as many pre-
operative transsexuals find today. It is not only that others may refuse to
respect one's self-identification, however. There is also the phenome-
non of "passing," successfully claiming an identity that others would
not acknowledge if they knew one's history or origins, or even pretend-
ing successfully to an identity that is not one's true identity at all (as in
the case ofJohn Howard Griffin, a white man who wrote in Black Like Me
of his experiment in darkening his skin to live among blacks in the
southern United States, or, to take a nonracial example, Mark Twain's
novel The Prince and the Pauper, in which a look-alike street child and
child prince trade clothes and exchange social positions).36 Although
one may be justified in claiming or in disowning a heritage, the implica-
tions for one's identity of doing so may be less clear than the implica-
tions for one's social relationships with others. If! disown my Protestant
heritage, I may alienate some people, but others will not cease to iden-
tity me as WASP, and there is no alternative heritage that I am in a
position to claim.
History indicates that I hail, on my father's side, from a line of Scots.
Should I identify with that? I have not particularly identified with Scot-
tish ethnicity. My love of music does not extend to bagpipes. I like
plaids but for decades have not worn skirts, not even kilts. And I seem
not to have inherited proverbial Scottish attitudes toward money. Yet,
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 175
such choices (if that is what they are) may not be decisive for who I am.
Some of my sensibilities and dispositions may be inherited through
generations of parenting by Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors whether
or not I have any desire to affirm or identify with their culture. My
unreflective attitudes and values may also be influenced by a more
palpable Presbyterianism despite my disavowal of the Shorter Cate-
chism. Such characteristics may have enabled me throughout my life to
hook into advantageous social networks and to develop assets that oth-
ers value in me (and that I value in myself). If such influences are
transmitted through parenting processes, and if they construct me
ethnically, the connection of my ethnicity with my choices or voluntary
identifications may be complex. To reject my ethnicity, it would not be
enough simply to disavow it verbally, however sincerely. I would need to
work first to become conscious of what my ethnicity consists in, to learn
to recognize it in myself. My success in that endeavor may be helped by
the "mirrors" that Maria Lugones writes about. But even if I succeed in
identifying my ethnicity, the question of getting rid of it may also take
on moral dimensions. By profiting in various ways, willingly or not, from
ethnic privilege, I may now have acquired moral responsibilities. Being
an ethnic Scot may be part of my moral luck, something to be taken
into account if! am to appreciate the political meanings of my relation-
ships and interactions with others.
Just as combatting ethnocentrism may require developing a con-
sciousness that many of one's values, attitudes, and so forth have roots
in one's ethnic heritage, anti racism may require-as it has, in my
case - developing a higher order race consciousness: becoming con-
scious not only of such things as how one has learned to process percep-
tions of racial difference (in order to deny them, for example) but also
of how one's whiteness has been socially constructed through social
and political institutions from I.Q. tests to real estate practices. 37 Joel
Kovel's distinctions among dominative racism ("direct, physical oppres-
sion"), aversive racism ("the racism of coldness and the fantasy of
dirt"), and metaracism may be helpful here. In the case of metaracism,
which is characterized by economic and technocratic means, he finds
that there need be no particular psychological mediation, that is, no
particularly racist attitudes or beliefs on the part of individuals. 38 At this
level, racism is embodied in social and political institutions. For this
reason, Kovel rejects as misleading William Julius Wilson's contention
that race, by contrast with socioeconomic class, has declined in signifi-
C hap t erE i g h t 176

cance in the United States since the civil rights movement. 39 Kovel
maintains, rather, that what has declined in significance are at most
racist psychological attitudes. 40 If racism has become even further en-
trenched through social and political institutions, a declining con-
sciousness of race may make more difficult the tasks of resisting and
combatting racism. Acquiring a helpful consciousness of race, like ac-
quiring an ethnic consciousness, would appear to be a complex en-
deavor, involving much more than the psychological introspection
characteristic of white activist workshops on racism.
Race consciousness goes against the grain of my upbringing. In
my corner of anglo culture terms like "color consciousness" evoke
negative psychological attitudes. They suggest such thoughts as that if
people are classified by readily visible physical characteristics, such as
color, those characteristics will not be treated as value-neutral, and
then masses of people will be instantly targetable by one another for
friendship (as in elitist cliques) or hostility (as in people of color being
tracked by white security guards in predominantly white department
stores), independently of who they are as individuals. 41 "Racial" think-
ing, I was taught, blocks getting to know people as they really are.
Stereotyping is not even the worst danger. Generalizing at all in terms
of race about highly problematic or highly desirable characteristics
(such as aggression or intelligence) is readily enlisted in the service of
oppression.
Yet among those who are in fact targets of racism, instant recognition
of potential friends or potential enemies is an aid to survival. Instant
recognition of contexts in which racism is a potential danger can be
necessary for effective resistance by anyone. Color consciousness facili-
tates positive contacts among the oppressed as well as oppressive con-
tacts of dominant with subordinate. It facilitates political separatism of
the oppressed as well as segregation and oppressive avoidance by the
dominant. 42 The segregationist potentialities are terrifying: capture,
concentration of peoples, imprisonment, enslavement. Yet these are
hardly reasons to reject color consciousness in a society already racist-
rather the opposite: Such dangers can hardly be combatted without it.
This creates a challenge for white people in a society such as the United
States: how to be race or color conscious without being racist or in
other ways oppressive. As Pat Parker puts it in her poem "For the White
Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend":
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 177
The first thing you do is to forget that i'm Black.
Second, you must never forget that i'm Black. 43

And yet, color consciousness on this level is focused on the color of

individuals who stand to gain or lose in consequence of their racializa-
tions. More important is consciousness of what Kovel calls metaracism,
the way color structures the social and political institutions by which
individuals stand to gain or lose. It is at this level, for example, that
Bernard Boxill has argued against "color blindness" in his philosophi-
cal examinations of bussing and affirmative action. 44 (Because "blind-
ness" here connotes ignoring, we may need another term-perhaps
"color obliviousness" - out of respect for the physically blind.)
One may want to ask: Must color consciousness, or race conscious-
ness, be at best only a necessary evil? Can good purposes, other than
resistance to oppression, be served by race consciousness? Du Bois
seemed interested in the good for Mrican Americans of affirming ra-
cial identity. But he also spoke ofits value to humanity. His idea was that
different cultural developments distinguish racial groups and that it
takes many generations to produce these cultural developments. He
feared that if races were not conserved - if, for example and in particu-
lar, Mrican Americans assimilated to European Americans-valuable
cultural developments would be lost. Du Bois's focus on culture may
suggest a concern more with ethnicity than with race. And yet, how
separable are they, if he is also right that significant cultural develop-
ments require many generations?
Du Bois, in his essay on conserving races, thinks of race as having
internal aspects, which he identifies as cultural potentialities that may
require generations to realize, as well as whatever external aspects may
be defined by practices of others. As he may have realized in his obser-
vation that members of a race strive together "both voluntarily and
involuntarily," neither the internal nor the external aspects need have
been originally the object of choice on the part of those to whom they
apply, although individuals may later choose to affirm or deny them.
In my liberal anglo upbringing, the reason most frequently offered
for the moral irrelevance of race was that individuals have no control
over their racial identity, and individuals were supposed to have con-
trol over who they really are. What was important about people, I was
taught, were their individual choices. Only for one's choices could one
C hap t erE i g h t 178

be held morally responsible. Thus the idea of constitutive moral luck

was implicitly rejected.
It often seems that one can adopt or reject many aspects of an eth-
nicity - as I do with the Scots. Perhaps for that reason, anglo liberals
have tended to worry less about the importance of ethnicity than about
that of race. On both biological and social constructivist conceptions,
the racial identity of individuals has often been thought totally invol-
untary - except for the choice to procreate, which can affect the race
of one's offspring although it does not affect one's own identity.
Marilyn Frye's essay "On Being White" partly challenges the assump-
tion that one has no control with respect to one's race, arguing that we
can at least choose where to place our loyalties. 45 This position pre-
serves the idea that the individual, morally speaking, is basically re-
vealed by her choices. At any rate, it does not challenge that idea. I want
to question, however, the historically liberal view that who we really areis
determined only by our choices, which has seemed to support the
position that one's race is morally irrelevant. Although who I am is
importantly affected - and revealed - by my choices, I do not choose
everything that is important to my identity, nor even all of it that mat-
ters morally. Even my individual past imposes constraints on my present
choices. Ifl have been a misogynist in the past, for example, but recog-
nize and reject misogyny today, I cannot completely disavow that past. It
does not suddenly become someone else's past. It is still mine to con-
tend with. I am still sufficiently identical with my previous self that I
might be held responsible for whatever harm my prior misogyny did to
others. The extent of my identity's dependence on factors beyond my
power to change is, however, even more deeply revealed by the realiza-
tion that I am a relational being and that my choices alone are not
decisive for all my relations. A heritage that has given me privileges or
liabilities from birth, whether I affirm it or reject it, is important to who
I am and to who I can become. Even whether I have a heritage to which
to be loyal or disloyal is not the product of my choices.
"Heritage" is a slippery term. If we think of it as whatever led up to
one's existence, then everyone has a heritage. But what makes a past
one's own is not just causal precedence. On that score, Appiah is right.
Choices matter. But the choices that matter are not always one's own.
When a heritage is a cultural legacy, one can be disinherited or alien-
ated from it. One can be robbed of one's culture. Cultures of one's
ancestors may have been appropriated by others. 46 Thus, not all have
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 179

the privilege of being able to claim a heritage. Nor do all of us want to

claim as our heritage some of the pasts that produced us (rape and
slavery, for example). Amoja Three Rivers writes: "One of the most
effective and insidious aspects of racism is cultural genocide. Not only
have Mrican-Americans been cut off from our Mrican tribal roots,
but ... we have been cut off from our Native American roots as well.
Consequently most Mrican Native Americans no longer ... even know
for certain what people they are from. "47 If race in its internal aspect re-
fers to certain aspects of cultural heritage - as is suggested in Du Bois's
usage in "The Conservation of Races" - an insidious aspect of racism is
the destruction of races. (This is compatible, of course, with its also
constructing races.) Thus Patterson describes the "natal alienation" of
slavery as a "loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending
generations" and observes, as noted above, that it "also has the impor-
tant nuance of a loss of native status, of deracination. "48 Building on
Patterson's concept of natal alienation, Laurence Thomas maintains
that under American slavery, by the seventh generation cultural death
would be complete in that there would be no more of the memories on
which participation in cultural traditions that should have been one's
own depends. 49
Race and ethnicity can come together, to some extent, in the notion
of a heritage. Cultural death may be less complete than it appears if
what is destroyed are the most natural means of identifying cultural
developments (conscious memories, for example) but not necessarily
those developments themselves. Further, in pondering the question
what significance, if any, one's biological heritage has for one's social
identity, perhaps we should ask, What counts as "biological"? Marilyn
Frye once wrote, in thinking about gender: "Enculturation and social-
ization are misunderstood ... if one pictures them as processes which
apply layers of cultural gloss over a biological substratum. It is with that
picture in mind that one asks whether this or that aspect of behavior is
due to 'nature' or 'nurture'." She goes on to paint a bodily portrait of
gender:

Socialization molds our bodies; enculturation forms our skel-

etons, our musculature, our central nervous systems. By the
time we are gendered adults, masculinity and femininity are
"biological." They are structural and material features of how
our bodies are .... They are changeable just as one would ex-
 C hap t erE i g h t 180

pect bodies to be - slowly, through constant practice and de-

liberate regimens, designed to remap and rebuild nerve and
tissue.

But she also notes that now "biological" does not mean "genetically
determined" or "inevitable" but rather, "of the animal. "50
Likewise, much of what is "biological" in "race" may not be genetic
and what is "cultural" in ethnicity may not have been chosen by the
individuals whose ethnicity it is, nor even open to them to reject if they
can identify it. For self-understanding it may be important to know our
earliest un chosen caretakers and the also often unchosen social con-
texts of their lives, and their early caretakers and the social contexts of
their lives (and so on) . Such histories might be considered genealogies.
Consider the following three examples of genealogies where what are
of interest are the histories of parenting and cultural formation and
transmission.
An issue of Lilith a few years ago contained an article on Indian
Catholic Jews of New Mexico, descendants of sixteenth-century con-
versos (Jews forced to convert to Christianity) who fled the Inquisition
in Mexico. 51 These descendants are reported to be practicing Catholics
who still also practice Jewish customs privately at home without know-
ing what they mean or even that the customs are Jewish. Some, who by
accident discovered the Jewish meanings, now speak of discovering
their Jewish heritage. And what customs, one may wonder, do they
likewise practice without knowing their Native American meanings?
Calling the Indian Catholics of New Mexico Jews on the basis of such
connections is an example of identifying individuals as members of a
group on the basis of shared customs that are taken to be partly con-
stitutive of the identities of those who share them. There is no indepen-
dent criterion, such as Appiah has insisted we would need, for recogniz-
ing the sixteenth-century conversosand contemporary Indian Catholics
as members of the same group. Such an identification may be contro-
versial, but it is neither totally arbitrary nor totally a matter of choice. It
seems to fit with Du Bois's 1897 idea of shared traditions as definitive of
what he wanted to call a "race" in the sociohistorical sense. 52 What is
critical here is not shared biological ancestry but traditions transmitted
from generation to generation through parenting (child-rearing).
Enslaved Africans in the Americas were often separated from biolog-
ical kin at early ages and raised by others who were enslaved from totally
 RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 181

different regions of Mrica. Such foster parents may have borne little
resemblance to the children's biological kin and may not even have
spoken a related language. If a common Mrican American heritage has
been developing in this country, generations of such parenting under
conditions of slavery may be a more significant factor in its unification
and development than the genetic impositions of white rapists who
claimed to own Mrican slaves and their descendants.
And what is the heritage of whites who were raised by black servants
or slaves? Or, for that matter, of whites today in the United States,
regardless who parented them? Thanks to generations of enforced in-
terracial care-taking and many forms of cultural appropriation, the
culture of most whites in the United States is probably more mixed in
its genealogy than that of the Indian Catholics of New Mexico. And
white folk are characteristically no more aware ofthe meanings ofthese
heritages. Consider, for example, Nikki Giovanni's ruminations on a
nursery song from my childhood:

Just listen to "Rockabye Baby" and picture a Black woman

singing it to a white baby.... They didn't know we were laugh-
ing at them, and we unfortunately were late to awaken to the
fact that we can die laughing. 53

I was rocked to sleep as a baby to this song. As a teenager, I was raised on

Dick Clark's daily afternoon television show American Bandstand, where
exclusively white teenagers danced to rock 'n' roll hits mostly written
and recorded by black artists. 54 One cannot read through a list of the
names of the artists and performers, many still famous today, without
being struck by the irony and injustice of only white teenagers par-
ticipating in programs made possible by Mrican American talent, pro-
grams that have become part of "white nostalgia" for many of my gen-
eration. And how many generations of white children were raised on
the Uncle Remus tales as appropriated and retold by Joel Chandler
Harris and portrayed in the animated film Song of the South? 55
To return in conclusion to the idea of lifting veils of ignorance, un-
covering particular histories, such as those underlying our racial and
ethnic social identities, can help us to appreciate who it is our moral
luck to have become, to determine what responsibilities we now have,
how we are related to one another, the meanings of the institutions in
which we now participate and by which we have been formed, and what
Chapter Eight 182

kinds of choices we now have. Approaches to justice that take our social
and political identities and institutions to be transparent, in the sense
of supposing that we are ordinarily conscious and in general equally
conscious of who we are and of the rules defining our social practices,
will probably fail to see such a need. However, becoming race con-
scious, in the sense of developing an awareness and appreciation of
histories and practices underlying contemporary racisms, is required
even to recognize issues of justice in a society such as that of the
United States today. Whether such recognition should lead eventually
to dismantling of constructions of race, with a consequent abandon-
ment of the very concept, or instead, to their transformations into
something more benign may be fruitfully discussable only if we con-
front those constructions together in their historical contingencies and
specificities.
 N o e s

Preface

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of MrYrals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and

R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967).
2. Claudia Card, "On Mercy," The Philosophical Review81, no. 2 (Apr. 1972): 182-
207.
3. Claudia Card, "Retributive Penal Liability," in American Philosophical Quarterly,
Monograph #7: Studies in Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), pp. 17-35.
4. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

Chapter One

1. B.A.O. Williams and Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, supp. vol. 50 (1976): 115-51. Williams's contribution is reprinted in his
MrYral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), pp. 20-39, and Thomas Nagel's in his MrYrtal Questions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 24-38.
2. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Margaret Urban Coyne
(now Walker), "Moral Luck?" The Journal of Value Inquiry 19 (1985): 319-25, and
Margaret Urban Walker, "The Virtues of Impure Agency," Metaphilosophy 22, nos. 1-
2 (Jan.-Apr. 1991): 14-27, the latter reprinted in MrYral Luck, ed. Daniel Statman
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
3. Many of these essays are collected in MrYral Luck, ed. Statman.
4. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. Sir David Ross (London: Oxford Uni-
versityPress, 1925),p. 17.
5. The MrYral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of MrYrals, trans. H. J. Paton
(London: Hutchison, 1948), pp. 74-113.
6. See, for example, my review essay, "Oppression and Resistance: Frye's Politics
of Reality," Hypatia I, no. 1 (Apr. 1986): 149-66.
7. Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist TherYrY (Trumansburg, N.Y.:
Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 1-16.
8. Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine
Bodily Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality," in Throwing Like a Girl and Other
Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990), pp. 141-59.
9. What happens to female self-respect in oppressively sexist environments is
discussed in detail by Robin Dillon in "Self-Respect: Emotional, Moral, Political,"
presented to the Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy, Apr. 23, 1995.
Notes 184

10. Iris Marion Young,Justice and the Politics ofDifference (Princeton, N J.: Princeton
University Press, 1990), pp. 39-65.
11. Laurence Mordekhai Thomas, Vessels ofEvil: American Slavery and the Holocaust
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
12. On "total institutions," see Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situa-
tion of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961).
13. Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower, trans. H. A. Pichler, with a Symposium
(contributions in German, trans. H. A. Pichler) (New York: Schocken Books, 1969).
14. The first three issues appeared as special issues of Women s Studies International
Forum, vol. 6, no. 6 (1983), vol. 7, no. 5 (1984), and vol. 8, no. 3 (1985). Most of these
essays are reprinted in Azizah Y. AI-Hibri and Margaret A. Simons, eds., Hypatia
Reborn: Essays in Feminist Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
15. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women s Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), and many subsequent essays. In
"Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection," Hypatia 10, no. 2 (spring 1995):
120-27, she distinguishes between a feminine and a feminist voice.
16. See, for example, Michelle Moody-Adams, "Gender and the Complexity of
Moral Voices," in Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1991), pp. 195-212.
[Link] Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
18. Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co.,
1948), p. 155.
19. Nel Noddings, Caring: A FeminineApproach to Ethics and MoralEducation (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984).
20. Nel Noddings, Women and Evil (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989).
21. Susan Griffin first used the term "protection racket" to describe chivalry as a
practice dependent on rape in her classic essay, "Rape: The All-American Crime,"
first published in &mparts magazine, Sept. 1971,26-35, reprinted in Feminism and
Philosophy, ed. Mary Vetterling-Braggin, Frederick A. Elliston, and Jane English
(Totowa, NJ.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1977), pp. 313-32 (see p. 320 on the protec-
tion racket).
22. Claudia Card, Lesbian Choices (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),
esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
23. See, for example, Bernard Boxill, Blacks and SocialJustice (Totowa, NJ.: Row-
man andAllanheld, 1984).
24. Currently edited by Leonard Harris, Philosophy Department, Purdue Univer-
sity, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
25. See, for example, David Theo Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of&cism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1990), and David Theo Goldberg, &cist Culture:
Philosophy and the Politics ofMeaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
26. In addition to Thomas, Vessels of Evil, see, for example, Howard McGary and
Bill E. Lawson, Between Slavery and Freedom (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1992).
27. See, for example, Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa,
NJ.: Rowman andAllanheld,1983).
 Not e s 185

28. Frye, Politics of Reality and Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, 1976-1992 (Free-
dom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1992). Sarah Lucia Hoagland, LesbianEthics: Toward New
Value (Palo Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988).
29. See, for example,Judith Butler, ('>finder Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), and my review in Canadian Philosophical Reviews
10, no. 9 (Sept. 1990): 356-59.
30. For scholarly examination of this and related concepts, see Julia Penelope,
Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers' Tongues (New York: Pergamon, 1990).
31. For a discussion of these issues, see Shane Phelan, Getting Specific: Postmodern
Lesbian Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
32. The same thing is even truer of derogatory ethnic terms. See Irving Lewis
Allen, Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling from Redskin to Wasp (New York: Bergin and
Garvey, 1990).
33. Joyce Trebilcot, Dyke Ideas: Process, Politics, Daily Life (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1994).
34. See, also, my introductory essay, "The Feistiness of Feminism" in Feminist
Ethics, esp. pp. 20-21.
35. For Plato's Apology, see Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairnes, eds., The
Collected Dialogues ofPlato (New York: Bollingen, 1961), pp. 3-26.
36. Consider, for example, Socrates' derogatory references to his wife, Xan-
thippe, and to women generally when he talks about emotional display in the Apol-
ogy.
37. Ruth Ginzberg, "Philosophy Is Not a Luxury," in Feminist Ethics, ed. Card,
pp.126-45.
38. For a fuller discussion, see Card, "The Feistiness of Feminism," esp. pp. 21-
22.
39. On the breakdown of these oppositions in a cybernetic age, see Donna].
Harraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149-81.
40. Classics of ecofeminism include Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring
Inside Her (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), and Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Meta-
ethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon, 1978). See also Andree Collard, The Rape
of the Wild: Man s Violence Against Animals and the Earth (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1988), and Karen]. Warren, ed., Ecological Feminism (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1994). On social ecology, see Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society
(Montreal: Black Rose, 1980), and Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future (Bos-
ton: South End, 1990).
41. Some philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, seem
to view "good and bad" as not a dichotomy but a continuum and to prefer it, for that
reason, to the dichotomy of "right and wrong." But that view is too simple. Although
there are degrees of goodness and badness, and we speak of the less good as "worse
than" and of the less bad as "better than," it does not follow that the less good (what
is worse than) is bad or that the less bad (what is better than) is good.
42. Marcus G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961) .John Rawls,
A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
Not e s 186

43. See Rawls's Dewey Lectures, Journal oJPhilosophy 77, no. 9 (Sept. 1980): 515-
72; ''Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14,
no. 3 (summer 1985): 223-51; and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1993).
44. Rawls, A Theury oJJustice, pp. 4-5, 453-62; Political Liberalism, pp. 35-40.
45. Rawls, A Theory oJJustice, p. 315. My Ph.D. dissertation, "Retributive Justice in
Legal Punishment" (Harvard University, 1969), constructed a principle of punish-
ment from behind a thick Rawlsian veil of ignorance, but when asked to illustrate its
implications, I was at a loss.
46. Rawls, "The Law of Peoples," in On Human Rights: The OxJord Amnesty Lectures,
1993, ed. Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 41-
82, esp. pp. 71-77.
47. See Laurence Thomas, "Liberalism and the Holocaust: An Essay on Trust and
the Black:Jewish Relationship," in Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on
aDark Time, ed. Alan Rosenberg and Gerald E. Myers (Philadelphia: Temple Univer-
sity Press, 1988), pp. 105-17, for discussion of the contrast between the relative
states of black and Jewish histories in this regard.

Chapter Two

1. B.A.O. Williams and Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," Proceedings oj the Aristotelian
Society, supp. vol. 50 (1976): 115-51.
2. Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 38.
3. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986), p. 123.
4. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility oj Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy
and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
5. Williams, Moral Luck, pp. 22-30. Count Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans.
Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1950). Thomas Nagel, "Moral
Luck," Mortal ~estions (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1979), p. 26.
6. Bernard Williams, "The Idea of Equality," in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 2d
ser. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), pp. 110-31.
7. John Dewey, "Philosophies of Freedom," in On Experience, Nature, and Freedom,
ed. Richard]. Bernstein (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), pp. 261-87. The Nico-
machean Ethics oj Aristotle, trans. Sir David Ross (London: Oxford University Press,
1925), pp. 28-29. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy ojMorals, trans. Walter Kauf-
mann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 57-62. Nietzsche, who
apparently believed in the inheritability of acquired characteristics, presented a
naturalistic account of how a sense of responsibility might have been developed in
the human species.
8. Herbert Fingarette, On Responsibility (New York: Basic Books, 1967), p. 6.
9. Arnold A. Kaufman, "Responsibility, Moral and Legal" in Encyclopedia ojPhiloso-
phy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols. (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967), 7: 183-88.
10. Joyce Trebilcot, "Taking Responsibility for Sexuality," in Dyke Ideas: Process,
 Notes 187

Politics, Daily Life (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 97-109.
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, pp. 1-21.
11. Williams, Moral Luck, pp. 33-34. John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 407-16.
12. Nagel, ViewJromNowhere, p. 127.
13. P.F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," in Freedom and Resentment and
Other Essays (London: Methuen & Co., 1974), pp. 1-25. Thanks toJonathan Bennett
for calling to my attention the relevance of this essay.
14. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
15. Thomas HiII,Jr., "The Importance of Autonomy," in Women and Moral Theory,
ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (Totowa, NJ.: Rowman and Littlefield,
1987), pp. 129-37.
16. HilI, "Importance of Autonomy," pp. 132-33.
17. Lynn McFall, "Integrity," Ethics 98, no. 1 (Oct. 1987): 5-19.
18. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles oj the Metaphysic of Morals, trans.
Thomas K. Abbott (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), p. 12. Margaret Urban
Coyne (now Walker) , "Moral Luck?" TheJournal of Value Inquiry 19 (1985):319-25.
19. Kant, The Doctrine oj Virtue: Pt. II of The Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary J.
Gregor (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 28.
20. Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans.
Thomas K. Abbott, 6th ed. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), app. I,
pp.361-66.
[Link]-Paul Sartre, "The Wall," in Intimacy, trans. Lloyd Alexander (New York:
Berkeley Medallion, 1960), pp. 59-80.
22. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911).
23. See, for example, essays by Norvin Richards, Henning Jensen, Michael J.
Zimmerman, and Judith Andre in Moral Luck, ed. Daniel Statman (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993).
24. HenningJensen, "Morality and Luck," in MoralLuck, ed. Statman, pp.131-40.
25. Coyne (Walker), "Moral Luck?" pp. 322-23.
26. The Nichomachean Ethics ofAristotle, pp. 19-23.
27. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 151-93, and Observations on theFeelingofthe Beautiful and
Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960),
pp.76-116.
28. Nagel, View from Nowhere, p. 123.
29. Coyne (Walker), "Moral Luck?" p. 319.
30. Coyne (Walker), "Moral Luck?" pp. 321-22. She also agrees with Williams
that the ahistorical, noumenal Kantian self has to go but proposes modifications of
the democratic-egalitarian picture to which it gives rise that may survive, maintain-
ing that "even if the burdens morality assigns are not equal" "nonetheless we are all
equallyjudgeable in the same deep way in light of such burdens as have fallen to us"
(p.323).
31. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and MoralEducation (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 6.
 Not e s 188

32. It is jarring to have examples constructed to have us sympathizing with the

bad luck of the lorry driver or concentration camp officer, when their victims were so
much unluckier. The intention, however, is not to excuse; it is to maintain that the
luck of the driver and of the officer is moral rather than excusing.
33. See, for example, the work of Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The
Search for the True Self, trans. Ruth Ward (New York: Basic Books, 1981); For Your Own
Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, trans. Hildegarde Han-
num and Hunter Hannum (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983); and Thou Shalt
Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child, trans. Hildegarde Hannum and Hunter
Hannum (New York: New American Library, 1984).
34. Euripides, "Hecuba," trans. E. P. Coleridge, The Complete Greek Drama,
ed. Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr., 2 vols. (New York: Random House,
1938),1:807-41.
35. "Survivor" is also a problematic term insofar as it suggests that those who did
not survive might have survived had they tried harder.
36. For skepticism regarding the validity of recovered memories, see Elizabeth
Loftus, The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). For defense of many such memories, see
Lenore Terr, Unchained Memories: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found
(New York: Basic Books, 1994).
37. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed., rev. (Washington,
D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1987), p. 271.
38. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ofMentalDisorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.:
American Psychiatric Association, 1994), p. 485.
39. An example of a male diagnosed with multiple personality disorder is the
campus rapist, Billy Milligan, allegedly raped in childhood repeatedly by his step-
father. See Daniel Keyes, The Minds of Billy Milligan (New York: Random House,
1981). Multobiographies of women with histories of childhood sexual abuse are
documented by Flora Rheta Schreiber in Sybil (New York: Warner, 1974), by the
Troops for Truddi Chase in When Rabbit Howls (New York: Dutton, 1987), and by
Kathy Evert in 'When You're Ready::A Woman's Healing, from Childhood Physical and
Sexual Abuse by Her Mother (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Launch Press, 1987).
40. Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
41. Stephen E. Braude, First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of
Mind (London: Routledge, 1991).
42. Schreiber, Sybil. The therapist was Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur.
43. The Troops for Truddi Chase, When Rabbit Howls. The therapist and apparent
scribe was Robert A. Philips, Jr., to whom the book is also dedicated.

Chapter Three

1. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women s Development

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). Also important are Carol Gilligan,
Janie Victoria Ward, andJill McLean Taylor, with Betty Bardige, Mapping the Moral
 Not e s 189

Domain: A Contribution of Women 's Thinking to Psychological Thelll'y and Education (Cam-
bridge: Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1988); Carol Gilligan, Nona P.
Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer, eds., Making Connections: The Relational WllI'lds of Adoles-
cent Girls at Emma Willard School; and Gilligan's essays "Moral Orientation and Moral
Development," in Women and Moral Thelll'Y, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers
(Totowa, NJ.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), and "Hearing the Difference: The-
orizing Connection," Hypatia 10, no. 2 (summer 1995): 120-27.
2. Gilligan, In a DijJerent Voice, p. 2.
3. Gilligan, "Moral Orientation and Moral Development," p. 25.
4. For another tradition in moral theory, see Annette Baier, "Hume, the Women's
Moral Theorist?" in MllI'al Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1994), pp. 51-75; and see Joan Tronto on the eighteenth-century Scottish
Enlightenment tradition in MllI'al Boundaries: A Political Argument fill' an Ethic of Care
(New York: Routledge,1993), pp. 25-59.
5. Sandra Harding, "The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and Mrican Morali-
ties: Challenges for Feminist Theory," in Women and Moral Thelll'Y, ed. Kittay and
Meyers, pp. 296-315.
6. Tronto, MllI'al Boundaries, p. 82.
7. Gilligan,In a DijJerent Voice, p. 100.
8. Gilligan, "Moral Orientation and Moral Development," pp. 22-23.
9. For an extended critique of the "gestalt view," see Owen Flanagan and Kathryn
Jackson, ':Justice, Care, and Gender: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Debate Revisited,"
Ethics 97, no. 3 (Apr. 1987): 622-37.
10. Marilyn Friedman, "Beyond Caring: The De-moralization of Gender" in Sci-
ence, MllI'ality, and Feminist Theory, ed. Marsha Hanen and Kai Nielson (Calgary:
University of Calgary Press, 1987).
11. Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: MllI'al Stages and the
Idea ofJustice (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981); John Rawls, A Thelll'Y ofJustice
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
12. Baier, MllI'al Prejudices; Virginia Held, Feminist Morality: TransfllTming Culture,
Society, and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Sarah Lucia Hoag-
land, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value (Palo Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies,
1988); Tron to, Moral Boundaries.
13. See Adrienne Rich, "Women and Honor: Notes on Lying," in On Lies, Secrets,
and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (New York: Norton, 1979), pp. 185-94.
14. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation
Between Men and Women as a Factlll' in Social Evolution, ed. Carl N. Degler (1898;
reprint, New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks, 1966).
15. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. Sir David Ross (London: Oxford,
1925), p. 193.
16. NicomacheanEthics ofAristotle, p. 207.
17. Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, p. vi.
18. Sigmund Freud, "Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Dis-
tinction between the Sexes," in The Collected Papers, ed. James Strachey, 5 vols. (lon-
don: Hogarth, 1950),5:186-97.
19. Gilligan, In a DijJerent Voice, p. 18.
Not e s 190

20. Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans. [Link]. Payne (1841; re-
print, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 151. The Royal Danish Society did not
award this essay a prize even though it was the only entry in the contest.
21. Immanuel Kant, Observations on theFeelingofthe Beautiful and Sublime (hereafter,
OBS), trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960),
p.81.
22. Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Women," in Parerga andParalipomena, trans. [Link].
Payne, 2vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 1:619.
23. Kant, OBS, p. 81.
24. Kant, OBS, p. 61.
25. On dispositions to animality and to personality, see Immanuel Kant, Religion
Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson (New York:
Harper, 1960), p. 21. They also sound like what he called "pathological love" by
contrast with "practical love"; see The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic
of Morals, trans. H.]. Paton (London: Hutchinson, 1948), p. 67. For more on Kant's
theory of moral character and his views on women's characters, see Jean Rumsey,
"The Development of Character in Kantian Theory," Journal of the History of Philoso-
phy 27, no. 2 (Apr. 1989): 247-65, and "Agency, Human Nature, and Character in
Kantian Theory, " Journal of Value Inquiry 24 (1990): 109-21.
26. Kant, Groundwork, p. 102.
27. Immanuel Kant, Critique ofJudgment, trans.]. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner,
1951), pp. 37-45.
28. Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary].
Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijho/f, 1974), pp. 166-73.
29. Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, pp. 120-67.
30. Barbara Herman argues in "On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty,"
The Philosophical Review 90, no. 3 (July 1981): 359-82, that Kant can acknowledge the
virtue of agents who act from sympathy, provided they have the general scruple of
subjecting their maxims to the test of duty. Marcia Baron argues in "The Al-
leged Moral Repugnance of Acting from Duty," The Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 4
(Apr. 1984): 197-220, that a Kantian understanding of the motive of duty can
be stretched to include the motive of sympathy if one has cultivated the sympathy
from the motive of duty. Neither of these views attributes moral value to sympathy
itself.
31. Gilligan, In a DifJerent Voice, p. 44.
32. Kant, OBS, p. 74.
33. Kant, Groundwork, p. 88.
34. Held, Feminist Morality, p. 71.
35. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.]. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967).
36. Alice S. Rossi, ed., Essays on Sex Equality: John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
37. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1982).
38. Gilligan, In a DifJerent Voice, pp. 43-45.
 Notes 191

