Susan Haack's Argument Concerning Feminist Epistemology

In this paper, Susan Haack supports the argument laid out by Dorothy Sayers’ in her 1936 novel, ‘Gaudy Night’. Haack’s argument is a critique of the current feminist perspective; stating that feminism confines women to a “pink-collar ghetto of women’s issues and feminist approaches”. (Haack, 2008: 31) Moreover, Haack’s analysis in her paper demonstrates that women’s place in philosophy, and even more broadly in society, has not radically changed over time. Haack’s conclusion is that feminism needs to move away from the emphasis on “women-as-a-class”, and rather feminism should concentrate on making sex irrelevant to the assessment of someone’s academic capabilities. (Haack, 2008: 31) Furthermore, Haack claims that today’s feminist discourse inevitably perpetuates divisions between men and women.

This essay will examine how Russell arrives at this conclusion.

The first premise that Haack introduces is that there is an “emphasis on women-as-a-class which predominates in feminism today”. (Haack, 2008: 31) This statement is a critique of the current form of feminism. Haack suggests feminism sees women are somehow separate from other human beings; in particular, from men. This is because feminism ignores what is universal, and instead focuses exclusively on the “woman’s point of view”. (Haack, 2008: 29) Furthermore, Haack goes on to argue that “women-as-a-class was the basis of old practices of exclusion”. (Haack, 2008: 31) The practices of exclusion refer to mechanisms such as sexism that pursues to degrade the position of women in society. As result, these mechanisms try to impose the belief that women are of a separate, and lower status to men. Haack argues that current feminism itself focuses too deeply on women. For this reason, feminisms emphasis on women has “had no alternative but to focus on women-as-a-class themselves” (Haack, 2008: 31) Therefore, feminism itself perpetuates the divisions in society. For this reason, Haack argues that feminist discourse plays into “the hands of the oppressor”. (Haack, 2008: 31) This infers that the oppressor is anyone that undermines the position of women in society; in particular, the oppressor would be men. Therefore, Haack claims feminism perpetuates the discourse of women as a class.

Secondly, Haack’s next premise states “a refusal to acknowledge women’s full humanity, and a correlative inability to appreciate each woman’s full individuality, really is at the very heart of sexism” (Haack, 2008: 31). This quote infers that sexism does not acknowledge women’s individuality, rather sexism seeks to classify women into a homogeneous group. Whereas, in reality, Haack argues that women are individual; women have unique tastes and ideals, as do men. I will explain Haack’s argument with my own example. For instance, in politics, there is a clear difference of opinion. This is demonstrated by the fact there is a range of parties that represent a multiplicity of interests. Although there are general voting trends, there is usually no definitive pattern that all men and all women vote uniformly for a particular party. This example epitomizes that there is no set of gender-specific ideals, therefore, all humans are individualistic. Haack relates the idea that sexism categorizes women as a class in the context of academia today; stating that instead of women “being unambiguously welcomed” into their workplace, women are “encouraged to confine themselves to the pink-collar ghetto of ‘women’s issues’ and ‘feminist approaches’” (Haack, 2008: 31). In other words, women are automatically sub-grouped as different from male scholars simply because of their sex. Therefore, Haack argues this language makes it harder for women to be viewed equally. As a result, this discourse simply reinforces sexist stereotypes because it normalizes the view that women are a class separate from men. Aside from this, there is an underlying sentiment in Haack’s argument that draws parallels between the position of women today in society, and the women described in Sayers ‘Gaudy Night’; Haack implies that there has been no fundamental change. For this reason, Haack argues that sexism makes it harder for clever women to succeed in philosophy, and more broadly, the workplace and society.

