Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:54:16.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Kant On Moral Agency and Women's Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2011

Mari Mikkola*
Affiliation:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Abstract

Some commentators have condemned Kant's moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant's apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant's view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant's moral project.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, H. E. (1998) ‘Morality and Freedom: Kant's Reciprocity Thesis’. In P. Guyer (ed.), Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays (Landam, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), 273302.Google Scholar
Antony, L. (1998) ‘ “Human Nature” and its Role in Feminist Theory’. In J. Kourany (ed.), Philosophy in a Feminist Voice (New Haven, CT: Princeton University Press), 6391.Google Scholar
Antony, L. (2000) ‘Natures and Norms’. Ethics, 111, 836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antony, L.Witt, C. (2002) ‘Introduction’. In L. Antony and C. Witt (eds), A Mind of one's own (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), pp. ixxv.Google Scholar
Baron, M. (1984) ‘The Alleged Moral Repugnance of Acting from Duty’. Journal of Philosophy, 81, 197220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, M. (1995) Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, M. (1997) ‘Kantian Ethics and Claims of Detachment’. In R. M. Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 145170.Google Scholar
Benson, P. (1987) ‘Moral Worth’. Philosophical Studies, 51, 365382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, J. (1983) ‘Kantian Conceptions of Moral Goodness’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 13, 527550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denis, L. (2002) ‘Kant's Ethical Duties and the Feminist Implications’. In S. Brennan (ed.), Feminist Moral Philosophy (Calgary: University of Calgary Press), 157187.Google Scholar
Galvin, R. (1991) ‘Does Kant's Psychology of Morality Need Basic Revision?’. Mind, 100, 221236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimshaw, J. (1986) Philosophy and Feminist Thinking. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Henson, R. (1979) ‘What Kant might have Said: Moral Worth and the Overdetermination of Dutiful Action’. Philosophical Review, 88, 3954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, B. (1993) Practice of Moral Judgement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Herman, B. (2002) ‘Could it be Worth Thinking about Kant on Sex and Marriage?’. In L. Antony and C. Witt (eds), A Mind of one's own (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), 5372.Google Scholar
Jeske, D. (1998) ‘A Defense of Acting from Duty’. Journal of Value Inquiry, 32, 6174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1960a) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (German version: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, in http://www.korpora.org/Kant/aa02/205.html; accessed May 2010.).Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1960b) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1974) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1996a) Critique of Practical Reason. In M. J. Gregor (trans.), Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1996b) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In M. J. Gregor (trans.), Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1996c) The Metaphysics of Morals. In M. J. Gregor (trans.), Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1997) Lectures on Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, P. (1993) ‘The Problematic Status of Gender-Neutral Language in the History of Philosophy: The Case of Kant’. Philosophical Forum, 25, 134150.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, C. (1996) ‘From Duty and for the Sake of the Noble: Kant and Aristotle on Morally Good Action’. In S. Engstrom and J. Whiting (eds), Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 103228.Google Scholar
Mendus, S. (1992) ‘Kant: “An Honest But Narrow-Minded Bourgeois”?’. In H. Williams (ed.), Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 166190.Google Scholar
Meyers, C. D. (2008) ‘The Virtue of Cold-Heartedness’. Philosophical Studies, 138, 233244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, S. M. (1982) ‘Women and the Making of the Sentimental Family’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11, 6588.Google Scholar
Papadaki, E. (2007) ‘Sexual Objectification: From Kant to Contemporary Feminism’. Contemporary Political Thought, 6, 330348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Paton, H. J. (1971) The Categorical Imperative. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Plumwood, V. (1993) ‘The Politics of Reason: Towards a Feminist Logic’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 71, 436462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumsey, J. P. (1997) ‘Re-visions of Agency in Kant's Moral Theory’. In R. M. Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 125144.Google Scholar
Schott, R. M. (1988) Eros and Cognition. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Schott, R. M. (1997) ‘The Gender of Enlightenment’. In R. M. Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 319337.Google Scholar
Schott, R. M. (1998a) ‘Feminism and Kant: Antipathy or Sympathy?’. In J. Kneller and S. Axinn (eds), Autonomy and Community (New York: SUNY), 87100.Google Scholar
Schott, R. M. (1998b) ‘Kant’. In A. Jaggar and I. M. Young (eds), A Companion to Feminist Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers), 3948.Google Scholar
Schröder, H. (1997) ‘Kant's Patriarchal Order’. In R. M. Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 275296.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, S. (1990) ‘Can Kant's Ethics Survive the Feminist Critique?’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 71, 6079.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorell, T. (1998) ‘Kant's Good Will and our Good Nature’. In P. Guyer (ed.), Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays (Landam, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), 81100.Google Scholar
Stratton-Lake, P. (2000) Kant, Duty and Moral Worth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sverdlik, S. (2001) ‘Kant, Nonaccidentalness and the Availability of Moral Worth’. Journal of Ethics, 5, 293313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannenbaum, J. (2002) ‘Acting with Feeling from Duty’. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 5, 321337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, A. (1999) Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, A. (2008) Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar