Phenomenological Feminist Perspectives
Nancy Tuana, Rosemarie Putnam Tong
February 6, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429500527-26 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that phenomenology, with its focus on lived subjective experience, is particularly suited to feminist philosophy, which should theorize from women's experiences. Notes Iris Marion Young's claim that phenomenologists treat a certain experience as an alienated objectification of the body because they posit a unified self as a condition of experience. |
Abstract
Phenomenological philosophy is rooted in the desire to ground philosophy in lived experiences. Initially developed by Edmund Husserl and significantly modified by Martin Heideggar and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology was a response to the privileging of objectivity as the hallmark of reason. Phenomenology embraces the importance and centrality of human subjectivity—the flow of lived human experience—from which our theories and our reason emanate. Phenomenology is particularly well suited to feminist philosophy. Given the conviction of many feminists that feminist theorizing ought to arise from the experiences of women, a description of the embodied consciousness of women is a central component of the feminist endeavor. Iris Marion Young notes that phenomenologists treat the latter experience as an alienated objectification of one&s;s body precisely because they posit the idea of a unified self as a condition of experience.