Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism

Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism

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Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism Resisting Oppression Carol Hay University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Carol Hay 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-00389-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-43445-9 ISBN 978-1-137-00390-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137003904 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

For Becca, whose welcome arrival didn t help the completion of this book. And for John, who surely did.

So if I noticed or I didn t, why does it have to be my deal? What, because there s assholes in the world I don t get to ride on The Zipper? I don t get to ever spin? Assholes are just assholes. What s getting hot and bothered going to do about it except keep me from getting to have fun? [You] might ought to try just climbing on and spinning and ignoring assholes and saying Fuck em. That s pretty much all you can do with assholes. David Foster Wallace To let oneself be insulted without reprisal is already a diminution of one s own worth. The man who lets himself be trampled underfoot, shows himself to be a worm, a bee without a sting. He displays a want of forcefulness, whereas his duty is to stand opposed to all attacks on his personality. If he wishes others to have respect for his person, he must likewise hold fast to it, and show that he respects himself. He must at least bring the offending party to the point of an apology, so that he may be forgiven. Immanuel Kant (Lectures on Ethics 27: 606-607)

Contents Preface Acknowledgements viii xii 1 Liberalism & Oppression 1 2 A Feminist Defence of Kant 50 3 The Obligation to Resist Sexual Harassment 89 4 The Obligation to Resist Oppression 117 5 Respect-Worthiness and Dignity 158 Selected Bibliography 186 Index 197 vii

Preface What does the philosophy of a bunch of dead white men have to tell us about oppression? Rather a lot, I will argue. This is a book about the harms of oppression, and about addressing these harms using the resources of liberalism and Kantianism. Its central thesis is that people who are oppressed are bound by the duty of self-respect to resist their own oppression. In it, I argue that it is only through liberal and Kantian principles that contemporary feminists can adequately describe and counteract the harms of oppression. And I argue that it is only by paying proper attention to the treatment of oppressed groups that Kantian liberalism can realize its promise. I have found that attempting to make sense of the harms of oppression using the resources of mainstream philosophy has the potential to pit me against two different camps of philosophers: those mainstream philosophers who do not seem to care much about the problems of oppression, on the one hand, and those philosophers who care quite a lot about oppression but reject both liberalism and Kantianism, on the other. My hopes here are to convince mainstream philosophers that the problems of oppression are real, and that they matter, and also to convince those who know very well what these problems are that the traditional canon of Western ethics and social and political philosophy has a great deal to offer in their analysis and resolution. My analysis defends the importance of certain core ideals, specifically autonomy, the intrinsic and inalienable dignity of the individual, the importance of rationality, and the duty of self-respect. I make the case a case that is explicitly Kantian that these ideals are pivotal in both understanding and counteracting oppression. I acknowledge, and discuss in detail, the dangers of adopting this strategy, dangers that have been routinely described by theorists who worry that Kant s emphasis on autonomy as the locus of moral value fails to describe the full spectrum of ethical life, and that liberalism s historical failure to address oppression in any systematic way is a constitutive, not accidental, feature of the tradition. These dangers are real, but they are not unavoidable. This book is divided into two sections. The first section is a detailed defence of the possibility of using both the liberal and Kantian theoretical frameworks to address feminist concerns. These expansions of liberalism and Kantianism amount to a significant revision and redeployment of viii

