Explorations

Future Paths of Phenomenology

1st OPHEN Summer Meeting

Repository | Series | Book | Chapter

194204

Reason

Gillian Howie

pp. 63-85

Abstract

Those in the sway of the "ideology of objectivism" persevere with the belief that scientific and epistemic claims can only be produced by rational, dispassionate, disinterested, and value-free methods of inquiry conducted by reasonable subjects.1 Troubled by the relationship between reason and power, particularly reason and masculinity, postmodern and cultural feminist theorists deny that reason has transcendental qualities and question the assertion that reason and philosophy can provide objective, reliable, and universal foundations.2 But their attempt to escape from the heritage of classical rationalism, from the ideology of objectivism, seems to leave us with a stark choice between rationalist humanism and antirationalism.3 Such a choice is only a pseudo-choice though, formulated as it is through a narrative associating reason with masculinity and emotion with femininity.4

Publication details

Published in:

Howie Gillian (2010) Between feminism and materialism: a question of method. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 63-85

DOI: 10.1057/9780230113435_4

Full citation:

Howie Gillian (2010) Reason, In: Between feminism and materialism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 63–85.