The Idea
The Idea.Over the past few decades, feminist philosophy has become recognised as a philosophical sub-discipline in its own right. Feminist philosophers typically aim both to critique real-world patriarchal social structures by utilising mainstream philosophical tools, and to shape mainstream philosophy with the help of feminist political insights. It is typically distinctive in being framed around specific concepts and background beliefs, which are sensitive to gender justice. Feminist philosophers usually reject the view of philosophy as value-free, neutral investigation upon which feminist insights neither can nor should bear. Many reject the view that the political value commitments of feminism are inconsistent with the supposed valueless theoretical commitments of philosophy.
More radically, we contend that philosophers cannot, and should not, generally draw a clear distinction between allegedly constitutive theoretical and cognitive values and contextual social, practical, or ethical values. Echoing the work of Helen Longino and Elizabeth Anderson, we contend that relying on moral, practical, and political values is legitimate and even necessary when making theory choices in philosophy. In so doing, feminist philosophy has brought new methodological insights to bear on traditional ways of doing philosophy.
This conference aims to investigate in more depth methodological insights that feminist philosophy can afford, and to examine points of intersection between feminist commitments and existing methodological outlooks (e.g. non-ideal theory, pragmatism, amelioration, critical theory).
Upcoming Events
October 20th Meetup - Healing after 3,000 years of sexual oppression. Exchange student Amelie Pons will be hosting a 30 minute workshop on achieving sexual liberation through freedom of expression. Amelie is the creator of the website Sex Toys and Flowers, which has tools that educate women on how to use sex toys and vibrators.
October 6th Meetup - We will be discussing the book "We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, if you don't have time to read the book, don't worry. This meetup will be a chance to educate and discuss the ideas in the book.