Preface ix what are now regarded by many philosophers interested in issues of social justice as antiquated and outmoded moral and social theories. The second section applies these two frameworks to a particular practical and theoretical concern: the question of whether people who are oppressed have an obligation to resist their oppression. I argue that if we take seriously certain central tenets of Kantian liberalism those defending the fundamental importance of rationality, autonomy, and self-respect then it follows that people who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. My analysis throughout focuses primarily on sexist oppression, but for the most part I take my arguments and conclusions to apply, mutatis mutandis, to other forms of oppression as well. Chapter 1 lays out the theoretical groundwork that is necessary for understanding the arguments that follow in the rest of the book. In it, I attempt to head off a number of misconceptions about what both oppression and liberalism are. I begin by offering a definition of oppression that says that an individual is oppressed if and only if (i) she is unjustly harmed in a group-specific way, and, (ii) this harm is part of a structural and systemic network of social institutions. I then synthesize what I think are the most incisive criticisms of the liberal tradition s inability to accommodate the reality of oppressive social circumstances, cataloguing along the way how contemporary liberals are responding to these criticisms. I argue that many of these criticisms are not without merit, but that contemporary liberals can and do have responses here, that liberalism is an evolving doctrine whose contemporary manifestations are compatible with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonialist concerns. The version of feminist liberalism that I ultimately defend, however, requires a commitment to certain objective, transcultural moral ideals; this makes it a liberalism that that many liberals will reject as too comprehensive and many radicals will reject as imperialism in disguise. Chapter 2 defends these moral ideals on Kantian grounds. I have found this to be a rather unpopular proposal. Kant is regarded by many as deeply hostile to the feminist goal of counteracting oppression. In this chapter, I defend the Kantian moral framework from two related criticisms, both of which claim that this framework is unsuitable for feminist purposes. One of these criticisms focuses on Kant s privileging the rational over the animal; the other focuses on his privileging the rational over the emotional. While I admit that there is much to be learned from these two criticisms, I deny that the oversights and inadequacies they highlight are necessary consequences of adopting the Kantian view. Kantianism has the resources within it, I claim, to both show us the full

x Preface extent of the psychological harms that people can experience when they live under oppressive social conditions, and to suggest novel ways to ameliorate these harms, that we might otherwise not see. I caution that if we reject the Kantian framework because of the sorts of considerations emphasized by these criticisms we risk, in effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I argue that Kantianism is uniquely able to capture the fundamental moral importance of self-respect, and thus is uniquely able to explain what is wrong with the gendered norms of self-sacrifice that have historically exploited women. Chapter 3 is where I begin to use the liberal and Kantian frameworks to establish my claim that there is an obligation to resist oppression. The preliminary attempt in this chapter restricts its focus to the narrower question of whether women have an obligation to confront the men who sexually harass them. I argue that women s obligation to protect their autonomy from the harms of sexist oppression translates into a general obligation to confront harassers. A reluctance to be guilty of blaming the victims of sexual harassment, coupled with other practical and normative considerations that tell in favour of the unfairness of this obligation, might make us think that women never have an obligation to confront their harassers. But I argue that the fact that women are oppressed is not usually sufficient to relieve them of their moral obligation to resist that oppression by confronting the men who sexually harass them. Normative considerations of fairness do not remove this obligation, even if we are willing to recognize that it is not fair that women are burdened by extra moral obligations as a result of their oppression. We can recognize that women s oppression leaves them with an unfair share of obligations and still be justified in saying that they have further obligations to resist their oppression. I argue that the fact that patriarchy harms women by burdening them with unfair obligations is just one more reason it must be eradicated. I then take up an objection that attempts to undermine the obligation to resist sexist oppression by pointing out that its harms are almost never severe enough to completely destroy women s autonomy; answering this charge, I argue, requires a proper understanding of the relationship between autonomy and responsibility in general. I close the chapter with a preliminary analysis of the possibility that there can be many different ways to resist oppression. In Chapter 4, I move on to my central argument in favour of a general obligation to resist oppression. This is an obligation that people have to themselves, I argue, which is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect. I begin by presenting a Kantian account of the obligation to resist one s

Preface xi oppression as an obligation that oppressed people have to protect their rational nature. I defend this Kantian account by considering some of the many ways oppression can harm people s rational nature, arguing that this harm is evidenced by a number of practical irrationalities to which oppressed people are particularly susceptible. I consider four objections that reject the obligation to resist oppression as too demanding because it can be too dangerous; because requiring it amounts to blaming the victim; because it can be impossible and thus flouts the rule of ought implies can; and because it is only ever supererogatory and respond by arguing that the obligation is not as onerous as it might initially appear to be because it is best thought of as an imperfect duty. This means there are many different forms that resistance to oppression can take, some of which I enumerate. I go on to argue that, because the fundamental duty here is one of self-respect, even in cases where external resistance is imprudent or impossible, an oppressed person can still recognize that something is wrong with her situation and that she deserves better. This, I argue, is profoundly better than nothing. In Chapter 5 I take up what I consider to be the most pressing unresolved objection to my argument, the concern that it follows from the terms of this account that failing to fulfill the obligation to resist oppression might actually vitiate future instances of this obligation. The thought here is that if oppression harms rational nature, and if the value of rational nature is what grounds the obligation to resist oppression, then a person whose rational nature has been harmed by oppression will at some point no longer be obligated to resist it. Another way to think about this problem is that because someone who fails to fulfill the objection to resist her oppression has behaved immorally, and because it is someone s moral agency that gives her the sort of value that makes her worthy of moral respect, then being immoral might affect her respectworthiness. And if someone is not worthy of respect, then it looks like she has no obligation to respect herself, and thus no obligation to resist her oppression. I respond to this dilemma by defending a novel interpretation of Kant s views on the relationship between the value we have and the respect we are owed. I argue, contra the received view among Kant scholars, that the feature in virtue of which someone has unconditional and incomparable value is not the same feature in virtue of which she is owed the respect that constrains how she may be treated. So, even though someone who fails to attempt to protect her rational nature fails to respect herself in the right way, and even though this moral failing does make her lose a certain kind of value, her obligations to respect herself do not go away.

Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint various parts of my previously published works. This project began its life as my doctoral dissertation, Rationality and Oppression: A Defence of the Obligation to Resist Oppression (2008). It has changed a great deal since then. Some of the defences of liberalism in Chapter 1 were published, to very different ends, in my Consonances between Liberalism and Pragmatism, The Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 48 (2012): 141 168 and Justice and Objectivity for Pragmatists: Cosmopolitanism in the Work of Martha Nussbaum and Jane Addams, The Pluralist 7 (2012): 86 95. A very early version of the discussion in Chapter 3 was published as On Whether to Ignore Them and Spin: Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment, Hypatia 20 (2005): 94 108. Earlier versions of the arguments in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 were published as The Obligation to Resist Oppression, Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (2011): 21 45, and Respect-Worthiness and Dignity, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 51 (2012): 587 612 respectively. The development of the ideas expressed in this book has benefited a great deal from the philosophical discussions I have had at a number of professional venues. Versions of the arguments defending liberalism that I develop in Chapter 1 were presented at a meeting of the Summer Institute in American Philosophy in 2011, a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in 2011, a meeting of the Northern New England Philosophical Association in 2010, a Midwest Division meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy in 2009, and a Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in 2009. Parts of the feminist defence of Kant that I develop in Chapter 2 were presented at a Pacific Division meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy in 2010. Some of the arguments in Chapter 3 were presented at a Society for Value Inquiry conference in 2005 and a Society for Analytical Feminism conference in 2004. Versions of the arguments in Chapter 4 were presented at the MIT Workshop on Gender and Philosophy in 2009, a Society for Analytical Feminism conference in 2008, and the University of Dayton s Richard R. Baker Colloquium on the topic of Building Coalitions Across Difference in 2008. For their constructive feedback on this work in its many different stages, my sincerest thanks are owed to Louise Antony, Amy Baehr, Zac xii

Acknowledgements xiii Cogley, Ann Cudd, Robin Dillon, Jean Harvey, Sally Haslanger, Bob Innis, John Kaag, Jos é Mendoza, Charles Mills, Susanne Sreedhar, Anita Superson, Timothy Schroeder, Sigr ú n Svavarsd ó ttir, Amelia Wirts, the participants of WOGAP, and several anonymous reviewers. Thanks to my family for their love and support. And thanks most of all to my partner, John Kaag, for making the writing of this book, and just about everything else in life, not only possible but wonderful.