Women and ReasonElizabeth D. Harvey, Kathleen Okruhlik University of Michigan Press, 1992 - 294 pages The idea of reason and its place in Western thought has long been a central topic for philosophers, histories, and cultural theorists. Some have claimed that since rationality is a male principle, the emphasis placed upon it has relegated women to secondary positions throughout the history of Western civilization. Women and Reason provides a revisionary assessment of the idea of reason and its relationship to femininity. The editors of this interdisciplinary collection have gathered essays that examine the concept of reason from a variety of perspectives and across a number of historical periods. Philosophers, philosophers of science, historians, literary critics, art historians, and theorists of culture address the idea of reason and how it has affected our notion of the feminine from the seventeenth century, the period many have seen as giving birth to our modern idea of rationality, to the present. Topics addressed include the place of women in seventeenth-century English culture, the relationship between women and religion in the writings of Francis Bacon and John Calvin, women and prophecy, and the relationship between gender and the origins of science. Examinations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and literature focus on the gendered linkage between madness and creativity and on abstract art's exclusion of the feminine. Other essays treat issues in feminist methodology such as whether reason and emotion are mutually exclusive, the role of experience in the construction of knowledge, and the place of language and consensus in the shaping of society. The result is a volume with far-reaching implications for the understanding of our cultural inheritance and for future feminist practice and theory. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, history, literary studies, art history, and the history and philosophy of science. |
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Page 121
... constructed on several levels . The most obvious way in which emotions are socially constucted is that children are taught deliberately what their culture defines as appro- priate responses to certain situations : to fear strangers , to ...
... constructed on several levels . The most obvious way in which emotions are socially constucted is that children are taught deliberately what their culture defines as appro- priate responses to certain situations : to fear strangers , to ...
Page 130
... constructed ; like all social constructs , they are historical products , bearing the marks of the society that constructed them . Within the very language of emotion , in our basic definitions and explanations of what it is to feel ...
... constructed ; like all social constructs , they are historical products , bearing the marks of the society that constructed them . Within the very language of emotion , in our basic definitions and explanations of what it is to feel ...
Page 159
... construct . " So , too , is the racial duality of black / white . But as such , each of these constructed dualities has had profound consequences for the experiences of those who " live " them . Feminism , in exposing the gendered ...
... construct . " So , too , is the racial duality of black / white . But as such , each of these constructed dualities has had profound consequences for the experiences of those who " live " them . Feminism , in exposing the gendered ...
Contents
Contents | 1 |
Feminist Methodology in the Social | 15 |
Smith | 19 |
Copyright | |
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Adam Adam's naming animals argues argument Arnauld artist bodily body Bordo Calvin Camille Claudel Cartesian claims cognitive Commentarie communicative reason conception constructed context creativity critical critiques culture defined Descartes desire difference discourse discussion dominant English epistemic epistemology essay Evelyn Fox Keller example exclusion experience feel Female Malady feminine Feminism feminist research feminist theory Fontenelle Francis Bacon gender Genesis Genevieve Lloyd George Eliot Grimshaw Habermas Habermas's human hysteria ideological individual intellectual interests James Spedding John John Calvin knowing knowledge London madness male Malebranche marriage Mary Astell masculine metaphor mind Mondrian moral nature notion objectivity oracles outlaw emotions patriarchal patriarchy perspective philosophy physical Plato political purity question rational reality relationship role scientific sense seventeenth century sexual Showalter social society Stanley and Wise subjects Susan Bordo Suzanne Valadon Symbolist thought tradition trans understanding University Press values Western woman women York