Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (Studies in Feminist Philosophy) - Hardcover

Walker, Margaret Urban

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195315391 ISBN 13: 9780195315394

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2007

Synopsis

This is a revised edition of Walker's well-known book in feminist ethics first published in 1997. Walker's book proposes a view of morality and an approach to ethical theory which uses the critical insights of feminism and race theory to rethink the epistemological and moral position of the ethical theorist, and how moral theory is inescapably shaped by culture and history. The main gist of her book is that morality is embodied in "practices of responsibility" that express our identities, values, and connections to others in socially patterned ways. Thus ethical theory needs to be empirically informed and politically critical to avoid reiterating forms of socially entrenched bias. Responsible ethical theory should reveal and question the moral significance of social differences. The book engages with, and challenges, the work of contemporary analytic philosophers in ethics.

Moral Understandings has been influential in reaching a global audience in ethics and feminist philosophy, as well as in tangential fields like nursing ethics; research ethics; disability ethics; environmental ethics, and social and political theory. This revised edition contains a new preface, a substantive postscript to Chapter 1 about "the subject of moral philosophy"; the addition of a new chapter on the importance of emotion in practices of responsibility; and the addition of an afterword, which responds to critics of the book.

About this title

About the Author:

Margaret Urban Walker is Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University. She is author of Moral Contexts and Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations After Wrongdoing, and editor of Mother Time: Women, Aging and Ethics and Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, with Peggy DesAutels.

Review:

"Walker's book challenges all of us to reflect on how ethics are inextricably connected to psychology, sociology, history adn anthropology. Her book would... be especially appropriate for upper-level moral or feminist philosophy classes where nontraditional approaches to ethics are emphasized."
-Marcia L. Homiak, "Signs, Spring 2001
"Walker provides a devastating critique of the gender, race, class, and other biases endemic to the theoretical-juridical model assumed in most nonfeminist ethics.Her own expressive-collaborative ethics of responsibility offers a persuasive alternative not only to the theoretical-juridical model but also to the ethics of care as that has been construed in many feminist discussions. Presenting feminist ethics in a somewhat unexpected light, this profound and original book reaches new levels of theoretical insight and moral understanding..""
-Alison M. Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0195315391
• ISBN 13: 9780195315394
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 328