Haack’s next premise argues that the feminist perspective has further undermined women’s position in society. Haack explains that feminism “echoes … old sexist stereotypes”. (Haack, 2008: 31) Therefore, this suggests that the feminism of today inevitably restores this discourse into society. This is because feminism creates a feminist epistemology that is not objective. As a result, their epistemology imposes logic that cannot be value-free. For instance, Haack states “feminist ethics will focus on caring rather than duty, or on virtue rather than justice”. (Haack, 2008: 31) This implies that feminist ethics differ from ordinary ethics, which further reinforces the idea that women are a class separate from the rest of society. Therefore, feminism encourages sexism through their ethics. For instance, Haack argues that feminist ethics promote care over duty, this suggests that feminists endorse and embrace stereotypes of women as acceptable. In this way, feminist ethics also promote that “logic is a masculinist enterprise”. (Haack, 2008: 31) This is because feminist ethics classifies itself as a class apart from masculine, ordinary ethics. For this reason, it can be said that feminist ethics perpetuate the divisions between men and women, instead of narrowing them. Therefore, the feminist perspective in Haack’s view undermines women in society.

Lastly, Haack’s final premise provides direction for feminist epistemology in the future. For example, Haack states that the “feminist epistemology should stress connectedness, community, emotion, trust, the body, etc.”. (Haack, 2008: 31) This infers that instead of isolating women-as-a-class, feminists should concentrate on the inclusion of the whole of society. Therefore, feminist epistemology should not concentrate solely on the perspective of women, but rather it should develop an epistemology that represents all of humanity. For instance, Haack argued feminists should be “epistemologists, to develop a true account of knowledge, evidence, warrant, inquiry, etc…” (Haack, 2008: 31); meaning that feminism needs to distinguish justified belief from simply opinion. Again, this is because inherently opinions cannot be value-free. Following this, Haack argues that society will be readier to know of any substandard epistemology; Haack consequently implies that it would be easier to disregard the inferior epistemologies. Haack suggests that feminism is this imperfect epistemology. This is because feminism fails to provide “a much-needed antidote to the emphasis on women-as-a-class which predominates in feminism today”. (Haack, 2008: 31) Therefore, this undermines the credibility of the feminist perspective, and much broader, the credibility of women in society. For this reason, feminism currently undermines the position of women in society, and thus feminism reinforces women as-a-class.

This completes Haack’s argument that claims the current feminist discourse inevitably perpetuates divisions between men and women.

Now, this essay will comment on the quality of Haack’s argument.

A critique of Haack’s argument is that there is a casual fallacy in terms of mistaking correlation for cause. A causal fallacy understands that premise ‘x is correlated with premise y’, therefore it infers a false conclusion that ‘x causes y’. (Bowell and Kemp, 2014: 239-240) In the context of individualism, Haack implied that all human beings have inherently individual thoughts. Furthermore, Haack infers that all humans are ‘individualistic’; defined as “valuing the individuality of individual human beings”. Haack understands that ‘all human beings have individual thoughts’ correlates ‘with all humans being are individualistic’. Haack then makes a false assumption that the premise that ‘all human beings have individual thoughts’ causes ‘all humans to be individualistic’. However, premise x does not cause y. For instance, Haacks argument fails to acknowledge that humans sometimes share similar views. For instance, humans form groups with people who share similar interests in a multiplicity of instances. Humans join pressure groups that pursue a common cause. Specifically, the NRA had more than 5 million members in 2015. This suggests that at least 5 million humans in America share a common interest to promote their constitutional right to bear arms. For this reason, this example demonstrates that it is wrong for Haack to assume that the correlation between individuals’ thoughts and individualism, means that individual thoughts cause all humans to be individualistic. Therefore, Haack’s argument lacks quality in this regard.

This is an instance of a deductive argument because “it would be impossible for all the premises of the argument to be true, but the conclusion to be false.” (Bowell and Kemp, 2017: 73) For instance, Haack argues that ‘all women are individuals’ and ‘all women are fully human. (Haack, 2017: 31) Therefore, this argument is deductively valid because it is right to say that the premise ‘all women are humans’, would then guarantee the truth of the conclusion ‘women are fully individual’. This is because Haack is inclusive of ‘all women, and all humans. Therefore, this highlights the strength of Haack’s argument.

In summary, despite some flaws in the quality of her argument, on balance, Haack makes a high-quality argument, in particular, this was indicated by her deductively valid argument regarding individuality. Haack claims that today’s feminist discourse inevitably perpetuates divisions between men and women. Therefore, Haack concludes that feminist epistemology needs to change; Feminism should focus on making sex irrelevant to the assessment of society as a whole.