The Case for A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Transforming Philosophy's Imagery and Myths

by Pamela Sue Anderson

To introduce my case I would like to explain how it comes about that A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief is a prolegomenon to a new way of thinking, believing and feeling. To develop this case I will introduce and respond to various criticisms of my prolegomenon. This way of proceeding is consistent with my assumption that a distinctive quality of feminist philosophy is the willingness to reflect upon and respond to dissenting voices. In the end the case for a feminist philosophy of religion will only be as strong as my ability to enable you to think differently and listen to voices different from what I call a 'male-neutral' philosophy. By male-neutral I mean philosophical conceptions, experiences or thoughts which are distinctively male but are presented with the pretence of sex/gender neutrality.

I. A Reformist Feminist Approach to Philosophy of Religion: An Overview

As a prolegomenon my book seeks to have readers recognise that contemporary philosophy of religion is a strange discipline. Calling this discipline strange - or 'making strange what had appeared familiar' - is one way in which feminist philosophers have started and continue to reform Western philosophy; that is, they become aware of philosophy's Western male, or male-neutral, point of view in order to change it. [1] The intention is to rend strange the conceptions which are, or have been, all too familiar in order to see the exclusive nature of a now traditional perspective. In particular, there is too much familiarity, and so unquestioning acceptance, accompanying the classical model of traditional theism. Whether theist or atheist, we too easily accept the theistic frame of reference and fail to notice how strange is the conception of God - a personal being who is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal creator and sustainer of all creation! Why should the overall conception itself remain, while endless debates centre on each of the divine attributes, especially in relation to the ever-popular problem of evil? For instance, a feminist philosopher could argue that it is far more constructive to try to alleviate suffering than to justify the existence of evil and a good, all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal God. Why not consider beginning philosophy of religion with something different from the traditional conception, even different from variations (e.g. pantheism or panentheism) on this basic conception, of a divine being?

Feminist philosophers of religion insist that this conception of a personal God will appear strange - at least for women and followers of non-theistic religions - once we stop and shift our thinking. We might ask, do philosophers themselves aspire to be infinite in proposing the God's eye view? From various perspectives the monotheistic conception implicit in such a view seems an outmoded ideal to which Western men aspired. But note that following A. W. Moore's Points of View I will maintain that the aspiration to be infinite is distinct from the craving for infinitude. [2] The latter has an affinity with what I call yearning: it motivates the search for truth, goodness and justice without the one who craves, or yearns, ever aspiring to be fully rational, perfectly good and completely just, i.e. aspiring to be God. The radical, yet obvious question is, whose conception is the God of contemporary philosophy of religion? If not our own, or if a male corruption of who we are, then why seek to either defend or challenge it? Instead let us consider a shift away from philosophy's privileged Western point of view which has been identified as the God's eye point of view or the view from nowhere.

I ask you to bear in mind my intention to make what had appeared to be 'familiar', in contemporary philosophy of religion, 'look strange', while I explain the significance attributed to reform and transformation in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. The transformation, or reform, supports the case for feminists to produce a revolution in our ways of thinking about religion. Yet the potentially revolutionary process is premised on reforming what is deeply and generally familiar as a most fundamental framework: that is, our evolving conceptual scheme. Our conceptual scheme - including the language we use, the way we think or reason - is more fundamental than our conception of the divine, but it is related.

Turning to A Feminist Philosophy of Religion I explain my reformist approach in the Preface: Summarizing overall, I intend to supplement contemporary approaches to the philosophy of religion. My initial approach at least is reformist, reaching back to rebuild philosophy at the level of fundamental presuppositions. To cite a well-known statement by Willard van Orman Quine (1908- ) about rebuilding philosophy,

We can change [the conceptual scheme that we grew up in] bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea. We can improve our conceptual scheme, our philosophy, bit by bit while continuing to depend on it for support; but we cannot detach ourselves from it and compare it objectively with an unconceptualized reality. Hence it is meaningless, I suggest, to inquire into the absolute correctness of a conceptual scheme as a mirror of reality. [3]

