| "Hekman
advances the discussion of moral thinking. Her new way of reconceptualizing
moral thinking is a major challenge to the Cartesian/Kantian paradigm.
. . . Hekman navigates the subject with remarkable clarity and insight.
. . . [A] book of significance."—Perspectives on Political Science
In her landmark 1982 study In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan
argues that there is not only one, true moral voice, but two: one
masculine, one feminine. Moral values and concerns associated with
a feminine outlook are relational rather than autonomous; they depend
upon interaction with others. Susan J. Hekman argues that the approach
to morality suggested by Gilligan's work marks a radically new departure
in moral thinking.
In a far-reaching examination and critique of Gilligan's theory,
Hekman seeks to deconstruct the major traditions of moral theory
that have been dominant since the Enlightenment. She challenges
the centerpiece of that tradition: the disembodied, autonomous subject
of modernist philosophy. Hekman argues that the logic of Gilligan's
approach entails multiple moral voices, not just one or even two,
and that factors other than gender—class, race, and culture—are
constitutive of moral voice. Using the work of Wittgenstein and
Foucault, she outlines the parameters of a discursive morality and
its implications for feminism and moral theory. |
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