Hegel's ethical thought and feminist social criticism.

Abstract

Two important and perplexing questions confronting movements of political liberation concern the extent to which group critiques of oppression can or should be expressed in universalist terms, and that to which the agency of unwitting oppressors is impugned in these critiques. These questions are related in that the justification for agent-criticism turns, in large part, on the universal accessibility of an act's wrongness. Hegel criticized Kant's moral theory both for its assertion that intention is the key issue for ethical justification, and for its argument that a universal or impartial point of view is procedurally accessible. Though Hegel maintained a commitment to universalism, he focused on the social and historical conditions for moral action that Kant's approach ignored. In my dissertation, I argue that Hegel's criticisms of Kantian formalism can yield important insights into the nature of oppressive agency and the limitations of universalist approaches in criticizing it. In Part I, I describe certain key themes in Hegel's critique of "formalism," linking it both to Schiller's criticisms of Kant's moral psychology, and to his own innovative conception of action and agency. Against Kantians such as Onora O'Neil and Christine Korsgaard, I argue that even if Hegel's charge does not exclude universality as an abstract ground of justification, it shows how gaining access to it may involve eschewing an attitude of impartiality. In Part II, I argue that Hegel's qualified critique of Kantian universalism is of use in understanding issues of agency and impartiality in feminist social criticism. First, I argue that "consciousness-raising," with its focus on the collective development of a previously unarticulated and decidedly partial perspective, serves to transform key moral categories even as it appeals to them. I then employ that argument in showing why some sexist agents may rightly be subject to reproach, even if they lack reflective access to the descriptions under which their actions are oppressive. Finally, I use my discussion of Hegel to reevaluate certain elements of Simone de Beauvoir's quasi-Hegelianism in The Second Sex.