Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal

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.

From the reviews: "This collection is divided in four parts each comprising four chapters plus a useful introduction by Lisa Tessman. ... All in all this is a collection worthy of note. It contains a variety of articles, generally well written and accessible that should be useful to all those interested in feminist ethics and politics ... ." (Raffaele Rodogno, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Vol. 15 (14), April, 2011)

• Feminist Theorizations of Ethics and Politics, and of the Ideal and Non-ideal.- Normativity, Feminism, and Politics.- Ethical Reasons and Political Commitments.- Feminist Eudaimonism: Eudaimonism as Non-Ideal Theory.- L’Imagination au Pouvoir: Comparing John Rawls’s Method of Ideal Theory with Iris Marion Young’s Method of Critical Theory.- Critiquing Idealized Characterizations of Personhood.- Conjoined Twins, Embodied Personhood, and Surgical Separation.- The Ideology of the Normal: Desire, Ethics, and Kierkegaardian Critique.- The Challenge of Care to Idealizing Theories of Distributive Justice.- The Ethics of Philosophizing: Ideal Theory and the Exclusion of People with Severe Cognitive Disabilities.- Remaking the Moral and Political Subject.- The Vulnerable Self: Enabling the Recognition of Racial Inequality.- Anger, Virtue, and Oppression.- Practicing Imperfect Forgiveness.- Feminist Political Solidarity.- Contextualizing in Actualities.- Resisting Organizational Power.- Women and Violence: A Theory of Judgment.- Narrative Structures, Narratives of Abuse, and Human Rights.- Women, Corporate Globalization, and Global Justice.