39. Gilligan, Ward, Taylor, with Bardige, Mapping the MoralDomain, p. 9.

40. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs
5, no. 4 (summer 1980): 631-60.
41. Gilligan, In a Different Voice, pp. 39-45; cf. Gilligan, Ward, Taylor, with Bardige,
Mapping the Moral Domain, pp. 245-62.
42. For a groundbreaking study, see Menachem Amir, Patterns in Forcible Rape
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), which is discussed in Chapter 5.
43. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, pp. 60-74.
44. Notable contributions include Elizabeth Telfer, "Friendship," Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 71 (1970-71): 221-41; Michael Stocker, "The Schizophrenia of
Modern Ethical Theories," Journal of Philosophy 73, no. 14 (Aug. 12, 1976): 453-66;
Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1980); Janice G. Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female
Affection (Boston: Beacon, 1986); and Marilyn Friedman, What Are Friends For? Femi-
nist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1993).
45. Baier, Moral Prejudices, pp. 95-129.
46. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice; see p. 3 on justice as the first virtue; on the original
position and the veil of ignorance, see pp. 118-92.
47. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, p. 7.
48. Susan Moller Okin, "Political Liberalism, Justice , and Gender," Ethics 105, no. 1
(Oct. 1994): 23-43 and Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989),
pp.89-109.
49. Rawls has not, to my knowledge, admitted to any such ambivalence. In Political
Liberalism he says, "I believe ... that the alleged difficulties in discussing problems of
gender and the family can be overcome" and "I do assume that in some form the
family isjust" (p. xxix).
50. Both of these points have been noted by Okin in relation to the family. Okin,
Justice, Gender, and the Family, pp. 89-109.
51. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, p. 7.
52. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, p. 544. Rawls tended to use "self-respect" and "self-
esteem" interchangeably in A Theory ofJustice. Differences between these concepts
have been pointed out by Laurence Thomas and others (see Thomas, "Self-Respect:
Theory and Practice," in Philosophy Born of Struggle: [Link]-American Philosophy from
1917, ed. Leonard Harris [Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1983], pp. 174-89).
Here I follow Rawls in ignoring those differences, on the assumption that in children
some very basic sorts of self-esteem are probably important to the development of
self-respect.
53. Robin Dillon gives a detailed account of the undermining of self-respect in
"Self-Respect: Emotional, Moral, Political," presented to the Oberlin Colloquium in
Philosophy, Apr. 23, 1995.
54. Kant, Groundwork, chap. 2; The Doctrine of Virtue: Pt. II of The Metaphysic of
Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 7-28.
55. Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (New York: Simon & Schus-
ter, 1991).
Not e s 192

Chapter Four

1. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984), and Women and Evil (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989). Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value (Palo
Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988), and "Some Thoughts About Car-
ing," in Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1991), pp. 246-63.
2. In Claudia Card, Lesbian Choices (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
3. john Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1971), Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), and "The
Law of Peoples," in On Human Rights: The Amnesty Lectures, 1993, ed. Stephen Shute
and Susan Hurley (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 41-82.
4. Not all who support care ethics reject the importance ofjustice. For example,
Virginia Held and joan Tronto both insist on the importance ofjustice and question
its detachability from care. See Held, Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society,
and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and Tronto, Moral Bound-
aries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993). In her
response to commentators on Caring, Noddings also says "my critics may be right
that a concept ofjustice is needed" but adds that "a great deal of work must be done
on exactly what it contributes" (Hypatia 5, no. 1 [spring 1990]: 122.
5. Laurence Mordekhai Thomas, Vessels ofEvil: American Slavery and the Holocaust
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
6. For this reason julia Penelope objects to the term "sexual abuse" when it is
applied to the domestic rape of children (as though there were a proper sexual use
of children). See Penelope, Call Me Lesbian: Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory (Freedom,
Calif.: Crossing Press, 1992).
7. Virginia Held's feminist morality is also pluralistic, although hers is a pluralism
of contexts, according to which some contexts call for one kind of ethical focus and
others call for another. She leaves unanswered, however, the question how we are to
determine which context calls for which kind of focus. See her Feminist Morality,
p. 218; Rights and Goods (New York: Free Press, 1983), pp. 21-39; "Feminism and
Moral Theory," in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers
(Totowa, NJ.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), pp. 111-28.
8. Held, Feminist Morality, pp. 70-75.
9. Noddings, Caring, pp. 6, 102.
10. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books,
1989), pp. 89-109.
11. In A Theory ofJustice Rawls also treats parent-child relationships as the place
where the foundations are laid for the development of a sense of justice (pp. 462-
67). This aspect of the theory is not discussed in Political Liberalism.
12. Rawls, A Theory oJjustice, pp. 462-96.
13. Also worth mentioning in this regard are Susan Sherwin, No Longer Patient:
Feminist Ethics and Health Care (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 99-
240; Tronto, Moral Boundaries, pp. 101-80; and Annette Baier's work on the concept
 Not e s 193

of trust in Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1994), pp. 95-202.
14. Noddings, Caring, p. 9.
15. Noddings, Caring, pp. 9-26.
16. Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics, p. 127.
17. Similarly, Tronto defines care as having the three elements of engagement,
reaching out, and leading to "some type of action" (Moral Boundaries, pp. 102-3). In
contrast to Noddings, Tronto's care ethic emphasizes the action aspect of caring.
18. Noddings, Women and Evil, p. 184.
19. Tronto distinguishes "taking care of," as a kind of administrative taking of
responsibility, from "care giving" (Moral Boundaries, pp. 106-7). I tend to use "care
taking" and "care giving" to refer to activities all of which she might regard as "care
giving."
20. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Con-
temporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992).
21. Noddings, Women and Evil, p. 172.
22. Noddings, Women and Evil, p. 121.
23. Noddings, Women and Evil, p. 91.
24. Noddings agreed with this point during discussion at a symposium on her
book Caring at the American Philosophical Association Central Division conference
in Cincinnati, Apr. 28, 1988. The symposium was published in Hypatia 5, no. 1
(spring 1990): 101-26.
25. Noddings, Caring, pp. 46-48.
26. Noddings, Caring, p. 47.
27. Noddings, Caring, p. 47.
28. Noddings's understanding of encounter appears to be face-to-face, not the
sort exemplified by addressing a crowd; her teaching examples do not readily sug-
gest university lecturing.
29. Noddings, Caring, p. 54.
30. See Marcus G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961), p. 15.
See, also, Singer, "The Golden Rule," Philosophy 38, no. 146 (Oct. 1963): 293-314, or
"Golden Rule," in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols. (New York:
Collier Macmillan, 1967), 3:365-67.
31. Noddings says a pregnant woman can "confer sacredness" on an embryo if
she loves the biological father to whom it is connected (Caring, pp. 87-89).
32. Noddings, Caring, p. 28.
33. Noddings, Caring, p. 175.
34. See Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of
Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
35. Noddings, Caring, p. 2.
36. lowe this point to Victoria Davion's critique of Sara Ruddick's "Maternal
Thinking" and "Preservative Love and Military Destruction" (both in Mothering:
Essays in Feminist Theory, ed. Joyce Trebilcot [Totowa, NJ.: Rowman and Allanheld,
1984], pp. 213-62) in "Pacifism and Care," Hypatia 5, no. 1 (spring 1990): 90-100.
Not e s 194

37. Nina Simone, "Mississippi goddam" (1964), Philips 812378-1 (1983), side I,
band 2.
38. Michele Moody-Adams also develops this idea in "Gender and the Complexity
of Moral Voices," in Feminist Ethics, ed. Card, pp. 213-32.
39. "Domestic Abusers Keep Cops on Run," The Capital Times, June 26, 1995,
[Link].
40. Lenore E. Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper & Row, 1979),
pp.55-70.
41. Noddings, Caring, pp. 113-20. See Faith McNulty, The Burning Bed (New York:
Bantam, 1981), on Francine Hughes of Michigan, acquitted of murder although,
after years of abuse and unsuccessful attempts to use the law, she doused her former
husband with gasoline and incinerated him as he slept.
42. Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers, 1956-1972 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 179.
43. See Noddings, Caring, pp. 109-10, for the case of siding, despite her racism,
with Aunt Phoebe (for years of personal kindness) against those fighting for racial
justice and p. 55 for the case of whether to inform on one's mobster neighbor,
although we are not told who wants to know what, nor how one learned of the
mobster involvements, which makes the case unclear.
44. See Marilyn Frye, "In and Out of Harm's Way: Arrogance and Love," in The
Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1983),
pp. 52-83, for discussion oflearning through abuse to anticipate others' needs.
45. Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (Hamden, Conn.:
Archon Books, 1970), p. 5.
46. Rawls, A Theory ofjustice, pp. 62, 92.
47. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 106; on the moral powers, p. 81.
48. Rawls, A Theory ofjustice, p. 92.
49. Iris Marion Young, justice and the Politics ofDifference (Princeton, N J.: Princeton
University Press, 1990), pp. 39-65.
50. Noddings, personal correspondance, Sept. 19, 1994.
51. Here I follow Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a
Person," in The Importance of l-WIat We Care About: Philosophical Essays (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 11-25, in distinguishing between higher-
and lower-order psychological states.
52. Perhaps Noddings means to acknowledge the positive value of guilt in her
remarks on guilt in relationships (Caring, pp. 37-40).
53. Young,justice and the Politics ofDifference, pp. 15-38.
54. The quotation is from Rawls, A Theory ofjustice, p. 3.
55. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 5.
56. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 181-82.

Chapter Five

1. Bat-Ami Bar On, "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problematic," in Feminist Ethics,

ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), pp. 107-25.
 Not e s 195

2. For a historical survey of martial rape, see Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will:
Men, Women, and Rnpe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975), pp. 31-113, and for a
more recent study, see Mass Rnpe: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzogovina,
ed. Alexandra Stiglmayer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
3. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rnpe: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on
Campus (New York: New York University Press, 1990).
[Link] Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
5. See Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York:
Grove, 1963).
6. See Rose Giallombardo, Society of Women: A Study of a Women's Prison (New York:
Wiley, 1966), chap. 9.
7. Harriet Baber, "How Bad Is Rape?" Hypatia 2, no. 2 (summerl987): 125-38.
8. Rcpresentative of current literature that so understands terrorism are Walter
Laqueur, The Age of Terrllrism, rev. and expanded (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987);
Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., Terrorism: How the West Can Win (New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1986); and Gayle Rivers, The War Against the Terrorists: How to Win It (New
York: Stein & Day, 1986).
9. For silence-breaking philosophical inquiries into what is wrong with rape, see
thc four essays in the" Rape" section of Feminism and Philosophy, ed. Mary Vetterling-
Braggin, Frederick A. Elliston, and Jane English (Totowa, NJ.: Littlefield, Adams,
1977), by Susan Griffin, Pamela Foa, Carolyn Shafer and Marilyn Frye, and Susan
Rae Peterson, pp. 313-71. Sce, also, the bibliography at the end of that scction,
pp.372-76.
10. Susan Griffin, "Rape: The All-Amcrican Crime" in Feminism and Philosophy,
ed. Vctterling-Braggin, Elliston, and English, pp. 313-32. It also appears as the first
chapter of Susan Griffin, Rnpe: The Power of Consciousness (New York: Harper & Row,
1979).
11. Barbara Mehrhof and Pamela Kearon, "Rape: An Act of Terror" in Rndical
Feminism, ed. Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anite Rapone (New York: Quadrangle,
1973), pp. 228-33.
12. For Rawls's definition of "practicc" or "institution" sec his A Theory ofJustice
(Cam bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 55.
13. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Random House, 1970).
14. Philosophical essays of the late 1950s and early 1960s discuss this ambiguity of
"punishment." See H. B. Acton, ed., The Philosophy of Punishment (London: Mac-
millan, 1969).
15. For development of this point regarding punishmcnt, see H.L.A. Hart, "Pro-
legomenon to the Principles of Punishing," Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the
Philosophy of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). Hart distinguishes
between "general justifYing aims" of punishment and justifications offered by rules
for particular moves within the practicc.
16. See]. D. Mabbott, "Punishment," Mind, n.s. 48, no. 190 (Apr. 1939), pp. 152-
67, reprinted in Philosophy ofPunishment, ed. Acton.
17. See Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, pp. 241, 314, 575, for sketches ofsu~h an under-
standing.
18. Mehrhofand Kearon, "Rape: An Act of Terror," p. 232.
Not e s 196

[Link] Glover, "State Terrorism," in Violence, Terrorism, andjustice, ed. R. G.

