Sarah Marie Babbitt

In this essay, I suggest that significant insights of recent feminist philosophy lead, among other things, to the thought that it is not always better to choose than to be compelled to do what one might have done otherwise. However, few feminists, if any, would defend such a suggestion. I ask why it is difficult to consider certain ideas that, while challenging in theory, are, nonetheless, rather unproblematic in practice. I suggest that some questions are not pursued seriously enough by philosophers, because certain popular liberal conceptions of individuality and freedom are taken too much for granted.

In this essay, I suggest that significant insights of recent feminist philosophy lead, among other things, to the thought that it is not always better to choose than to be compelled to do what one might have done otherwise. However, few feminists, if any, would defend such a suggestion. I ask why it is difficult to consider certain ideas that, while challenging in theory, are, nonetheless, rather unproblematic in practice. I suggest that some questions are not pursued seriously enough by philosophers, because certain popular liberal conceptions of individuality and freedom are taken too much for granted.

Moral naturalism, as I use the term here, is the view that there are moral facts in the natural world – facts that are both natural and normative – and that moral claims are true or false in virtue of their corresponding or not to these natural facts. Moral naturalists argue that, since moral claims are about natural facts, we can establish the truth about moral claims through empirical investigation. Moral knowledge, on this view, is a form of empirical knowledge.One objection to this metaethical view is that even if moral naturalists are correct in their claims about truth, they cannot answer the question of normativity. Jean Hampton, for instance, argues that it is not enough to explain the conduct's wrongness by showing it to be a property that necessarily supervenes on natural properties. For nothing in this analysis explains the relationship between these properties andus.The question is why should peoplecareabout these properties. Christine Korsgaard claims that moral realists take the normative question to be one about truth and knowledge.

To explain the causal relation between institutional rules and people’s actions and expectations, Searle relies upon his concept of the Background, the thesis that intentional states function only given a background of capacities that do not themselves consist in intentional phenomena. Any sentence, for instance, only acquires truth conditions or other conditions of satisfaction against a background of capacities, dispositions, know-how, etc. that are not themselves part of the content of the sentence. The Background also structures expectations. La Rouchefoucauld said, for instance, that few people would fall in love if they had never read about it.

Charles V was a scholarly king who commissioned French versions of ancient & medieval treatises for the express purpose of guiding his government. To translate Aristotle's "Politics" he chose Nicole Oresme, an ingenious philosopher whose aptitude & attitudes made him an effective supporter of the Valois monarchy. Oresme's task was to take his text out of the language of a small but international community of scholars & adapt it to serve the French people, making it accessible to a new & broad audience. Contents: Oresme & his Version of the "Politics"; Oresme & the Commentary Tradition of the "Politics"; Nat. Sovereignty & the Hierarchy of Communities; The Public State & the Common Good; The "Politics," the "Livre de Politiques," & the Church; Aristotle, Oresme, & Gallicanism; Conclusion; & Bibliography.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypatia 16.1 (2001) 91-94 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Analyzing the Different Voice: Feminist Psychological Theory and Literary Texts Analyzing the Different Voice: Feminist Psychological Theory and Literary Texts. Edited by Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Philosophy has always recognized that we test our theories against our lived experience. John Stuart Mill argued for utilitarianism by showing that it is consistent with deeply held intuitions about moral deliberation, such as that everyone's interests should count equally. This is not to suggest that we arrive at appropriate theories by merely describing our experience. Instead, we may [End Page 91] argue for a philosophical view by showing that it is better able to explain more aspects of human experience, and our reactions to those experiences, than other available theories.Literature, then, is essential to philosophy. For literature is able to repre-sent human experience so that we identify and give importance to complexities we might not otherwise recognize in our own lives. When we read literature, we become involved in a situation according to a perspective that is not our own and we are surprised by events or phenomena that we might otherwise take for granted. Because it requires that we be differently involved, literary engagement sometimes makes us aware of expectations of which we are not self-conscious. To the extent, then, that we strive for theories that do not assume that everyone is like us, we ought to consider our theories in relation to various, select sorts of good literature.Analyzing the Different Voice uses literature to consider and develop recent theories about women's ways of approaching human development, morality, and knowledge. It draws on Carol Gilligan's "voice-centred psychology" (1982, xi) derived from Gilligan's recognition that women often speak differently about self, relationship, morality, adolescence, and other landmarks of human life. Women's voices, expressing new insights, resonances, and evidence, have, according to Gilligan, changed "the voice of human psychology" (1982, x). The book also draws on Women's Ways of Knowing (1986), which suggests that women are more inclined than men toward the "personal and political investedness of knowers and groups of knowers in what they know" (1986, 98). Analyzing the Different Voice aims at "matching the novelist's ear with a theoretical ear" (1998, xiii). It aims to use literature to build upon women's insights about voice in order to promote a different expression of human--not just women's--experience.The novels discussed add useful new dimensions to the notion of a "different voice." Consider, for instance, the fascinating account by Betty Sasaki (117-40) of the role of silence in Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981). Sasaki points out that while feminists have treated silence as an obstacle to self-expression and realization, silence is sometimes an appropriate response in situations in which there do not exist the recognition and conceptual resources that could promote understanding. Describing ways in which, for Kogawa's characters, silence is an "act of agency," Sasaki suggests that some feminist accounts misrepresent many women's struggle for meaningfulness by setting actual silence in opposition to the metaphorical "voice" of recent feminist theory. Sally Kitch's "Motherlands and Foremothers: African American Women's Texts and the Context of Relationships" is another paper which complicates the central notions of connectedness and relationship driving object relations models. Kitch points out that aspects of identity relevant to critical understanding are often explained not by connections to loved ones, or even people [End Page 92] we know, but by historical traditions and the symbols to which they give rise. Thus, they are "larger than a personal development project" (1998, 162). The experiences of the characters of the novels Kitch discusses might suggest that relationships are not as significant to women's development and self understanding as are the means available to us for interpreting relations and giving them importance.One frustrating feature of this book is precisely the inattention given to the theoretical resources available to us for situating and interpreting the intriguing examples...