I agree with Quine's point in the above that philosophers cannot detach themselves completely from their conceptual scheme to achieve an absolutely correct representation of reality. But this does not imply that philosophers have to give up our search for true belief or knowledge of reality. Yet the embodied search, or inquiry which acknowledges its perspectival nature, is clearly distinct from the God's eye view. Embracing this distinction does not, however, mean that I agree with Grace Jantzen's approach to feminist philosophy of religion when she simply rejects belief as a term of the masculine symbolic. In contrast, I would insist that we cannot give up belief, or jump outside of our conceptual scheme; this would be like being in the sea without a ship (i.e. without a conceptual scheme). Roughly, I use 'belief' in this context as a very basic term for 'thoughts taken up - whether handed down or discovered - and held to be true' (Anderson 1998, 3). Certain beliefs may be male-neutral. Yet recognition of the sexed/gendered perspectives of beliefs is part of a process of transformation. This process can only begin, I suggest, in discerning the sexed/gendered shape of our conceptual scheme.

Beginning this process, you might follow me and consider the shape of philosophical conceptions of reason. Modern, philosophical texts have also frequently contained images of the sea as outside the territory of rationality, in relation to the secure - since rational - ground of an island. In particular, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) employs the stormy sea to represent the illusions which threaten and surround the land of truth. In the Kantian picture, the definite line separating the philosopher or seafarer from the sea represents the limits of ordered rationality and pure understanding. But if this line is drawn by men alone and represents the limits to their reasoning, can and should it be pushed back? [4] According to certain feminists, human rationality should be reformed in order to grasp the contents of the marine waters whose turbulence evoke images of desire, birth and love. By emphasizing these additional images, feminists intend to move toward a fully embodied standpoint on reality. More specifically, my reform would include the belief-constructions implicit in imagery which takes the land in Kant's use of sea imagery as the limit of rationality; or the turbulent sea as gendered images of desire and the land's relationship to the sea as reason's relationship to the unknowable; or the horizon beyond the sea as the divinisation of a disembodied reason and so on. [5] Of course this also implies that to rethink pervasive Kantian imagery I will have to deviate from Otto Neurath's (1882-1945) picture of philosophy; and vice-versa.

Unlike Kant who does not describe the philosopher's ship but consistent with the picture of philosophy created by Neurath, at least as described by Quine, the planks of the philosopher's ship include the mistaken beliefs which are necessarily part of our conceptual scheme. The post-Kantian point is that philosophers must rely upon both true beliefs and falsehoods when changing the planks of mistaken beliefs in order to stay afloat. For Neurath, to be without the ship is to be in the sea without any beliefs; this would be impossible! But to qualify Quine's references to a mariner and his ship on the open sea, if these are taken to mean that the rebuilding of a philosophical framework is done by a lone man then they will also have to be supplemented with additional images from feminist philosophers - for whom the subject of knowledge is not a discrete, simple self with its very own set of fully transparent beliefs. Instead generally feminist epistemologists speak about subjects of knowledge.

Leaving aside the question of the correct imagery (for the moment), let me explain further that my general argument, in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, is divided into four parts in order to build the framework for, while also negotiating the content of, a feminist philosophy of religion. Part One on Background Matters begins a detailed discussion of the definition and symbolization of reason, with a focus upon the conception of reason in the justification of religious belief. I move on to criticize a modern feminist attempt to degender reason, as well as to criticize an empirical realist attempt to justify theistic belief on the basis of experience strictly conceived by formal reasoning. [6] The last two sections of Part One anticipate my presentation of feminist epistemological frameworks of belief, as well as the reconfigurations of those beliefs which have been configured by dominant, patriarchal myths.

Part Two contains three chapters, addressing the question of the rationality of religious belief according to three possible, epistemological frameworks. Outlining these frameworks helps to introduce the valuable insights of recent feminist epistemologies. But I also tackle the difficult discourse of Julia Kristeva (1941- ) and Luce Irigaray (1930- ); I include both of these women under the label 'feminist poststructuralism' with a certain qualification. Yet despite my forays into poststructuralist discourse which feminists such as Jantzen take to be anti-epistemology, I remain concerned with the epistemology of belief, especially concerned with substantive issues related to reason, objectivity and desire. I assume here that philosophers of religion have to be able to reassess the process of belief-construction (or, in Quine's terms, their evolving conceptual scheme) before deciding on the case for a feminist philosophy of religion. Recognition of the deeply gendered - often sexist and racist - nature of our social and physical locations supports the need for greater, better or more adequate philosophical reflection.

Part Three involves two chapters on the reconfigurations of belief. In these chapters, I use a combination of two feminist frameworks - both standpoint epistemology and poststructuralism - to illustrate the possibility of transforming the practice of philosophy of religion; this involves at least supplementing a formal justification of religious beliefs with a rational reconfiguration of beliefs which would include the significant material content of desire and sexual difference.

Today I would say that this supplementation may culminate in transformation. Replacing the ship's weak planks, in relation to the sea and land (whether these represent desire and reason or not), implies a rebuilding. This may imply a total reconstruction when it comes to male-neutral planks of philosophy of religion which have excluded differences of gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity. So my book's aim is not merely to modify rules or produce a checklist of beliefs. I do not address standard questions about God precisely because my intention is not to justify theistic beliefs. What concerns me is the process of uncovering and reconfiguring beliefs as embedded and variously configured in myths. Shaping this process is the cognitive sensibility of yearning; more on yearning below. I illustrate my reconfigurations of belief by taking two distinctive figures from patriarchal configurations of religious belief in myth: [7] one from a nonwestern form of theistic belief (i.e. Mirabai, the legendary Hindu poetess-saint), the other from a western form of civil belief (i.e. Antigone, the mythical figure of Greek tragedy).

II. Responding to O'Grady: A Feminist Standpoint

It is on this last point that Kathleen O'Grady, in her review article, 'Where Bodies Embrace', asks of my choice of mythical figures, Why not consider those non-privileged persons who are actually marginalised from birth? [8] Here my reply is that I wanted to encourage our movement from centre to margins by the reconfiguration of central figures in philosophical texts (e.g. Antigone in political philosophy). In fact, within philosophical texts these figures themselves can be reconfigured by imagining how they could relinguish their privileged positions in acts of dissent. The very process making up feminist reconfigurations of women's lives represents the crucial movement from a privileged position at the centre to a position of marginality as a source of less partial knowledge. Moreover these figures, whether mythical or historical rendered mythical, are imagined as part of what Michèle Le Doeuff (1948- ) calls the philosophical imaginary. [9] In the end, my reason for turning to mythical figures, informed by Le Doeuff, has to do with my understanding of a standpoint - more on this as well in a minute.

At the same time as responding to O'Grady I would like to express my gratitude for her moving and highly insightful exposition of A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, especially in linking the Kollwitz sculpture with the heart of my book. In O'Grady's words,

Anderson has chosen the Kollwitz artwork carefully, and its accompanying epigraph, to speak her philosophy first in sculpted bodies crafting a feminist philosophy of religion from the aesthetics of a passionate embrace. While the theoretical musings on [the] technique [of the reconfiguration of myth and thinking from the place of the other] are a promising synthesis of the variety of feminist methods available thus far, they nevertheless continue to be incomplete.

Still a promising concept emerges. Yearning, manifestly expressed in the Kathe Kollwitz sculpture that adorns the cover of Anderson's text (one might even say 'embodied' therein) is a material representation of the active, passionate, love and desire of one for an other. Yearning thus becomes a central component of Anderson's philosophy of religion, a semantic container that can accommodate her complex melange of reason and desire in the philosophical contract.

While 'yearning' (as with Anderson's method) remains a somewhat nebulous and inchoate concept, resisting an easy definition, it nevertheless infuses Anderson's work with a vitality and richness that is found in so few texts of philosophy. [10]

In response to O'Grady's criticisms concerning my method in reading mythical figures I hope to clarify what otherwise may appear, in her terms, 'inchoate.' [11] Part of the difficulty is grasping the crucial role I intend for a feminist standpoint. A further difficulty is that I assume it is too soon to be able to state definitively an absolutely clear method for a feminist philosophy of religion. More ground needs to be broken before feminist philosophers are able to settle on a secure, feminist method for philosophy of religion. Similarly, my present case for a feminist philosophy of religion hangs to a large degree on developing a transformative awareness of sex/gender including the multiple variables of race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation. To develop this I introduce (below) an epistemological strategy for reinventing ourselves as other.

It is essential that my conception of a feminist standpoint be grasped at this point. I argue for struggling to achieve such a standpoint in order to tackle the problem of a hierarchy of values, in which reason is valued over desire, male over female, upper class over working class, infinite over finite, power over weakness, centre over margin, and other similar (value) combinations, inherent in philosophical texts. In a recent paper I stipulate that a feminist standpoint is not the same as a woman's experiences or her situation, it is not a female perspective. It is not straightforwardly, in Jantzen's terms, the female imaginary or a feminist symbolic; [12] and it is not even an outlook given by birth to all women whatever their particular social location. [13] Instead I argue, a feminist standpoint is an achievement - i.e. the achievement of an epistemically informed perspective - resulting from struggle by, or on behalf of women and men who have been exploited, oppressed or dominated, including women who have been exploited or even oppressed by very specific, pernicious monotheistic beliefs. To achieve an epistemically informed perspective, embodiment (as a woman) is not a sufficient condition for the production of a feminist standpoint. Formal and substantive principles - that is, concepts of reason, as well as myths - necessarily mediate one's embodiment. Therefore, I employ myth and the philosophical imaginary in the struggle to achieve a feminist standpoint. Looking at myths and the male-neutral representations of beliefs support a strategy of reform which exposes the exclusive point of view of philosophy of religion: it begins with taking the privileged readings of female figures or images of women in patriarchal texts out to the margins in order to reconfigure them from the standpoint of others. In this way, the familiar in philosophy of religion is rendered strange; and it becomes apparent that a self-conscious awareness of our sex/gendered perspectives (with all the sexual and social factors that go with these) moves us to change conceptions of ourselves, i.e. to reinvent ourselves as other than we have been. In this way, we recognise (greater) truth, or more true representations of our social and spiritual reality, by thinking from the lives of others.

Another criticism involves questioning the relationship between myths and patriarchy. O'Grady insists that 'myths are one of the most successful tools of patriarchal discourse.' I agree there is always the danger that in trying to transform patriarchy we fail. Yet I attempt to confront what is crucial to the process of the interpretation of difference: i.e. mimesis of myth. [14] I chose mythical figures rather than actual women in order to avoid the highly problematic notion of women's supposedly unencumbered or unmediated experience; such a notion simply fails to take into account that all experience is interpreted. Instead I acknowledge in my account of the threefold mimesis, of prefiguration, configuration and reconfiguration, that the understanding of the relation of women and philosophy cannot be separated from myth, its narrative core and variability. Accordingly I take as my examples mythical figures in philosophy, acknowledging the complex history of their textual configurations. I focus upon narratives of two 'mythised' women to use an adjective I've appropriated from Paul Ricoeur; other figures of women in myth or history could be considered. Now the two women I've chosen are figured as dissenting from privileged female roles, finding support for their actions in broadly construed religious beliefs. Yet within western philosophy the memory of the potentially subversive nature of these female acts of dissent and the potentially sexually specific content of these female beliefs have been consistently construed to support the philosophical limits of western patriarchy; these are the limits which excluded both acts of female subversion and actual expressions of sexually specific beliefs. In one sense I come to recognise the exclusivity of these limits from an engagement with the writings of both Kristeva and Irigaray. But perhaps the stronger sense of my insight comes from Le Doeuff on the role of imagery and figures in philosophical texts which create both the unity of philosophy and the exclusion of women.

