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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerPublisher’s Note:
Nearly a century before the advent of "multiculturalism," Jane Addams put forward her conception of the moral significance of diversity. Each member of a democracy, Addams believed, is under a moral obligation to seek out diverse experiences, making a daily effort to confront others' perspectives. Morality must be seen as a social rather than an individual endeavour, and democracy as a way of life rather than merely a basis for laws. Failing this, both democracy and ethics remain sterile, empty concepts. In this, Addams's earliest book on ethics--presented here with a substantial introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried--she reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of all members of society to determine their own well-being. Observing relationships between charitable workers and their clients, between factory owners and their employers, and between household employers and their servants, she identifies sources of friction and shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct. She also considers the proper education of workers, struggles between parents and their adult daughters over conflicting family and social claims, and the merging of politics with the daily lives of constituents. "The sphere of morals is the sphere of action," Addams proclaims. It is not enough to believe passively in the innate dignity of all human beings. Rather, one must work daily to root out racial, gender, class, and other prejudices from personal relationships.
Akkitiq, Atuat, Akpaliapak Karetak, Rhoda. Inunnguiniq (Making a Human Being)2017, In: Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: What Inuit Have Always Known to be True. Joe Karetak, Frank Tester, Shirley Tagalik (eds.), Fernwood Publishing.-
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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
The Inuit have experienced colonization and the resulting disregard for the societal systems, beliefs and support structures foundational to Inuit culture for generations. While much research has articulated the impacts of colonization and recognized that Indigenous cultures and worldviews are central to the well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities, little work has been done to preserve Inuit culture. Unfortunately, most people have a very limited understanding of Inuit culture, and often apply only a few trappings of culture -- past practices, artifacts and catchwords --to projects to justify cultural relevance. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit -- meaning all the extensive knowledge and experience passed from generation to generation -- is a collection of contributions by well- known and respected Inuit Elders. The book functions as a way of preserving important knowledge and tradition, contextualizing that knowledge within Canada's colonial legacy and providing an Inuit perspective on how we relate to each other, to other living beings and the environment.Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Astell, Mary. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies: Parts I and II2002, Broadview Press-
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Added by: Francesca Bruno
Publisher's Note: Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel, also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.Comment: This new edition by Patricia Springborg of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies: Parts I and II includes helpful introductory material and explanatory annotations to Astell's text. Springborg's introduction places Astell's work in the context of the woman question and the debate over empirical rationalism in the eighteenth-century. Astell defends women-only education, arguing against the dangers of women failing to think for themselves. This text is good to use in an early modern course. It could also be considered in a course on feminist philosophy as an example of early feminist thought (predating Mary Wollstonecraft).
Attfield, Robin, Robin Attfield, Attfield, Kate. Principles of Equality: Managing Equality and Diversity in a Steiner School2019, Sustainable Management Practices, ed. Muddassar Sarfraz, Muhammad Ibrahim Adbullah, Abdul Rauf, Syed Ghulam Meran Shah, London: IntechOpen-
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Added by: Björn Freter, Contributed by: Robin Attfield, Kate Attfield
Abstract: Principles of equality are examined in the context of managing equality and diversity in practice. Our case study is the Cardiff Steiner School, an independent international school located in Wales, UK with educational values guided by the philosophers and educationalists Rudolf Steiner and Millicent Mackenzie. The sustainable management referred to and assessed in this chapter is the school's management structure and the related School pedagogical operation, with the founding Steiner value of human justice informing these. We argue that at the School the management of equality and diversity reflects theories of Diversity and Equality Management, with School managers aspiring to encourage respect for all. We appraise the philosophical and spiritual values of the founders in relation to equality and diversity, in order to demonstrate the visionary ideals of these philosophers and the extent to which their beliefs live on sustainable in contemporary society, and particularly in a Steiner education community.
