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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Dissertations and Theses

1995

Feminist theory

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

John Rawls, Feminism, And The Gendered Self, Lori Kinder Macarthur Nov 1995

John Rawls, Feminism, And The Gendered Self, Lori Kinder Macarthur

Dissertations and Theses

John Rawls's theory of justice, which he calls "justice as fairness," has proven to be most influential with regard to the course of contemporary political theory. In both of Rawls's books, A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, his aim was to present a theoretically-compelling defense of deontological liberalism, and to present a set of principles by which to fairly order a just society. While Rawls's project has attracted a fair number of proponents over the years, it has also been a popular target for liberal and nonliberal critics alike. A recurrent theme among these criticisms has been an objection …


Communicative Action As Feminist Epistemology, Todd Nathaniel Gilman Oct 1995

Communicative Action As Feminist Epistemology, Todd Nathaniel Gilman

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis proposes that feminist social and political theory adopt the epistemology inherent in Jurgen Habermas's communicative ethics in order to more coherently work toward the goal of freeing individuals from social oppression. This thesis first examines the fundamental differences that exist between the particular claims for knowledge made by the three major schools of feminist theory; the empirical feminists, the standpoint feminists, and those allied with postmodernism. After illuminating the specifics of these feminist claims, the conception of knowledge central to Habermas's thought is explored and shown to be split into three distinct realms; the objective, the social, and …