Sayers Sean, Osborne Peter (ред.). Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy. A Radical Philosophy Reader

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

This page intentionally left blank.

INTRODUCTION

Christopher J.Arthur

Original versions of the chapters in this anthology appeared in

Radical Philosophy; it represents very well the concerns of the

magazine. Radical Philosophy first appeared in January 1972 and

has come out three times a year since then. The founders and

most of the early contributors had been students in the 1960s.

Our intellectual formation was characterised by a disjunction

between the ferment of radical and critical ideas coming out of

the student revolt and the narrow sterile orthodoxy pervading the

academic system in which we were trained. In those days profes-

sional philosophy was dominated by the analytical approach in

its most philistine form—so-called ‘ordinary language philosophy’.

The Radical Philosophy Group was formed in 1971 to organise

publications and conferences which would provide a forum for

the discussion of ideas excluded from the existing institutions. We

were the first of the radical subject-based groups that emerged

around that time to answer a need felt right across the spectrum

of learning. (For more about the intellectual context, and original

objectives, of Radical Philosophy see the Introduction by Roy Edg-

ley to Radical Philosophy Reader, London, Verso, 1985.)

Since those days much has changed: analytical philosophy is in

decline and no new paradigm has established itself; the thinkers

previously excluded from the curriculum (such as Hegel, Marx

and Sartre) are now generally taught. Nonetheless, the continued

success of the journal shows it still fulfils a felt need. But what

exactly is the project calling itself Radical Philosophy? The Radi-

cal Philosophy magazine reaches a more diverse readership than

any other philosophy journal. This is because RadicalPhilosophy

turns its face partly towards the philosophy departments, but also

partly towards the radical left. In the first case it is concerned to

contest the terrain of establishment philosophy, e.g. to redefine

the ‘canon’ to be studied. In the second case it is concerned to

improve the philosophical awareness of radical movements and to

contribute to socialist theory. This has been all the more neces-

sary in recent years because so much of the left in the academy is

prone to espousing uncritically the latest ‘French fashions’. Radi-

cal Philosophy has generally been characterised by a sceptical and

tough-minded scrutiny of overblown claims and language. ‘Clar-

ity is not enough’, as someone once said of analytical philosophy,

but it is certainly desirable. We commend the present papers to

the reader in the hope that they are both radical in their concerns

and rigorous in their argument.

A recent debate in The Times Higher Education Supplement (7

April 1989 and 12 May 1989) on the character and achievement

of Radical Philosophy brought out one important ambivalence in

the definition of these radical concerns. Ted Benton and Sean Say-

ers quoted from the founding statement: ‘that the Group will not

attempt to lay down a philosophical line’. In response Joseph

McCarney claimed that such a negative definition seems to allow

that anything excluded by the existing establishment might be

considered radical. He pointed out that Radical Philosophy has

not in fact treated Marxism as a position on a par with all others

in ‘a boundless receptivity to ideas’. Certainly Marxism is

inescapable for critically minded people: one has to take account

of it, if only to reject it. But the journal has never taken a formal

position for or against Marx, still less elaborated any particular

Marxism (although, again as McCarney pointed out, the more

dialectical tradition going back to left-Hegelianism has been

present in much of the work).

The pieces included in this book reflect this: the influence of

Marx is present in some, but by no means all. At the same time,

the journal has remained responsive to new ideas and debates in

philosophy and on the left. In recent years, feminist and green

ideas have been influential and given rise to controversy. They

have been discussed in Radical Philosophy, and this is reflected in

the present collection. An uncontentious definition of our project

would be that Radical Philosophy is a journal of socialist and fem-

inist philosophers.

* * *

2 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

For this book the papers have been organised into three parts in

accordance with the most important current concerns of radical

circles, and hence of our magazine. First there is a section on fem-

inism and philosophy. We are pleased that Radical Philosophy

has been an important forum for the discussion of issues in femi-

nist theory. Second we have a section on socialism and philoso-

phy which reflects important current debates about the renewal

of the Marxist tradition. Finally we have a section called ‘Nature

and Human Nature’.

