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HERTA NAGL-DOCEKAL

TRANSLATED BY KATHARINA VESTER


FEMINIST
PHILOSOPHY
FEMINIST
PHILOSOPHY

HERTA NAGL-DOCEKAL
Translated by !Catharina Vester
Foreword by Alison M. Jaggar

A Me mber of the Perseus Books Group


All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of An1erica. No part of this publica-
tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical , including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and re-
trieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
English Translation © 2004 by Westview Press
German Edition© 1999 Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Frankturt am Main
Published in the United States of America by Westview Press, A Member of the
Perseus Books Group, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301 -2877, and
in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid's Copse Road , Cumnor Hill,
Oxford OX2 9J].
Find us on the world wide web at www.westviewpress.com
Westview Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the
United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more infor-
mation, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,
11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, or call ( 617) 252-5298, (800) 255-
1514 or emaiJ [email protected].
A Cataloging-in-Publication data record tor this book is available from the Library
of Congress.
ISBN 0-8133-4189-2 (he.); 0-8133-6571 -6 (pbk. )
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper tor Printed Library MateriaJs Z39.48-1984.
Typeface used in this text: 11-point GaJliard
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

Foreword by Alison M. ]aggar VII


Acknowledgments XI
Introduction:
Feminist Philosophy Under
Post-feminist Conditions XII I

l On the Anthropology of the Sexes 1


Why there is no natural order of the sexes, l
Corporality as an issue offreedom, 9
Are binary oppositions discriminating speech acts, 15
Cartesianis1n: A reproach that needs further precision, 18
Sex/Gender: How a long-running debate could come
to a conclusion, 22

2 Art and Femininity 41


Art isgendered, 4 1
Sigtnt,nd Freud and the woman artist, 45
Writing with white ink, 5 8
Feminist aesthetics, 73

3 Reason: A Concept \.Vith Connotations


of Masculinity 87
One problem, many questions, 87
Rationality and gender blindness in the sciences, 88

V
VI CONTENTS

ls science founded on aggressi-ve masculinity? 110


The criticism of Western Logos, 116
Ir the subject shaped by instrumental reason? 122
Detached emotions, 127

4 For a NonessentiaJist Politics 133


Moral foundations, 13 3
The feminist we, 141
Women as citizens; or, Why the social contract theory
should be reformulated, 152

Notes 171
Bibliography 213
Index 237
FOREWORD

P ROF ESSOR DOCTOR H ERTA NAGL - DOCEKAL is Professor


of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. She is a pioneer in the
philosophy of the German language, both as a \VOn1an and as a femi-
nist. It is a philosophical honor and a personal privilege to present
Nag] -Docekal's groundbreaking book to the Anglophone philosoph-
ical world.
Nagl-Docekal's professional career was influenced at an early
stage by feminism in the United States. In 1970/71, when she
spent a sabbatical year at Millersville State University, Lancaster, PA,
Nagl-Docekal encountered the then-new aspiration among women
philosophers to become full n1embers of the academic philosophical
con1munity. At this time, no \vomen philosophy professors in Aus-
tria existed. Nagl-Docekal decided to write her habilitation thesis in
philosophy. She accomplished this in 1981 and soon becan1e a phi-
losophy professor at the University of Vienna. Since that ti1ne, she
has been very supportive of younger Austrian women philosophers.
In 2001, she was elected a member of the Austrian Academy of the
Sciences.
Fen1inist philosophy has long been a central-though far fron1
the only-focus of Nagl-Docekal's \vork. In addition to making her
o,vn intellectual contribution to this emerging field, Nagl-Docekal
has encouraged the work of other feminist scholars. She \Vas a
founding member of an interdisciplinary group on feminist studies

