Page 211 - Contribution To Phenomenology

204 DON MARIETTA

a large way is yet to be seen. Cooperation requires some effort on both
sides, and those who profit from the abuse of the natural environment
have not always demonstrated a willingness to cooperate. In some
situations, however, developers have been willing to negotiate, and when
they are willing, feminist social skills might be very valuable. Then again,
will ecological feminists be inclined to engage in boycotts? The actions
of feminists in defense of reproductive freedom may give some indication
of how environmental struggles would be approached.

II

There are special reasons why we phenomenologists, as phenomenologists,
should take an interest in ecological feminism.
One affinity between phenomenology and ecological feminism is in
the stress on context in feminist ethics. Warren has described the ethical
approach of ecological feminism as contextual. Rather than base ethics
solely on the implications of abstract principles, contextualists look at the
actual contexts within one acts, as they are experienced by the people
involved. These actual experienced contexts help determine the ap-
propriate behaviors. My interest in phenomenological analysis, more than
anything else, made my ethical approach contextual. Contextual ethics,
including the contextualism of ecological feminist ethics, provides rich
examples of attending to actual experiences, which I see as examples of
going "back to the things" to test thought against Uved reality.
In my work in ethical theory I have stressed the important role of
individual world views in the development of moral beliefs and in the
assessment of moral opinion. Warren seems to refer to something similar,
if not the same thing, when she talks of "conceptual frameworks.
Phenomenology can greatly clarify our understanding of how the
individual's hved world works in the structuring of that person's view of
the world. From an understanding of how a lived world is constituted, we
can explain more clearly the formulation of moral beliefs. Why does the
racist not feel the same horror which many of us feel when police beat
a person of color unmercifully? In some way the racist's beliefs about the
inferiority of nonwhite people affect a constitution of the situation in
which what is done is fitting. We need to understand this aspect of the
formation of values and moral beliefs as clearly as possible. The same
sort of effect is at work when \vomen and men constitute situations
differently. Why do some men find something funny when most women