Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, ed. Alison M. Jaggar. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.

Reviewed by Margaret A. McLaren.

The field of feminist ethics continues to grow at a rapid rate. Two recent contributions to this field, Ethics: A Feminist Reader, edited by Elizabeth Frazer, Jennifer Hornsby and Sabina Lovibond, and Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, edited by Alison Jaggar, each provide a distinctive contribution to feminist ethics through different approaches. The editors of both collections make explicit the perspective that guided the selection of the articles in the anthologies. The editors of Ethics: A Feminist Reader focus on ethical theory and the potential for feminism to transform it. They foreground women’s voices and draw from both historical and contemporary sources. The reader is divided into three sections: women’s condition, ethics and gender difference, and towards a feminist ethics. Living with Contradictions focuses on the disagreements among feminists about issues that deeply affect women’s (and men’s ) lives. Choosing to focus on contemporary feminist controversies in North America, Jaggar compiles an impressive wealth of articles on feminist issues ranging from the environment to sexuality. The emphasis of this collection is on ethical issues that relate to public policy, such as reproductive rights and technologies, issues in the workplace, and the way that femininity is prescribed and reproduced by the marketplace, including advertising and pornography.

An interesting feature of Ethics: A Feminist Reader is that while it includes both contemporary and historical sources, the readings are not in chronological order. While some of the readings seem dated, the interspersion of historical with contemporary material allows the reader to see the relevance of feminist analyses made at the turn of the century. One of the virtues of the collection is that it includes important feminist voices, such as June Jordan "Report from the Bahamas" and Virginia Woolf Three Guineas (excerpts), that are sometimes neglected if the selections are restricted solely to philosophical arguments. A third striking feature of the collection is the combination of some of the classic analyses of women’s subordination, such as selections from Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women, the conclusion to de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and a chapter from Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, with some lesser known accounts, such as writings by Cicely Hamilton and Alexandra Kollontai, both of whom were writing at the turn of the century. A wide range of feminist views are represented in the collection: anarchist (Goldman), socialist (Kollontai), liberal (Wollstonecraft), radical (Dworkin, MacKinnon) and postmodern (Wilson) as well as others, less easily categorized. This wide range both of feminist views and of approaches to the issues of ethics and feminism may be explained by the editors’ decision to use a normative rather than a descriptive criterion; their aim was to include readings that promoted a more thoughtful approach to the subject-matter of ethics (10). In spite of the editors’ fear that this collection "may strike some professional philosophers as a bewildering mixture of sociology, cultural criticism, psychoanalysis and outright polemic," the essays provide an interesting, and remarkably coherent, view of women’s subordination and the possibilities for social and political change (10). The importance of class, for instance, is stressed in both the historical and the contemporary selections (Kollontai, Roberts). Although many of the selections address the continuing fact of women’s subor-dination, several present strategies or visions for an alternative feminist ethics, most notably the articles by Audre Lorde, Seyla Benhabib, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Wilson and Sara Ruddick.

While the selection of articles shows careful paring down of the available material, the bibliographies at the end of the book seem to demonstrate the same principle; they are helpful, but far from comprehensive. Surprisingly, the most helpful may be the bibliography on the male tradition; it focuses on the canon and notes passages relevant to women. Including a bibliography is a good idea especially for a book that would work well as a text, but there has been a wealth of articles and books published on feminist ethics since this book was published. Also, the bibliography seems a little idiosyncratic, omitting significant texts in feminist ethics and including others that are clearly feminist but have little to do with ethics. Some notable oversights in the Ethics and Feminism bibliography are: Feminist Ethics edited by Claudia Card, and Women and Moral Identity by Elisabeth J. Porter, both published in 1991. Since Ethics: A Feminist Reader was published in 1992, several books and articles dealing with feminist ethics have been published. Two edited collections, An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Mary Jeanne Larrabee, and Explorations in Feminist Ethics edited by Eve Browning Cole and Susan Coultrap-McQuinn, are well worth including in any biblio-graphy on feminist ethics.

Living with Contradictions is an ambitious attempt to cover the gamut of issues about which feminists disagree. Beginning with a minimal definition of feminism as "the various social movements dedicated to ending the subordination of women (2)," Jaggar raises the question, why do feminists disagree? She points out that in spite of feminists’ shared commitment to ending the subordination of women, disagreements arise for several reasons: feminists may not know all the facts, feminists may have different values, and the issues of sexuality and procreation are hotly contested and emotionally charged. Furthermore, not only do feminists disagree with one another about particular issues, but some issues, such as pornography, involve conflicts within an individual as she struggles to balance her commitment to women’s welfare against a respect for freedom of expression (7). Finally, one important source of disagreement results from the differential impact of practices and policies on different groups of women.

The collection is a bit unwieldy. It is divided into seven parts and twelve subsections including: 1) equality, 2) women working, a) affirmative action and b) sex work, 3) marketing femininity, a) representing women: pornography, art, and popular culture and b) presenting women: fashion and beauty, 4) women’s fertility-individual choices and social constraints, a) abortion and b) procreative technology and procreative freedom, 5) family values, a) contract child production and b) valuing alternative families, 6) the personal as political, a) sexual practice and b) consuming animals, 7) feminists changing the world, a) militarism and b) environmentalism. Any one of these topics could have filled an entire book. Nonetheless, the comprehensiveness of this collection is a strength as well as a weakness. Bringing all these issues together in one volume highlights the incredible range of issues that feminists disagree about.

The articles Jaggar anthologizes include many of the classic pieces in the contemporary feminist "canon" and successfully represent the diversity of positions that feminists hold. The best feature of the book is Jaggar’s clear and comprehensive introductions, to the book as a whole and to each section. She provides lucid explanations of the history of each issue and the various positions represented by the articles in each section. Although the brevity of the excerpts leads one to desire more, the editorial skill with which Jaggar excerpted the material is clear because the selections convey the main points of each argument. A clear benefit of this collection is that it finally brings together opposing feminist views on a variety of different issues. Most other feminist anthologies tend to represent only one side of a given debate, e.g., the feminist anti-pornography position or the feminist sex radicals position. Presenting only one side of a feminist debate may have helped to influence the understanding in the dominant culture that feminists have an orthodox position that does not countenance any disagreement. Living with Contradictions makes explicit the stakes involved in feminist positions on a wide range of issues and the very real conflicts and disagreements among feminists. Because of this it destroys the illusion of hegemony among feminists as well as providing an invaluable resource for feminists.

• From the Editor
• About the Newsletter
• News from the Committee on the Status of Women
• From the New Chair
• Book Reviews
  • Recent Feminist Philosophy Textbooks, Reviewed by Amy Mullin
  • Free Spirits: Feminist Philosophers on Culture and Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and Men, Reviewed by Jessica Prata Miller
  • The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory and Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, Reviewed by Cynthia A. Stark
  • Ethics: A Feminist Reader and Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, Reviewed by Margaret A. McLaren
  • Hypatia's Daughters: Fifteen Hundred Years of Women Philosophers, Reviewed by Julie M. Zilberberg
• Notes on Contributors