Page 213 - Contribution To Phenomenology

206 DON MARIETTA

recognition of the significance of context, including the kinds of thinking
which give rise to various moral claims.
Ecological feminism shows the influence of Carol Gilligan's report that
women do not think about moral matters in the same way men do.*
Ecological feminists support the feminist demand that different voices,
those of women and oppressed people everywhere, be heard. This entails
the rejection of a monistic system of ethics based on the following of
rules which can be derived fi-om one rationally argued foundation. In one
of her recent papers on ecological feminism, Warren says that feminist
ethics must approach ethics from a context of dialogue and practice
which includes the voices of people who have different moral experiences
from living in different circumstances.^ Jim Cheney opposes monistic
rationalistic ethical schemes, which he calls "totalizing theories." He favors
a feminist environmental ethics which is grounded in "bioregional
narrative," an "ethical vernacular," through which the "multiple voices of
this Earth" are heard.* Warren does not deny the importance of theory
in ethical thought, but in ecological feminism we see an ethical approach
which is experience-driven, rather than driven by abstract theory.
The pluralism of ecological feminism, seen in its listening to many
voices, attending to many narratives, gives to an understanding of the
human condition reports from many Uved worlds which have not been
considered much before. Surely the lived worlds of about half the human
race are worth the attention of philosophers. Indeed, without them, any
understanding of what it is to be human is bound to risk incompleteness
and one-sidedness.
The feminist interest in the concept of narrative gives phenomeno-
logists and feminists an important area of shared interest Phenome-
nology can benefit from a broader awareness of how large numbers of
people perceive the world, feel about the world, intend to act in the
world, and communicate to other people the doxic, pathic, and praxic
features of their lived worlds. For its part, phenomenology can contribute
to feminism through it's experience and technical skill in attending to

* Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982);
Mapping the Moral Domain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
^ Karen J. Warren, "The Power and the Promise," 139,142f.
* Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narra-
tive," Environmental Ethics 11.2 (Summer 1989): 117-134; "The Neo-Stoicism of Radical
Environmentalism," Environmental Ethics 11.4 (Winter 1989): 323f.