The Reconstruction Of Epistemology In Feminist Perspective

Theoretically,the most important achievement of nearly 200 years of feminist movement is the creation of feminist epistemology in its pursuit of gender equality and the emancipation of women.From the level of philosophy,feminist epistemology profoundly and systematically critiqued and reflected the patriarchal unreasonable aspects of traditional epistemology,and created its own unique concept of theory of knowledge,has made irreplaceable contributions for the development of human epistemology.How to summarize and organize so much achievements of feminist epistemology is an indispensable part of feminist epistemology research.By summarizing the historical development process of the feminist movement,this dissertation reveals that the creation of feminist epistemology is the inevitable outcome of the development of feminist movement.The first theoretical task of feminist epistemology that needs to be done is profoundly and systematically critiqued traditional epistemology which based on individualism and male chauvinism.Feminist epistemologists pointed out that traditional epistemology has made the patriarchal interpretation about objectivity,value neutrality,and the relationship between subject and object,etc.At the same time,feminist epistemology also makes a profound analysis of the sociopolitical and gender reasons of the traditional epistemology.Based on the above criticism,feminist epistemology systematically expounded its basic view,they can be summarized as follows:Firstly,through transforming critically about standpoint theory of social epistemology and marxist standpoint theory,positivist empiricism,philosophical postmodernism,feminist epistemology created its own feminist standpoint theory,feminist empiricism and feminist postmodernism.Furthermore,feminist epistemology explained its concept of truth,values,political pursuit of women’s liberation,and the unique status and role of women in cognition,etc.Secondly,on the basis of its standpoint theory,feminist epistemology has developed a wide variety of theoretical perspectives,which are more extensive than traditional epistemology.In combination with caring ethics,feminist epistemology has created knowledge concept of caring ethics from the perspective of theoretical tolerance.Moreover,feminist epistemology introduced pluralism,decentration,anti-essentialism,and marginality of postmodernism,which makes the theoretical perspective of feminist epistemology various and vivid,this goes far beyond comparatively single perspective of traditional epistemology.Thirdly,because of the basic theoretical standpoint and perspective of pluralism,feminist epistemology contains a rich concept of methodology,not only do they have criticism on unreasonable methodology of traditional epistemology,e.g.,dualism,but also put forward new methodological ideas,such as pluralistic method,the method of combining the deconstruction and reconstruction,the dialectical method of anti-dualism and so on.Finally,in order to strengthen the depth of the feminist epistemology research,most of feminist epistemologists have given full attention to thematic issues,and expounded the unique understanding on them,such as view on ignorance,epistemic injustice,localization of feminist epistemology,and so forth,which have been incorporated into the study of feminist epistemology.In conclusion,feminist epistemology is the indispensable important component of epistemology,it has made a theoretical contribution as important as traditional epistemology and social epistemology.Although there are somewhat biased concepts,e.g.,exaggerate the epistemic privileges of women,but the role and influence of feminist epistemology will increasingly significant in the contemporary philosophy,and research on feminist epistemology also gradually become important one dimension of philosophical theory.