Relational morality
which relations, which morals?
pp. 327-343
in: Kostas Gavroglu, John Stachel, Mark W. Wartofsky (eds), Science, mind and art, Berlin, Springer, 1995Abstract
I began chewing on questions about constructions of the individual and society in liberal moral philosophies and theologies while a graduate student in religious studies at Boston University. My questions developed in relation to my involvement in feminism, in the study of Marx, and previous work in linguistics. During this process, Bob Cohen was a collegial and generous teacher and the second reader for my dissertation on the constructions of the individual and society in Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Marx. Our many discussions were marked by Bob's insistence on careful attention to the text at hand, by his willingness to consider any argument with the same exacting and exploratory style, and by his rejection of all easy answers. For the past ten years I have continued to think about liberal moral constructions and feminist responses to them, often working by immanent critique. In this article I extend this process by exploring the plural notions of society and morality in liberal thinking that become evident when we consider their gender and class relations.1
