The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

The papers share a common theme of attending to difference—such as the differences of race, ethnicity, or culture and as well as the differences in women’s ethical concerns and experiences. The first set addresses the challenge of multiculturalism and postcolonialism to contemporary feminism and mainstream philosophy. The second revisits an ethic of care which initially used the insight of women’s distinctive moral concerns and experiences to transform the categories and assumptions that had shaped the ethical tradition valorized by the philosophical canon.

The plenary session panel, "Multicultural and Postcolonial Feminisms: Challenges to Philosophy," focused on the concerns and methodologies of multicultural and postcolonial feminisms which Sandra Harding described, in introductory comments, as acts of "border crossing." They transform mainstream concepts and familiar philosophical frameworks. Much of contemporary feminist thought refuses to be constrained by the traditional disciplines or by the categories of culture, race, sexual orientation, etc.

In a retrospective essay, Andrea Nye ("It’s Not Philosophy") noted the debt of current multicultural and postcolonial thinking to several feminist writers of the 1980’s. Each allowed us to think of philosophy in a new way: Trinh Minh-Ha, by questioning the unitary self; Patricia Hill Collins, by identifying the situated knowledge of Black women; and Maria Lugones, by devising cognitive strategies for negotiating cultural dissonance. Nye stressed that the resistance to feminism by the currently established canon of philosophy should be placed within its historical context. The philosophical tradition has always been resistant to the new. For example, the Aristotelians perceived Descartes as radical. Not merely content with examining the arguments being presented, Nye advocated a philosophical method that also teases out the social and political influences at work. She advised that in addressing postcolonial concerns, we should read with history in mind and remember that contemporary feminism represents work going on at a time of significant global and historical change.

Uma Narayan ("Essence of Culture and A Sense of History") presented a feminist critique of cultural essentialism. She problematized the multicultural injunction to attend to differences among women by pointing out that once we acknowledge that women are not alike, it is not difficult to start essentializing them by their culture. Narayan argued that feminist efforts to avoid gender essentialism have led to a cultural essentialism that depicts as homogeneous groups that are actually heterogeneous. Cultural essentialism also reenforces colonial stereotypes. The colonial encounter depended on insistence on difference that created totalizing categories of First World and Third World and constructed a binary between Western and Non-western that parallels in many ways masculine/feminine binaries. At the same time, anticolonialism has also contributed to this essentialism. In an effort to achieve self-definition, anticolonialists seek to emphasize their difference from Western cultures. But what gets marked as "this is what we have always done and this is who we are" is determined by the dominant group within a culture. Thus culturally dominate norms of femininity and practices that are inimical to the interests of women are often chosen as essential to a culture. Women are frequently saddled with the primary responsibility for cultural preservation, and practices that adversely affect women are depicted as anticolonialist "virtues," while Third World feminists are placed in the vulnerable position of being seen as enemies of their own people.

Essentialist notions thereby come to pose a serious danger for anti-imperialist and Third world feminist agendas. In advocating strategies to overcome cultural essentialism, Narayan urged that we look at history politically, and with suspicion, remembering that the neat boundaries between cultures are constructed by those in power through a process of "selective labeling," in which certain changes are allowed and others are not. Thus, by drawing parallels between gender and cultural essentialism, Narayan sent a warning to postcolonial feminists to be wary of essentialist contrasts between Western and Third World cultures.

If Narayan illustrated how colonialism operated on an assumption of difference, Lynda Lange ("Burnt Offerings to Rationality: A Feminist Construction of Indigenous Peoples in Enrique Dussel’s Theory of Modernity) pointed out that the assumption of sameness also supported colonial oppression. Both Lange and Narayan relied upon an understanding of colonial history to identify strategies for achieving a critical postcolonial understanding.

Lange drew upon an interpretation of Enrique Dussel to explore how modernity was constituted by its relationship with non-European peoples and was characterized by the "fallacy of development," which assumed that Europe was the end point towards which the world was progressing. Europeans did not discover but rather "invented" indigenous peoples, perceiving them in terms of their own categories of thought. For example, the Spanish perception of non-Europeans was that they were deficient examples of the "same," that is, underdeveloped, deficient Europeans who would benefit from Western civilization.

Given their ideals of universality, Europeans lacked an awareness of their own historical specificity. To be modernized, indigenous cultures were seen as merely needing to give up their historical difference. First Europeans said there is no culture here, and then they made that evaluation a reality by destroying the existing culture. Thus modernity has justified violent practices in the guise of helping people become civilized . In the process, the "Other" has become the source of its own victimization.

Drawing parallels between colonialism, on one hand, and modern humanism and liberalism, on the other, Lange proposed that Dussel’s analysis of modernity could help us recognize how indigenous peoples are currently being excluded from the conditions of entry into a discursive community. Just as the Spanish conquistadors understood themselves to be liberators, modern liberals justify the subjugation of indigenous peoples. Liberalism assumes that if persons have "x" quality, they are rational and deserve autonomy. But there will always be a group which does not have "x" quality and will be deemed correspondingly nonrational and unworthy of rights. Failure to embrace modernity must in and of itself be a mark of irrationality. Thus, indigenous peoples are not seen as deserving of autonomy because they fail to be as concerned about individual rights as Western liberals are. They do not, for example, live up to the standards of gender equality advocated by European feminists. Like the missionaries and colonizers of centuries ago, the modern liberal is guilty of a naive notion of progress that forces people to be free.

Lange also cautioned that universalism always leads to a silencing of the other. And in fact our best values, including our feminist convictions, may be what gets in our way. We as moderns assume we are rational and as Western feminists see ourselves as more liberated and invidiously compare Third World women to ourselves, while refusing to see how we have benefitted from colonialism.

The panels titled "Moral Theory" and "Difference, Toleration, and Exclusion," also concern questions of rationality and difference, but moved from issues of multiculturalism to the realm of the ethical. As Lange pointed out, modern rationality has been constituted by designating certain groups as other; but in the Western philosophical tradition rationality has also been constructed in opposition to the emotions. The self becomes divided into rational/emotional by the individual and the personal. Shaped by this universalism, modern ethical theory operates on a level of abstraction and particularities of place, time and social group.

Many feminists have found this universalist rational approach to ethics to be a distinctively male mode of experiencing the world that depersonalizes the moral and demoralizes the personal. An ethic of care was advanced as an alternative ethic that enlarged the domain of moral theory to accommodate the needs of individuals in their particularity, the concerns of the private values of relationship and family and the moral experiences of women in general.

Several papers, however, questioned whether an ethic of care could be a feminist ethic. An ethic of care is an ethic grounded in difference, seeking to articulate women’s distinctive ethical concerns and decisions. Yet some feminists have found an ethics based on women’s difference to be antifeminist. They have claimed that it reinscribes gender essentialism and argued that to affirm women’s difference is also reenforce their powerlessness and domination. They have argued that women value care because men value them when they are caring and thus an ethic of care reenforces patriarchy.

Janet Borgerson ("Ethical Considerations on Ressentiment and Power") cautioned that an ethic of care is a disempowering ethics that results in ressentiment. Exploring the relationship between femininity and Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, she argued that women need an ethics of power. Ressentiment, based on the desire for power and requiring self-deception, has kept women in subordinate roles. According to Borgerson, women really want power but think that they don’t. Women have status in obedient gender roles, but not actual power. In roles of care they have given up power in exchange for the ability to manipulate. In contrast, Nietzsche’s concept of power is agency based, not a power over or domination of others, but a move from oppression to liberation that radically transforms consciousness and resolves ressentiment.

Rather than finding a care ethic to be an antifeminist ethic, Heisook Kim ("Is Confucian Feminism Possible?") contended that the determination of whether a care ethic is or is not a feminist ethic is context dependent. She explored whether it was possible to restructure Confucianism as a feminist ethic. Confucianism is a care ethic because it is family centered and relationship modeled. Also, it directs the good ruler to govern by virtue rather than by law. But Confucianism is also a male ethics. In Chinese society, caring is marked as a male attribute. Men are seen as more caring than women while women are thought to be deficient in the ability to care. Confucianism, Kim held, is inexorably patriarchal. If it could be transformed so as not to be sexist, we would no longer have Confucianism. Based on the bonds on father, ruler and husband, Confucianism is an ethics of nobility that served to oppress people. Most interestingly, Kim concluded that a care ethics can be a feminist ethics only in a social context in which a justice ethics oppresses women and this was in fact what Gilligan was trying to overcome, but that in a Confucianist culture women actually need, in contrast, a justice ethics.

