Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy ― Theorizing the Non-ideal

Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal is a collection of feminist essays that self-consciously develop non-idealizing approaches to either ethics or social and political philosophy (or both). Characterizing feminist ethics and social and political philosophy as marked by a tendency to be non-idealizing serves to thematize the volume, while still allowing the essays to be diverse enough to constitute a representation of current work in the fields of feminist ethics and social and political philosophy.

Each of the essays either serves as an instance of work that is rooted in actual, non-ideal conditions, and that, as such, is able to consider any of the many questions relevant to subordinated people; or reflects theoretically on the significance of non-idealizing as an approach to feminist ethics or social and political philosophy.

The volume will be of interest to feminist scholars from all disciplines, to academics who are ethicists and political philosophers as well as to graduate students.

Lisa Tessman is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Binghamton University, where she directs the graduate program in Social, Political, Ethical and Legal Philosophy (SPEL). Her research, which takes a feminist approach, focuses on ethics with special attention to virtue ethics and eudiamonism, the ethics of liberatory political struggles, the place for normative ideals in non-ideal theorizing, and the concept of a moral dilemma. She has published a collection that she co-edited with Bat-Ami Bar On called _Jewish Locations: Traversing Racialized Landscapes_ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), a monograph called _Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles_ (Oxford University Press, 2005), and various articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a monograph that focuses on the dilemmatic character of moral life, particularly under conditions of oppression.