Anderson - Autonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

8/12/2019 Anderson - Autonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

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Feminist Theory

DOI: 10.1177/146470010300420042003; 4; 149Feminist Theory

Pamela Sue AndersonAutonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

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on the centrality of autonomy in the assessment of political institutions. 1Autonomy is a good thing for individuals to have and for society topromote. So it appears that autonomy serves as a critical test for what isgood; and it is certainly a linchpin for modern liberalism. Yet agreementruns out when we look to the philosophical literature for a denition of autonomy and nd diverse and contradictory accounts. Nevertheless, thereis one prominent claim, which has become the object of feminist and post-modern critiques: that autonomy is a personal ideal, according to whichindividuals are authors of their own lives: to be autonomous is to be ableto live out ones plans, projects and aspirations and, in that sense, to writethe story of ones own life (Mendus, 2000: 128). 2 I intend to focus criti-cally on autonomy as self-authorship, in order to assess the genderednature of this prominent claim.

In recent years, the claim to self-authorship has been the focus of a range

of ethical, political and social criticisms. In particular, consider the criti-cism of Susan Mendus that:

. . . autonomy, so understood, is less important than is commonly believed. Bygiving centrality to the concept of autonomy as authorship modern political phil-osophy neglects what is of most signicance to many peoples lives. In particular,it misrepresents the nature of personal relationships and in consequence advo-cates social and political arrangements which threaten to distort the realities of individuals lived experience. (Mendus, 2000: 129)

My aim is to bring out the lived reality of the relation of autonomy tovulnerability and the signicance of this relation for ethics today. I willsuggest that the gendering of autonomy can help us to read and wri te thenarratives which actually shape the lives of men and women, includingtheir personal, material and social relations.

To be precise, I will understand the gendering of ethics as an internalprocess whereby, rst, we become aware of the model of human nature, of identity, which ethics employs; and, second, as feminists we assesswhether this identity has been imposed authoritatively in order to subordi-nate women. 3 So gendering is an internal critique (of ethics) rather thana corrective process that operates (on ethics) from outside. As an internalcritique, it works from within; which means, in this context, that if mascu-line narcissism has led to defects in ethical theory, then the problem is notsimply descriptive incompleteness. The problem is a failure to respect thepresence in moral rationality of capacities such as attention and relation-ality. These particular capacities are supposedly not those possessed by theautonomous individual yet are apparently (correctly) attributed towomen in their roles of wife and mother. For my part I propose that thisinternal critique of any subordination of women due to the imposition of gender identity should, in addition, be followed by a creativity that initi-ates a transformation of sexist conditions: a transformation that could besaid to constitute a re-gendering.

My argument builds upon Kantian discussions of autonomy, includingreferences to critical work by feminists and by some theorists who rejectKant. 4 From this grounding, I seek to defend my own view on autonomy,

150 Feminist Theory 4(2)

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vulnerability and gender. However, before the presentation of myargument, I will follow Mendus example in turning to A Doll s Hou se , a19th century play by Henrik Ibsen. In particular, I will stress the politicalnature of Ibsens play, since it can still contribute to feminist discussionsof autonomy, especially in breaking down the distinction between thepublic and private spheres of life. Clearly Ibsens play provoked furiousreactions in 187980, when audiences were not yet ready to admit theentrance of women into public life, let alone their autonomy! My initialconcern is with the picture of a gendered conception of autonomy and thecondition of womens vulnerability found in Ibsens 1879 play (Ibsen, 1981:188).

As A Doll s Hou se opens, Torvald Helmer and his wife, Nora, are at thepoint in their marriage of nancial success after years of hard work.

Torvalds status and success have been achieved by the efforts of both

husband and wife. In fact, in the early years of their marriage Torvald wasunwell. During that period of time, and unknown to him, Nora borrowedmoney to pay for his medical treatment. This involved forging her fatherssignature because women were not allowed to borrow money. Nora did thisout of love and imagined that, if Torvald ever found out he would be proudof her. But it becomes brutally clear that she did not know him. Further-more, she neither understood the criminal nature of her act of forgery noranticipated the inevitably harsh response of her husband to this act. Therevelation of the mutual failure of husband and wife to know each other

comes just after Torvald learns that his wife is not an innocent doll, but aliar, a cheat even a common criminal. His initial reaction is panic, thenincomprehension:

. . . people might even suspect me of being an accomplice in these criminal actsof yours. They might even think I was the one behind it all . . . I just cant under-stand it, its so incredible. (Ibsen, 1981: 76)

Until he is assured that her criminal act of forgery can be concealed, heseems horried.

Ironically, this becomes a moment of potential power for Nora. She is

able to recognize the role which has been authoritatively imposed uponher. Here she realizes her failure to read her own life in relation to herhusband, family and society:

NORA . . . At home, Daddy used to tell me what he thought, then I thought thesame. And if I thought differently, I kept quiet about it, because he wouldnt haveliked it. He used to call me his baby doll, and he played with me as I used to playwith my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. . . .

HELMER What way is that to talk about our marriage?

NORA What I mean is: I passed out of Daddys hands into yours. You arrangedeverything to your tastes, and I acquired the same tastes. Or I pretended to . . . Idont really know . . . I think it was a bit of both, sometimes one thing and some-times the other. When I look back, it seems to me I have been living here like abeggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by doing tricks for you, Torvald. But thats theway you wanted it. You and Daddy did me a great wrong. Its your fault that Ivenever made anything of my life. (Ibsen, 1981: 80)

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Nora is equally horried at this moment; she is shocked by the picturewhich her husband, l ike her father, sustained of her. From an external pointof view, especially in her husbands eyes, she is a child in acute need of theprotection of a practical man to compensate for her inadequacies. Yet, forNora this is a signicant moment for self-recognition when she nds powerin reacting against a destructive, external view of her:

. . . If Im ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, Imust learn to stand alone. Thats why I cant stay here with you any longer. (Ibsen,1981: 81)

[Now] . . . I believe that rst and foremost I am an individual, just as much as youare or at least Im going to try to be. I know most people agree with you, Torvald,and thats also what it says in books. But Im not content any more wi th what mostpeople say, or with what it says in books. I have to think things out for myself,and get things clear. (Ibsen, 1981: 82)

In this play, the male and female characters equally fail to read therelational context of their lives, despite each shaping the others story.

There are at least two moments when Nora discovers her own power to act,in a certain sense, autonomously. First, there is the earlier moment (impliedabove). At the death of her father she helps her husband, without his aware-ness, by borrowing money in her fathers name. Second, there is thisdecisive moment for her own self-knowledge (above), when her husbandis horried by the discovery of her autonomous action and she asserts hernew intention, that is, to leave him. I urge that we recognize a Kantianpossibility for the female character in Ibsens play. There is, on the onehand, the upshot 5 of Kants position that a man has autonomy, while awoman lacks the autonomous capacity to reason for herself; a position thatwas obviously entrenched in the minds of those who reacted furiously toIbsens implicit proposal in A Doll s Hou se that a woman has autonomy.

Yet I contend that there is also, on the other hand, the Kantian possibil itythat, in asserting herself as a rational agent, the woman can break with adolls house. Nora takes a step toward self-authorship, or autonomy, byseeking to know herself, the law and society.

Kantian ethics and Kant on autonomy There has never been much dispute that Kant seeks the limits to what wecan know. Yet in the past this limitation has rarely been related to theautonomous use of reason in Kantian ethics. In fact, the postmoderncritique of autonomy has assumed just the opposite: that the Kantiansubject has a fully transparent knowledge of itself as a rational agent.However, I maintain that this is not the (best) way to read Kant. The post-modern assumption is incorrect, tending to derive from formalist readingsof the Kantian autonomous subject as disembodied and disembedded. Thissubject is especially prominent in works by 20th century Anglo-Americanethicists. In contrast, if we accept the necessarily partial nature of self-knowledge and the need to read our lives in the context of the stories inwhich we already play a part even before we begin to write our own 6 then




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the autonomy and reason of a Kantian agent are vulnerable to circum-stances, to the contingencies of nature and of concrete relationships withother agents.

