It is interesting that the majority of philosophy that is
taught has generally been developed by white males. As Friedman points out,
though the personal qualities of someone in particular do not directly affect
their view, there is a risk that they might only consider a view that coincides
with their singular experiences. Yet, I have
traditionally held the view that ad-homonistic points do injustice to the
argument at hand, but exposure to Friedman’s ideas is causing me to question
this idea.
Almost all philosophy up until the
twentieth century has been written by white men. The first woman philosopher I
can think of off the top of my head is Simone de Beauvoir. Conceptions of
autonomy do not specifically exclude women, but the baseline theoretical conceptions
that have been developed are not the only important aspects to autonomy nor are
they the kinds of autonomy that we see in practice. Friedman suggests that
autonomy as it has been realized thus far is an autonomy of white men. This kind
of autonomy does not mean the same thing for women. She also provides the
important caveat that white men are sometimes subjected to some of the same
disadvantages that this kind of autonomy has for women.
Still, it is an injustice, in my
view, to teach concepts of autonomy that are flawed without acknowledging those
flaws. Some flaws that philosophers traditionally try to exclude from their arguments
are those biases the creep unbeknownst to the philosopher his/herself. Though
Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, for example, provide views on autonomy that are
well known and respected, these views are coincidentally aligned with
traditionally male values. Furthermore, these ideas of autonomy are by no means
the final say in what autonomy is. It is likely that each of their views
possesses a male bias. I think this bias is apparent in all of them.
It is my understanding that each
takes reason to be independent of all other human functions and abilities.
Reason is taken to be the purely calculating ability of the human. It is
independent of the passions, of spirit, of emotions, of desires, of appetites,
etc… Yet reason can interact with all of the human capacities. If reason was
truly independent, then would it not be lacking in understanding? To understand
emotion, one must possess empathy. Reason, by the above definition fails to
constitute full understanding. This may be indication that reason is not the
almighty concept it is made out to be. Yet, I believe that without reason empathy
would not exist. Empathy appears to be a synthesis of the human capacities for
emotion and reason.
Perusing these ideas tends to align
my perspective on reason with Friedman’s. She points out that traditional
ideals of autonomy have been grounded in reason, and that this may not be a
well-grounded justification itself. Reason in this sense—the sense I attempted
to express that Kant, Aristotle, and Plato take—involves a detachment from
emotion. Such a detachment realized in behavior is typically masculine.
Friedman makes these points—considering autonomy and not Plato, Aristotle, and
Kant specifically—far better than I, and I will leave it where she has.
I would like to add, however, an interesting
idea inspired by Friedman’s point regarding the ideal of autonomy versus the
use of autonomy. The use of anything or the act of anyone can be consider as a
performance—performance in the sense of success/fail as with athletes. All
performances require an attitude. For example, generally an attitude of
confidence or disregard for others opinions is required to perform well,
whereas an attitude of cowardice will generally result a bad performance.
Attitudes require emotions, passions, and feelings. They are mental states of
the human being. Reason cannot be exercised (as far as we know) independent of mental
states. We may think of reason in an idealized manner (i.e. as pure and
independent of other things), but reason cannot be employed without a mental
state. Thus human reasoning is never independent of emotions and passions. This
further aligns my perspective on reason with Friedman’s suggestions.
Here, I begin to doubt the ideal of
reason as presented by those renowned philosophers and with it the idea that an
argument can stand independent of its author. I do not mean to say that logic
(the field of logic) is skewed by emotion nor do I mean to say that we should
consider ad-homonyms a valid option for argument invalidation. I mean merely to
suggest that we cannot ignore other factors that might have possibly
contributed to a view that are not immediately apparent in that argument.
