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- Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4053 sci.philosophy.meta:2520 sci.classics:986
- Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.classics
- Path: sparky!uunet!hela.iti.org!usc!cheshire.oxy.edu!rooney
- From: rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney)
- Subject: Re: Plato's Views on Women
- Message-ID: <1992Nov11.210624.15383@cheshire.oxy.edu>
- Keywords: politics, women, feminism
- Sender: rooney@oxy.edu
- Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
- References: <BxIKsp.Gt3@unx.sas.com> <1992Nov11.010102.14565@cheshire.oxy.edu> <BxK1zu.93q@unx.sas.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 21:06:24 GMT
- Lines: 40
-
- In article <BxK1zu.93q@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
- >
- >In article <1992Nov11.010102.14565@cheshire.oxy.edu>, rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:
- >
- >|> Secondly, you seem to be implicitly claiming that a true
- >|> philosophy worthy of the name should be politically neutral, equally
- >|> acceptable to both followers of Rand and Marx. This foolishness
- >|> merely betrays the ethically irresponsible legacy of Wittgenstein's
- >|> disconnection of transcendental philosophy from the world. [1]
- >|> That feminism seeks some connections between thought and practice
- >|> is no vice.
- >
- >"Ethically irresponsible legacy of Wittgenstein's disconnection of
- >trancendental philosophy from the world"? Well, I guess that ices
- >the cake. I did not, by the way, claim that a true philosophy worthy
- >of the name (whatever that means) should be politically neutral.
- >I posed a question concerning how *uniform* the political philosophy
- >of so-called "feminist philosophy" is and how *central* a given
- >perspective seems to be. The implicit question, of course, is
- >what comes first: a committment to a particular philosophy for which
- >one then concocts a new discipline to serve as a vehicle of expression,
- >or the genuine identification of a new discipline and the discovery
- >that virtually all of its acolytes happen to cleave to a particular
- >political philosophy.
- >
-
- Regardless of "what comes first" (either an abstract metaphysical
- position or a practical political disposition), it is the arguments of the
- philosophies in question which matter. Obviously, assuming a political
- stance ad hoc (say, libertarian capitalism) and then detailing "down" to
- metaphysical stands increases the possibility of incoherence considerably
- (cf. the pontifex minimus Leonard Peikoff). But this does not have to be
- the case. The "genuine identification of a new discipline" (whatever that
- means) need not proceed from pre-political considerations. It is the
- positions and arguments that are central, items which seem anathema to
- the anti-feminist-philosophy posters on this thread.
-
- Cordially,
-
- Michael S. Rooney
-