Feminist Moral Inquiry and the Feminist Future [1993]

Feminist moral inquiry is an ongoing process that will need to continue far into the future. Most feminists see morality as a matter of practice and art as well as of knowledge. Feminists often insist on the importance of the emotions in moral understanding. Returning to the method of moral inquiry sketched before, one can see how well it incorporates the feminist concern for emotion along with reason and the feminist appreciation of appropriate feelings. Another way in which a feminist approach to moral inquiry seems to differ from dominant approaches is in its greater reliance on actual rather than on hypothetical experience. Feminist morality develops its principles with awareness of the differences between the contexts for which such principles are deemed suitable and with attention to the moral experience of those actually in such contexts. The view that an economic foundation determines all the layers of society built upon it also seems inadequate from a feminist point of view.