VII
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V 111 FOREWORD

at the University of Vienna and helped to establish the first lecture


series on feminist topics. In 1989, she co-organized a landmark con-
ference on feminist philosophy at the University of Vienna, which
brought together pron1inent English- and German-speaking femi-
nist philosophers. Fluent in English, she has presented feminist de-
bates occurring in English to German-speaking philosophers at
many occasions. She has co-edited several volumes of feminist phi-
losophy, translated from English to German.
Nagl-Docekal's study, Feminist Philosophy, is one of a very few
book-length philosophical treatments of feminist topics in German.
However, it is unique in Anglophone as well as German philosophy
because it is deeply informed by the author's extensive knowledge of
feminist philosophical work not only in German but also in English
and French. The book thus brings together and analyzes critically
contributions from several philosophical literatures. This rich synthe-
sis offers a fresh and important perspective on the central issues of
feminist philosophy, including topics in philosophical anthropology,
aesthetics, theory of science and the critique of reason, and philoso-
phy of law.
Nagl -Docekal's distinctive point of view developed through her
attempts to discuss feminist philosophical issues in the Continental
European perspective, an approach that is of significant influence in
German philosophy. She contends that, against this background, the
issues of feminist philosophy cannot be avoided. Her \vork draws es-
pecially heavily on Kant, despite his nlixed reputation an,ong fenlinist
philosophers. Nag!-Docekal shows that Kant's n1oral philosophy and
philosophy of law can-and must- be turned to feminist purposes,
arguing that those who read Kant properly have to becon1e feminists.
For Nagl-Docekal, feminist philosophy is not simply an academic
enterprise. In her view, the ultin1ate aim of this field of research-
whose point of departure is the fact of n1anifold discrimination
against \vomen-is to provide theoretical foundations for feminist
politics. Nagl-Docekal believes that philosophy is able to make a con-
tribution to practical politics but that this can occur only if philoso-
FOREWORD IX

phy's previous distortions are corrected through a rigorous fen1inist


analysis. If philosophy is indispensable to feminism, fen1inism is also
indispensable to philosophy.
Like n1any in the first generation of fen1inist philosophers, Nagl-
Docekal has taken professionaJ risks to get feminist issues recognized
as central to philosophy. In Feminist Philosophy, she challenges pro-
fessional philosophers' attempts to dismiss feminist issues, attempts
that son1etin1es focus on rhetorical excesses of feminist authors in
order to discredit their substantial concerns. Her aim is to carve out
those elen1ents of fen1inist philosophy that are so well -founded that
they can no longer be ignored by philosophers who \.vish their work
to reflect the current state of the discipline.
Feminist Philosophy is a landmark contribution simultaneously to
feminist politics and philosophical scholarship. Already becoming
a classic in German philosophy, I am proud to introduce it to an
Anglophone audience.

Alison M. Jaggar
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T H E 1NRITI NG OF THIS BOOK wassupportedinmanywaysby


colleagues and friends in the United States and Canada sharing
the concern to e1nploy a feminist perspective in academic discourse.
My reflections greatly benefited from information on current debates
n1ade available by the Society for Women in Philosophy, \vhich I
joined as a men1ber many years ago, and by a number of sessions at
APA n1eetings dedicated to feminist issues. First and foremost I am
obliged to Seyla Benhabib, Steven Burns, Kurt Rudolf Fischer, Mary
Mosher Flesher, Nancy Fraser, Alison M. Jaggar, Lorraine Markotic,
Linda Lopez McAlister, Ruth Anna Putnan1, Robin May Schott, and
Iris Marion Young; I would like to thank them all for their inspiring
\VOrk, for many stimulating conversations, and for their sustained
commitment to cultivate trans-Atlantic relations. This book is dedi -
cated to Lud\vig Nagl, who has connected these two worlds in his
philosophical \VOrk for more than three decades.

XI
INTRODUCTION:
FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY
UNDER POST-FEMINIST
CONDITIONS

S HO U LD THIS BOOK BEGIN WITH a definition of feminist phi-


losophy? Presumably this field of scholarship has long been
kno,..,n. In the context of the student movement of the late 1960s,
"vomen philosophers-like their fellow con1batants in other disci-
plines-began to confront their field with the problen1 of the existing
hierarchies of the sexes. This beginning was, strictly speaking, a re-
sumption; discrimination against women due to their sex was prob-
lematized in the philosophical context much earlier, for instance, by
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, or-to give another exan1-
ple from the seventeenth century-by the Cartesian Frans:ois Poulain
de la Barre. But these ,..,ere individual investigations that did not
found a research tradition. The term feminist philosophy, first coined
during the new beginning at the turn from the 1960s to the 1970s,
serves as an umbrella term for the entire developn1ent since then,
which presents itself as an increasingly differentiated discourse. 1 This
decades-long continuity and a considerable number of publications
suggest that feminist philosophy is a ,..,ell-established field of re-
search. The countless individual studies and journal articles, the peri-
odicals and book series specifically dedicated to this subject have
created such a mass of texts that it has become in1possible to keep an
overview. 2 Quite a few publications that aim at facilitating orientation

XII I
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