Hegel and Feminist Social Criticism: Justice, Recognition, and the Feminine

GAUTHIER, Jeffrey A. Hegel and Feminist Social Criticism: Justice, Recognition, and Feminine. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Cloth, n.p.--In this book Jeffrey A. Gauthier attempts to link moral and political theory to contemporary feminist theory in a way that he hopes will prove useful to feminism. The book is divided into three parts: first develops Gauthier's interpretation of Hegel in relation to Kantian procedural ethics, second applies this interpretation to feminist philosophical criticisms, and third deals more specifically with extending de Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master/slave dialectic to issues of victimization and self-realization in feminist debates. In part 1 (Emergent and normativity in Hegel) Gauthier reads Hegel's historicization of Kant's notion of moral law as incorporating a moment of Kantian universalism, namely the right of agent to fred his interests and desires embodied by society (p. xiv). At same time, Hegel introduces un-Kantian emphases on role of institutions, social practices, interests, and desires that render access to perspective always partial and to some degree opaque. This makes claims to perspectives in morality fallible and relative, but also, Gauthier argues, susceptible to development and transformation when those making these claims are confronted with alternative perspectives. Part 2 (Feminist Justice and Historical Realism) argues that practice of feminist consciousness raising in 1960s and 70s presents a paradigm case of Hegelian mediation of universal discussed in part 1. That is, consciousness raising provided a forum for voicing particular interests and thereby eventually led to a transformation of larger social and institutional gender norms. Gauthier takes up Cheshire Calhoun's analysis of responsibility and blame for sexism, arguing for a alternative--a historicized approach that views agents as bearers of potential but still `unactualized' agency (p. 83), and hence as morally culpable despite their embeddedness in a sexist framework. Using Alison Jaggar's discussion of outlaw emotions as a starting point, Gauthier goes on to argue that a conception of ethics is less vulnerable than Kant's or Hume's to critique that it employs an untenable isolation of emotion and feeling from reason. Part 3 addresses de Beauvoir's classic Hegelian/Existentialist analysis of femininity in The Second Sex, arguing that she could have exploited conceptual tools more fully by recognizing that male/female conflicts were every bit as life-threatening as Hegel's master/slave conflict and therefore that victimization of women by men could both be recognized as real and also analyzed as origin of women's self-recognition and eventual transformation. …