In the Final Critical Matters in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion I come to a general account of the philosophical imaginary, exposing the role of women, desire and belief in modern philosophers' configurations of rationality. Amongst other points, it is imperative to see that any conception of reason sharply contrasted with desire is too formal or 'thin' to deal adequately with beliefs of embodied persons; it is also imperative to see that desire cannot be sufficiently understood as long as its content remains excluded by reason; and to see that philosophical analysis of and feminist concern with a combination of reason and desire, as found in expressions of yearning for truth whether epistemological, ethical or aesthetic truth (e.g. yearning for justice, love or beauty), need to supplement contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion. [15] In fact, yearning is, I insist, the vital reality of human life which gives rise to religious belief. Yet I have to be careful here. Is this yearning only a disguised form of the philosophical aspiration to be infinite? Can we yearn for truth, or crave infinitude, while acknowledging our self-consciously held and embodied locations? [16]

III. A Critical Challenge for Philosophy: On Marginality

It is useful here, after the above overview and brief response to O'Grady, to consider a statement from Beverley Clack's response to 'A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Author Meets Critics' conference held at the University of Sunderland on 18 April 1998. Her statement illustrates a problem with my discourse for non-philosophers. There are both theologians (whether feminist or not) and non-academic feminists who, if asked about a feminist philosophy of religion, will respond why bother with philosophy - let alone philosophy of religion?! It tends to be assumed by non-philosophers that the difficult and abstract nature of philosophy renders it virtually useless in the urgent task to transform the lives of marginalised men and women. Something like this assumption lies behind Clack's statement which I quote here:

Anderson suggests, rightly, that we should broaden out the perspectives which form the basis for the general assumptions of those engaged in the discipline. Privileged, white, middle class, male perspectives (and the male-neutral stance adopted by some female practitioners) need to be challenged. The perspectives of, to use Anderson's phrase 'non-privileged others' need to be included in our discussions. But who are these 'non-privileged others'? Are we talking about undergraduates? Less senior practitioners of the discipline? Women? Black people? The working classes? If anything, Anderson's use of poststructuralist thinkers exacerbates this problem. Would [non-privileged others] understand the language and concepts used by figures like Kristeva and Irigaray [Clack continues]. As feminists, this issue is of the greatest importance, and for me it raises a significant question mark against overreliance on the writings of some poststructuralist thinkers with their attendant and excluding terminology. By using such thinkers, are we simply creating a new elite of interpreters?'

Who are these non-privileged others? I would answer anyone who is in some way less privileged than oneself - and there is always someone who is less, but also always someone more, privileged than oneself. Yet Clack raises a significant point: there is an undeniable problem in understanding poststructuralist discourse. [17] French poststructuralist discourse is both complex and difficult to read; and I don't think it can be made less difficult by putting feminist poststructuralism into therapeutic terms as done by Jantzen. [18] Basically I admit that A Feminist Philosophy of Religion tends to be more concerned with criticising the privileging of simplicity over complexity in the dominant Anglo-American discourse in philosophy of religion than with challenging the complexity which marks what Clack calls 'the excluding terminology' of poststructuralism.

What I had found to be most exclusionary in philosophy of religion is an overly rigid preoccupation with the principles of clarity, coherence and simplicity. My response to this rigidity does not rule out the use of these formal principles - far from it. But I caution against their exclusive use, especially at the expense of recognising the apparent ambiguity, frequent inconsistency and complexity in the vital reality of human life. For me, a decisive weakness in dominant forms of philosophy of religion has been both the exclusion of the significant material making up the yearnings of non-privileged persons - whether this is in their longing to overcome suffering, or in their cries for justice - and the exclusion of the substantive content from concepts such as, on the one hand, practical reason and, on the other hand, yearning for truth, justice or beauty. These forms of exclusion have been at times the result of attempts to achieve, for example, coherence in reply to the problem of evil and simplicity on the question of the existence of God. Thus in contrast with Clack's concern with the complexity of poststructuralist discourse I was more concerned with the inadequacy of theoretical solutions to innocent suffering and to the longing for a heart in a heartless world.

And yet there is agreement between Clack and me on the very important point that philosophy of religion has to be transformed in order to reflect the reality of women's lives, of marginalised lives, of desire and passion that exceeds the limits of formally rational discourse. I admit that I was not readily conscious of the danger that the very sentences written by poststructuralists such as Irigaray and Kristeva 'excluded' their work from actual readers.