Frey and Christopher W. Morris (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
p. 256. Emma Goldman develops the same position in "The Psychology of Political
Violence" and "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For," both in Anarchism and Other
Essays (New York: Dover, 1969), pp. 79-108 and 47-67.
20. Annette Baier, "Violent Demonstrations" in Violence, Terrorism, and justice,
ed. Frey and Morris, p. 33.
21. See, for example, Marilyn Frye's discussion of pimps' seasoning of new pros-
titutes, "In and Out of Harm's Way: Arrogance and Love," in The Politics of Reality:
Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, N.¥.: Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 61-66, and
accounts in Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice
Hall, 1979), including the terrorizing of Patty Hearst, pp. 118-36.
22. On the two targets, see Onora O'Neill, "Which Are the Offers You Can't
Refuse?" in Violence, Terrorism, andjustice, ed. Frey and Morris, pp. 170-95.
23. On rape and lynching, see Ida B. Wells-Barnett, On Lynchings (New York: Arno
Press, 1969), which reprints pamphlets from her antilynching campaigns of the
1890s and the turn of the century.
24. Griffin, "Rape: The All-American Crime," p. 320.
25. Susan Rae Peterson, "Coercion and Rape: The State as a Male Protection
Racket," in Feminism and Philosophy, ed. Vetterling-Braggin, Elliston, and English,
pp.360-71.
26. The idea is not, of course, that rape meets Rawlsian principles of justice but
only that it fits Rawls's understanding of the concept of a practice, as indicated
above.
27. Hegel's Philosophy ofRight, trans. T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press,
1942), pp. 69-74, pars. 99-104, and "Additions," pp. 246-47.
28. See Frye, Politics ofReality, pp. 95-109, on access as a face of power.
29. Menachem Amir, Patterns in Forcible Rape (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1971).
30. Amir, Patterns, p. 143.
31. Amir, Patterns, p. 314.
32. Amir seems to move in that direction in the theoretical discussion at the end
of Patterns.
33. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949).
34. See Susan Estrich, Real Rape (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1987), on "simple rape" as nearly impossible to establish in court as real rape. "Sim-
ple rape" contrasts in law with "aggravated rape," which is rape aggravated by such
conditions as the assailant's being a stranger to the victim or using a weapon.
35. Lily Tomlin says she actually saw a man walk up to four women in a bar and ask,
"What are you doing here sitting all alone?" See Lily Tomlin: On Stage (New York:
Arista Records, 1977), Act I (side I, end of band 4).
36. This rule is discussed by Shafer and Frye, "Rape and Respect," in Feminism and
Philosophy, ed. Vetterling-Braggin, Elliston, and English, p. 335.
37. lowe this analogy to Frye, Politics of Reality, pp. 4-5.
38. For practical strategies that have worked, see Pauline Bart and Patricia H.
O'Brien, Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies (New York: Pergamon, 1985),
 Not e s 197

and Denise Caignon and Gail Groves, eds., Her Wits About Her: Self-Defense Success
Stmies by Women (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
39. Feminist self-defense classes often do include consciousness-raising about rape
in a way that does address its institutionalization at the level of women's awareness.
40. I viewed the film more than fifteen years ago but have been unable to find
documentation on it. Critics soon pointed out that all the imprisoned rapists inter-
viewed on the film appeared to be black (one white rapist's face was in shadow),
thereby contributing unintentionally to a racist stereotype. The film seems to have
disappeared from circulation shortly thereafter.
41. Interestingly, the King Arthur film First Knight (1995) portrays Sir Lancelot as
refusing to rape Queen-to-be Guinevere, although it is also clear that he sees this
refusal as his to bestow.
42. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in The Philosophy ofJohn Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political and
Religious, ed. Marshall Cohen (New York: Modern Library, 1961), pp. 196-97. (On
Liberty was originally published in 1859.)
43. J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women, in Essays on Sex Equality: John Stuart Mill and
Harriet Taylur Milt, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
(Subjection of Women was first published in 1869.) See esp. chaps. 1 and 3 (Rossi,
Essays, pp. 125-56, 118-215).
44. Mill, On Liberty, pp. 252-54.
45. Mill, On Liberty, p. 253.
46. Bar On, "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problematic," pp. 111-12; Leo Lowen-
thal, "Terror's Atomization of Man," Commentary 1, no. 3 (jan. 1946): 1-8; Frye, The
Politics ofReality, pp. 52-83; Barry, Female Sexual Slavery, pp. 45-136.
47. Bar On, "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problematic," pp. 116-22. She is, however,
neither unconcerned with justice nor interested in substituting empathy for justice.
Her view is that "both empathy and justice have to be accorded a serious place in
moral thinking" (p. 121).
48. According to Paul Harvey, Oxfurd Companion to Classical Literature (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 320, the instrument's inventor, PeriIlus, became
its first victim.
49. Bar On, "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problematic," pp. 116-22. She also points
out that terrorism has a significant impact on the children of those terrorized, citing
the fact that children of Holocaust survivors have Holocaust nightmares. Presum-
ably, it also has an impact on the children of terrorizers.

Chapter Six

1. The most extended philosophical treatment of the topic is Terrance McCon-

nell, Gratitude (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), which usefully dis-
cusses nearly everything philosophers have had to say about it.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Murals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 62-65.
3. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Furms and Functions ofExchange in Archaic Societies, trans.
Ian Cunnison (New York: Norton, 1967).
Not e s 198

4. Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork 0/ the Metaphysic 0/ Morals,
trans. H.J. Paton (London: Hutchinson, 1948), pp. 90-91.
5. In his general introduction to The Metaphysic 0/ Morals, Kant holds that obliga-
tions cannot conflict with one another although the grounds of obligations can
conflict, which leaves us to determine what the obligation really is. See The Doctrine 0/
Virtue: Pt. 110/ the Metaphysic 0/ Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Harper &
Row, 1964), p. 23.
6. For a discussion of this point about supererogation, see Joel Feinberg, "Super-
erogation and Rules," in Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory 0/ Responsillility
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton, 1970), pp. 3-24.
7. G.E.M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy," Philosophy 33, no. 124 (jan.
1958): 1-19.
8. John Rawls, ':Justice as Fairness," The Philosophical Review 67, no. 2 (Apr. 1958):
164-94.
9. See Kant, Doctrine o/Virtue, pp. 115-46; Henry Sidgwick, The Methods o/Ethics,
7th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), pp. 259-63, 430-39; and W. D.
Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 27.
10. Michael Stocker discusses a similar problem about friendship and contempo-
rary ethical theory in "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories," TheJournal
0/Philosophy 73, no. 14 (Aug. 12, 1976): 453-66.
11. Fred Berger, "Gratitude," Ethics 85, no. 4 (july 1975): 298-309.
12. A. Cohen, Everyman's Talmud (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1932), p. 224.
13. For a summary of passages on various kinds of charity, see Cohen, Everyman's
Talmud, pp. 219-26. Loving acts are distinguished as superior to alms-giving (Sukkah
49b), the former (Gemiluth Hasadim) , including hospitality, visits to the sick, taking
charge of orphans, and providing an outfit and dowry for a poor bride; the latter
(Zedakah, "righteousness"), donations for the poor. Practice of the latter is said to be
"mere righteousness." And regarding the former, "highest of all is benevolence
performed to the dead, since it must be done from pure motives" (p. 226).
14. Kant, Doctrine 0/ Virtue, p. 123. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans.
Louis Infield (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 118-19.
15. Kant, Lectures, pp. 118-19.
16. Kant, Doctrineo/Virtue, p. 124.
17. Kant, Doctrine o/Virtue, pp. 115-31.
18. Kant, Lectures, p. 118. .
19. Kant, Doctrine o/Virtue, p. 123. Cf. Aristotle's discussion of "unequal friend-
ships," in The Nicomachean Ethics 0/ Atlstotle, trans. Sir David Ross (London: Oxford
University Press, 1925), pp. 203-4.
20. Kant, Doctrineo/Virtue, p. 140.
21. Nietzsche, Genealogy, pp. 93-94.
22. Nicomachean Ethics 0/Aristotle, p. 92.
23. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Gifts," Essays, Second Series, in The Complete Writings 0/
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2vols. (New York: Wm. H. Wise, 1929),1:287.
24. Ruth Benedict, Patterns a/Culture (New York: Mentor, 1946), pp. 160-205.
25. Kant, Doctrine a/Virtue, p. 123.
26. Kant, Doctrine o/Virtue, p. 123.
 Notes 199

27. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive; or, The Citizen, ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), p. 47.
28. Hobbes, Leviathan; or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, Eccle-
siasticall and Civil, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), p. 99.
29. H.L.A. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?" Philosophical &view 64, no. 2
(Apr. 1955): 185.
30. Rawls, ':Justice as Fairness," pp. 179-81. In A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press; 1971), Rawls renames the principle underlying the
"duty of fair play" (now called the obligation rather than the duty of fair play) as the
"principle offairness" and holds this principle to be the source of all obligations. He
also distinguishes between obligations as voluntarily incurred and "natural duties,"
defined only by ostension, which apply without regard to our voluntary choices
(Theory, pp. 108-17). In Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1992), he abandons the idea of presenting a comprehensive moral theory and
restricts his ambitions to presenting a conception ofjustice that might represent an
overlapping consensus of many different, more comprehensive philosophies.
31. Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," p. 181, including footnote. Berger agreed on the
ground that compliance with the duty of fair play does not require benevolence
(Berger, "Gratitude," p. 301). In informal practices, this is not so clear.
32. On differences among the concepts of deserts, rights, and claims, see Joel
Feinberg, ':Justice and Personal Deserts," in his Doing and Deserving, pp. 55-94.
33. Kant, Doctrine of Virtue, pp. 7-28.
34. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?" p. 183.
35. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?" p. 181.
36. Carol Gi1\igan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
37. Emerson, "Gifts," 1:286-87.
38. See, for example, "Legal and Moral Obligation" in Essays in Moral Philosophy,
ed. A. I. Melden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), pp. 3-39.
39. Richard Brandt, "The Concepts of Duty and Obligation," Mind 73, no. 291
(July 1964): 373-93.
40. For an example, see Hart on the U.S. President's responsibility to execute the
law of the land, in "Legal and Moral Obligation," p. 99.
41. "Of Friendship," Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral: 1597-1625 in Selected Writ-
ings ofFrancis Bacon, ed. Hugh G. Dick (New York: Modern Library, 1955), p. 75.
[Link] Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (New York:
Warner Books, 1983), p. 6.
43. Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (Hamden, Conn.:
Shoestring Press, 1970), p. 164.
44. For a perceptive discussion of generosity that brings out why, see Lester Hunt,
"Generosity," The American Philosophical Quarterly 12, no. 3 (July 1975): 235-44.
45. A classic discussion is The Nicomachean Ethics ofAristotle, pp. 79-85.
46. On these and other issues regarding trust, see Annette Baier, Moral Prejudices:
Essays on Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 95-202.
47. Emerson, "Gifts," 1:286.
Not e s 200

Chapter Seven

1. For a review ofrecent books on this question, see Richard Horton, "Is Homo-
sexuality Inherited?" New Yorlt Review of Books 42, no. 12 (July 13, 1995): 36-41. Two
double issues of the Journal ofHomosexuality (vol. 28, nos. 1-4 [1995), "Sex, Cells, and
Same-Sex Desire: The Biology of Sexual Preference") are devoted to this topic.
2. For evidence, however, that social oppression of overt same-sex eroticism has
not been universal, see John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York:
Villard, 1994); Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont,
Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990); and Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual
Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).
3. See, for example,Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in
the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas E. Crowell, 1976), pp. 209-79, on lesbians who passed
as men.
4. George Chauncey, Gay New Yorlt: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay
Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 7.
5. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 6.
6. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), and Noddings, Caring.
7. Joyce Trebilcot, Dyke Ideas: Process, Politics, Daily Life (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1994), pp. 98-99.
8. Joan Didion, "Self-Respect," in Slouching Toward Bethlehem (Middlesex, En-
gland: Penguin, 1974), p. 123.
9. This is something like the distinction that John Rawls argues clarifies the
justification of punishment in "Two Concepts of Rules," The Philosophical Review 64,
no. I (Jan. 1955): 3-32.
10. Trebilcot, Dyke Ideas, pp. 104-8.
II. Marcus G. Singer, for example, argues in Generalization in Ethics (New York:
Knopf, 1961) that if the consequences of everyone's failing to do x would be disas-
trous, then it would be wrong for anyone to fail to do x, provided that the referent of
x is not too narrowly or too broadly specified.
12. For philosophical discussions that tend to ignore this ambiguity, see papers by
male contributors in Alan Soble, ed., Philosophy of Sex (Totowa, NJ.: Littlefield,
Adams, 1980), pt. 1.
13. Kate Millett, SexualPolitics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970).
14. John P. De Cecco and Michael G. Shively, "From Sexual Identity to Sex-
ual Relationships: A Contextual Shift," in Origins of Sexuality and Homosexuality,
ed. John P. De Cecco and Michael G. Shively (New York: Harrington Park, 1985),
pp.I-16.
[Link] G. Raymond, The TranssexualEmpire: The Making of the She-Male (Boston:
Beacon, 1979).
16. Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth
Century to the Present (London: Quartet, 1977), p. 3.
17. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Random House, 1978), p. 43.
 Notes 201

18. Foucault. History of Sexuality. p. 43.

19. Thomas Szasz. The Manufacture of Madness (New York: Harper & Row. 1970).
20. Trebilcot. Dyke Ideas, pp. 100-101.
21. See, for example, Noretta Koertge. ed .• Philosophy and Homosexuality (New
York: Harrington Park, 1985). The same was true of turn-of-the-century homosexual
rights activists. See James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Ger-
many (New York: Arno, 1975).
22. On the origins of "gay." see John Boswell. Christianity, Social Tolerance. and
Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the
Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 43 n 6.
23. See. for example. Kath Weston. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays. Kinship (New
York: Columbia University Press. 1991). and Phyllis Burke. Family Values: Two Moms
and Their Son (New York: Random House. 1993).
24. I discuss this issue at greater length in Lesbian Choices (New York: Columbia
University Press. 1995). pp. 11-57.
25. Edwin Schur. Labeling Deviant Behavior: Its Sociological Implications (New York:
Harper & Row. 1971). p. II.
26. Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals. trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage. 1967). pp. 79-80.
27. Nietzsche. "Appendix: Seventy-Five Aphorisms from Five Volumes." in Geneal-
ogy. p. 180.
28. Nietzsche. Genealogy. p. 80.
29. See Alan Goldman. "Plain Sex." in Philosophy of Sex. ed. Soble. pp. 119-38.
30. For development of this idea using other arguments. see Marilyn Frye. "Les-
bian 'Sex· ... in Willful Vi7gin: Essays in Feminism, 1976-1992 (Freedom, Calif.: Cross-
ing Press. 1992). pp. 109-19.
31. For more on the nature and consequences of c1idoridectomy. see Mary Daly,
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of &dical Feminism (Boston: Beacon. 1978). pp. 153-77.
and Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar. Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and
the Sexual Blinding of Women (New York: Harcourt. Brace. 1993).
32. On the physiology of the clitoris. see William H. Masters and Virginia E.
Johnson. Human Sexual Response (Boston: Little. Brown. 1966). pp. 45-67.
33. Sigmund Freud. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. trans. James Strachey
(New York: Avon. 1965). pp. 66-106.
34. This was the view of Arthur Schopenhauer. Freud's philosophical predecessor
on sexuality. in "The Metaphysics of Sexual Love" and its Appendix on pederasty in
The World as Will and &presentation. trans. [Link]. Payne. 2 vols. (New York: Dover.
1966).2:538-67. Cf. 1:326-31.
35. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. Sir David Ross (Oxford: Clarendon
Press; 1925). pp. 72-74.
36. Thomas Nagel. "Sexual Perversion." in Philosophy of Sex. ed. Soble. pp. 76-88.
37. For Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. see Plato: The Collected Dialogues. ed. Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Pantheon. 1961). pp. 527-74. 476-
525.
38. Nagel suggests that perverted sex might be better as sex than unperverted sex
("Sexual Perversion." p. 88). meaning. perhaps. that it may be more fun.
Not e s 202
Chapter Eight

1. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing
American Institutions, 2d ed. (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1980).
2. M. F. Ashley Montagu, "On the Phrase 'Ethnic Group' in Anthropology,"
Psychiatry 8, no. 1 (Feb. 1945); 27-33, reprinted as" 'Ethnic Group' and 'Race,''' in
Ashley Montagu, Race, Science, and Humanity (New York; Van Nostrand, 1963),
pp. 61-71. See, also, Ashley Montagu, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race
(Cleveland; Meridian, 1964).
3. On responses to scientific racism by Mrican Americans (including W.E.B.
Du Bois, whose views I take up in this chapter) and Jews, see Nancy Leys Stepan and
Sander L. Gilman, "Appropriating the Idioms of Science; The Rejection of Scientific
Racism," in The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance, ed. Dominick
LaCapra (Ithaca, N.Y.; Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 72-103.
4. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
(New York; Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 35.
5. On the ethnicity, class, and nation paradigms of race, see Michael Omi and
Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (New
York; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 9-54, and David Theo Goldberg, Racist
Culture: Philosophy and the Politics ofMeaning (Oxford; Blackwell, 1993), pp. 61-89.
6. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Conservation of Races," W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: SPeeches
and Addresses, 1890-1919, ed. Philip S. Foner, 2 vols. (New York; Pathfinder, 1970),
1;75-76. Lucius Outlaw first called my attention to this essay at a conference on
racism and sexism at Georgia State University in 1991.
7. Appiah, In My Father's House, pp. 28-46.
8. Goldberg, Racist Culture, pp. 70-74. Tommy Lott also argues that Du Bois's
intention was to offer a revisionist sociohistorical conception of race to resolve the
dilemma of Mrican American double consciousness. See Lott, "Du Bois on the
Invention of Race," The Philosophical Forum 24, nos. 1-3 (fall-spring 1992-93); 166.
9. In 1897 Du Bois thought "the final word of science" was that "we have at least
two, perhaps three, great families of human beings - the whites and Negroes, possi-
bly the yellow race"; in the sense of "race" that he thought was supported by histor-
ical usage, he said, however, "we find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly
differentiated races," namely, "the Slavs of Eastern Europe, the Teutons of middle
Europe, the English of Great Britain and America, the Romance nations of South-
ern and Western Europe, the Negroes of Mrica and America, the Semitic people of
Western Asia and Northern Mrica, the Hindoos of Central Asia and the Mongolians
of Eastern Asia" (Du Bois, "Conservation of Races," pp. 76-77).
10. Appiah, In My Father's House, p. 32.
11. Du Bois, "Conservation of Races," pp. 73-85.
12. Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg,
N.Y.; Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 110-27, and Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, 1976-
1992 (Freedom, Calif.; Crossing Press, 1992), pp. 147-69.
13. The earliest of these essays by Maria Lugones, "Pedagogy and Racism," was
presented in Minneapolis at a conference of the Midwest Society of Women in
Philosophy in 1984 and printed in the Carleton College campus periodical Breaking
 Not e s 203

Ground 6 (spring 1984): 38-43. It was later revised and expanded as "Hablando cara
a cara/Speaking Face to Face: An Exploration of Ethnocentric Racism," in Making
Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, ed. Gloria Anzaldua (San Francisco: Aunt Lute,
1990), pp. 46-54. See, also, Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World '-Travelling, and
Loving Perception," Hypatia 2, no. 2 (summer 1987): 3-10, and 'Hispaneando y
lesbiando: On Sarah Hoagland's Lesbian Ethics, " Hypatia 5, no. 3 (fall 1990): 138-46.
This material is developed further in her forthcoming book, Peregrinajes/Pilgrim-
mages (Albany: State University of New York Press).
[Link] Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Columbia University Press,
1984), p. xlv.
15. Maria Lugones, "On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism," in Feminist Ethics,
ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), pp. 39-40. Lorraine
Bethel, "What Chou Mean We, White Girl? or, The Cullud Lesbian Feminist Declara-
tion ofIndependence (Dedicated to the Proposition that All Women Are Not Equal,
I.E., Identical/ly Oppressed)" The Black Women's Issue: Conditions: Five 2, no. 2
(autumn 1979): 86-92.
16. Lugones, "On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism," pp. 40-41.
17. Lugones, "On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism," pp. 41-42.
18. Lugones, "On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism," p. 42.
19. For examples of the latter, see Amoja Three Rivers, Cultural Etiquette: A Guide
for the Well-Intentioned (1990); distributed by Market Wimmin, Box 28, Indian Valley,
VA 24105.
20. Marcus G. Singer, "Some Thoughts on Race and Racism," Philosophia (Philo-
sophical Quarterly of Israel) 8, nos. 2-3 (Nov. 1978): 153-83, first called my atten-
tion to this history.
21. Appiah, In My Father's House, pp. 13-14. Outlaw agrees that "race thinking"
need not be socially divisive and finds it an error to think "that 'race thinking' must
be completely eliminated on the way to an emancipated society," "Toward a Critical
Theory of Race," in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1990), p. 78.
22. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition,
1969, s.v., "race."
23. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 7.
24. A merican Heritage Dictionary, s. v., "deracinate."
25. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation
Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, ed. Carl N. Degler (1898;
reprint, New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks, 1966). Sometimes she uses "race" to
refer to the human species and at other times for more specific human groups. Her
views about people of color were often insensitive. See "A Suggestion on the Negro
Problem" in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Nonfiction Reader, ed. Larry Ceplair (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 176-83, and her novel Herland in Her-
land and Selected Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Barbara H. Solomon (New
York: Signet, 1992), pp. 1-146.
26. Goldberg presents "ethnorace" as one of the masks of race, Racist Culture,
pp.74-78.
 Not e s 204

