Feminist Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition

What is analytical feminism? In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ann E. Cudd defines it as follows: "Analytical feminism applies analytic concepts and methods to feminist issues and applies feminist concepts and insights to issues that traditionally have been of interest to analytic philosophers." But why the need consciously to name the approach "analytic" as opposed to merely "feminist"? The problem to which the name is a response is that within philosophy there has been a tendency to categorize all feminist work as tied to other alternative approaches to philosophy, when in fact much feminist work is closer in method to the analytic tradition. This should not come as a shock as most North American philosophers, including feminist philosophers, receive an education that is analytic in orientation. Some, of course, go on to subject the analytic tradition to feminist critique and in the end find that analytic methods are either part of the problem or simply inadequate for addressing feminist concerns. However, not all philosophers who think of their work as feminist reject the methods of analytic philosophy. Some philosophers find the tools of analytic philosophy useful in understanding the practices and concepts of oppression, subordination, sexism, and exploitation. Readers of this issue of Hypatia will see examples of this in most of the essays we have included.

But a puzzle does remain. Why has the problem of women's oppression remained largely invisible within the tradition of mainstream analytic philosophy? Here one of the strengths of analytic philosophy comes into play, since analytic philosophy routinely subjects its own methods to philosophical scrutiny. Feminist analytic philosophers who have looked critically at the tradition have attributed the failure of analytic philosophy to address women's concerns to specific aspects of the analytic approach to problems. For example, in some instances, analytic philosophers may have failed to apply their own methods consistently. This seems to be the case in philosophy of language, where the gendered assumptions built into language had gone unnoticed, hence unchallenged, by mainstream philosophers of language. It took feminist philosophers of language to point out that the problems with male terms as universal are not just political; such language is also problematically ambiguous.¹ Feminists have also faulted analytic philosophy for a failure to be thoroughgoing enough in the questioning of assumptions which ground philosophical investigations. Such criticisms are consistent with the kinds of criticisms of method that go on within the analytic tradition and so need not constitute an objection to the approach as a whole.

What makes analytical feminism feminist is, according to Cudd, the insistence on "recognizing and contesting sexism (practices that take women and feminine things to be inferior to men and masculine things) and androcentrism (practices that take males or men or men's life experiences to be the norm or the ideal for human life)." One of the notable features of work in analytical feminism is that it crosses traditional boundaries within philosophy between work in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, and work in moral, legal, and political philosophy. But such boundary-crossing work can often have a hard time finding an appropriate venue. Neither "feminist enough" for some of the more radical societies, and yet "too feminist" for the mainstream meetings, analytic feminist approaches needed their own place for presentation and discussion.

The Society for Analytical Feminism was founded in 1991 to address precisely these concerns. Its goal is to promote analytical approaches to issues of feminist concern. Since its inception, the society has been meeting annually as part of the group meeting program at the Central Division meetings and at either the Eastern or Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In response to a growing interest in analytical feminism, reflected in a respectable increase in membership in the society, in June 2004, the group held its first stand-alone conference with a full program of papers and participation from more than sixty feminist philosophers—faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. The conference, "Feminist Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition," was cosponsored by the society and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario...