June 5, 2015 at 1:02 P.M. A package containing the form mentioned, allegedly from the U.S. Attorney's Office, has been mailed by overnight mail to Preet Bharara, Esq., U.S. Attorney for New York, via tracking number EK 773841028 US. Delivery is to take place on the next business day, Monday, June 8, 2015 before 12:00 Noon.
There are 15 pages included in the package of materials that are self-explanatory, including a previous overnight mail receipt for the same form already received by the U.S. Attorney for New York and a copy of the envelope in which the form was received by me (for the second time) purporting to come from the U.S. Justice Department's "Crime Reports Unit."
Inquiry indicates that there is no "Crime Reports Unit" in the U.S. Justice Department unlike the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, Jersey City, New Jersey.
May 18, 2015 at 1:24 P.M. I am in receipt of the exact same form allegedly sent to me once before by the U.S. Justice Department requesting information about the Invicta matter. Having previously returned this form to the Justice Department (which never sent it in the first place), I will now do the same, yet again, with proof of having supplied the requested form and information previously. Evidently, this "letter" was placed by hand in my mailbox.
Alterations in the sign-in page may be a prelude to new difficulties in signing-in to this blog. I will struggle to continue writing. ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
It may be that the U.S. Attorney and Justice Department are O.K. with New Jersey officials (or former officials) sending letters claiming to be the federal prosecutor's office.
These tactics appear to come from "R. Schnetzler" and "Fernando Fernandez." The goal may be to frustrate and discourage my efforts to pursue the truth in this matter. ("An Open Letter to Cyrus Vance, Jr., Esq.")
I will also continue to struggle for a resolution of the issues I have raised and for the truth from New Jersey. I will post the overnight mail receipt number at this blog for the new package to be sent to the U.S. Attorney for New York so that readers may follow the tracking number.
No doubt the size of the text in this essay will be altered or deformed, other attacks against this work must be expected. The text was altered 3 times on the first day that the work was posted.
May 16, 2015 at 12:33 P.M. A fire alarm was set off yesterday at NYPL, Morningside Heights branch. All library patrons were required to exit the facility. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete my writing session for the day at computer #4.
This is the fourth time the alarm has gone off in about a year, always when I am at a computer at this branch. I am sure that this is only a coincidence. ("How censorship works in America.")
What follows is a response to a collection of essays by self-described "feminist analytical philosophers" on epistemology and other issues within different branches of the subject.
I.
For decades philosophers have debated whether there are women's ways of knowing (or knowledge) and, if so, whether such knowledge and ways of knowing are (or should be) denigrated in our intellectual culture.
Feminist philosophers have recognized that attitudes about women and logic, or reasoning and truth have developed, historically, along gender lines because of the "sexism" that pervades Western intellectual culture.
So many issues are entangled or confused in this discussion that, as usual, very little progress can be made without some effort at clarity about the fundamental concepts that are inevitably implicated in the debate, or even in what is understood to be at issue in this controversy. ("Robert Brandom's 'Reason in Philosophy.'")
It is necessary to ask, initially, whether there are "women's ways of knowing" that are different from "men's ways of knowing" because granting the existence of such a sexual cognitive difference may confirm the very stereotypes feminists have opposed for centuries. (A dark twist on this problematic and a brilliant meditation on questions of consciousness, identity, power, gender and freedom is the recent film Ex Machina.)
If you admit a natural rather than artificial difference in men's as distinct from women's ways of knowing or thinking, you may expect that, soon, men's "ways of knowing" and reasoning will be deemed superior to "women's cognitive styles."
Acceptance of this tendentious distinction in how men and women "think," in other words, could lead to very unwelcome consequences for all women, especially for feminist intellectuals who are politically active. ("David Stove and the Intellectual Capacity of Women" and "Arthur Schopenhauer and the Metaphysics of Art.")
Setting aside this foundational difference or difficulty, the question becomes whether any alleged gender-difference in thinking depends on the nature of the "inquiry" rather than the cognitive skills of "inquirers."
Why is this issue of sex-based differences in thinking so troubling to analytical philosophy? Why is analytical philosophy at the same time so attractive to young women philosophers who often fail to see what have been called the "disturbing" sexist assumptions structural to any form of analytical logic or linguistic philosophy as a movement in twentieth century English-language thought?
Why assume or believe that analytical philosophy provides the only intellectually respectable or "scientific" way of doing philosophy in today's intellectual setting? Is the notorious "secondary role" for philosophy a "scientific" or philosophical conclusion as opposed to a mere prejudice? ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
When studying mathematics or chemistry, for example, will women who think well about the issues and subject-matter not reason exactly as men do to arrive at identical conclusions or "correct" answers? Will reasoning and conclusions necessarily differ for men as compared with (or opposed to) women scientists as well as male and female philosophers? Is the "form" of reasoning different for philosophers as distinct from scientists? If so, why does this difference exist? ("What is Memory?")
Is it easier to accept that men and women will differ over, say, Jane Austen's novels rather than the basic principles of logic? Why are culture or the arts trivialized as "lesser" or unimportant inquiries by analytical philosophers as compared with science as a model of "knowing"? Why is the attitude to the arts and culture so different in the Continental tradition? Is this assumption or distinction concerning what is "serious" or "rigorous" (to say nothing of what is "important") not part of the very sexism that feminist philosophers have struggled against?
Given the understanding of "rigor" or "powerful" argumentation admired within analytical philosophical circles it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, again, that so-called "masculine" notions of logos are structural to analytical philosophy of all varieties.
One way to begin exploring the issues is with an effort to achieve some much-desired and -needed "clarity" concerning what is meant by analytical philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition -- clarity from the people seeking "clarity" is most welcome -- then to look, specifically, at the branch of philosophy called "epistemology" that long predates the existence of analytical philosophy.
Has epistemology been "changed" by feminism apart from, or independently of, analytical philosophy, so that a comparison can be made? Has -- and, if so, in what ways -- feminist philosophy changed "everything" with regard to epistemology and metaphysics, not only ethics and politics or the arts and culture?
One way of examining the issue is to focus on a recent essay by a self-professed "analytical feminist." (See Part III of this essay.)
Feminism is seen by commentators as a general philosophical stance "relevant" to politics, law, ethics, even metaphysics and aesthetics, but how does feminism "apply" to epistemology?
"Relevant" is a problematic term in this context: Should feminism accept or reinvent analytical philosophy? Or is feminism inevitably "altered by" the discoveries in logic resulting from twentieth century analytical philosophy? ("Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.")
For reasons that I hope will become clear during the course of my discussion, I suggest that it is feminism that is the more important term in this discussion and not analytical philosophy.
Feminism changes all of Western philosophy if the full depth of the feminist critique in Modernity is taken to heart. It is not analytical philosophy that alters feminism, nor is analytical philosophy the only intellectually serious or respectable option for women and men in philosophy who are feminists.
If there are feminine ways of knowing in our society that are favored, presumably, by men and women then we may wonder whether these ways of knowing -- or intellectual methods -- are also reflective of the conditions affecting women (whatever "feminine" may mean to thinkers) to which feminists have objected because they are unequal and unjust in relation to the situation of men and the "masculine" (whatever that is). ("A Doll's Aria.")
Feminist concerns may extend to the foundational assumptions of analytical philosophy as a movement and/or to science as it is understood in our culture and not only to politics or law.
It would be surprising if a total critique of Western thought and knowledge were to exclude a major intellectual movement and style of thought in the contemporary world. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")
"Feminine" and "masculine" are contentious and tendentious terms as well as anything but clear concepts for reasons that go beyond the limits of analytical concerns. ("What you will ...")
To achieve clarity in terminology and in the use of concepts that are not only mistaken or confused, but which may actually be harmful, is not exactly ultimate progress in dealing with fundamental feminist issues.
It is better than nothing, I suppose, to realize what is confused or mistaken. However, if analytical philosophy (at best) can only take us so far as to demonstrate confusions and linguistic "muddles" then more than analytical philosophy will be needed to improve things for women and men.
To see the philosopher's role as limited to the achievement of such narrow clarity, on rare occasions, may ignore more substantive issues of values and/or justice as "ambiguous" and practical reforms as "non-philosophical."
This limited analytical role for philosophy seems mistaken and inaccurate as defining the boundaries of thought, or feminism, for many of the same reasons. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft" and "Master and Commander.")
Analytical philosophy is a notoriously ambiguous term that is an ominous label for a movement primarily concerned with "clarity" about language and precision in conceptual thought. The term analytical philosophy does not merely identify a single group of philosophers sharing core values and principles for the study of the subject focusing on "analysis" of the propositional contents of sentences, close examination of logic in reasoning, concepts, terms, or "logical form" with the primary goal of achieving clarity in substantive discussion of underlying issues in human ethical and political life, say, or concerning the ultimate nature of existence.
Rather, analytical philosophy has dispensed, for the most part, with all substantive discussions to become obsessively concerned with logic, linguistics, concepts and speech, seemingly, for their own sakes from the perspective of an outside observer:
"Analysis, as practiced by Russell and Moore, concerned not language per se, but concepts and propositions. In their eyes, while it did not exhaust the domain of philosophy analysis provides a vital tool for laying bare the logical form of reality [emphasis added] ... Today, it is difficult to find much unanimity in the ranks of analytical philosophers. There is, perhaps, an implicit respect for argument and clarity -- an evolving though informal argument as to what problems are and are not tractable, and a conviction that philosophy is in some sense continuous with science. The practice of analytic philosophers to address one another rather than the broader public has led some to decry philosophy's 'professionalization' and to call for a return to a pluralistic, community-oriented style of philosophizing. Analytic philosophers respond by pointing out that analytic technique and standards have been well represented in the history of philosophy."
Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1995), pp. 22-23.
Does reality have a "logical form"? This seems to be a doubtful proposition:
"For Bohr, quite simply, '[t]here is no quantum world. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.' On this view -- endorsed with certain reservations by [Bas] van Frassen -- there is no point in seeking a more 'complete ' (i.e. realist or causal-explanatory) theory of the kind proposed by physicists such as Einstein, Shrodinger, and Bohm."
Christopher Norris, "Is it possible to be a realist about quantum mechanics?," in Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism (New York & London: Routledge, 2000), p. 30.
For comparisons, see Ted Hondreich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995), pp. 28-29 and Simon Blackburn, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1994), pp. 14-15.
For philosophers to presume to instruct physicists on the nature of empirical reality as distinct from the "meaning" of reality or ultimate truth is bizarre.
For a powerful critique of the analytic-linguistic movement, see Brand Blanshard, "The Philosophy of Analysis," in H.D. Lewis, ed., Clarity is Not Enough (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), pp. 76-100 then Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (Illinois: La Salle, 1962), pp. 382-381:
"Here we come again to the fundamental view of philosophy and the linguistic view. On the standard view, philosophy is an attempt to gain fuller and clearer knowledge by reflecting on the nature of things; on the linguistic [analytical] view at what seems to me its best, it is still an attempt to gain such knowledge, but now by ridding one's language of absurdities. The chief criticism we have offered is that the only way to detect these absurdities is to consider the objects thought of [and not merely the language used to express them.]" (Reason and Analysis, pp. 367-368.)
Among philosophers taking up the critique of analytical limitations from within the analytical camp many distinguished recent thinkers -- including Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, Edward Craig and others -- may be mentioned.
Analytic or analytical philosophy, then, founds philosophy on linguistic clarity and the disciplined as well as careful definition of terms together with precise conceptual usage and adherence to logic regardless of the goals of thought.
Logic is placed at the center of the philosopher's tool-kit and efforts along with respect for the methods and findings of science. There may be no "goals of thought," we are told, except for "thinking well about thinking well."
One could be an "analytical philosopher" and also a sexist, or many other unpleasant things, without these beliefs and habits affecting the quality of one's philosophical work for other analytical philosophers. ("Hilary Putnam is Keeping It Real.")
Analytical philosophy views the essence of philosophy as instrumental, methodological, incidental to ultimate purposes or values.
Much the same is true of science for such instrumentalist thinkers: Science is "good" based on whether it works, as science or technology, whether in building a hydrogen bomb or developing antibiotics for logical positivists and analytical-linguistic logicians.
Analytical philosophers hope for a scholarly and scientifically-minded form of inquiry among "experts" as opposed to a civilized dialogue concerning the great questions of life to which all are invited.
Cultural factors play a marginal (or no role) in philosophical efforts for analytical thinkers whereas they are much more important for Continental philosophers who tend to concentrate on a different list of distinguished thinkers when drawing from the history and literature of philosophy in their scholarly efforts.
Comparisons between, say, P.F. Strawson's (analytical) writings and the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Continental) provide a useful contrast to illustrate the differences in styles and also where the two traditions in Western thought are found today:
"The self-conscious employment of the linguistic method produced brilliant and often amazing results. It destroyed much and revealed much. It should continue to play a great part in philosophy, acting as an indispensable control on extravagance, absurdity, and over-simplification; revealing more and more of the fascinating substructure of our thinking. But it no longer appears that it can, by itself, satisfy all the demands of philosophical inquiry. Above all, it cannot by itself satisfy all the persistent philosophical craving for generality, for the discovery of unifying pattern or structure in our conception of the world."
P.F. Strawson, "The Post-Linguistic Thaw," Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011), p. 74.
And Hans-Georg Gadamer explains:
"Being that can be understood is language. ... However, the traditional formation of ideas, especially the hermeneutic circle of whole and part, which is the starting point of any attempt to lay the foundations of hermeneutics, [or social theory,] does not necessarily require this conclusion. The idea of the whole is itself to be understood only relatively. The totality of meaning that has to be understood in history or tradition is never the meaning of the totality of history."
Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982), pp. xxii-xxiii. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")
II.
Analytical philosophy relies on crucial epistemological assumptions concerning what constitutes philosophical "knowledge" if there is such knowledge:
"Epistemology" is understood as the "study of knowledge, and logos, explanation, the study of the nature of knowledge and justification; specifically, the study of (a) the defining features; (b) the substantive conditions, and (c) the limits of knowledge and justification ..."
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 233.
Analytical philosophers hold that linguistic imprecision, ambiguities, confusions and the absence of logical sophistication largely explain theoretical difficulties which can be removed from thought or discourse leading to total "elimination of nonsense" in thought. Presumably, all philosophical confusions may some day be "dissipated." ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")
Opposed to this view is the idea that philosophical issues concerning good and evil, for example, consciousness and justice, freedom and love are far more than linguistic puzzles or confusions. Such concepts (however "ambiguous" they may be) and the discussions to which they lead inhere in the "human condition."
Accordingly, these issues or problems will never be "eliminated" from human life, fortunately, nor will they ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. The value of philosophy for many thinkers lies in the struggle to come to terms with such questions and/or to resolve them for oneself.
It may be that puzzlement about ultimate questions and spiritual/intellectual suffering resulting from the human inability to answer these questions, definitively or permanently, is part of what persons and civilized societies are defined by and not a form of neurosis or illness and/or obfuscation, or confusion, to be cured by being "clarified" away thanks to the efforts of Oxbridge logicians of any (or all) genders. ("Bernard Williams and Identity" then "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Curiously, for analytical philosophers -- who are suddenly admired by many self-professed feminists -- "nonsense" (Wittgenstein's "language on holiday") tends to be identified with such "feminine" concerns as doubts about identity in metaphysics, alterity studies in ethics, or (say) gender issues as epistemological-political problems; whereas "clarity" is associated with "masculine" rigor and powerful argumentation that is "truly logical" and focused on war and money or big trucks, perhaps, and other allegedly important subjects. (Again: "Judith Butler and Gender Theory" then "Cornel West and Universality" and "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")
Analytical philosophy's foundational assumptions and values, furthermore, concerning what is meant by precision and logical rigor cannot escape the controversial sexist assumptions that are central to the feminist critique of Western thought that includes analytical philosophy.
The feminist critique is now several centuries old and long predates the existence of analytical philosophy.
Feminism has challenged the "theft of the logos" by the so-called "masculine subject" of Western thought as reflective of inequality in power and culture by men as compared with women in our civilization as a whole.
Logic, reasoning, intelligence and many other aspects of our intellectual culture are subject to this critique which is valid in many respects, overstated in other respects, certainly a matter of continuing debate and controversy. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review" and "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")
For a feminist to accept or identify with the premises of analytical philosophy, as traditionally understood, also as distinct from disciplined and serious logical thought in general, or within rival traditions, may be to "give away the game."
This acceptance by feminists reflects the pervasiveness of the offensive sexism that is the enemy (Foucault, Butler), but which is deeply ingrained in us long before we study philosophy -- or anything else -- at a sophisticated level. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question.")
We are told that logic and science-dominated forms of discourse are what "real men" must specialize in, as philosophers, in order to be taken seriously by their colleagues even when these "real men" are women who call themselves feminists. ("Oh, to be in India.")
Why are such "no-nonsense" approaches taken seriously?
"No-nonsense," evidently, means science-based and logic-centered (this may be contradictory) whereas "nonsense" presumably means focused on the arts and language more generally or upon the examination of social forms. "Nonsense" is often a powerful and deadly force in human societies that should be exposed as nonsense rather trivialized and/or ignored by lofty philosophers. ("Behaviorism is Evil.")
What constitutes "nonsense" in discussions of human subjectivity and its creations, like legal systems or art works and religions, may not be the sort of issue best resolved by logicians and math geeks who tend to assume one controversial definition of what is nonsensical or the opposite.
Analytical philosophy -- like spontaneity -- has its time and place.
After women have dealt with society's serious philosophical questions, for instance, it may be O.K. to let men quibble about logic and language by deploying their curious "male logic," but we should never confuse important questions of life and death with issues pertaining to tenure or publication in Mind. Seriousness may not require solemnity, nor mathematical or logical notation in one's essays.
If there are dismissals of "feminine logic" then why not dismissals of "male logic"? "Why not" indeed. ("A Doll's Aria.")
Philosophy can be written elegantly, or by way of literary and other artistic works, without any necessary loss of rigor. Among the open questions in philosophy is: "What constitutes a sound argument?" What is "cogency" as opposed to "persuasiveness"? Where do we draw the line between rhetoric and logic? (Again: "Bernard Williams and Identity" and "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness" then "The Allegory of the Cave" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")
Continental skepticism, grounded in the works of Butler, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva and Lacan is outlawed as "non-professional" by mainstream or traditionally-minded analytical philosophers, mistakenly believing that they are very daring in their views, when they are merely repeating the prejudices of their elders in a new vocabulary.
Simone Weil and other thinkers have argued for a place for mystery in philosophy as well as the arts. This suggestion is anathema to analytical philosophy.
There seems to be a horror among analytical philosophers of "mere" literary or cultural theory. This has always seemed bizarre, to me, because all philosophy is literary in the sense that the entire tradition is concerned with written texts and their interpretations.
Professionalization of philosophy and attempts to eliminate metaphysics may turn out to be only another of the ideologies of the twentieth century.
Not only are such ideologies absurd in the new century, but they may tend to reinforce hateful sexist and racist assumptions about the nature and merits of different styles of writing and thought concerning philosophical issues that are eternal and inescapable for persons everywhere. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?")
In the introduction to a recent collection of scholarly essays by "analytical feminist philosophers" much is made of comments by John Silber and Colin McGinn concerning the triviality of feminist contributions to philosophy in the English-language analytical tradition. Notice how specific and narrow is the claim made by Professors Silber and McGinn.
I believe that these men are mistaken in their views as evidenced, to take only two examples out of many, by Jennifer Hornsby's and Jane Heal's recent writings within the analytical philosophical tradition.
I am sure, however, that McGinn's and Silber's comments were not intended as an insult of women philosophers. Rather, the focus was on the definition of analytical philosophy as "separate" from political philosophy and other types of philosophical writings dealing with topics other than logic and epistemology concerned with applied philosophy.
It is the "separateness" issue which is taken for granted by McGinn and Silber, but not by me.
If feminism is accurate there is no aspect of our thinking that is entirely "separate" from sexist-power relations. If one accepts the standard definition of analytical philosophy (or calls oneself an analytical philosopher), however, then McGinn and Silber may be correct. None of this is to suggest the nonsensical claim that "it's all relative." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
It would surprise us if Wall Street financiers were to identify themselves as "Marxist Communist Revolutionaries." It is equally surprising for active and politically-aware feminists to call themselves "analytical philosophers" implying that their primary professional interest is neutral analysis of language and logical precision in "thought about thought" as opposed to the politics of the real world and violence against, as well as oppression of, women. (Compare "Not One More Victim!" with "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")
Much of the hostility to the opinions of Silber and McGinn by women in philosophy results from serious misunderstanding of the issue between philosophers in the various schools who do not seem to agree upon, or appreciate, what is meant by "analytical philosophy," logic, epistemology, or even feminism.
If disagreement and confusions, along with failures to achieve mutual understanding concerning the scope of the issues, is so common among analytical philosophers, it makes sense that such confusions and misunderstandings are also a daily reality in academia and politics, more generally, and in legal controversies pertaining to women's issues.
Before women in philosophy "burn the books" of Professors Silber and McGinn -- who are not David Stove-like misogynists -- consider the comments of feminist philosopher Susan Haack in opposition to the very idea of a "feminist analytical epistemology":
"The rubric 'feminist epistemology' is incongruous on its face, in somewhat the way of, say, 'Republican epistemology.' And the puzzlement this prompts is rather aggravated than mitigated by the bewildering variety of epistemological ideas described as 'feminist.' Among self-styled feminist epistemologists one finds quasi-foundationalists, coherentists, contextualists; proponents of epistemic naturalism, and unabashed relativists; some who stress connectedness, community, the social aspects of knowledge, and who stress emotion, presumably subjective and personal; some who stress concepts of epistemic virtue; some who want the 'androcentric' norms of the 'epistemological' [tradition] to be replaced by 'gynocentric' norms, and some who advocate a descriptive approach; etc., etc. Even where there is apparent agreement, e.g., that feminist epistemology will stress the social aspects of knowledge, it often [leads to] significant disagreement about what this means: that cooperative inquiry is better than individual inquiry; that epistemic inquiry is community-relative; that only a social group, not an individual, can properly be said to inquire or to know; that reality is socially constructed, and so forth. As Louise Antony observes, 'there simply is no substantive consensus position among feminists working in epistemology.' ..."
Susan Haack, "Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist," in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (Chicago: U. Chi. Press, 1998), pp. 124-125.
Professor Haack is led to an obvious conclusion:
"Sometimes we are told that feminist epistemology represents 'women's ways of knowing.' This reversion to the notion of 'thinking like a woman' is disquietly reminiscent of old sexist stereotypes -- as, for example, Andrea Nye's 'feminist critique of logic' disquietly echoes those old complaints that women are 'so illogical.' Still, there are disquieting truths, so this doesn't settle the matter." Ibid.
Professor Haack expresses serious doubts about any notion of an analytical feminist epistemology or exclusively linguistic philosophy, as a pragmatist, because analytical philosophy of all varieties in order to be properly called ANALYTICAL philosophy aims at a gender-neutral, objective, science-like approach to the examination of the propositional content of sentences as well as language/thought on the assumption that philosophical issues reveal confusions in language, lack of clarity, category mistakes.
To be an advocate for women or favor "women's cognitive styles" necessarily places a thinker outside the scope of analytical philosophy.
It seems to me far more important to advocate the need for philosophy for women -- who are required to appreciate the absurdity of many of the values and concepts used to injure them -- than to be a "proper" analytical philosopher whatever that may be.
It is at least doubtful for many students adhering to different philosophical approaches whether the goal of philosophy is only clarity in thought or expression.
Analytical philosophy has certainly made contributions to the development of linguistics and is also valuable, instrumentally, for any number of reasons to students of philosophy. However, given what analytical philosophy means, the concerns of philosophers in that movement or school are -- and must be -- secondary to what, I believe, is central to philosophical inquiry and especially to philosophers with a feminist commitment.
Philosophy should be concerned with genuine intellectual issues, I have suggested, or the problems of meaning and purpose experienced by persons in every historical period -- problems irremovable from what used to be called "the human condition."
Political philosophy is not, primarily, about the analysis of language-use or logic of conceptual usage, even if such analyses and sharp intellectual skills, again, are undeniably useful in developing such philosophy.
That subject matter is concerned with the attempt to resolve dilemmas of justice in society, for instance, the plight of women, and issues pertaining to the contents of reality, or what may be called knowledge versus opinion, balancing competing values and defining identity as well as other issues of metaphysics and culture, or comparing religious traditions.
If you see the proper subject-matter of philosophy as limited to linguistic usage or focused on the clarity of statements then substantive questions concerning gender, race, poverty and power, meaning and religion will be deemed beyond the scope of philosophy.
Students posing such ultimate questions will be directed to "linguistic therapists." Worse, many charlatans will appear offering snake oil solutions to ordinary metaphysical or existential anxieties.
I am confident that profound questions of meaning and metaphysics belong in philosophy and are even central to what philosophy is and should be about or "for." The point of developing philosophical intelligence must be to improve the effort to cope with (if not to resolve) such weighty issues.
Logical positivism, logic-based or Oxford-style philosophy and other once dominant ways of doing philosophy in the English-speaking world will always be inadequate to the task of philosophy if they are limited to methodological objectives. Clarity is not enough for philosophers.
Philosophy is not merely an "adjuct to the sciences" whose purpose is linguistic purity. Pluralistic methods, different styles and ways of doing philosophy are needed that are respectful of the humanistic and humane (traditional and non-traditional) values of the discipline:
" ... to say all philosophic problems have arisen out of verbal confusions seems to me almost certainly false; I do not think that the problems of evil and immortality first pressed themselves on men's minds because of linguistic confusions, nor do I think that when we now wonder whether chairs and tables continue to be when unobserved has anything to do with language or has a linguistic cure. But even if every philosophical problem without exception arose out of linguistic confusions, it would still not follow that philosophy is essentially the detection and correction of such confusions. When one takes a gun and goes hunting in a populous jungle, one's failures will probably arise from the misuse of one's instrument, but the aim of hunting is not simply to avoid such mistakes."
Blanshard, "The Philosophy of Analysis," in Clarity is Not Enough, p. 105.
III.
Professor Anne E. Crudd promises to concentrate in her essay contribution to a celebrated collection upon the works of "feminists working in the analytic tradition of feminist philosophy." (p. 15.)
Professor Crudd speaks confidently of "feminist philosophy's contributions to all of the major areas of philosophy." (p. 15.)
Presumably, this contribution includes feminist logic, feminist philosophy of mathematics and science, feminist epistemology and metaphysics.
Given what analytical philosophy is understood to mean, however, the notion of a single feminist analytical epistemology or logic appears "problematic" as they say in the faculty lounge.
Please contrast Anne E. Crudd, "Resistance is (Not) Futile: Analytical Feminism's Relation to Political Philosophy," in Sharon L. Crasnow & A.M. Superson, eds., Out From the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2012), p. 15 with Walter Brogan & James Risser, eds., "Introduction," in American Continental Philosophy: A Reader (Indiana: Indiana U. Press, 2000), pp. 1-15. (Contributions from Continental philosophers Judith Butler, Seyla Benhabib, along with many others.)
It is articles such as Professor Crudd's essay, I suspect, that Professors McGinn and Silber object to in their infamous comments: Kantian scholar John Silber, for example, attacked the notion of a separate feminist logic and epistemology as an "assault on reason." (Crudd, p. 16.)
Professor McGinn said: "Feminism now has a place in many philosophy departments, for good or ill, but it has not made any impact on the core areas of the subject." (Crudd, p. 16.)
Much depends on how Professor McGinn is using the word "subject" in this statement. Perhaps some analytical clarity is called for: If by "subject" is meant "analytical philosophy in 'traditional' Oxbridge terms" then he is correct, perhaps or "arguably"; but if Mr. McGinn is suggesting that feminism is irrelevant to all of the philosophy of the last two hundred years, analytical or otherwise, then he is certainly mistaken.
Given Professor McGinn's assumed premise concerning what analytical philosophy "is" his statement may be accurate. The declaration has certainly endeared Professor McGinn to new generations of feminist scholars. (Much depends on the definition of "is" in this statement as Bill Clinton will remind us.)
It is equally bizarre that Professor Crudd alludes to great contributions to analytical political philosophy by feminists since classical analytical philosophers generally regard political theory as outside the scope of their style of philosophy. Professor Crudd provides the examples of Judith Butler and Seyla Benhabib to illustrate her point, but they are both Continental philosophers and the opposite of "analytical." (Crudd, p. 16.)
As a matter of fact, all of the themes focused upon by Professor Crudd as "revolutionary" have been standard themes of political theory in the Continental tradition for more than a century.
The social nature of identity and critiques of the liberal subject date, at least, from the writings of Rousseau and Hegel as well as Marx, all of whom were men and hardly "feminists," even if their ideas have been used by recent feminists offering new interpretations of their writings that would have horrified these men.
Professor Crudd fails to realize that philosophy is not and should not be ideology.
Philosophy is also not identical with political advocacy. Philosophy should be much more of a shared search for truth. This understanding of philosophy assumes 1). truth exists; 2). intelligent and professional inquirers can obtain or achieve truth; 3). it is at least possible to communicate, truthfully, with others concerning philosophical issues so that the effort to do so is worthwhile. There may even be "truth" in political philosophy.
The enemy of philosophical study and effort is not (I hope) the "male gender" (whatever that may be) or "mainstream" philosophy (whatever that is), but ignorance and nihilism, or acceptance of the futility of all philosophical work. Resistance is not futile? (Again: "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Professor Crudd's suggestion is that the "feminist approach gradually becomes the analysis of the influence of gender more generally on what had always been seen as the central topics and issues of the field, [analytical philosophy?] branching eventually to the analysis [emphasis added] of masculinism [?] as well." (Crudd, p. 17.)
This is to place philosophy outside the definition of the analytical tradition that Professor Crudd ostensibly defends.
In appropriating the label "analytical" for what, I interpret, as her ideology, Professor Crudd does not offer a definition of feminism as a philosophy, does not make clear what she means by analytical philosophy, nor does she identify "mainstream philosophy or philosophers," except for McGinn (analytical) and Silber (Kantian), neither of whom is particularly "mainstream." ("Colin McGinn's Naughty Book.")
Much of the difficulty (for me) in reading Crudd's fairly typical essay in this collection is wading through a trendy, politically correct, jargon-studded academic prose that contains many sentences such as this:
"When one is not opposing it, but simply going with the dominant flow of thought, it can be difficult to see that [what?] as involving epistemic or moral error." (Crudd, p. 18.)
This sentence may be meaningless. It is difficult to tell what the words are even intended to convey. Is it the "dominant flow of thought" or "going along with it" that involves epistemic or moral error? What is the "dominant flow of thought"? Is this an example of the analytical and logical precision that we may come to expect from professional analytic philosophers?
Presumably, this statement indicates that Professor Crudd is an "ethical cognitivist" who accepts the possibility of "moral error" and a "realist" about truth who asserts the existence of epistemic error.
Professor Crudd "identifies and presents as" a "linguistic analyst" who insists on high standards of clarity in philosophical prose and fails to acknowledge any of these categories or even the issues arising from the use of these terms. ("Whatever" and "Why Jane Can't Read.")
None of the traditional or "mainstream" ideas involved in these assertions are defined by the author. Furthermore, this quoted sentence is far from the most confused or incoherent statement in Crudd's essay.
Incidentally, Professor Crudd, "Annette Baier" (Kantian) and "Virginia Held" (Kantian-Rawlsian) may be aligned with politically Conservative philosophers like Robert Nozick or Roger Scruton and are not "analytical philosophers."
If analytical or linguistic philosophy seeks the clarification of concepts, focuses on logical precision and rigor in argument, is respectful of science, then the method must be available, equally, to men and women studying philosophical issues of all kinds.
If feminist thinkers are concerned -- as I am -- that Western rationality is infected with sexist notions of truth and knowledge then they are raising a meta-critique of the entire intellectual project of Western civilization and identifying a weakness or flaw best found, perhaps, in analytical philosophy and other similar developments. Accordingly, to speak of analytical feminist epistemology and logic seems absurd. The lapse into total incoherence by Professor Crudd is difficult to miss:
" ... feminism has continued to challenge the mainstream and build coherent and complex critiques of mainstream political philosophy. Analytic feminism has walked a fine line between these twin dangers and the internal critique of feminism that it [what?] has tried to present." (Crudd, p. 29.)
Please tell me who are the "mainstream philosophers" intending to "exclude feminists"? Who counts as an "analytical feminist"? What is "analytical feminism"?
Feminism, again, is a world view that is much broader than analytical philosophy which may be held by Conservatives -- even much-dreaded Republicans -- such as Mary Anne Glendon and many others. Feminism is not monolithic in method or (except at the most general level) in objectives.
Continental thought is much freer than analytical philosophy and allows more room for the type of project sought by many of the contributors to this misclassified collection of essays by women in philosophy.
Many of the essays in this collection seem like examples of the point being made by Professor McGinn.
There are philosophers reinventing analytical methods to cope with public issues and controversies. For example, Jennifer Hornsby on pornography and issues of women's rights as well as Susan Hack uniting pragmatism with analytical and logical precision. Maria Pia Lara, in the Continental tradition, applies phenomenological-hermeneutics to questions of evil that are relevant to feminists. Judith Butler applies the same methods to gender issues and other political matters. Existentialists Mary Midgley and Mary Warnock have used philosophical discipline to deal with questions of applied ethics. The same may be said of Marxist Angela Davis and Hegelian Kimberly Hutchins or Kantian Christine Korsgaard.
There are many options beyond analytical philosophy which is often described as "bankrupt" these days. Women interested in philosophy need not be tied down to analytical approaches that are far from satisfactory or without the taint of sexism.
Feminists have placed foundational and methodological issues back on the agenda of philosophical scholarship in the twenty-first century. The battles fought by generations of feminists to win a new freedom of approach for students should not be lost now by an uncritical acceptance of logic-centered and science-dominated philosophical methods that are being modified or discarded in their places of origin.
"I came to philosophy in the hope of revelations about how things are. Analysis is interesting enough at a subordinate level, and I have devoted a lot of time to it, but as a conception of philosophy it is hopelessly inadequate, above all because no problems of substance are soluble by it. The solution of important and interesting problems always calls for new ideas, new explanatory theories, and it is for these, not for analysis, that we look to philosophers of genius. Many are the reliable professionals who can carry out a workmanlike analysis of any given set of arguments or concepts. All that this task requires, over and above a certain minimum level of professional competence, is time, concentration, thoroughness and assiduity. It is certainly hard work, and those who can bring to it an extra flair and a deeper than ordinary level of penetration make personal reputations. But the difference between doing this [analysis] and producing new ideas is like the difference between being a musicologist and being a composer."
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Western Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 398 and Brand Blanshard, "Sanity in Thought and Art," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (La Salle: Open Court, 1973), p. 249. ("A hundred years from now men [and women] will look back with wonder at eminent philosophers insisting that the business of philosophy is with linguistic usage.")
Sources:
Linda Alcoff & Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemology (London: Routledge, 1993).
Brenda Almond, The Philosopher's Quest (New York & London: Penguin, 1988).
Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1995).
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Random House, 1974), H.M. Parsley, trans.
Simon Blackburn, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1994).
Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (Illinois: La Salle, 1962).
Brand Blanshard, "The Philosophy of Analysis," in H.D. Lewis, ed., Clarity is Not Enough (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), pp. 76-100.
Brand Blanshard, "Sanity in Thought and Art," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (Illinois; La Salle - Open Court, 1973).
F.H. Bradley, Writings On Logic and Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 3-100. ("Judgment, in the strict sense, does not exist where there exists no knowledge of truth and falsehood; and, since truth and falsehood depend on the relation of our ideas to reality, you cannot have judgment proper without ideas.")
Walter Brogan & James Risser, eds., American Continental Philosophy: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 2000).
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004).
Claudia Card, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2003), pp. 168-189. (See especially Judith Butler's contribution to this anthology or her critical commentary on the French philosopher's works.)
Nancy J. Chodorow, Feminities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (Lexington: U. Kentucky, 1992).
Drucilla Cornell, Beyond Accomodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). (The feminist reading of Derrida. "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
Anne E. Crudd, "Resistance is (Not) Futile: Analytical Feminism's Relation to Political Philosophy," in Sharon L. Crassnow & Anita M. Superson, eds., Out From the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2012).
Angela Davis, An Autobiography (New York: International, 1974).
Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Vintage, 1983).
Thomas Doherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1993), pp. 363-443. (Postmodernist Feminism that is non-analytical.)
Emma Donohue, Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2010). (Sensitivity, perception, emotional knowing as expressed in literature by women for all readers.)
Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and the Love Between Women From the Renaissance to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1987). (Women's "secret" ways of "knowing" and "sharing.")
Anthony Flew, How to Think Straight (Chicago: La Salle, 1995). (No irony intended.)
Marjorie Garber, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: Paladin, 1991).
Susan Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1998).
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reunification of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (New York: Cornell U. Press, 1991).
Jane Heal, Fact and Meaning: Quine and Wittgenstein On the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
Ted Hondereich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995). (An extreme feminist claim is that "logic is a phallic and patriarchal device for coercing other people." See p. 132 et seq.)
Jennifer Hornsby, "Descartes, Rorty and the Mind/Body Fiction," in Alan Malachowski, ed., Reading Rorty (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 41. ("Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.")
Kimberly Hutchins, Hegel and Feminist Philosophy (London: Polity, 2013).
Christine Korsgaad, "Kant," in Robert J. Cavalier, James Gournilock, James P. Sterba, eds., Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).
Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1996).
Patricia Jagentowicz-Mills, ed., Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Interpretations of Hegel (Pennsylvania: U. Penn. Press, 1996), pp. 109-119, pp. 299-321. (A volume in this series is devoted to Kant.)
Alison Jaggar, "Love and Knowledge: Emotion in a Feminist Epistemology," in Women, Knowledge, and Reality (Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1989), pp. 127-155. (F.H. Bradley on emotion in judgment; Sartre on "the transcendence of the ego.")
Judith Jarvis Thomson, Rights, Restitution, and Risk: Essays in Moral Theory (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1980). (The epistemology of abstract thought experiments in the abortion debate.)
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Western Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1997).
Colin McGinn, The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth Century Philosophy (New York: Harper-Collins, 2002).
Carolyn McMillan, Woman, Reason, and Nature (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1982).
Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism (Boston: Northwestern, 1992). (Foucault on the strictures of power in alignment with concepts of gender as formulating the "episteme" -- or regime of knowledge -- under which we cannot avoid thinking and/or resisting sexism within our culture. The trajectory from "The Order of Things" to "Discipline and Punish" then "The History of Sexuality" in terms of feminist concerns is explicit. "Whatever.")
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Penguin, 1992). (The inescapable moral dimension to personhood and the "call" of the other. Notice the influence of Simone Weil on Murdoch's thinking.)
Christopher Norris, Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism (New York & London: Routledge, 2000).
Camille Paglia, Vamps & Tramps (New York: Random House, 1994).
Janet Radcliffe-Richards, The Skeptical Feminist: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston: Routledge & Keegan, 1980).
John R. Silber, "The Copernican Revolution in Ethics: The Good Re-examined," in R.P. Wolff, ed., Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Anchor, 1967), p. 266.
P.F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen & Co., 1952). (Classic treatment of analytical themes in philosophy and logic.)
P.F. Strawson, Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011).
Nancy Tuana, The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman's Nature (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1993).
Mary Warnock, Women Philosophers (London: J.M. Dent, 1996).
Mary Whiton Calkins, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy (New York: MacMillan, 1917). (A neglected masterpiece of American philosophy which is a "book-within-a-book" -- or a work that is "in disguise" -- by a major early twentieth century thinker who studied under Royce, James, and Santayana. The original publication date is 1917, but the work was written earlier. The book anticipates developments in Continental thought nearly a century later, especially Gadamerian hermeneutics and Derrida's "deconstruction.")
Bruce Wilshire, Fashionable Nonsense: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy (New York: SUNY, 2002).
Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London: Penguin, 1982). (Still the indispensable work to read when beginning the study of modern feminist thought. I recommend both Janet Todd's massive biography and Claire Tomalin's more literary biographical work for those fascinated, as I am, by one of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, Ms. Wolstonecraft. The original publication date for this masterpiece was 1792. "William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft" and "Master and Commander.")