Comment: The principle of equality of consideration underpins managerial and pedagogical practices at the Cardiff Steiner School. We argue that respecting the principle of equality of consideration (see Singer 1983) is a prerequisite of respecting diversity, and issues in precisely this in an educational context. We present alternative models of equality (related to different principles of equality), applying these to an inclusive educational system, and find them deficient when it comes to the respecting of diversity. The various dimensions of diversity considered are culture, gender status, sexual orientation, socio-economic position, appearance and ethnicity.
Ayim, Maryann. Passing Through the Needle’s Eye: Can a Feminist Teach Logic?1995, Argumentation 9: 801-820-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
Is it possible for one and the same person to be a feminist and a logician, or does this entail a psychic rift of such proportions that one is plunged into an endless cycle of self-contradiction? Andrea Nye's book, Words of Power (1990), is an eloquent affirmation of the psychic rift position. In what follows, I shall discuss Nye's proscription of logic as well as her perceived alternatives of a woman's language and reading. This will be followed by a discussion more sharply focused on Nye's feminist response to logic, namely, her claim that feminism and logic are incompatible. I will end by offering a sketch of a class in the life of a feminist teaching logic, a sketch which is both a response to Nye (in Nye's sense of the word) and a counter-example to her thesis that logic is necessarily destructive to any genuine feminist enterprise.
Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Bortolotti, Lisa, Daniela Cutas. Reproductive and Parental Autonomy: An Argument for Compulsory Education2009, Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 19 (Ethics Supplement): 5-14.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: In this paper we argue that society should make available reliable information about parenting to everybody from an early age. The reason why parental education is important (when offered in a comprehensive and systematic way) is that it can help young people understand better the responsibilities associated with reproduction, and the skills required for parenting. This would allow them to make more informed life-choices about reproduction and parenting, and exercise their autonomy with respect to these choices. We do not believe that parental education would constitute a limitation of individual freedom. Rather, the acquisition of relevant information about reproduction and parenting and the acquisition of self-knowledge with respect to reproductive and parenting choices can help give shape to individual life plans. We make a case for compulsory parental education on the basis of the need to respect and enhance individual reproductive and parental autonomy within a culture that presents contradictory attitudes towards reproduction and where decisions about whether to become a parent are subject to significant pressure and scrutiny.Comment: This text provides a clear overview of debates about reproductive autonomy and compulsory education. It also contains responses to well known criticisms of compulsory parental education. It would be best used in a course dealing with issues of parenthood and procreation, reproduction, or autonomy in a medical context.
Broad, Jacqueline, Karen Detlefsen. (eds.) Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays2017, Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Francesca Bruno
Publisher's Note: This book addresses the theme of liberty as it is found in the writing of women philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives. It covers both theoretical and practical philosophy, with chapters grappling with problems in the metaphysics of free will (both human and God's), the liberty (or lack thereof) of women in their moral, personal lives as well as their social-political, public lives, and the interactions between the metaphysical and normative issues. The chapters draw upon writing of both women and men, and notably, upon a wide range of genres, including more standard philosophical treatises as well as polemical texts, poetry, plays, and other forms of fiction. As such, this book alerts the reader to the wide range of conceptions of what counts as a philosophical text in the early modern period. Several chapters also grapple with the relation between early modern and contemporary ways of thinking about the theme of women and liberty, thus urging the reader to appreciate the continuing importance of these earlier philosophers in the history of philosophy and of feminism. Ultimately, the chapters in this text show how crucial it is to recover the too-long forgotten views of female and women-friendly male philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for in the process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly altered toward a more accurate history of our discipline.Comment: This volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, including chapters on women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will and chapters examining the topic of women's freedom (or lack thereof) in their moral and personal lives. Some of the papers in this collection could be assigned individually in an undergraduate early modern survey course; or it could be one of the main texts for a more advanced (undergraduate or graduate) course on the topic of liberty/freedom, from a variety of philosophical perspectives (ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious).
