Nature of Philosophy

Nature of Philosophy

Nature of Philosophy

Introduction

While feminist empiricists are linked to post-positivist assumptions around different communities of knowers battling for truths and legitimacy in knowledge making, feminist standpoint epistemologists have challenged the differential power that groups have to define knowledge, and they argued that marginalized groups hold a particular claim to knowing. At the centre of viewpoint epistemology is their assertion that they comprise the world from a specific communally located perspective, which comprises epistemic privilege or authority. This epistemic privileging is established in the viewpoint of the marginalized or disadvantaged, and all women, regardless of social location, live at this position. “Women's experiences, acquainted by feminist idea, provide a potential grounding for more entire and less distorted information assertions than do men's” (Harding 1987b:184; see furthermore Hartsock 1983, 1985).4 viewpoint epistemology has continually emphasized how information should start in women's “everyday/ everynight world” (Smith 1999:5; see also Smith 1987) and how women's inhabits are the “places from which to start off information tasks” (Harding 1991:61). Standissue feminists have furthermore been at pains to issue out that these experiences, everyday/everynight worlds, or standpoints should also be established, and analyzed, inside broader relations of ruling or social organisations (Smith 1987, 1999). As Nancy Hartsock (1998) has made clear, a standpoint is “achieved rather than obvious, a mediated rather than an immediate comprehending” (p. 110). Similarly, Patricia high ground Collins (1997) has emphasised that standpoint is about “historically distributed, group-based experiences.”

First-Wave Feminisms

Western feminist movements first sought the inclusion of women in the everyday world of men. Thus, they demanded equal opportunity in politics, law, work and the economy, and public space. This stage of Western feminism often is referred to as liberal feminism because feminists drew on liberalism's ideal of individual liberty, freedom, and egalitarianism to make their claims. Indeed, feminists of ...