Ethics and Political Philosophy Group Talk (Gina Schouten, Harvard)

The Ethics and Political Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker Gina Schouten, a professor at Harvard who works primarily in the areas of social philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics. She has written about political liberalism and political legitimacy, educational justice, and the gendered division of labor. She is also interested in issues of justice in higher education, diversity problems within the discipline of philosophy, the politics of abortion, and other topics in feminist philosophy.

Please join this online-only talk.

Talk Title

Liberal Feminism, Social Critique, and Moral Methodology: What Can Reflective Equilibrium Accomplish?

Talk Abstract

This paper brings together two strands of opposition to liberalism: First is the substantive strand, concerning liberalism’s feminist, anti-racist, and egalitarian credentials. Second is the methodological strand, concerning liberalism’s method of moral justification, reflective equilibrium. In response to the substantive strand of opposition to liberalism, left-liberal feminists have argued that, properly understood, liberal values entail a deep critique of sexism, racism, and economic inequality, and furnish an emancipatory, democratic vision for progress toward a more just society. My question in this paper is: Does liberalism’s method of moral justification undermine these liberal feminist attempts to answer the substantive challenge? I defend reflective equilibrium in order to support a negative answer to that question: Liberal feminist attempts to redeem the progressive potential of liberalism are not undermined by their use of reflective equilibrium as a method of moral justification. I make my case by engaging with recent work by Sally Haslanger, in which she criticizes reflective equilibrium generally but with a particular focus on its implications for feminist normative theorizing.

About the Ethics and Political Philosophy Group

The Ethics and Political Philosophy Group meets periodically throughout the year to discuss topics in value theory and related fields, including meta-ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, moral psychology, practical reason, agency, and identity.