The Theoretical Source of Contemporary Feminist Epistemology

Contemporary feminist epistemology consists of three main theoretical sources: 1) Western feminism and its development;2) traditional perspective on science and;3) postmodernist epistemology.Specifically,it embraces four parts: 1) gender awareness based on women's psychology;2) the feminist view of politics of liberation;3)critique of scientific reason;4) a mode of sympathetic understanding.Women's psychology and gender awareness produce the notion of gender oppression and gender equality;the feminist view of politics of liberation as a political cultural gene,after a number of transmutations,leads to the dichotomy of male and female,as well as that of male cognition and female cognition;reflections on scientific reason naturally involve the idea that faith can be changed,and provide men with a gender-based criterion on the shaping of knowledge as a social process;and the mode of sympathetic understanding satisfies men's value-focused quest for the origin of knowledge,raising the idea of cognitive relativity,non-neutrality and the possible existence of subjective preference.A brief introduction above concerning the relation between these four factors and feminist epistemology is to show that contemporary feminist epistemology is a branch of philosophical thought based on the West's unique social-historical background and political culture.