I have perhaps been too preoccupied with trying to transform the privileged readers and writers only of philosophy of religion to think carefully about the nature of my own academic lexicon in relation to marginalised women and men. But certain aspects of the poststructuralist message strongly compel change for those at the centre as well as those on the margin. At least the content of Irigaray's and Kristeva's distinctive messages for women and religion speak powerfully and provocatively of the need to be able to recognise and retrieve - by way of imagination and subversion - the significant content in human desire and love. This content has been largely excluded by the exclusive preoccupation with the disembodied omnipotence, omniscience, omnitemporality, infinity of the God's eye point of view.

For example, listen to Irigaray's provocative miming of the (male) aspiration to be infinite:

You wound my living skin to safeguard your claim to some divine ideal. You abolish the edges of our bodies to turn yourself into a God.

Return inside yourself, and measure out your limits by working here and now within your powers. No more, no less than they permit you at any moment in time. No more, no less than the person you are at each moment, dreamer and preacher of infinity!

But returning inside yourself, that is your torment. You always want to project yourself far out, become ever greater, losing all measures in your nostalgic desire to be God. [19]

In fact both Irigaray and Kristeva are highly significant and distinctive players on the poststructuralist scene. They present potentially subversive material for the transformation of relations between men and women, women and women, men and men, as well as between what has been conceived to be human and what is divine.

IV. Rereading Kant: The Imagery in Philosophical Texts

To support the case for A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, I would like to pick up the imagery introduced in my earlier overview. As already explained, in my book's Preface, I question Quine's use of Neurath's picture of the philosopher as a mariner rebuilding his ship on the open sea. Does the mariner have any affinity with Kant's seafarer? [20] At first glance the subjects in both Neurath's and Kant's pictures appear to be men who venture out on the open and stormy sea. But Neurath's philosophers do not begin on the secure land of truth; his picture contains no island. So women philosophers should take care to confront the imagery of Kant and Neurath separately.

To offer some rough guidelines I would ask, first, do women philosophers stand in a different relation to the sea from past male philosophers who like Kant begin by viewing the sea when securely placed upon the land of truth? Perhaps contemporary women philosophers would be more like Neurath's mariners and find themselves already on the open sea. But, second, would women philosophers be aboard his ship, which Quine identifies as the evolving conceptual scheme of Neurath's mariner? [21] To be without a ship would mean being without beliefs, apparently, in the sea. So in this picture to have any beliefs, to have a conceptual scheme, women would have to be carried along in a ship; [22] but once recognized as philosophers women could seek to rebuild the ship's planks of mistaken beliefs. The question is, if philosophers who are self-conscious about their sex/gender, race, class and ethnicity join in the rebuilding task, how would their involvement transform the shape and material of the mariners' ship? As already suggested feminist epistemologists at least would insist that the rebuilding task could not be done by a lone philosopher, whether privileged male or female, nor could the rebuilding be done by an authoritative Captain and his crew as more recently suggested by Simon Blackburn's Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. In particular, I would contend that the latter imagery of a Captain embodying reason simply fails to represent Kant's equalitarian spirit, appearing much more like Plato's rationalist picture of the authority of a philosopher king. Yet before asserting anything about the new beliefs which might supplement Kant's philosophy and transform Neurath's ship, it would be necessary to do more sustained studies of Kant and of Neurath, especially to explore questions related to the sex/gender of the seafarers and of the mariners' beliefs, respectively. To initiate such studies, I do explore the new subjects of feminist epistemologies and the construction of their beliefs in Part Two of A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. [23]

At this stage it might be wondered if my frequent references to Kant who is a privileged white male eighteenth-century European philosopher are even more problematic for a feminist standpoint than my reliance upon Kristeva and Irigaray. Nevertheless I have made an explicit choice to find support for the rationality of belief in certain readings of Kant's writings. Kant supports my project insofar as his account of religion within the limits of reason argues strongly against both any naive claims of empirical realists and any blind faith of religious enthusiasts; but this does not mean I give up either realism or religious passion; in particular, I place great value in yearning as a shared passion for real justice. The distinctive move toward a feminist philosophy occurs in turning to disrupt the patriarchal structure of traditional theism, including any patriarchal images used by Kant to define Enlightenment reason. My intention has been to re-assert in a post-Kantian spirit, if not the unreconstructed arguments of Kant that, on the one hand, rationality and reality do not correspond perfectly due to the limitations of human reason. On the other hand, blind faith in subjective enthusiasm needs to be tempered by the critical truth of reason. Admittedly what remains open to critical scrutiny in Kant himself are some of his most fundamental presuppositions concerning the limits and purity of reason. These presuppositions become evident in the philosophical imagery which continues to be at work in his attempt to account for the unity of philosophy (or philosophical truth) and the coherence of pure reason.