Ra-Keum Huh ("Ethics of Care and Politics of Difference") also explored whether a care ethics was a feminist ethics. She reaffirmed the interrelationship between the political and the ethical and considered the desirable political context for an ethic of care. She analyzed the similarities between care ethics and communitarianism. But pointing to the example of Confucianism as a care ethics which oppresses women, she warned that a care ethic is very dangerous in a communitarian society. Instead, she argued that an ethic of care must be contextualized in a politics of difference which does not presuppose abstract, objective others or abstract, objective rights but rather seeks a heterogeneous good. But justice, determined through difference and confrontation, will need an ethic of care to negotiate the encounter. Thus, both Kim and Huh concluded by reaffirming an ethic of care, but with the cautionary note of the importance of care being situated in the right political context.

While not dealing directly with care ethics, Kate Parsons ("In Whose Terms? Emotionality and Rationality in Moral Discourse") questioned the traditional constitution of rationality in opposition to the emotions that result in the latter being devalued. She examined the contexts in which the emotions are morally important and argued for their being valued in their own terms instead of being gauged against rationality. Parsons criticized recent writers, such as Goldman and daSousa, for devaluing the emotions with respect to rationality. She stressed that rationality is not the only source for discovering morality but rather that the emotions are also an important moral resource. Furthermore, we should be wary of a dualism that holds that the emotions are valuable only if we process them by reason.

While Parsons called for a valuing of the emotions as a valid source of moral knowledge, Sarah Conly ("Why Feminists Should Reject Virtue Theory") expressed concern about the very emphasis placed on the feelings by virtue ethics. She argued that feminists should reject virtue theory and advocated a return to a duty ethics informed by a feminist concept of agency. Her paper also represents a critique of care ethics since many classify it as a type of virtue ethics.

Conly considered virtue ethics to be at odds with feminist goals because it is too demanding and intrusive; she warned that feminists should especially be concerned that the demands of a virtue ethic might lead to self-neglect. Virtue ethics places emphasis on the internal person, forcing us to be constantly reviewing ourselves morally, driving us to continually ask: what should we feel? Furthermore, for virtue ethics there is no nonmoral realm. The cultivation of a virtue thus becomes a moral task from which there is no respite.

Instead, Conly suggested, an ethics of duty makes it possible for the demands placed upon us to be ones that we can meet. A duty ethics allow us to prioritize choices in ways that virtue ethics cannot because it provides the rules necessary for resolving conflicts. She nevertheless admitted that a traditional duty ethic leaves us emotionally dead and recommended that it be revised by a feminist concept of agency that is both personal and contextual. This notion of agency, while still located within the core of a duty ethic, would acknowledge that the development of attachment is important, but it would mediate attachment by rules of duty.

Stephanie Semler ("Responding to Exclusionary Laughter") returned to the rivalry between a duty ethic and a virtue ethic. She suggested that difference can be overcome by inclusionary laughter and found in Hume’s virtue ethics better tools for fostering humanness than those provided by a duty ethics. She characterizes Kantian duty ethics as guilt based and Humean ethics as shame based and found the Humean model to promote less cruelty than the self-examining rigors of Kant. But the problematic that Semler explored revolves around exclusionary laughter. Hume is interested in the promotion of joy and the reduction of suffering and for him the greatest wrong is cruelty. Instead of retaliation Hume advocated laughter.

But Semler contended that derisive laughter can be even crueler than retaliation and asked—when might laughter be morally wrong? When can laughter be cruel? She determined that laughter can be cruel when it is alienating and in such cases laughter becomes a proxy for retaliation. But there is an alternative to exclusionary laughter in the shared standards of what is appropriate. She urged that we force the ridiculer to identify with us and to respond with inclusionary laughter.