ABSTRACT
The task of developing new theories of ethics and politics has engaged contemporary feminist thinkers for some time now. It is in many ways a unified task, for faced with the unacceptable choice between thinking about ways to be powerful yet dominating, and thinking about ways to be virtuous yet powerless, feminist theorists have followed feminist activists in searching for ways to integrate ethics and politics. Considering the substantial body of feminist writing on the general subject of the self, or identity, or subjectivity, one might initially be skeptical of this argument. One of the features that most prominently characterizes male-stream ethical and political philosophies is an intense focus on the human capacity of reason, and a concurrent hope that ethics and politics can be made as “rational” (and unemotional) as possible. Feminist ethical-political thinking, of course, often challenges this ideal of a reason purified of emotion.