We begin with some pieces related to feminist issues. The dis-

cussion that has gone on in feminist thought involves a number of

related strands. One elementary task is the recovery and interpre-

tation of the past, either in the form of rescuing the voices of

women themselves (see Grimshaw below) or of a critical scrutiny

of what the (male) luminaries of the philosophical tradition have

had to say about women (see Arthur). Another task is to bring a

feminist perspective to bear on the standard philosophical

domains, such as ethics (see Parsons), as had earlier occurred with

Marxist influenced social-structural perspectives (see Poole for

both). The same need applies to the new theoretical problematics

that emerged coincident with the rise of feminism, such as critical

cultural theory (see Johnson) and ecology (see Plumwood below).

Grimshaw discusses readings of that prototype feminist Mary

Wollstonecraft. She emphasises the need to situate her work in

the eighteenth-century context, and shows how its tensions arise

(in ways familiar to modern feminism) from using, and at the

same time contesting, the moral and political perspectives out of

which it comes. Arthur takes up a debate on the role assigned to

women in Hegel’s philosophy, notably his admiration for

Antigone’s moral quality. Poole argues that modern conceptions

of morality, markets and masculinity exist on the same terrain

and cannot be understood except in relation to each other. Par-

sons assesses the understanding of morality that emerges from

feminist writing. She distinguishes three broad trends: liberalism,

naturalism, and ‘social constructionism’. She thereby sheds light

on both moral philosophy and feminist concerns. Finally, in this

part, Johnson subjects to critical scrutiny the supposed appropri-

ateness of post-modernist aesthetics to feminist art theory and

practice.

In the second part, papers are presented relating to Marx-

INTRODUCTION 3

ismand socialism. Ever since Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach

(‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different

ways; the point is—to change it.’), the status of philosophy for

Marxism has been controversial. Marx ceased doing ‘philosophy’

in favour of ‘science’; yet it seems clear a philosophical ‘moment’

is necessary in situating Marx’s project. The problem is especially

acute when one considers the needs of the proletariat charged

with ‘changing it’ (see Rée). The need for contestation on the

philosophical level is illustrated, negatively at least, by the peren-

nial attempts by well-meaning souls to ‘give Marxism a philoso-

phy’ drawn from sources alien to it, such as Kantianism, function-

alism, or, today, ‘rational choice theory’ (see Sayers’ and McCar-

ney’s rebuttals below). As far as the more specifically political is

concerned there is a perennial tendency to assimilate socialism

merely to a form of liberalism. Bernstein started this one, and it is

running again today under such banners as ‘pluralism’, ‘civil soci-

ety’, etc. (see Harris).

Rée meditates on the ambivalences of ‘philosophers’ to ‘the

people’ outside the institutions, and of the proletarians who set

out to ‘philosophise’. He begins with a report on a new visit to

Jock Shanley, a participant in the movement whose history was

investigated in Rée’s book Proletarian Philosophers (OUP, 1984).

Sayers and McCarney are both concerned to criticise influential

variants of self-styled ‘analytical Marxism’, in the former case

G.A.Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (criti-

cised for its undialectical method), and in the latter case Jon

Elster’s Making Sense of Marx. Harris conducts a searching exam-

ination of the most important moments of philosophy down to

contemporary appeals to the concept of ‘civil society’ in order to

argue for a conception of democracy that steers a course between

romantic individualist pluralism, on the one hand, and, on the

other, the tension that has plagued the left between spontaneous

mass-mobilisation and Spartan discipline.

The final part, on ‘Nature and Human Nature’, concerns the

complex interdeterminations, the continuities and discontinuities,

of culture and biology, of humans with other natural beings. Of

course the topic of human nature is as old as philosophy, but

today it is seen to present more complex problems than ever;

there is the problematisation of gender stereotypes which are

themselves articulated with the supposed humanity/nature

dichotomy (see Plumwood); likewise new theories of the self still

4 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

have to contend with the self’s embodiment (see Keat); while even

a theory like Marx’s which always claimed to be a naturalism

needs re-examining in the light of new ecological thinking (see

Benton).

