A Humean Look at Feminist Ethics

Abstract

Hume would have supported feminist scholarship, specifically in the area of ethical theory, primarily because the feminist notion that we learn through relationships and conversation with others is exactly what he describes as the best way to develop our moral sentiments and come to know ourselves and our world. Feminist conceptions of justice and care, the complex distinction between social construction and the development of what we understand ourselves to be in relation to others, are themes feminists have in common with Hume. As Hume explains, we learn and change in the company of others, not as victims of unchangeable social constructs, but as persons in community--as individuals relating to each other and developing, never statically defined.

Notes

1. This essay was presented at the Hawaii University International Conference on the Arts and Humanities, in Honolulu, Hawaii, 8 January 2012Johanna Meehan, “Communicative Ethics,” in A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2000), 411.

2. Catherine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda forTheory,” in Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, ed. Diane Tietjen Meyers (London: Routledge, 1997), 70, 73, 74.

3. Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in Meyers, Feminist Social Thought, 95.

4. Judith Butler, “Excerpt from Gender Trouble,” in Meyers, Feminist Social Thought, 126, 125.

5. Terence Penelhum, “Hume’s Moral Psychology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 121, 136, 142.

6. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2^nd ed., rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 2.2.5; abbreviated as T, and hereafter cited in the text.

7. Susan J. Brison, “Outliving Yourself,” in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 365, 365–66, 372.

8. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3^rd ed., rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 5.2.17.

9. Joyce L. Jenkins and Robert Shaver, “Hobbes Could Have Said No More,” in Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000).

10. Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 190.

11. Jenkins and Shaver, “Hobbes Could Have Said No More,” 138.

12. Elizabeth Kiss, “Justice,” in Jaggar and Young, A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, 493, 494.

13. Laurie Shrage, “Equal Opportunity,” in Jaggar and Young, A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, 575.

14. Virginia Held, “Rights,” in Jaggar and Young, A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, 509, 501, 509.

15. Joan Tronto, “An Ethic of Care,” in Cudd and Andreasen, Feminist Theory, 251, 255.

16. Tronto, “An Ethic of Care,” 258, 251.

17. Catharine MacKinnon, “Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination,” in Cudd and Andreasen, Feminist Theory, 399.

18. Andrea Maihofer, “Care,” in Jaggar and Young, A Companion to Feminist Philosophy, 392.

19. Cohen, “The Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy,” 111.

20. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 8.1.9.

21. Cohen, “The Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy,” 119.

22. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 9.5.

23. Cohen, “The Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy,” 119.

24. John McDowell, “Projection and Truth in Ethics,” in Moral Discourse and Practice, ed. Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 215–25.