Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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147241

Binary opposition as an ordering principle of (male?) human thought

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

pp. 173-194

Abstract

Contemporary feminist philosophers have consistently decried the binary oppositions of Western philosophy and Western culture, perhaps most notably the oppositions: mind/body, reason/emotion, (or rational/irrational), and culture/nature. They attribute these oppositions to male ways of thinking. They have furthermore decried the uneven valorizations attaching to the oppositions and lay these too at the feet—or rather, heads—of males. Of course, binary oppositions and uneven valorizations inform the thinking and practices of other cultures as well, these oppositions being in some cases different from the predominant ones of Western culture—tame/wild, sky/earth, and right/left, for example.

Publication details

Published in:

Fisher Linda, Embree Lester (2000) Feminist phenomenology. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 173-194

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9488-2_10

Full citation:

Sheets-Johnstone Maxine (2000) „Binary opposition as an ordering principle of (male?) human thought“, In: L. Fisher & L. Embree (eds.), Feminist phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, 173–194.