We can be wrong not only about what we know and what is right action,but wrong about who we are in relation to the constraints of our personal,social and material world. In this light, our ethics need to be based uponrevisable, rational principles. I maintain that this revisability opens up thepossibility of recognizing the gendered nature of our contemporary concep-tion of autonomy. Moreover, if, in giving a more adequate account of Kantsassumptions about embodiment, his autonomous subject cannot be sepa-rated from the fundamental source of our vulnerability, then there isground, even in Kant, for an account of agency and ethics which includesthe variables of gender.

My own, Kantian, view is that an account of autonomy as self-authorship

can only be partially true. Inevitably the self is vulnerable also to thedemands of time and variables of gender in shaping the stories of our lives.If this view were accepted more widely, it would challenge decisively thestill dominant, liberal idea of autonomy as, straightforwardly, the abil ity towri te my story. Moreover i t would equally challenge a supercial readingof Kant.

For Kant, temporal events render us vulnerable to change. More gener-ally, what happens to us is contingent upon the vagaries of everydaycircumstances. In fact, it is Kants recognition of our contingency that led

him to try to make the moral realm secure with the reliability and consist-ency of what is necessarily common to all human beings: our capacity toreason. Autonomous reason aim s to achieve reliabil ity and consistency, butthis is always in the face of our inevitable vulnerability. Yet the issue iswhether such an ethical ideal of autonomy could allow for differences between men and women at the level of concrete, material and social life.

To address this critical issue in the rest of this article I will argue, roughly,as follows. First, I will contend that the lack of rational authority sufferedby socially marginalized or subordinated persons (for example, women)can be remedied by a practical principle of inclusion; that is, the inclusionof concrete differences. As a feminist principle this would have to be readat the interface of autonomy and vulnerability where women have beenexcluded by their vulnerabil ity. Second, I will demonstrate that, practicallyspeaking, rational authority should be able to account for the social andmaterial specicities of our vulnerability, as men and women, in bothreading and writing our own lives. In the face of vulnerability due to ourneediness and contingency, we seek a common humanity in aspiring to beautonomous selves, while nevertheless remaining dependent on others toa certain degree. This dialectic of autonomy and vulnerability, I suggest,can nd coherence only in making narrative sense of life. In Ricoeursterms, narrative identity seeks the fragile coherence of a story which,nevertheless, contains variability, diversity and even discontinuity. Herenarrative identity gives the self a unity, but this is a dynamic unity, allowingchange through time as in the context of a story. 7 In particular, the moralthread of the story can unite the characters, their actions and temporal




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In particular, a Foucauldian conceives discursive relations precisely asconstraining: such relations are constituted by power as a productive force,not by an absence of power. Conclude that a Kantian ideal of a discursivesituation in which power is absent is a false conception. After Foucault, wecannot make sense of a discursive situation in which the suppression of critical thought is overcome by the absence of power (Foucault, 1984).

In short, a decisive problem for the Foucauldian (ethicist) with aconstructivist vindication of reasons authority is the Kantian ideal of anethical situation in which we could exclude the workings of power fromdiscursive relations p er se . If we follow this postmodern line we will haveto reject the conception of autonomy as a regulative ideal for the perfectinclusion of all men and all women in ethical thinking. But the problemhere is not with reason itself and, I would say, not with autonomy itself.Instead, the loss of condence is in a commitment to a peculiarly unreach-

able standard, namely, the absence of power, for the vindication of rationalauthority. In other words, the postmodern thinker, as Fricker explains,despairs of the possibility of distinguishing authoritative from authori-tarian uses of reason (Fricker, 2000: 156). To overcome the postmodern lossof condence in rational authority we might, as Fricker does, shift the focusfor feminists to the ethics of our epistemic practices: how w e shoul d con d u ct ou rselv es as reason ers as participants in discursive or epistemicpractices (Fricker, 2000: 159; italics added). Frickers move is worth moreconsideration. Here I only have space to insist upon considering the dis-

cursive practices of a feminist ethics of autonomy. In particular, our prac-tices should be aware of, and so reect, the limited role of self-authorship.In other words, feminist ethicists should read womens lives carefully inthe context of the stories in which we nd ourselves.

