{"id":5840,"date":"2017-01-24T04:15:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T04:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/24\/susan-haacks-reasonable-feminism\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T04:15:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T04:15:06","slug":"susan-haacks-reasonable-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/24\/susan-haacks-reasonable-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Haack’s Reasonable Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an interview<\/a> with Marty Nemko (HT: Dave Lull):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

MN:<\/strong> In a number of papers, you propose what you call a humanist, individualist feminism very different from the kind of feminism now fashionable in the academy and elsewhere. Can you tell us more?<\/span><\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> My feminism is humanist because it stresses what all human beings have in common\u2014that as Dorothy Sayers wrote, \u201cWomen are more like men than anything else on earth,\u201d and it\u2019s individualistic because it stresses that every woman has her own unique m\u00e9lange of temperament, tastes, strengths, weaknesses, ideas, and opinions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, today\u2019s academic feminism, largely ignoring both what\u2019s universal and what\u2019s individual, stresses women-as-a-class. Sometimes it focuses on \u201cwomen\u2019s issues.\u201d Sometimes it appeals to a supposed \u201cwoman\u2019s point of view\u201d or \u201cwomen\u2019s ways of knowing." Sometimes it goes as far as to decry science as an inherently masculinist enterprise.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think this all has been bad for women, as well as bad for philosophy. It reinstates old, sexist stereotypes<\/a>: \u201cFeminist epistemology\u201d will focus on emotion rather than reason, \u201cfeminist ethics\u201d on caring rather than justice. It confuses inquiry with advocacy of \u201cfeminist values.\u201d It encourages women into a pink-collar ghetto of feminist philosophy and makes it harder for those whose talent is for logic, history of philosophy, metaphysics, etc., to succeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interviewers sometimes ask me, \u201cHow we can get more women into philosophy?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s the wrong goal,\u201d I reply. \u201cThe right goal is to make a person\u2019s sex<\/a> irrelevant to our assessment of the quality of his or her mind.\u201d So I\u2019m intrigued by recent empirical work suggesting that blinding the hiring process\u2014as I urged decades ago\u2014results in more diverse hires than diversity-training programs and the like.      <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I agree with the above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Haack entries (some critical):<\/span><\/p>\n

Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Philosophy Profession in Thrall of Dreadful Rankings<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Susan Haack on the Fragmentation of Philosophy and the Road to Reintegration<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an interview with Marty Nemko (HT: Dave Lull): MN: In a number of papers, you propose what you call a humanist, individualist feminism very different from the kind of feminism now fashionable in the academy and elsewhere. Can you tell us more? SH: My feminism is humanist because it stresses what all human beings … Continue reading “Susan Haack’s Reasonable Feminism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[394],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}