 2015 - 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 0608-1110-01 | Introduction to Feminist Philosophy: Women's Thoughts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The feminist calling to a radical change in both the status of women and the way they are perceived of raised the need to re-think fundamental constitutive principles and key-concepts in Western thought. The course will discuss feminist critique of the rationalist and ethical tradition of thought in Western culture as well as some of the prominent feminist alternatives for the re-conceptualization not only of women but of society as a whole.
The course will put an emphasis on the inherent tension between two poles in the history of feminist theory and the feminist social struggle for equality: Does equality between the sexes requires equating women to men or does true equality consist in establishing a new and distinct female identity? And does recognition in the fundamental difference between men and women necessarily conflicts with the notion of equality? This yet unresolved tension brings up a central theme in philosophy in general and in feminist philosophy in particular concerning the definition of the human subject and the philosophical ideal attached to it which feminist philosophers both re-examined and challenged.