Feminist ethicists can enhance a practical ideal of autonomy by raisingquestions of power, gender and social identity. This sensitivity to contextwould, in turn, support a constructivist vindication of the political auth-ority of reason. What would these questions say about Nora? her power?her gender? her social identity? In ways similar to this reading of Nora, wewould each have to read our own discursive practices in specic concretesituations. But this would also imply reading new possibilities in the ideasof past thinkers. For instance, we might read the possibility that Nora willgain knowledge of herself, the law and society, not by learning to standalone (Ibsen, 1981: 81), but by recognizing her rational capacities as wellas her needs in relation to others.

A feminist conception of autonomyI am not convinced by the postmodern philosophers critique of rationalauthority. In particular, I do not accept that ONeills Kantian ideal of perfect inclusivity for all men and all women as ethical reasoners is necess-arily undermined by a general, even pervasive, loss of condence in theauthority of reason. What seems to be wrong, at least with ONeills earlyaccount of a constructivist vindication of autonomys political basis as theground for perfect inclusivity, is a failure to address adequately the issue




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of social identity and power. Yet a practical ideal of inclusion not unlikecertain feminist proposals for relational autonomy 10 could still beemployed to interpret autonomy as a regulative, revisable principle of reason. This is revisable in precisely the sense of taking on board ourvulnerabilities as men and women. The principle of inclusion would, then,be inseparable from our concern with how we should conduct ourselves asrational readers and writers of our lives, attentive to each other. But can aKantian

. . . adjust her conception of the conditions under which we can say that nocritical thought is suppressed, so that only the absence of certain, corrupting oper-ations of power is required? (Fricker, 2000: 156)

For the Foucauldian it may be that all power is corrupting, or both corrupt-ing and enabling. 11 Nevertheless, I maintain that, as vulnerable, the auton-

omous self would be able to become aware of the power in all relations asboth enabling and corrupting. Judith Butlers Th e Psych ic Li fe of Power: Th eories in Subjection goes some distance to support this position (Butler,1997: 12). However, I move in a different direction from Butler. As aKantian philosopher, I propose that an ethics which genders autonomywould involve two sides: recognition and imagination. On the one hand,one needs to recognize the exclusive, self-contradictory conception of astrictly formal autonomy. Notice, for instance, the contradictory relation-ship of Torvalds autonomy to Noras sense of identity. And, on the other

hand, one must imagine a critically gendered conception of autonomy asnecessarily in relation to vulnerability (for example, to love): think, forinstance, about the possibility of a principled autonomy for Nora. I seek thelatter conception as a middle ground between a strictly formal autonomyand a complete rejection of autonomy as necessarily subordinating materialrelations. I doubt that Nora can understand, or become, herself by com-pletely rejecting, in her terms, Daddy, husband, the law and society(see Ibsen, 1981: 806).

Here, in our process of gendering, autonomys relation to vulnerability isexposed in its specicity for individual men and women. This processenables our becoming aware of the model of identity which ethics employs,as well as enabling us to assess whether this gendered identity has beenimposed authoritatively. As soon as we recognize ourselves as embodiedagents we must admit the partial nature of our rational knowledge of ourselves. This is reinforced by the contingency of our actual relationshipsand our dependence on other reasoners as agents and recipients of action(Anderson, 1993). The relevant, Foucauldian point is that we must be alertto the corrupting forces of power in the uses of reason by ethical agents,namely, by ourselves and by others. But we do not learn this today only fromFoucault. The corrupting forces of power have a Kantian version in Kantsaccount of the inscrutable origin of radical evil that corrupts the underlyingmaxims of our action (Kant, 1998b: 4573). My point is that vulnerability asa condition for exclusion and corruption is bound up with the partiality of self-knowledge and this vulnerability is evident in the dialectical nature of the enabling and corrupting, or creating and resisting, power of subjects.




