Philosophizing in a Dissonant Key

Abstract

Recently, I was asked to contribute to a discussion on the impact of feminism on men, held at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). These remarks represent the outcome of that invitation and discussion, recollected in comparative tranquility. My fellow panelists tended to take a strong, practical, real-world line on the question, skillfully assessing controversies about how feminism, considered as a social movement, affected the interests of men in general terms. My focus was perhaps a bit more hermetic: I assessed the impact of feminism, considered as a collection of ways of doing philosophy, on men, considered as philosophers. My approach was also unabashedly normative: it seems to me that feminism lays down an ethical gauntlet to the profession generally, and to the men that form such a large part of it, in particular. Part of the motivation for this more constricted approach was my disinclination to pose as a social scientist manque, in that making judgments about social movements and social impacts tends to press my empirical confidence to its limits. Addressing how male philosophers ought to receive feminism, on the other hand, strikes me as a task that might usefully begin with a statement of my own experience of feminist philosophy as a philosopher who is not a woman (though, of course, I don't intend to leave it there). I'm not altogether happy about the way I express that experience, since I think it's almost bound to spark misunderstanding. Nonetheless, here's the statement, complete with a label for handy further reference: