Bodies and Dualism

Abstract

Rights-based language is used in a number of contexts in the contemporary world — it is used in debates about informed consent in medical ethics; debates about citizenship and work; debates about abortion or euthanasia. In all of these contexts, the notion of the individual as an autonomous, responsible entity, possessing rights to life and liberty, is taken for granted. What is often forgotten is that classically, the above subject — the liberal self — is assumed to be disembodied. In this chapter, I wish to outline the classical liberal position, and then to describe and critically analyse one of the feminist responses to the perspective. The response I would like to examine is the perspective in epistemology that takes the notion of embodied women’s experience as an epistemological starting point. I shall argue that this perspective remains inside the dualist outlook of the liberal view. I will then go on, in the final section of the paper, to argue that the feminist outlook described reinforces a subordinate position for women in policies on caring for others.