Essays in Feminist Ethics

For long enough have male academics, with their privileged status and far from banal, everyday life, been able to define exclusively the morally good and bad. What is contained in our ethical handbooks on genetic engineering, economy, animal experiments, etc., is mainly the product of this narrow point of view. Feminist ethics can, according to Ina Praetorius, occur at the kitchen table as well as in the lecture room, the nursery, in the bank, or from the pulpit. Fourteen essays introduce in an understandable and often polemic form issues in feminist ethics. These issues are themes such as biotechnology, animal experimentation, life styles outside of the monopoly claims of heterosexual marriage, ecology, etc. Praetorius examines closely 'prominent' ethical outlines such as Hans Jonas' principle of responsibility or Hans Kung's project of a world ethos. The introduction offers a very informative overview of what feminists have brought to the field of ethics up to the present. This is a book for interested readers who do not shrink from anti-mainstream thinking and have developed a healthy mistrust of androcentric ethics.