Rational Woman: A Feminist Critique of Dualism (Routledge by Raia Prokhovnik

By Raia Prokhovnik

To feminists and a few postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman signify basic polarities, fastened deep inside Western philosophy and mirrored within the buildings of our languages, and units of hierarchical energy relatives in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik demanding situations the culture of dualism and argues that rational girl desire not be a contradiction in phrases. Prokhovnik examines in flip: · the character of dichotomy, its difficulties and another · the reason/emotion dichotomy · dichotomies important to the man/woman dualism, equivalent to sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm

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443). In exploring the conception ‘rational woman’, this book seeks to go against the grain of the implicit pattern of mapping which evaluates this term as a disjunction and so potently disbars the conjunction it contains from serious consideration. Adversarial style of argument The second problem with dichotomy concerns the rhetoric of the style of reasoning it recommends. Dichotomous thinking is reflected in an advocacy of an adversarial style, which rests on the belief that through confrontation the truth emerges, in philosophy, in practical politics in the House of Commons, and in legal argument.

Because the winning term never breaks away from the vanquished one, the tension between them remains perpetually, perennially. ’ Furthermore this ‘relationship of denied dependency determines a certain kind of logical structure, as one in which the denial and the relation of domination/subordination shapes the identity of both the relata’ (Plumwood 1993: 443). As Baier observes in taking issue with Davidson’s either/or approach (with respect to motives, using the same logic), ‘[w]e rarely have to leave a felt motive entirely unexpressed when we act, even when it has been “defeated” by better reasons.

In other words, if ‘I uphold the dictates of my conscience, then I cannot recognize myself in your conscientious claims. Conversely, if I surrender my conscience to the dictates of yours then I surrender my pure self-recognition; I become your moral beast or slave’ (Bernstein 1994: 55). Transcendence The fourth feature of dichotomy is the notion of transcendence. Transcendence is the sole mechanism by which, in the Western intellectual tradition, access from the inferior term to the superior term can be made.

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