Karen Warren claims that there is an interconnection between the domination of nature
by humans and the domination of women by men. She uses the following argument schemas to
set out the 'logic of domination'.
A1. Humans do, and plants and rocks do not, have the capacity to consciously and
radically change the community in which they live.
A2. Whatever has the capacity to consciously and radically change the community in
which it lives is morally superior to whatever lacks this capacity.
A3. Thus, humans are morally superior to plants and rocks.
A4. For any X and Y, if X is morally superior to Y, then X is morally justified in
subordinating Y.
A5. Thus, humans are morally justified in subordinating plants and rocks. (1)
She points out that the assumptions A2 and A4 are critical, since without them, all
that can be shown is that people are different from plants and rocks.A4 in particular
expresses the logic of domination.(269) This key assumption recurs in the reasoning
justifying male domination of females:
B1. Women are identified with nature and the realm of the physical; men are identified
with the "human" and the realm of the mental.
B2. Whatever is identified with nature and realm of the physical is inferior to
("below") whatever is identified with the "human" and the realm of the
mental; or conversely, the latter is superior to ("above") the former.
B3. Thus, women are inferior to ("below") men;or conversely, men are superior
to ("above")women.
B4. For any X and Y, if X is superior to Y, then X is justified in subordinating Y.
B5. Thus, men are justified in subordinating women.
Claims of superiority, moral or otherwise, justify the subordination of the alleged
inferior by the alleged superior, via the justifiable domination assumption 4. Feminism
involves the principled opposition to domination, hence it opposes B4. But since B4 is
virtually the same as A4, and since women are culturally identified with nature, feminism
should also involve an opposition to A4, and its use in the A argument justifying the
subordination of nature by people. "That all feminists must oppose the logic
of domination shows the breadth and depth of the ecofeminist critique of B; it is a
critique not only of the three assumptions on which this argument for the domination of
women and nature rests ,viz. the assumption at B1, B2 and B4; it is also a critique of
patriarchal conceptual frameworks generally,i.e. of those oppressive conceptual frameworks
which put men "up" and women "down".....Therefore, ecofeminism is
necessary to any feminist critique of patriarchy, and hence necessary to
feminism..."(270) That is, feminism involves a rejection of the logic of domination,
value dualisms, and value hierarchical thinking, which treats differences as grounds for
moral rankings of superiority and inferiority, and which justifies domination, as
reflected in B4. But that same logic of domination operates to justify the human
domination of nature, so feminists must be as opposed to the latter as to men's domination
of women.
(In what follows I will use the term domination of X by Y to express the relation of
subordination of X by Y, since Warren objects primarily to the 'logic of domination'
although she couches her arguments in terms of subordination.)
I have no doubt that a feminist's principled objection to the logic of domination could
lead her to reject that logic when applied to natural objects such as plants or rocks.
However, it does not follow from this possibility, or from Warren's parallel reasoning
that this objection must lead to her to reject 'naturism' (Warren's term for the
unjust domination of nature by people, in parallel to 'sexism'). There are undoubtedly
multiple theories of domination and its wrongness, but in at least the enlightenment
tradition, which played a major role in the development of contemporary feminism, the
conditions for there being grounds to object to domination do apply to the domination of
women by men, but do not apply to the domination of nature by people.
Modern western feminism is very much the product of enlightenment political thought.
This is not to say all enlightenment thinkers were in fact feminists---far from it. Kant
and Rousseau, for example, were thoroughly anti-feminist and indeed misogynist. However,
certain key notions for feminism and feminist objections to unjust domination arise from
the enlightenment framework, exemplified by Kant's moral theory: moral autonomy, involving
the moral agency and rights of rational beings, and moral equality of persons, independent
of factual equality. The domination of women by men, women's lack of political and legal
standing, their social inferiority inside and outside of the home, offends the
enlightenment sensibility (and should have offended Kant) because it violates the autonomy
and equality requirements: that all persons, by virtue of their rationality, (whatever the
particulars of their actual abilities) are entitled to self rule, in the moral and social
sphere. Subordination of other persons, whether in the form of human slavery, denial of
political rights, or conventional treatment of women as not full political, and social
actors is morally offensive. It treats rational agents as non-rational patients,
"thingifying" them. Even under the guise of being for their own good, the
control of women's choices and activities by men ignores the fact of women's moral agency
and concomitant responsibility. Treating women as moral inferiors whose choices must be
more carefully controlled and constrained than those of most men, on this enlightenment
view is a paradigm of disrespectful, immoral treatment.
This enlightenment view objects to the domination of women by men not because it is
domination but because it is unjust domination. B4 becomes moot because factual
equality for persons is delinked from moral equality. (2)
Just being the same kind : human, and putatively rational, is sufficient proof of
moral equality. Either B1 reports a false belief (one that identifies women with nature)
or B2 is a false premise: if women are culturally identified with nature, it is
illegitimate to leap to claims of inferiority. Thus, the conclusions B3 and B5 do not stem
from a sound argument.
So far, I have been outlining the broad enlightenment picture in which the moral
equality of women with men has been advanced. On this picture, that the domination of
women by men is unjust provides no grounds to object to domination of other beings. It is unjust
domination, not domination itself, which is the target of moral objection. And much of
contemporary feminism emerges from this enlightenment tradition. Hence, a contemporary
feminist may easily separate objection to sexism from objection to 'naturism'.
But more, and worse for ecofeminism, follows from the reflection on the enlightenment
rejection of the unjust domination of women by men. The rationale for finding domination
unjust involves moral objection to "thingifying" an agent: bending or ignoring
the will of the one being dominated for the satisfaction of the dominator. This requires,
at the very least, that the one being dominated has a will, and raises the question of the
intelligibility of applying the characterizations of justice/injustice to the domination
of non-conscious, non- volitional objects for the reason of that domination. (3)
Consider the options:
a. If domination of X by Y can be taken to be unjust and morally objectionable for the
reason of that domination, then X must have some kind of will.
b. If X has no will, then domination of X by Y is not unjust because of that
domination. (It might be unjust for other reasons, but not from the simple fact of the
domination relationship; additionally,it might be taken to be connected to a vice, in the
same way that gluttony is taken to be a vice, but such vices are defects in character and
are not unjust conduct).
Re:a. As the line of reasoning concerning the enlightenment view of the domination of
women suggests, the reason that it is wrong to dominate women lies in the control of the
rational or moral will by another. Ignoring someone's choices, overriding them, or
forbidding the conditions for the consciousness and articulation of those choices are
paradigmatically immoral acts. The value and dignity of each rational individual lies in
her rational will:the source of the moral law. Subordinating her capacity of choice to
that of another, controlling, overriding or ignoring the choices stemming from this will
treats the person disrespectfully, as a thing, ignoring in that individual the source of
her unique and priceless worth:the capacity to be a moral agent. Thus, a necessary
condition for the domination of X by Y to be morally objectionable is that X is conscious
and volitional.
Re b:A species can be said to dominate an ecosystem or an eagle can be said to dominate
a mountaintop. However, in these cases, it would be unintelligible to characterize this
domination as unjust or morally objectionable, without further explanation. A fact about
the proliferation of one species, and its dominant role in an ecosystem, by itself implies
nothing about its value. There may be reasons to deplore the domination in particular
cases: e.g. the proliferation of a given species might disrupt the balance of an
ecosystem, and this could be judged wrong, say, by a land ethicist. This judgement,
however, although negative, is not one of injustice, and is based on valuing balance and
integrity of ecosystems, so it is in content and grounds different than the judgment of
wrongness of the domination of women by men. In different cases, there is no reason for a
moral judgement about the fact of domination: that an eagle dominates the mountaintop, or
that dogs are subordinate to the dominant member in a dog pack, invites no moral concern.
In the case of humans and nature, e.g. logging an old growth forest, it is not domination
as such which raises concerns for environmental ethics, but rather that the logging
destroys an increasingly rare functioning ecosystem. Ethical concerns about the treatment
of natural objects can, and for a true environmental ethic, should stem from
commitments to the value of these natural objects, and their functioning and biological
integrity, and not from concerns about justice.
We can now return to A4. If Y has no will, then either moral justification of this
relationship is irrelevant, or if this is an issue of moral concern, it is because of
other features of the treatment of Y by X, and the context in which it occurs.
The ecofeminist claim that the plundering of nature and the oppression of women
represent the same logic of domination and are both wrong for the same reason is thus
problematic. On the historically influential enlightenment view of unjust domination, the
claim is unintelligible. Yet the enlightenment framework provided a decent explanation of
the wrongness of domination of women.
Of course an ecofeminist such as Warren will object to the importation of enlightenment
views to analyse domination:after all, the enlightenment celebrated human control over
nature, and most of its adherents fudged the case for the moral equality of women.
However, to link every feminist position with the rejection of naturism, Warren has to
debunk, and not simply ignore, enlightenment feminism. She must argue either that the
enlightenment tradition is incompatible with feminism, which is historically false, or
that enlightenment feminism is conceptually unstable, so that while such feminists try to
separate the domination of nature from the domination of women, the grounds for doing so
are incoherent. However, that case has yet to be made.
It is at this point that we can see the artificiality of Warren's B argument: while her
reconstruction of patriarchal reasoning in B is supposed to reveal the deep motivations
underlying the acceptance of the sexist premise B3, as a point of fact B3 has been
supported in multiple fashions throughout intellectual history. For example, the
inferiority of women to men is fashioned, by Aristoteleans, in terms of the weakness of
women's faculty of reason and inability to control appetites and passion by reason. This
might tend to support Warren's view, if we assume the passions are identified with nature,
and not just, say, with animal life. Yet, in contrast, the enlightenment misogynist
Rousseau justifies training women for inferiority and submission to men for the purpose of
upholding family order. The point is that the reasons for misogyny are various and premise
B1 and B2 are entirely replaceable in the argument for patriarchal control of women. B, in
short, is not a sketch of the only argument supporting the domination of women, or even an
influential one; rather B represents ecofeminist conjectures about the deep
cultural/cognitive reasons for belief in B3. These conjectures then reconstruct
intellectual history to cast patriarchy and the domination of nature as evil twins when in
fact, in other genealogies, they might not even be in the same family.
The upshot is that the 'logic of domination' is not a single logic after all, at least
in the tradition which gave clear articulation to the moral objection to unjust
domination.
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