Liberalism V, Feminism Liberalism vs.

Liberalism V, Feminism Liberalism vs. Feminism: Comparative analysis between Liberalism and Feminism Perhaps the most fundamental similarity between liberalism and feminism is that liberalism and feminism are both wide ranging, inclusive ideologies that are often difficult to define, although the personas of both liberals and feminists have stirred up the ire as well as the affection in the public discourse. A politician of a centrist bent may be called a liberal if he or she allows that gays and lesbians should be permitted to legally wed.

A woman who runs her own business may be called a feminist. However, these individual's real political convictions may bear little resemblance to such great liberal thinkers as John Rawls and John Stuart Mill and to such self-identified feminists as Naomi Wolf and Luce Irigaray. Rawls and Mill, Wolf and Irigaray themselves span quite different areas of the political spectrum, not in terms of its continuum of liberal vs. conservative, but the fact that Irigaray might deny that such a creation of a continuum of liberal v. conservative, feminist v.

anti-feminist is itself a male creation, part of the polarizing, dual discourse of patriarchy. Since the term 'liberalism' originated before feminism, it might be useful to look at the definition of liberalism first. According to self-identified liberal political philosopher Gerald Gaus, "as a political tradition liberalism has varied in different countries.

In England -- in many ways the birthplace of liberalism" because of philosophers such as Mill and advocates of the free market such as Adam Smith "the liberal tradition in politics has centred on religious toleration, government by consent, personal and, especially, economic freedom. In France liberalism has been more closely associated with secularism and democracy.

In the United States liberals often combine a devotion to personal liberty with an antipathy to capitalism, while the liberalism of Australia tends to be much more sympathetic to capitalism but often less enthusiastic about civil liberties.

To understand this diversity in political traditions, we need to examine liberalism as a political theory and as a general philosophy," for it is both a rights-base discourse advocating guarantees for individuals to be able to move and act as they freely chose, as well as a dicourse of limitations on government's ability to impinge upon the self.

(Gaus, 2003) Similarly, feminism has varied, in England and America, by stressing the need for a rights-based system of values that enables women to be able to enjoy full political freedoms, while in France becoming more influenced by political and social theory of language, and the need to rehabilitate what is construed as 'the feminine' from patriarchal discourse. Feminist philosophy emerged early in America and England in a rights-based capacity, through the sufferage movement.

But feminism as a liberal philosophy of social rights really only emerged in the United States in the 1970s, a decade behind the rise of the American women's movement in the 1960s. "Although Simone de Beauvoir published her now highly influential the Second Sex in 1953, it would take at least a decade for women in the U.S. To begin to organize around the injustices Beauvoir identified, and even longer for feminist philosophers in the U.S. To turn to her work for inspiration.

(Tuana, 2004) Feminism and liberalism have often been, epistomologically speaking, intertwined -- is it not "the Fundamental Liberal Principle" that restrictions on liberty must be justified, and justified limitations on liberty must be fairly modest? Should not women be similarly legally and sociallyfree of constraints, feminists of the past have argued? In such a liberal view, women should be allowed to exercise basic freedoms such as the right to vote, as only a limited government can be justified; indeed, "the basic task of government" in a liberal view "is to protect the equal liberty of citizens and each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system for all." (Gaus, 2003).

Liberals and feminists disagree, however, between and among themselves, about the concept of liberty. Some liberals favor a negative conception of liberty vs. A positive conception of liberty. For the former, the heart of liberty is the absence of coercion by others, thus the state should not prohibit a man's right to chose his profession or legislating officer. Nor should it limit's a woman's right to chose the same, under the categories of liberalism and feminism.

Rousseau seemed to advocate a positive conception of liberty, "according to which one was free when one acted according to one's true will as opposed to the general will," and the positive conception of liberty thus is more popular amongst feminists that stress the need to 'unthink' notions of masculinity and femininity and gender in general in a dichotomous fashion, while still paying attention to the political marketplace of ideas -- attempting to achieve a balance between the masculine construction of authority with a more feminine ethos, and combining feminist ethics into current political structures.

