The feminist philosophers I know are of the rising generation, and they are very decent people whom I've not seen engage in poisonous rhetoric of any sort. Watching the destruction of the career of Prof. Rebecca Tuvel, however, I can't doubt that there is a problem of some sort at work in the field.
I wonder if it isn't a more general problem of American political philosophy, though. Typically, it is very human to respect those who live moral lives according to your sense of what "moral" means, and to respect people less if they don't. It's ordinary even to despise people who live lives that are immoral by one's own lights. The problem in political philosophy is that despising your opponents destroys the process of reasoning together. Yet we -- and not just feminists at all, but Americans in general, Democrats and Republicans and others as well -- seem to be locked into a cycle of despising as immoral those with whom we disagree politically.
Oddly enough there isn't a similar problem in ethics, at least not usually. There are several basic roads to ethics that are all thought acceptable even though they diverge. I tend to believe in virtue ethics, for example, and find utilitarianism to be fairly implausible. But I don't despise utilitarians. Nor do they despise virtue ethics, nor does either group despise deontologists. So it's possible to disagree on even the most basic questions of morality without falling into mutual disdain.
Probably it's just the question of power. In ethics, I decide for myself what is right and do that, and mostly that affects me and a few others who have chosen to associate with me (and are free to choose otherwise). In politics, decisions on moral questions are inevitably impositions. It's no longer a question of respecting a difference; it becomes a question of resenting being forced to accept things that you yourself find immoral.
I suspect that any attempt to redress this problem would also give rise to a complaint (again, from all sides) that it is ridiculous to ask them to respect people who want to impose immoral agendas upon them. Which means that their opponents must be driven from politics, somehow, since imposition is inevitable.
For 13 years now, I've been trying to convince people that the right way to resolve this is by finding a way for Americans of different moral views not to exert power over each other. Mostly I have argued for restoring the 10th Amendment and devolving powers from the Federal branches to the states. Then the power concerns fade, as there will be 50 different ways of living available to all.
Sometimes people can be convinced while they are out of power, but I have yet to observe many who remained true to the path should they gain power. It's a quandary: one must have power, and substantial power, to make a change like this. Having gained the power, though, why would you want to break up its very source?
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I'm usually in the not-exerting-power camp myself, but there's no getting around the problem that we sometimes are ethically impelled to step in to protect innocents, though we can't all agree who's innocent or needs to be protected.
I have a bone to pick with people who are willing to lie to obtain and maintain power. There is always room for exaggeration and, ahem, vivid imagery in politics, but outright, provable lies turn me off. The cheering thing for me is that such outright, provable lies also turn off voters across the political spectrum.
For me, the ability of ordinary people to use the Internet to pull up past political statements and compare them to those of the present is seismic. I see it as every bit as consequential as the advent of the printing press, which opened the door to literacy for people of ordinary means. The first big event was the printing of the Bible, which put paid to the notion of the divine right of kings, not to mention the absolute authority of the Church.
Now, we are watching the destruction of the credibility of the press, which is being exposed as shallow, lazy, corrupt, and unable to remember their history.
I still value both the government and the press, but just as kings have been replaced with a divided system of mayors, state governments and a federal government, and the Church has been replaced by a proliferation of sects, I hope that the current press will be replaced by a new form of press, with less individual power and higher ethical standards.
Valerie
I noticed a lot of resistance when I first stated the idea and the concept that the Leftist alliance had a hierarchy, and that they, like zombies, obeyed a centralized system and mode of behavior that other people would call an organization.
All people can barely notice is the effects and consequences of this organization's orders and dictates. But they never connect the dots sufficiently, before 2012, to figure out that maybe this was all preplanned from a central cache and cadre. They always this Rebecca or that Juan Williams or this Republican President, or Reagan, or Watergate, or Clinton dead bodies, were isolated incidents. There are NO connections between them.
Later on the Left slapped them upside the face and head enough times that they started being forced to admit that there is some kind of connection, and to avoid the shame of being conspiracy right wing nutters, they had to use some other term for it, like ideology or communism or something else that is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.
The press has already been replaced. Since the printing press is inferior to the fax, phones, and internet bandwidth now. Giving a faction of people the power to Rule over Humanity, just because some of them happened to use a printing press, was not one of the smartest or wisest course of actions humanity had engaged. If people wanted the freedom of the press, how about they elevate Gutenberg to their G forever, instead of these ignorant reporters.
I wonder if it isn't a more general problem of American political philosophy, though. Typically, it is very human to respect those who live moral lives according to your sense of what "moral" means, and to respect people less if they don't. It's ordinary even to despise people who live lives that are immoral by one's own lights.
Just look at the ancient history of the Pharisees and Sadduccees. Saul of Tarsus was himself a Pharisee, a proud fanatic and true believer. And only a true believer like me, can understand those sorts. Everybody else gets the textbook definition, but it's like running a war by using Sun Tzu as a manual backstopped by the door stopper Clausewitz's On War. That's not going to cut it.
But I don't despise utilitarians. Nor do they despise virtue ethics, nor does either group despise deontologists. So it's possible to disagree on even the most basic questions of morality without falling into mutual disdain.
