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Spring 2008
Volume 07, Number 2

From the Editor

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Feminist philosophers have long recognized the need to address, engage, or embrace issues of race and critical race theorists certainly recognize the need to address, engage, or embrace gender issues. We all, however, continue to struggle with the ways to respond to those needs. The articles in this issue offer some intriguing proposals. Two of the essays address teaching about race and gender privilege. Nancy Holland uses Heidegger’s notion of authenticity to think about how better to understand privilege and responses to privilege. Gail Presbey offers a description of her Introduction to Philosophy course and in the process raises a number of questions about how to challenge students to think about philosophy and how to challenge the profession of philosophy. Presbey also offers a discussion of the philosophy reader she co-edited. This sort of critical reflection on the texts we teach as representative of the field of philosophy also characterizes Alison Bailey’s article. Bailey co-edited, with Chris Cuomo, a new reader on feminist philosophy. She describes their efforts to gather articles that revealed both the history of feminist philosophy and demonstrated the feminist philosophical challenge to traditional philosophical methodology. As Bailey puts it, feminist philosophers have not yet sufficiently wrestled with the implications of intersectionality. Heeding the variety of philosophical presentations—in narrative as well as argument, for instance—gets us somewhat closer to seeing the possibilities of intersectional thinking. She calls us to attend more to the lived experiences and ambiguities of real women within our feminist courses and research. In the final essay in this issue, Naomi Zack revisits the arguments she made in Inclusive Feminism and responds to objections. Zack challenges intersectionality with her notion of inclusive feminism and calls for women to assume positions of power.

Together, these articles invite us to think about how race and gender affects every aspect of our professional lives. Whether we are teaching courses, editing books to be used in teaching or scholarship, or writing articles and books to advance our research aims, we confront challenges that push us to examine the ways we reinscribe relationships of domination even as we attempt to challenge them. I hope you will find these articles thought provoking and useful.

I have also included a number of book reviews in this issue of the Newsletter. The books range from feminist political theory, to philosophy of mind, to existentialism and phenomenology. These reviews offer a crucial service to the reading audience and the author or editor of the subject books. They also offer valuable insight into some of the subfields. The reviewers lend their expertise, often revealing some of the most interesting issues or debates within the span of a few short pages, while assessing a particular text. I am confident you will find something of interest and perhaps you will be so inspired to read more from our feminist colleagues.

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