(Gaus, 2003) But even more so than positive and negative rights liberalism, so-called 'new', 'revisionist', or 'welfare state' liberalism also challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property-based market order -- in other words, simply because one is theoretically free to create a business does not mean one is free, and simply because one has the same rights as a man and is free to behave like a man to suceed in the capitalist workplace does not mean that a society is really feminist, free, and fully equitable to both genders.

Feminists who identify themselves more as contemporary philosophers than politicians often value the mulitbility and the need to deconstruct or current philosophy of language, rather than stress advancement in the marketplace. They stress epistemology, and logic vs. securing rights through the legal system and they typically view the old stock of philosophical concepts, methods, and assumptions to be consistent with an outdated European heritage, in contrast with methods originating in twentieth-century continental Europe, most recently poststructuralism and postmodernism broadly conceived.

(Garry, 2004) Thus, there are many feminisms, from liberal feminism to deconstructionist approachest to the gender, and many liberalisms, from welfare state liberalism to negative rights-based liberalism.

Feminsts who are more subsume their ideology under liberal goals of autonomy and practical, material gains, "recognize that philosophy and philosophers are part of the wider set of institutions of culture in which human beings live, understand themselves, and, only sometimes, flourish." (Garry, 2004) but those feminists who do not state that "given the current imbalances of power and privilege with which people live, philosophy has social effects when it "leaves everything as it is" in terms of the discourse of masculine vs. feminism.

These feminists stress the need not merely for positive as well as negative rights in the practical discourse of the political landscape but "seek philosophy that can generically be called engaged," that is, "philosophy that is potentially useful to empower human beings rather than contribute to the perpetuation of a status quo in which people are subordinated by gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and so on." Rather than accept liberal constructions of the self, feminists must rethink the self anew, and question how gender intellectually limits the psychlogical capacilty of women to function.

This is not to say, of course, that feminist philosophers all agree over the appropriate ways to work this out, but "they do agree that philosophy can influence lives and should influence them for the better." (Garry, 2004) Among the many functions of both liberalism and feminism "are the following: to help us to understand ourselves and our relations to each other, to our communities, and to the state; to appreciate the extent to which we are counted as knowers and moral agents; to uncover the assumptions and methods of various bodies of knowledge, and so on.

These kinds of philosophical insights -- ones that concern our methods, assumptions, theories and concepts -- can contribute to the oppression of human beings as well as to their liberation." (Garry, 2004) But should feminism or a genearl understanding of human social liberalism be the goal of liberal philosophy? Liberal feminist Anne Garry believes, "while only one facet, gender is nevertheless an important facet with a wide variety of implications for the way we should do philosophy.

As feminists continue to critique other philosophers as well as reconstruct philosophy that is not male-biased, most share some points in common." In other words, gender is not the be-all and end all, but ultimately, "philosophy that reflects a feminist sensibility would promote the flourishing of every person." (2004) In contrast to Garry, feminists that stress the gendered construction of language suggest that even if a perfectly equal political landscape that enshrined liberal rights could be created, this would not be enough.

"The tendency to describe nature in feminine terms is a long-standing and widespread one," and is linked "to a tendency to describe reason and the mind as male, and to contrast these with 'feminine' emotions and bodies." These metaphors play a powerful role in the history of philosophy, shaping and often distorting our views both of reason, mind, emotion, and body and of men and women.

Other important discussions of gendered metaphors in philosophy include Irigaray," whose disucssion of the female sex calls woman the gender that is not one, in other words that the female body physically denies the male, liberal split of self and other. This split is intrinsic to patriarchy, even liberal patriarchy, and denies the ability of women to assert 'the feminine' as writ upon their bodies and souls.

Philosophers such as French feminist and deconstructionist Luce Irigaray thus deny the presumption of liberal's use of temrs such as the individual and pre-exisintg and 'obvious' existance rights. (Saul, 2004) Liberalism rests upon a conception of the self, and "the topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy,.