27. See, also, Goldberg, Racist Culture, pp. 78-80, on "race as nation."
28. Pierre L. van den Berghe, Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective, 2d ed.
(New York: Wiley, 1967, 1978), pp. 9-10.
29. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
30. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., "slave." Milton Meltzer,
Slavery: A World History, updated edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), p. 3.
31. On the racial state, see Omi and Winant, RacialFormation, pp. 57-69.
32. As Goldberg argues in Racist Culture, it is misleading to regard racism as simply
arbitrary discrimination insofar as that suggests irrationality, because racisms have
had definite rationales in the purposes for which they have been instituted and
maintained.
33. Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception," p. 3.
34. For a critique of the concept of race from the perspectives of mixed race, see
Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). See,
also, Naomi Zack, ed., American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995).
35. Appiah, In My Father's House, p. 32.
36. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (Boston: Houghton Millin, 1960). Mark
Twain, The Prince and the Pauper (Toronto:]. Ross Robertson, 1882).
37. For detailed examination of how whiteness has been constructed in the
United States, see Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Con-
struction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
38. Kovel, White Racism, p. xi.
39. Wilson, Declining Significance ofRace.
40. Kovel, White Racism, p. xv.
41. For another example of invidious color identification, see Cornel West's ac-
count of how long it took him to hail a taxi on the corner of 60th Street and Park
Avenue in Manhattan in the 1990s, in Race Matters (Bosto!!: Beacon, 1993), p. x.
42.1 here follow Malcolm X and Marilyn Frye in using "separatism" to refer to the
voluntary separation from an oppressor by the oppressed in the interests of the
oppressed and "segregation" to refer to separations from the oppressed imposed by
an oppressor, in the interests of the oppressor. See Malcolm X, with the assistance of
Alex Haley, The Autobiography ofMalcolm X (New York: Grove, 1964), p. 246, and Frye,
Politics ofReality, p. 96.
43. Pat Parker, Movement in Black (Oakland, Calif.: Diana Press, 1978), p. 68.
44. Bernard R. Boxill, Blacks and Social justice (Totowa, NJ.: Rowman and Al-
Ian held, 1984), pp. 9-18, 73-172.
45. Frye, Politics ofReality, pp. 110-27.
46. Regarding cultural death and cultural appropriation, see Laurence Mor-
dekhai Thomas, lkssel! ofEvil: American Slavery and the Holocaust (Philadelphia: Tem-
ple University Press, 1993), on the "natal alienation" of descendants of enslaved
Mricans in the Americas.
47. Three Rivers, CulluralEtiquette, p. 8.
48. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. 7.
49. Thomas, lkssel! ofEvil, pp. 150-52.
50. Frye, Politics ofReality, pp. 35-37.
 Not e s 205

51. Maria Steiglitz, "New Mexico's SecretJews," Lilith 16, no. 1 (winter 1991): 8-
12. On contemporary descendants of conversos (a.k.a. marranos, which means "pigs"
in Spanish and is derogatory) in New Mexico, see also La Escondida, 'Journal
Toward Wholeness: Reflections of a Lesbian Rabbi," in Twice Blessed: On Being Les-
bian, Gay, and jewish, ed. Christie Balka and Andy Rose (Boston: Beacon, 1989),
pp.218-27.
52. See Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai, The Myth of the jewish Race, rev. ed.
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), for analysis, discussion, and refutation
of views that there is aJewish race (or that there are Jewish races) in the scientific
(genetic) sense. For contemporary views on Jewish identity, see David Theo Gold-
berg and Michael Krausz, eds.,jewish Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1993).
53. Nikki Giovanni, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First
Twenty-Five Years ofBeing a Black Poet (New York: Penguin, 1971), p. 97.
54. A special Dick Clark selection of these pieces from 1954 to 1961 has been
issued on Compact Disks as "The Rock 'N' RolI Era" (Time-Life Music, Warner
Special Products, 1987, 1988, and 1992), OPCD 2533, 2535, 2536, 2538, 2541, 2543,
and 2544.
55. See Alice Walker's discussion of Joel Chandler Harris and the Uncle Remus
stories in Living by the Word (New York: Harcourt, Brace,Jovanovich, 1988), pp. 25-
32.
 I n d e x

Abortion. 82. 193n31 Burning bed cases, 86-88, 194n41

Abuse. childhood. 40. 41. 192n6; and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 115
the care ethic. 85-90; and multiple
personality. 42-45. 46-47; and re- Care. 70. 72; and abusive relationships,
sponsibility. 24-25. 47 85-90; chains of. 79-80; and conflict.
Abuse. domestic. 7. 86. 94. 97. 99 50-51; the encounter sense of, 76-
American Bandstand, 181 77,79,80-81,85, 193n28; and evil.
Amir. Menachem. 106-7 72-73, 78; and gender, 49-50, 61;
Anarchism. 15 and justice. 8, 49-50, 72-73, 77-78,
Anscombe. Elizabeth. 121 79-80. 192n4; meanings of. 7. 76.
Anthropology (Kant). 58 193n17. 193n19; and one-caring, 76,
Antipornography. 8 82-83, 88-89; and relationships. 26-
Antiracism. 15. 175 27,30,75-76; and relationships with
Anti-Semitism. 5-6 strangers. 8, 78. 79; and respon-
Apology (Plato). 13. 185n36 sibility, 26-27. 28. 30, 50, 85
Appiah. Kwame Anthony. 165. 166. 169. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and
174.178.180 Moral Education (Noddings), 76
Aristotle. 3. [Link],158; and debt [Link], 70-71
and gratitude, 119, 124, 126, 128; on Chase, Truddi, 45-46, 47
justice and friendship, 55-56 Chauncy. George, 141
Autonomy, 26-27, 30-31, 32. 34; and Christianity. 4, 5. 6, 72; criticized by
responsibility, 24. 42. 47-48 Nietzsche. 60. 77
Cive, De(Hobbes). 128
Bacon, Francis, 135 Clark, Dick. 181
Bait'r, Annette, 52. 66-67, 68,103 Clitoris. 158
Bar On. Bat-Ami, 97,116-17, 197n47, "Coercion and Rape: The State as a
197n49 Male Protection Racket" (Peterson),
Barry, Kathleen, 116 106
Battery. See Abuse, domestic Corning out, 141-42, 149-50, 162; and
Benedict, Ruth. 126 moral luck, 150, 168. 200nll
Benhabib, Seyla, 77 Concentration camps, 7
Benkert, Karoly Maria, 153 "Conservation of Races. The" (Du
Berge~Fred. 123, 127, 137-38 Bois). 164-66, 179
Bethel, Lorraine, 167
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), De Cecco,john P., 153, 155, 174
185n41 Descartes. Rene. 19
Black Like Me (Griffin). 174 Dewey,john, 24
Boxill, Bernard, 177 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men-
Brandt. Richard. 133 taLDisorders (DSM). 43. 45
Brass bull (of Ph alaris). 117, 197n48 [Link], 140, 147
Braude, Stephen. 45 Diminished ethical ideal. 86-88
Index 208

Doctrine of Virtue (Kant), 124 Friedman, Marilyn, 51

Domestic violence. See Abuse, domestic Friendship, 9
Doublethink, 108-9 Frye, Marilyn, II, 116; and gender,
DSM. See Diagnostic and Statistical Man- 179-80; oppression studied by, 4-5;
ual of Mental Disorders and race, 164, 166-67, 169, 178; "sep-
Du Bois, W.E.B.: cultural focus of, 169, aratism" utilized by, 204n42
177, 179; race defined by, 164-65,
170, 180,202n8,202n9 Gauguin, Paul, 33, 40; and Kant's im-
Dyke Ideas (Trebilcot), 12 putation principle, 35, 37, 38; and
moral luck, 23, 30, 31, 32
Ecofeminism,16 Gay Iiberationists, 154, 20ln21
Edwards, Paul, 25 Gays. See Homosexuals; Lesbians
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 133, 139 Gender: bodily portrait of, 179-80; and
Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (Edwards), 25 ethics, 54; and moral development,
Erotic, 155, 159-62, 168 49-50,51-52,56,58; and moral luck,
Ethan Frome (Wharton), 36-38 39, 49-50, 140; and particularism,
Ethicaltheor~50,52,66,69 10-11; and relationships, 52, 56, 61-
Ethnic America (Sowell), 17l 62,66-67; and virtue, 8, 54, 56, 57-
Ethnicity, 170-72, 179, 180; author's 58,61 .
Scottish, 174-75, 176; and identity, Generalization in Ethics (Singer), 18,
173-74,175,181; and moral luck, 9, 200n11
39,175,181 Gilligan, Carol, xii, 7, 74,119; care and
Ethnocentrism, 85, 172-73, 175 justice perspectives of, 7, 26-27, 28,
Evil, 20, 86; and care ethics, 72-73, 78; 49-52,54,59,61,65,69-70,73-74,
defined,73,91-94,192n4;andju~ 133,144; defense offemale character
tice ethics, 72-73, 90-96; and oppre~ by, 54, 59, 60, 61-62; on gender and
sion, 78, 91; and separation, 83-84 moral development, 49-50, 51-52,
56; men's problems with relationship
Feinberg,joel,98 viewed by, 61-62
Feminism, 7, 8, 9,12, 162 (seealsoLe~ Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 54, 170,
bianfeminism); hierarchical di- 203n25
chotomies rejected by, 15-16; and Ginzberg, Ruth, 14
oppression, 4, 7; and particularism, Giovanni, Nikki, 18
10-11,14; and rape, 105, 114 Glover,jonathan, 102-3
Feminist Politics and Human Nature Goldberg, David Theo, 165-66,
(Jaggar), 11 203n26,204n32
Fingarette, Herbert, 25 Goldman, Emma, 102, 103
First Knight, 197n41 Gone with the Wind, 115
Footbinding, 4-5 Gratitude, 9, 53; and benevolence, 123,
"For the White Person Who Wants to 138, 198n13; debts of, 8-9, 28,118,
Know How to Be My Friend" 119-20,122-30,138-39; misplaced,
(Parker),175-77 9,118-20,137-38; and obligation,
Foucault, Michel, 154 118,119,144
Freud, Sigmund: and sexuality, 155, Griffin,john Howard, 174
158-59,161; women viewed by, 56, Griffin, Susan, 99,105,107, 184n21
61 Groundwork (Kant), 57-58
 In d e x 209

