The Ethics of Feminism
Just seeing more of life, just recognizing that there are an awful lot of things that are common among people. There are certain things that you come to learn promote a better life and better relationships and more personal fulfillment than other things that in general tend to do the opposite, and the things that promote these things, you would call them morally right.[1]
The normative questions that come to fill one’s life, in this woman’s account, presume goals and methods that are inseparable from the history that creates a person as s/he is. However, that, over time, people change in moral thinking does not mean that everyone develops along a single track to moral enlightenment in a set ethical system. Rather, the perhaps unavoidable social impulse towards what is “morally right” can take folks on different paths towards different possibilities. That there is potential for difference here does not mean all people come to understand their moral world in radically different ways. Instead, it is quite likely that, as in ideology, economy, society and so on, dominant forces will channel many people into particular patterns of thought. From these modes of thought, one may be tempted to demand change, and appeals to what is “morally right” are common grounds for this. Difficulty arises with the realization that the world’s structure is far from neutral or inevitable, but has indeed been often intentionally, and always functionally, structured in ways that are not only open to contestation, but are capriciously biased. Feminism fed extensively on analyses of the complex systems of economic exchange, which ensured women’s domination by the shadow work of the home (Okin 228-229), social forces, whic...
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[1] Anonymous third year law student, as quoted in Gilligan, p. 21
Feminists have a lot of objections to Kantian morals. For example, there is too much emphasis on duty. For example, a feminist might argue that because feminists emphasize care so much, duty can sometimes overshadow care. Also, science is extremely important in feminism. Kant believes that science is not important where it is a defense in many cases of feminism.
Poetry stands beyond agreement or disagreement and reinforce all ideas of mysteriousness (671). In “Lady Lazarus”, the story of Plath’s life with her tendency of self-destruction sheds light the meaning of the poem. A poem can be a reflection of the writer’s life; to understand the particular poem better, a study about the writer background helps to construct the subliminal meaning within the lines. Plath reconstructs the meaning of being a survivor from destruction, as she sustains the trauma of life that causes her to be suicidal. “Although “Lady Lazarus” draws on Plath’s won suicide attempt, the poem tells us little of the actual event. It is not a personal confession, but it does reveal Plath’s understanding of the way the suicidal person thinks.” (Dickie). The courageous endeavor to survive proves that the death is no longer terrifying. “Peel off the napkin/O my enemy./D I terrify?---“. On the contrary, the character in the poem, Lady Lazarus comes out to the light and challenges to whoever the enemy is, by saying, “I am you opus,/I am your valuable,/The pure gold baby”. She addresses how worthy she is as a human being, and she is revived and stronger than
When Sylvia Plath was told her father died at the tender age of nine, she bitterly said, “I’ll never speak to God again.” In her brief but indispensable writing career, Plath distinguished herself in the poetical realm with her body of work that includes but is not limited to poems, short stories, and one semi-autobiographical novel. Her legacy lives on through her dark themes laden with powerful images such as the moon and skulls, while a father-type figure acts as a significant force either as a central antagonistic power or an influential shadow looming in the background. Brooding thoughts and despondent emotion overcome the reader when faced with one of Plath’s numerous works such as “Daddy,” “The Colossus,” and “Lady Lazarus.” Sometimes straightforward in understanding, Plath’s works contain intermittently placed, unique choices in diction like “mule bray, pig-grunt” throughout her works. On February 11, 1963, Plath was found with her head placed in her kitchen oven (death by carbon monoxide), yet she continues to resonate with people to this day; is it because we are able to relate to her melancholy and heartache? Or because of our sickening-interest in her suicide and the events that led to it? Maybe it is both. Because of her father’s death at a young age, Sylvia Plath’s poems underlies a theme regarding her suicidal demise and victimization at the hands of a patriarchal society, particularly from her husband, Ted Hughes, and late father, Otto Plath.
ABSTRACT: The problem of choosing the way for our country unavoidably brings us to a discussion of the problem of liberalism. At first glance, this should not be a problem since liberal principles underlie Western society and are the basis of the modern world order. But this opinion is not shared by all intellectuals in Russia. First is the specificity of the Russian mentality, social consciousness and social life. The idea of 'Russia's own way' is much referred to by various political movements of pronounced nationalist color, but we have to study this idea at its deepest level rather than oversimplify reality. Yet even most thinkers who are oriented to the West and have insisted on the adoption of Western values and standards have also strongly criticized European civilization. Secondly, liberalism does not have a simple meaning. It connotes a number of complex ideological systems transformed over time both in theory and in political practice. Therefore, it is important to analyze the metaphysical premises of liberal doctrines and systems. I will examine assessments of liberal ideas made by Russian religious philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as P. Struve, N. Novgorodtsev, I. Iliin, and S. Frank who all considered liberalism primarily a metaphysical rather than a legal or political phenomenon, and interpreted it as an empirical manifestation of the deep nature of the human spiritual reality.
Children are our future of the world. They are the ones who will create the next generation. Therefore, it is important to start young within children, teaching them right from wrong. It is important preventing them from following the same negative patterns as kids of today. Many kids today do not really have a strong discipline, love and support at home. In general being a parent does not come easy or, with a manual on how to be a positive effective parent. There is a different factor that causes children to be disobedient or out of control. Or sometimes the parent can be doing everything right and shows much love as they can for their child. But, the child is given a negative and avoidance feedback.
The influence of religion on humankind can be traced back to the first records of history. Religion has served as a pillar of strength to some and binding chains to others. There are vast amounts of information and anthropological studies revealing the interaction of religion and humankind. However, for the purposes of this paper, the time periods of study will be broken up into three sections. Each section will give a general description of how religion affected the institution of the state and its Sovereignty in a Euro-centric perspective. The first period is the early period, which will encompass from Christianity and the Roman Empire to the Medieval times (approx. 311 to 1100 A.D.).