Plumwood presents a conceptual framework in which to locate

the considerable variety of responses to the traditional dichotomy

of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ and its association with others—

mind and body, humans and animals, ‘man’ and ‘nature’. The

masculine ideal of the rational control of nature has thus been

intertwined with the domination of women by men. She argues

for an eco-feminism transcending such oppositions. Benton

argues that we must take a fresh look at Marx in the light of the

concerns of so-called ‘new’ social movements. He concentrates

here on how the early work of Marx relates to ecology and ani-

mal welfare. He concludes that Marx’s conception of the human

relationship to nature and to other species is problematic and

needs substantial revision, because it relies often on an over-sharp

human/animal dualism. Keat argues that both Reich and Foucault

help us to understand the distinctively ‘human’ character of

human bodies, by removing them from the category of exclusively

biological entities.

* * *

The reader is invited to take other pathways through this book

than that indicated by the editorial arrangement. Thus those inter-

ested in feminism can take Val Plumwood’s piece together with

the first section; those primarily interested in ethics may turn first

to Poole and Parsons; and so on.

As noted above, an earlier Reader was published in 1985: it

was based on issues 1–36. The present collection covers issues 36–

52. The selection was made by Chris Arthur, Jean Grimshaw,

Peter Osborne and Sean Sayers, and approved by the editorial

collective of Radical Philosophy. We have chosen to avoid repro-

ducing pieces already reprinted elsewhere, or that substantially

overlap with other such publications. Among those ruled out by

these criteria are the following:

Susan Easton, ‘Hegel and feminism’ (RP 38)—see Hegel and

Modern Philosophy ed. David Lamb, London, Croom Helm,

1987, pp. 30–55.

INTRODUCTION 5

Ruth Levitas, ‘New Right Utopias’ (RP 39)—see her The Ideol-

ogyof the New Right, Cambridge, Polity, 1985.

Joseph McCarney, ‘What makes theory critical?’ (RP 42)—see

his Social Theory and the Crisis of Marxism, London, Verso,

1990.

David Macey, ‘Lacan in Context’ (RP 35)—see his Lacan in Con-

texts, London, Verso, 1988.

István Mészáros, ‘Marx’s “Social Revolution” and the Division

of Labour’ (RP 44)—see his The Power of Ideology, Hemel

Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.

Jerry Ravetz, ‘Ideology in the Philosophy of Science’ (RP 37)—

see his The Merger of Knowledge with Power, Mansell

(forthcoming).

Barry Richards, ‘The Eupsychian Impulse’ (RP 48)—see his

Images of Freud: Cultural Responses to Psychoanalysis, Wei-

denfeld Dent, 1989.

Sean Sayers, ‘The need to work’ (RP 46)—see On Work, ed. R.E.

Pahl, Oxford, Blackwell, 1988, pp. 722–41.

6 SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Part I

FEMINISM AND

PHILOSOPHY

This page intentionally left blank.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

AND THE TENSIONS IN

FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY

Jean Grimshaw

The history of the reception and interpretation of Mary Woll-

stonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a complex

and fascinating one.

It was praised by many of her radical con-

temporaries, including Tom Paine and Mary’s husband, the radi-

cal anarchist philosopher and social theorist, William Godwin. It

was condemned, sometimes vitriolically, by other contemporaries,

including, notoriously, Horace Walpole, who called Mary a

‘hyena in petticoats’ and refused to have her book in his library.

The Historical Magazine declared, in 1799, that her work should

be read ‘with disgust by any female who has any pretensions to

delicacy; with detestation by everyone attached to the interests of

religion and morality’. It was not only men who condemned it.

Many women disliked it intensely, including Hannah More, who

felt justified in condemning it without even having read it.

The fate of the Vindication cannot be separated from views of

Mary’s personal life, nor from the fate of radical political ideas in

the wave of repression and political reaction that dominated

English politics in the years after the 1790s. Mary’s name and her

work were tarred with the brush of French-style liberty, free

thought, free love, irreligion, the undermining of family life, and

all those things that were anathema both to conservative political

orientations and to nineteenth-century evangelicalism. Apart from

the memoir published after her death by her husband William

Godwin,

obituaries were mostly ambivalent or condemnatory,

and no biography was published until 1884, nearly 100 years

after her death. One gets the impression that few people in the

nineteenth century can actually have read the Vindication, and

that Wollstonecraft’s reputation was an embarrassment to the