On the Very Idea of a “Feminist” Philosophy: Reply to Gary Gutting

Comment published in New York Times online blog, in response to Gary Gutting (Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame), “Feminism and the Future of Philosophy,” “The Stone” (Philosophy Column), New York Times, September 18, 2017, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/opinion/feminist-philosophy-future.html?comments

Surely the very idea of a feminist philosophy is based on the assumptions that (1) men and women characteristically think in different ways, and (2) our society still privileges the ways in which men think. From these assumptions, it is hard to escape the conclusion that women are liberated by the institution of a normative femininity, which by definition would be more fair to women by being less so to men. This might also be a consequence of a failure to distinguish between the two senses of "power" that Antonio Negri identified in his study of Spinoza: potentiality and domination. Historically at least, women have been much better than men at understanding emotions, their own and those of others, and personal relationships. This superiority is easily used as a weapon. 

We need to struggle against gender normativities of every kind; being accidentally of a certain disposition is fine, but making it a norm is something else. The very idea of a feminist philosophy surely can only mean a project to institute a "feminine" style of thinking. Whether there is such a thing may be the question. Mathematics rightly seems to have no history, because its history is not part of it, and cannot be. A different politics would result if thinking has no gender, in which case feminism would be a matter of achieving equality of persons, but not of changing how people are expected to think. If there are two more ways of thinking that are valid, they should both or all be learned.