Some sociologists claim that what changes primarily is the social system and religious change is an effect of the change in the former. It is not religion but, to a larger extent, the economy that is supposed to legitimize reality. From this perspective it is the social system that changes and this change in relation to religion means secularization, which generally speaking means the diminishing impact of religion on social life at various levels, degrees and intensities. Theories such as Luckmann’s privatization thesis or Hervieu-Le´ger’s emotional theory of religion may be categorized as giving priority to changes within the individual. The fundamental thought is that in contemporary society it is primarily the individual who changes. It is the individual that seeks direct contact with the sacral sphere, is driven by emotion, feeling, a personal and individualized need. The third current of theoretical solutions to the question of what predominates in modern and post-modern changes is the one that points to religion itself as the sphere of these changes. It is neither the society nor the individual, but rather religion that is pushed to the forefront of the phenomenon. Religion in confrontation with modernity takes on new forms which function well in the modern
Clenora Hudson-Weems, founder of Africana womanist theory, defines Africana womanism as “an ideology created and designed for all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture, and therefore, it necessarily focuses on the unique experiences, struggles, needs and desires of Africana women” (Hudson-Weems, 2007). Finding the existing philosophies dealing with women’s issues lacking, Hudson-Weems sought out a new perspective that would reflect the unique experience of Africana women. This paper explores the formation of Africana womanism and how it departs from traditional feminist theory. While Africana womanism claims to better meet the needs of Africana women than traditional feminism, there are a number of fundamental deficiencies in that theory as well. This paper will focus specifically on Black feminism in examining this failings.
Until recently, I was like a great number of people in today’s society who are afraid of being called a “feminist,” as if this were the same as being branded a witch in the 17th century Salem. Feminism is a word that everyone has heard of, but to most, it carries a disagreeable connotation. It brings up images of burning bras, the hatred of men and angry, overly passionate, bossy women who want to bring down the patriarchy. In short, feminist has become a “bad word,” viewed as something you do not want to be for fear of losing friends and relationships; but I would assert the only bad word in 2015 is not “feminism,” but rather “meninism,” the counter to the women’s rights movement. This is a topic that can no longer be ignored and shoved aside for being
In this essay, I will explore the religious experience in general and some of its variations around the world. The focus will be on the types of religious beliefs and religious leaders, especially in small-scale societies. An exploration of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other major religion is beyond the scope of this essay. The approach taken is that of cultural relativity--religious practices or beliefs are not evaluated in terms of their "correctness" or "sophistication" but, rather, in terms of their function within the societies that have them.
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
Because the beliefs, education and cultures of people vary so much, along with the age of the child, methods of child discipline vary widely. The topic of child discipline involves a wide range of fields such as parenting, behavioural analysis, developmental psychology, social work and various religious perspectives. Advances in the understanding of parenting have provided a background of theoretical understanding and practical understanding of the effectiveness of parenting methods.
Secularization is a controversial form of social change in modern day society. Secularization is a concept derived from a Latin word meaning “the present age,” the term is generally associated with modern, technologically, and advanced societies. “Secularism is a political tradition that has been evolving for eighteenth centuries. It shares important relationships with other traditions, sustaining complex ties with Judeo-Christianity, and maintaining a long-standing relationship with Islam” ( Hurd, 2004). The term secular has taken on many different meaning through history. The earliest references can be traced to the 13th century, when the notion of the saeculum arose in reference to a binary opposition within Christianity. Priests who withdrew from the world (saeculum) formed the religious clergy, while those living in the world formed the secular clergy (Casanova, 1994). The notion of the ‘secular’ has taken on a range of different meanings over the past eighteen centuries. In today society, the world secular is used to describe a world thought to be in motion, the moving away from religious influence in everyday life.
The role of religion in politics is a topic that has long been argued, and has contributed to the start of wars, schisms (both political and religious), and other forms of inter and intra-state conflict. This topic, as a result of its checkered past, has become quite controversial, with many different viewpoints. One argument, put forth by many people throughout history, is that religion and the government should remain separate to avoid any conflicting interests. This view also typically suggests that there is one, or several, large and organized religions like the Roman Catholic Church, which would be able to use their “divine” authority to sway the politics of a given state by promising or threatening some form of godly approval or disapproval. By leveraging their divine power, individual figures within a religion, as well as the religion as a whole, could gain secular power for themselves, or over others. A second view, which was developed by many theologians through history, suggests that that without religion there would be a general lack of morality in the people and leaders of a given state, which would give way to poor political decisions that would not be in the interest of the people and perhaps even God (or the gods). This argument, however, does not address the fact that morality can exist without religion. In sociology, it is commonly accepted that social norms, which include morality, can result from any number of things. Religion, laws, or the basic desire of survival can all create these norms, so it suffices to say that as a society, our morals reflect our desire to live in relative peace through the creation of laws that serve to help us to survive. The argument of whether or not religion and politics should mix...
One can hardly talk of a single united feminism, but rather, manifold feminisms. The US feminist movement ‘s main global struggle has been to enable ‘womankind’ to fully lead her existence and live her humanity by standing against the injustices of the dominant patriarchy and sexist discrimination . Throughout history, the dominant mainstream Feminism ( with capital F) tends to have been related to conform to the aspiration of the educated middle-class heterosexual white women who have traditionally been given unequal power to widen their significance--but the movement has lately had more ramifications. Currently, there are different kinds of feminism whose disagreements stem from fundamental intrinsic understanding of what feminism, sexism or phallocentrism mean. Each trend views it from a different perspective as in accordance with its motives or concerns. Nonetheless, they share common claims as to “the body, class and work, disability, the family, globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, reproduction, science, the self, sex work, and sexuality.”