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The obvious question is: why would a feminist want to hold on to apractical ideal of autonomy in the shape of a gendered reconstruction (of Kantian reason), especially if this goal is unrealizable? My argument isroughly that, if we recognize ourselves just as Kant did as never fullyautonomous, since we are always vulnerable agents; then we can makesense of a regulative ideal of perfect inclusion as the ground for solidarityacross differences. Admittedly, this regulative ideal must serve to make adistinction between the ideal and its translation in our ethical practices,whether as a principle or a goal. In this instance, the ideal is autonomywithout the exclusion of certain material differences. Its translation in ourethical practice takes on autonomys relation to the variables of gender suchas the vulnerability of inconstant love between, say, husband and wife. Inthis way, a critical distance is created. So, in the formulation of an ethicalconcept such as autonomy, a certain sort of exclusion is inevitable. The

most basic exclusion is the result of differentiating between one attributionor action and another. Whether the action be called good and not evil, orautonomous and not heteronomous, the ethical concept must be given adenite value. Thus the critical distance between ideal and ethical practiceis necessary both conceptually and practically for us to make any endeav-our to conduct ourselves according to the good, the right, the true, or anyother norm (see Huntington, 1995: 3755).

Another way of explaining the necessary role for an unachievable idealof autonomy, with its relation to vulnerability, is that the partial nature of

our knowledge of ourselves forces an indirect process of readingwritingour actions and lives. We have no direct knowledge of a perfectly ethicalact; we have no fully adequate self-knowledge. Instead we have only thecontinual process of endeavouring to make intelligible what remains unin-telligible. In the case of our lived experiences, knowledge is always poten-tially possible in so far as we have phenomenological access to our livedbody. For example, a particular womans experience of sexual desire foranother woman may not be a matter of explicit self-knowledge because itmay be obscured by certain norms and heterosexual codes of practice. Yetthis woman would have certain ways to access her bodily life: that is,critical self-reection could give access to the difference between the livedbody (as experienced by her) and the interpreted body (as, say, hetero-sexual). Such reection could, in this case, enable her own recognition of an as-yet-opaque, lived experience of lesbian desire. If the gendering of autonomy rejects the identity of a disembodied subject, then we need toadmit access to our lived, bodily experiences phenomenologically. In thisway, we recognize that an accessible, yet often unintell igible body can andshould be part of an ongoing, hermeneutic process of exposing the im-position of a certain gendered identity. 12

Going back to Ibsen; Nora may have thought that she acted out of lovefor her husband; but the imposed image of a doll rendered her act of lovevirtually unintelligible to both her and her husband once it was seen in thelight of the dominant, patriarchal norms of interpretation. What sort of knowledge does Nora have of her innermost motivations and desires? Infact, Ibsen himself gives no narrative of love as a reliable motivation or as




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a possible source of knowledge. Yet a reading of the story of Noras life (or,indeed, of ones own life) as a critically engaged process of self-recognitionrenders intelligible the knowledge necessary for an ethics of gender, incor-porating vulnerability and autonomy. 13

Reading and writing the stories of our lives To support further my argument for the gendering of autonomy by feministsI suggest that the limited, rational authority of autonomy has to do with thepartial nature of self-authorship and its relation to reading our lives(Cooke, 1999: 2589). Within the terms of Kants What is Enlightenment?the autonomous selfs authori ty is called self-governance pure and simple,as opposed to obedience to an alien authority (Kant, 1991: 5460). 14 Yeta qualication on self-governance for any contemporary, gendered recon-

struction of autonomy will reveal the distortions of self-authorship: theseare distortions resulting from a failure to read the stories in which we ndourselves, even before we act. I take the fundamental capacity to under-stand the relation of autonomy to vulnerability (of time and circumstance)to be an equally necessary element for gendering derivative capacities suchas responsibility, accountability, purposive rationality and evaluativeinterpretation. These derivative capacities would undergo an internalcritique similar to the following: the gendering of the conception of autonomy nds, in reading and writing the narratives that shape our lives,a dialectic between the coherent and unied and the opaque and conictedaspects of the self. Jean Grimshaw describes this dialectic well as follows:

. . . we are often faced with the experienced need to make sense of our lives andour feelings and goals, to relate confused fragments of ourselves into somethingthat seems more coherent and of which we feel more in control. We are often alsofaced, however, with the need to tolerate contradictions, not to strive for anillusory or impossible ideal, and to avoid self-punishing forms of anxiety, defenceand guilt (and feminist guilt can be as punishing as any other kind). The dialec-tic of autonomy is one in which a constant (but never static or nal) search forcontrol and coherence needs balancing against a realism and tolerance born out

of efforts to understand ourselves (and others) better. (Grimshaw, 1988: 106) 15

In response to the above account I stress that autonomy is not whollyunconditioned. Instead i t is, as Grimshaw says above, a constant search forcoherence balanced against a realism born out of efforts to understandourselves and others better. So autonomy must be a regulative principle.In other words, a practical ideal autonomy balances self-authorship withthe efforts to read our lives and those of others.

Women have traditionally been in situations of subordination (of power)and dependency, lacking identity and rights. I have proposed here that wehave been most vulnerable in our difculty with a fundamental sort of coherence: a coherence that depends upon making narrative sense of ourlives; in both reading and writing our lives in the context of personal,material and social relations. Ricoeur has argued that autonomy presup-poses the capacities for creating a narrative identity that encompassesalterity. Alterity includes temporal changes and uctuations in our




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relationships with others (Ricoeur 1992a: 35, 14068, 2906). 16 Seekingautonomy in the face of vulnerability due to time and to variables of genderis a serious challenge for women who, like Nora in A Doll s Hou se , confronta distinctive history of oppression. If we follow Ricoeurs argument, thesuccess of this search would depend upon the capacity for making senseof our narrative context and for creating new narratives. 17 A feminist ethicsof autonomy would, in this light, have the epistemological task of inform-ing and guiding the unending negotiation of two extremes. On the onehand, the female selfs personal search for singularity, or in AdrianaCavareros terms uniqueness 18 is necessary for autonomous action withand for others. 19 On the other hand, the social structures of power consti-tute a womans condition of marginality and lack of self-authorship andso subordination. In particular, a sophisticated ability is necessary to createa minimal amount of narrative coherence, making possible autonomy, or

self-authorship, in the face of the forms of power which subordinate. Thisability to achieve narrative coherence would be creative, going beyond thepower of (only) resisting the imposition of social structures. This abilityalso assumes the recognition of the dialectics of autonomy. That is, thegendering of autonomy must begin with recognizing the dialectic of seekingcoherence and accepting differences as bound up with an unavoidablepersonal opaqueness.

Two extremes constitute the tension between autonomy and vulnerabil -ity which is tied up with the partial nature of our knowledge of ourselves.

There is, on the one hand, a womans unacknowledged abil ity to resist theimposition of an identity, while simultaneously creating a narrativeidentity as the heart of self-authorship and, on the other hand, a failure tosee her own moral capacities, as well as her weaknesses, fragmentation andoppression. Ironically, the complex conditions of vulnerability which havehistorically rendered impossible (often by concealing it) womensautonomy, indicate both the need and the possibility for revision of ourethical principles. I propose steering between the total rejection of autonomy as a masculine ideal and the (mistaken) acceptance of a whollyautonomous reason. For me, the crucial step in gendering autonomy isrecognizing our capacity to render intelligible the sexed/gendered natureof human agency as evident in the material specicities of our vulnerabil-ity. 20 We need to make sense of ourselves as agents who are female, male,heterosexual, homosexual; that is, although alike as agents, we are invarious ways different from each other.