Burra, Arudra. The Lamps in our House: Reflections on Postcolonial Pedagogy2021, Miami Institute for the Social Sciences blog-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Arudra Burra
Introduction: I teach philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. My teaching reflects my training, which is in the Western philosophical tradition: I teach PhD seminars on Plato and Rawls, while Bentham and Mill often figure in my undergraduate courses.
What does it mean to teach these canonical figures of the Western philosophical tradition to students in India? I have often asked myself this question. Similar questions are now being asked by philosophers situated in the West: Anglophone philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, seems to have arrived at a late moment of post-colonial reckoning. [...]
Comment: This is a long blog post originally published in an online forum on philosophy in the Global Majority organised by the Miami Institute of Social Sciences. It defends a place for thinking and teaching the Western philosophical canon in postcolonial educational spaces such as India, bringing together both recent discussions of decolonising philosophy in the West, as well as older discussions within India about the place of the Western canon. It concludes with a debate on these themes between Mahatma Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore. I wrote it as a reflection on my own pedagogical practice teaching philosophy in India, but it has also been used in a course on Indian philosophy taught at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. I think it would be a useful counterpoint to think with while talking about the importance of diversity in philosophy -- among other things because it points out that even the question of what constitutes 'diversity' might vary from place to place; and in that sense it might be seen as an instance of philosophical diversity in action. This is a long blog post originally published in an online forum on philosophy in the Global Majority organised by the Miami Institute of Social Sciences. It defends a place for thinking and teaching the Western philosophical canon in postcolonial educational spaces such as India, bringing together both recent discussions of decolonising philosophy in the West, as well as older discussions within India about the place of the Western canon. It concludes with a debate on these themes between Mahatma Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore. I wrote it as a reflection on my own pedagogical practice teaching philosophy in India, but it has also been used in a course on Indian philosophy taught at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. I think it would be a useful counterpoint to think with while talking about the importance of diversity in philosophy -- among other things because it points out that even the question of what constitutes 'diversity' might vary from place to place; and in that sense it might be seen as an instance of philosophical diversity in action.
Cahill, Ann J., Jennifer Hansen (eds.). Continental Feminism Reader2003, Rowman & Littlefield-
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Added by: Alison Stone
Publisher's Note: Ann J. Cahill and Jennifer Hansen collect the most groundbreaking recent work in Continental feminist theory, introducing and explaining pieces that are often mystifying to those outside the field and outside academia. With these essays, Continental Feminism Reader begins the process of reanimating feminist politics through the critical tools of its contributors.Comment: A collection of essays that represent a range of continental-philosophy influenced approaches within feminism, for example with selections from the work of Judith Butler and Kelly Oliver. It could be used as the basis of a course on feminist philosophy if approaching it from a continental perspective, or separate chapters could be used as some of the readings.
Curtis, Annaleigh. Feminism Part 1: The Sameness Approach2014, 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Nathan Nobis
Abstract: In both academic and non-academic discussions of feminism, there is sometimes a lack of appreciation for the diversity among feminist positions. Two people may be called feminists while disagreeing about a range of theoretical and practical issues, like the nature of oppression, sex work, or abortion. In this and the next essay, I lay out two general feminist approaches to sexist oppression: the sameness approach, the difference approach, and the dominance approach. This first essay focuses on the sameness approach.Comment: An introduction to 'the sameness approach' in feminism.
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Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics
2002, University of Illinois Press
Comment (from this Blueprint): In this book, published in 1902, Jane Addams makes a case for why politics must be done with an eye to the personal, interpersonal, and lived. She argues that ethics and democracy cannot be properly conceived outside of the realm of the social. Addams thinks of social friction as productive and illuminative. Abstract and passive belief in doing good and being democratic without actually speaking to those who are oppressed or marginalized is not sufficient to do good and be democratic. One cannot be democratic without actually involving oneself with people who are different than you. Addams foreshadows later arguments about multiculturalism, diversity, and participatory democracy.