Give A Global Warming adherents a billion dollars to prove it is anthropogenetic, and watch how many will despise the dissidents and creationist scientists. Humans are not and never as virtuous as you think. That is the ideal, like Aristotle's Ideal about Alexander the Great and the Platonic Ideal. It's not real, and it cannot be real because you have no way to reach it, other than by divine power. If humans had the power to do so, it's impossible to distinguish which was human action and which was divine causes. Assuming that virtues don't merely come from natural causes. Right now the philosophers have no idea why Socrates said he had a personal oracle directing him on matters of right and wrong, knowledge and false teachings. They read some of the works and dialogues, but they don't understand it. Anymore than the Sadducees and Pharisees understood the Law of Moses and the works of the Patriarchs afterwards.
Having gained the power, though, why would you want to break up its very source?
The reason why the Confederates chose to independently declare secession was not to break the power of the federal government, but to create a new unity with slave territories and states overwhelming the new Union that will result from a renegotiated Constitution. That was the plan. The plan was not to empower states like New York to nullify federal acts. Things like slavery and taxation and import tariffs could always be negotiated away and a deal made, especially since many Northern Democrats were in league with the same power as the Confeds. Slavery 2.0 was Lucifer's solid javelin and it almost worked too for this continent.
If you have no idea what the Organization intends or what plan they are following or who their leaders truly are, you will have no idea what is going to happen, Grim or how to counter it. Basic strategy is to gather intel on your enemy and to know your own weaknesses. And Americans have failed to do even that.
...we can't all agree who's innocent or needs to be protected.
Yes, this is a big problem. There is a strong liberty interest in guarding, say, immigrant women from families that would practice honor killings on them. Whatever they do in Pakistan, such things are totally unacceptable here. On the other hand, there is a strong liberty interest in protecting the family from having its internal affairs subject to government approval! The default way of handling that is to punish honor killings, etc., after the fact. That does nothing to help the women, who are already dead (or abused, maimed, etc). On the other hand, punishing people who haven't actually committed a crime yet is a serious matter; as is giving the government the right to monitor your intimate space to be sure it approves of how you manage it.
Abortion is this way, too. There are intense liberty interests on both sides. If you believe the child is a living, individual human being (as seems impossible to me to deny), it seems like a clear candidate for protection. But such protection, to be effective, needs to be almost as intrusive as it is possible for government to be. That violates numerous liberty interests, including privacy.
It's very difficult to know when it's right to use power to protect people who can't protect themselves. There are clear cases, but those cases are often only clear after the fact; and after the fact we aren't really protecting anyone, except insofar as the example made by the punishment might protect someone else.
Are politics downstream from values, or are values downstream from politics? I used to think it was the former, but I run into enough people who assume the values of whatever their tribe's politics currently demand, that I'm starting to wonder.
In any event, some of those sets of values are wildly different enough from each other that each side can legitimately regard the other as subscribing to an alien religion.
Sometimes there can be compromises on the details of some policy implementation, but is there a possible religious compromise between Caesar and Christ? Christ said to render appropriately, but Caesar wants it all.
It's a good question, I guess, although I'm not sure how to answer it. It may be that they're distinct to some degree. Ethically, I do what I think best; politically, no one does what I think best, so I vote and act defensively against what I think worst.
Sometimes there can be compromises on the details of some policy implementation, but is there a possible religious compromise between Caesar and Christ? Christ said to render appropriately, but Caesar wants it all.
There were literal Caesars back then that the Jewish Zealots wanted to fight and the pro Roman Jewish councils wanted to appease.
The issue with serving two masters is already mentioned in what is left of the scriptures after the bible was translated.
Can one serve two masters? No, because there will be a conflict when the two give countermanding commands. First officer, arrest the captain. Marines, arrest the first officer. SEALs, arrest the Marines. Somebody will end up dead first.
The religious compromise of Constantine was turning Christianity into a state religion, a state culture, basically like Southern Baptist convention or the Papacy. That never ends well, because the state then determines the politics and spiritual doctrine of the churches. Or vice a versa.
The default way of handling that is to punish honor killings, etc., after the fact.
The better way was to convert the children and family to Jesus of Nazareth's teachings. Then there's no problem. That has happened sometimes. Those would be real Christians, since they had to sacrifice some actual priorities rather than the cultural Christianity of the Church of Nice.
"but I have yet to observe many who remained true to the path should they gain power."
Slightly OT, but this is why having George Washington for a leader was so providential for the fledgling United States. Rare it is to see a man walk away from the temptation of near absolute power.
Washington believed he was accountable to a higher power. And it wasn't Washington's grace or efforts that led the revolution to a success, it was the grace and protection of a divine entity. By all rights, both Hitler and Washington should have died at certain key points. But they didn't.
Washington eventually figured that out. If it was up to an Alexander, they would have to take power, because they could entrust or trust or delegate it to anybody, because nobody was as competent as them. But to Washington at least, he could entrust the fate of the US to the plan of god, and thus refuse the crown.
Those that think themselves god, like Caesars and Alexanders and Husseins, will not refuse power. Who better to take power than a human god. Humans are so ridiculous, it is effortless to point out the jokes.
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