Finally, my argument can be summarized in the following, rathercomplex, steps. Accept the ideal of autonomy as the ethical basis for inclu-sion of every man and woman in discursive practices. Accept that thisKantian ideal of autonomy becomes a revisable (normative) principle of reason for gendered agents who, as embodied, are vulnerable yet seek toread and write their own lives. Reect that the practical ideal of perfectinclusion as the basis for an ethics of gender, and for the gendering of autonomy, is inseparable from how we actually conduct ourselves asvulnerable reasoners who exclude, and are excluded by, others. Concludethat we can adjust the conditions under which we can say that a discursive




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13. Again I assume, and roughly appropriate, Lovibonds notion of genderingas an internal, ethical process (see Lovibond, 2001).

14. Some excellent Kant scholars provide an important background todebates on the signicance of Kants distinctive conception of autonomy(for example, see ONeill, 1992: 280308; Wood, 1999: 1578, 374 n. 4,

375 n. 5, 376 n. 7).15. Grimshaws account continues to be important for challenging the

philosophical assumptions that self-awareness is a straightforwardachievement and that opaqueness of self is not a problem.

16. Further background on this includes Ricoeur, 1992b: 10320; Ricoeur,1998: 71, 802, 8994.

17. I myself have buil t upon Ricoeurs work in this way (see Anderson, 2002:1531; and Anderson, 2003). Another way to approach this question of the selfs capacities is offered in terms of relating narratives (seeCavarero, 2000). Cavarero stresses the uniqueness of beings whose life-stories are narratable.

18. Cavarero has a relevant and insightful discussion of the uniqueness of anarratable self, especially in the narratable selfs relation to another (seeCavarero, 2000: 3245). A valuable discussion could be developed herebetween Cavarero and Ricoeur on the self and narrative. Cavarero herself makes only a passing (and potentially misleading) reference to Ricoeur.

19. This is a phrase appropriated from Ricoeur (see Ricoeur, 1992a: 172,18094).

20. Further consideration could be given to the sexed/gendered distinction

(see Vasterling, 1999: 1738).ReferencesAlcoff, L. (2000) On Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity

Relevant?, pp. 23562 in Naomi Zack (ed.) Women of Color an d Philosophy . Oxford: Blackwell.

Anderson, P.S. (1993) Ricoeur and Kant: A Phi losophy of th e Wil l . Atlanta,GA: Scholars Press.

Anderson, P.S. (2002) Ricoeurs Reclamation of Autonomy: Unity, Pluralityand Totality, pp. 1531 in John Wall, William Schweiker and W. David

Hall (eds) Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary M oral T hought . New York:Routledge.

Anderson, P.S. (2003 forthcoming) Ethics Within the Limits of Post-Ricoeurian Kantian Hermeneutics, in Jeffrey F. Keuss (ed.) Th e Sacred an d the Profane: Contem porar y Dem and s on H erm eneuti cs . Aldershot: AshgatePublishing Ltd.

Arendt, H. (1998) Hum an Condi t ion , with an Introduction by MargaretCanovan, second edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Beiner, R. and J. Nedelsky, eds (2001) Jud gm ent, Im agin ation an d Poli ti cs: Th em es from Kant and A rendt . Oxford: Rowan and Litteeld Publishers.

Berlin, I. (1969) Two Concepts of Liberty, in I. Berlin, Four Essays on Li berty .Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Butler, J. (1997) Th e Psychi c Lif e of Power: Th eori es in Subjection . Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.

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Dr Pamela Sue Anderson is Dean and Fellow in Philosophy, Regents ParkCollege, University of Oxford. Her publications include Ricoeur and Kant: A Phi losophy of the Wil l (Scholars Press, 1993) and A Fem in ist Phi losophy of

Reli gion : The Ration ali ty and M yth s of Reli giou s Beli ef (Blackwell, 1998), aswell as articles in ethics and the philosophy of religion.

Address: Regents Park College, University of Oxford, Pusey Street, OxfordOX1 2LB. Email: [email protected]


Anderson - Autonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

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