Hacking, Ian, 43-44 strangers, 79,81,84-85; and social

Harding, Sandra, 50 institutions, 67-68
Harris,Joel Chandler, 181 justice and the Politics ofDifference
Hart, H.L.A., 129, 132, 133-34, 195n15 (Young),5
Hecuba, 40 'Justice as Fairness" (Rawls), 129
Hegel, G.w.F., 106
Held, Virginia, 52, 192n7;justice and Kant, Immanuel, 19,24,57; and ac-
caring viewed by, 96, 192n4; and the cessibility, 3, 4; and debt, 124-25,
relations of parents to children, 59- 126; and duty, 69, 122, 131, 190n30;
60,74,75 on gender and virtue, 54, 56, 57-58,
Heracleitis, 11 61; and gratitude, 122, 126, 127-28;
Herman,Judith Lewis, 7-8, 97 and imputation, 34-39;justice and
Hierarchical dichotomies, 15-16, 17, 18 caring viewed by, 77, 96; and moral
Hill, Thomas, 30-31 obligation, 119, 120, 121, 122, 198n5;
Hoagland, Sarah, 11,52,72,76 theory of moral character of, 58-59
Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 124; and gratitude, Karenina, Anna (Anna Karenina) , 33,
119,128,129-30 46,52,74; and Kant's principles of
Holism, 10, 14-16, 17, 18 imputation, 34, 35, 37, 38; and moral
Homophile movement (1950s), 155 luck, 23, 30, 40
Homosexuals, 6, 153-54, 155. Seealso Kearon, Pamela, 99, 102, 107
Lesbians Kohlberg, Lawrence, 51-52,59,61,65
Hughes, Francine,194n41 Kovel, Joel, 167, 175-76, 177
Hume, David, 77
Hypatia: A journal ofFeminist Philosophy, Leopold, Aldo, 17
7 Lesbianfeminism, xii, 5,9
Lesbians, 5, 6,11; and moral luck, 150-
Imperialism, cultural, 5 51,168; and reproduction, 142-43,
Imputation, 34-39 155-56, 162; responsibility taken by,
In a Different Voice (Gilligan), 49, 65 140-41,142-43,145,148-49,150-
Incest, 94 51,152,162; and sexual behavior,
Indian CatholicJews, 180 157-58; and sexual identity, 142, 148,
Integrity, 27, 31, 33-34, 47 151,152,154-55,162,167; and toler-
ation, 145-46
Jaggar, Alison, 11 Leviathan (Hobbes), 128
James, William, 20 Locke,John, 165
Jensen, Henning, 37 Lott, Tommy, 202n8
Judaism, 5, 6 Lowenthal, Leo, 116
Justice, 64,66, 72, 76, 77; and auton- Luck, 2, 21, 22, 23-24, 31. See also Moral
omy, 26-27, 30; and care, 8, 49-50, luck
72-73,'77-78,79-80, 192n4; and Lugones, Maria, 164,167-68, 172-73,
conflict, 50-51; and evil, 72-73, 90- 175
96; and the family, 67, 75; and formal
and informal relationships, 70; and McFall, Lynne, 32-33
gender, 49-50, 61; and identity, 51, Malcolm X, 204n42
182; and the perspectives of others, Marginalization, 5
75-76; and relationships with Marxism, 7
 Index 210

Mauss, Marcel, 120 Obligation, 118, 198n5; debtor para-

Mehrhoff, Barbara, 99, 102, 107 digm of, 120-22,137,144; and duty,
Meltzer, Milton, 172 131, 199n30; formal and informal,
Men, 61-62,63, 64 119,134-36; and trustee paradigm,
Metaphysic ofMorals (Kant), 34, 198n5 119,130-32,136-37,144
MiII,john Stuart, 8, 57, 60,115-16, Okin, Susan Moller, 67, 68, 75
117 "On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from
Millett, Kate, 100, 151 Benevolent Motives" (Kant), 35-36
Milligan, Billy, 188n39 "On Being White" (Frye), 178
Montagu, Ashley, 163 On the Basis ofMorality (Schopenhauer),
Moral luck, 2-4, 22, 24, 140; and the au- 56
thor's character, x-xii; constitutive, "On Women" (Schopenhauer), 57
2-3,41,178; defined, ix, 2; incident, Oppression, 2, 4-6, 8, 24, 41; as evil, 78,
2-3,37 91; and internal hostilities, 42, 43, 46;
Moral Luck (Williams), 21 and moral damage, 53-54; and re-
Moral remainders, 87, 88, 89 sponsibility, 24-25, 41-42, 46, 47
Mortal Questions (Nagel), 21 Orwell, George, 108. See also Nineteen
Motivational displacement, 89 Eighty-FouT
Multiple personality, 42-47, 188n39 Outlaw, Lucius, 202n6, 203n21

Nagel, Thomas, 3, 21,160, 201n38; and Parker, Pat, 176

moral luck, 2, 22, 23, 24, 38, 40; and Particularism, 10-14, 17-18
responsibility, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 31- Patterson, Orlando, 170
32,39 Payne, [Link]., 58
Nazis, 5-6, 83 "Pedagogy and Racism" (Lugones), 172
Nietzsche, Friedrich, ix, 19,61,155, Penelope, julia, 192n4
185n41; Christian care ethics crit- Peterson, Susan Rae, 106
icized by, 60, 77; and debt and grati- Phaedrus (Plato), 161
tude, 120, 123, 125-26; and Philosophy, 1-2, 13-14, 20
responsibility, 24, 186n7; ritual de- Piaget,jean, 52
fined by, 156-57 Plato, 1, 13, 161
Nineteen Eighty-FouT (Orwell), 74 Political Liberalism (Rawls), 90, 95,
Noddings, NeI, 74, 89; and a care ethic, 191n49
72,73-74,76-77,78,82-83,96,144, Pornography, 8,117,161; and rape,
193n28; and caring in relationships 114-15, 197n40, 197n41
with strangers, 79, 83, 85, 193n31; Prince and the Pauper, The (Twain), 174
and a diminished ethical ideal, 86- Punishment, 94,100-101,102,157,
87,97; and ethical interdependence, 186n45,195n15
40, 74, 75, 142; and evil, 72, 83-84,
91-93;justice ethics viewed by, 8, 90, Queer Theory, 153
96, 192n4; pain defined by, 93,
194n52; relationship defined by, 77, Race: consciousness of, 163, 164, 169,
82, 193n31; separation viewed by, 83- 175,176,176-77,182,204n42;de-
84,92 cline in significance, 163, 175-76; de-
Nominalism, 10 fined,163-64,170,202n9;and
Nussbaum, Martha, 2, 3, 22-23, 25, 40 ethnicity, 170-72, 203n26; etymology
 Index 211

of, 169, 170; external and internal Reik, Theodore, 8

viewsof,164-65,166-67,168-70; Relationships: and autonomy, 30, 62-
and heritage, 179, 180; and identity, 63, 64; and care, 26-27, 30, 75-76;
173-74,181;interactiveviewof,167- and caretakers, 68-69; and chains of
69; moral irrelevance of, 177-78; and connection, 79-80, 82, 83; ending
moral luck, 9,181 abusive, 86-87; family, 67, 68, 74-75;
Racialism, 169, 203n21 and gender, 52, 56, 61-62, 66-67;
Racism, 5-6, 19, 204n32; and coopera- heterosexual intimacy feared in, 63-
tion among strangers, 85; and care 64; informal and formal, 66-70, 82;
ethics, 73, 83, 95-96; and cultural and luck, 14, 26-27; and moral luck,
heritage, 179; defined, 169; and eth- 39-41,74, 188n32; and responsibility,
nocentrism, 172-73; as evil, 91; inter- 52-53,65-70; and self-respect, 69,
active nature of, 167; and justice, 182; 191n52; with strangers, 78-85; and
and race consciousness, 164; types of, women,61,62-63,64
175-76,177 Responsibility, 9, 65; ambiguities of, 27-
Racist Culture (Goldberg), 204n32 29; and autonomy, 24, 42, 47-48;
Rape, 7, 104, 108, 114, 156; and dou- backward-looking orientation to, 23,
blethink, 108-9, 196n34; fantasies 25-27, 28; and caring, 26-27, 30, 50,
about, 63,114-15; and feminism, 85; and a debt of gratitude, 69 (see
105,114; institutionalized, 97, 99- also Gratitude, debts of); dimensions
102,107-8, 196n26, 197n39; mythol- of, 28-29; and the distribution of so-
ogy about, 106-7, 113; in prisons, 97, cial control, 143-44; dyadic, 143-44;
98; as a protection racket, 8,105-6, and feminism, 162; forward-looking
107-8,137, 184n21; rules of, 108-9, orientation to, 23, 25, 26-27, 28, 29;
110-14, 196n34, 196n35; as terrorism four senses of, 67; and integrity, 24,
(see Rape terrorism) 33-34,47; and moral luck, 2, 22-23,
"Rape: An Act of Terror" (Mehrhoff 24,47; for ourselves, 145-47; for po-
and Kearon), 99-100 litical activists, 147-48; and race, 167;
Rape Culture, 115, 197n40 and relationships, 52-53, 65-70; and
Rape terrorism, 8, 42, 97, 98-99, 102-5, sexuality, 152, 154; for something
107-8; effects of, 98,116 with a welfare, 143, 144-45
"Rape: The All-American Crime" Rich, Adrienne, 53, 62
(Griffin), 99,105, 184n21 Ross, Sir David, 55
Rawls,John, 25, 72, 100; and the basic Ross, W. D., 122
structure of society, 69, 74-75; duties Rousseau,JeanJacques, 61, 74, 75, 76
offair play discussed by, 121, 129,
199n30; and the family, 67, 68, San day, Peggy, 97
191n49, 192nll; and formal institu- Sartre,Jean-Paul, 36, 37
tions, 67, 68; and primary goods, 93, Scheler, Max, 89-90, 92, 137
95; and rape, 106, 196n26; and self- Schopenhauer, Arthur, 54, 56-57, 58,
respect, 69, 191n52; theory ofjustice 77,96
oL 18-20,52,64,65,66,67, 72, 74- Sexism, 19,91,169; and care ethics, 73,
76,78,84,90,91,94,95,192nl1, 95-96
196n26, 199n30 Sexuality, 151-59, 161, 174, 201n21;
Raymond,Janice, 153 and perversion, 162, 201n38
Recovered memory, 43, 188n36 Sexual orientation, 140
 Index 212

"Sexual Perversion" (Nagel), 160, Tronto,joan, 50, 52, 192n4, 193n17,

201n38 193n19
Sexual politics, 98-99,100,102,151, Twain, Mark, 174
160
Shively, Michael, 153, 155, 174 Uncle Remus tales, 181
Sidgwick, Henry, 122
Singer, Marcus G., 18, 200nll van den Berghe, Pierre, 170, 171, 172
Slavery, 5-6, 9, 95; etymology of, 171- ViewfromNowhf!T'e, The (Nagel), 25
72; and heritage, 179, 180-81 Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Socrates, 13, 117, 185n36 (Wollstonecraft), 61
Song of the South, 181
Sowell, Thomas, 171 Walker, Lenore, 86
"Speaking Face to Face" (Lugones), Walker, Margaret, 2, 38, 39, 187n30
172-73 "Wall, The" (Sartre), 36, 37
Stoller, Robert, 153 Wanderer, The (Nietzsche), 157
Straw Dogs, 115 Weeks,jeffrey, 153
Strawson, Peter, 26, 44 Wharton, Edith, 36-37
Subjection of Women (Mill), 116 "What Chou Mean We, White Girl?"
Sunflower, The (Wiesen thai) , 7 (Bethel), 167
Sybil,45 "Why Terrorism Is Morally Problem-
Sympathy ethics, 89-90, 92 atic" (BarOn),97, 116-17
Symposium (Plato), 161 Wiesen thai, Simon, 7
Szasz, Thomas, 154 Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
(Chang),70-71
Talmud, 123, 198n13 Williams, Bernard, 3, 21, 32, 34, 87; and
Taylor, Harriet, 60 moral luck, 2, 22, 23, 24, 40; and re-
Terrorism, 98-99, 116-17, 118, 197n49. sponsibility, 23, 24, 25-26, 29, 30
See also Rape terrorism Wilson, William julius, 163, 175-76
Theury ofJustice, A (Rawls), 68, 90, Wollstonecraft, Mary, 54, 60-61
191n52,192n11,199n30 Women, 5, 6, 8; and relationship, 59,
Thomas, Laurence, 5, 6, 73,179, 191n52 62,65
Three Rivers, Amoja, 179 Women and Economics (Gilman), 170
Tolstoy, Leo, 46 Women and Evil (Noddings), 77, 78, 91-
Tomlin, Lily, 196n35 92
Transsexualism, 153, 174
Trebilcot,joyce, 12, 145, 147, 154; and Xenophobia, 83, 85
taking responsibility for sexuality, 25,
140,148-49 Young, Iris, 5, 91, 92, 94-95