As I have stressed Kant employs the imagery of an island surrounded by a sea of illusion. Kant is not the first or the last to use sea imagery. He finds this imagery before him in Francis Bacon (1561-1626); and it reappears after him in G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) and other post-Kantians who use imagery in which an island is the land of truth. The territory beyond truth is the stormy ocean or that sea. Even our contemporary Quine finds sea imagery useful, however different his use is from Kant's, to imagine the philosopher as a mariner in a ship on the open sea. [24] The objectionable tendency with the Kantian imagery takes the sea to evoke images of female emotion or turbulent desire, while the island of pure understanding - that land of truth - remain the territory mapped out by male reason. But this might be forcing sexist metaphors onto philosophical texts. So how do I read Kant's imagery? [25]

For the sake of argument, Kant's stormy ocean could symbolize the philosophers' encounter with uncertainty and contradictions, associated with female desire as untruth. But even with this possibility, the larger picture of Kant's Enlightenment account of practical reason and of reflective judgment could still disturb a sexist view of truth. Rationality is not strictly formal or theoretical in the corpus of Kant's work, i.e. it is not restricted to the land of truth as marked out by strictly formal canons of reasoning. Not only do we find reason seeking (craving?) the unconditioned, but reason also serves a substantive role as a tool of freedom which must always be open to criticism by any free citizen. Recently, in At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex and Equality Drucilla Cornell has developed a feminist argument for 'an imaginary domain' which would render possible Kant's idea of freedom for all women and men. [26] At the outset Cornell asks, 'Where does women's freedom begin? It should begin with the demand that we free ourselves from the use of gender comparison as the ideal of equality (p. 3).' And she goes on to define the imaginary domain:

The freedom to orient ourselves to our sexuate being is inspired by Immanuel Kant's definition of freedom before the law, although we have learned much about "sex" since his times. Certainly, there is widespread agreement that sex is not just a simple fact of our natural being. Since sex, gender, and sexuality are not just given to us, we need the space to let our imaginations run wild. To even aspire to the self-representation of our sexuate being we need freedom to explore without fear the representations that surround us. This place of free exploration of sexual representations, and personas, is the imaginary domain. [27]

In order to get at the assumptions about reality implicit in Kant's use of images concerning the lives of women and men, the process of reform by feminist philosophers must account for reason as both practical and theoretical; and the crucial, Kantian idea of practical reason is freedom which, according to Cornell's rereading, can constitute the place of free exploration of sexual representations and personas. [28] I would also contend that there is substantial ground to read Kant's plan for the construction of an edifice near the end of the Critique of Pure Reason [29] in terms of practical reason; these terms necessarily take into consideration the physical or material and social locations of the free subjects of knowledge. According to Kant's own imagery, human subjects neither have 'the materials to build a tower to heaven' nor can their plan for the edifice be the work of a single man or authority because like 'the Tower of Babel' it would only collapse. [30] Of course, I do not limit myself to Kant's imagery. I consider additional, feminist readings of imagery of the sea in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion; notably I explore the imagery of Irigaray's Marine Lover. To consider further the possibilities in reconfiguring the dominant imagery of reason, desire and truth for the rebuilding of philosophy of religion, I direct you back to a reading - or rereading - of my book.

V. Conclusion: World-Travelling

A final word on A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: I come back to my reconfiguration of the Hindu poetess-saint Mirabai. Tina Beattie claims that I remain neutral here in reconfiguring an exotic discourse. Yet my intention was to propose an alternative strategy to what Maria Lugones has called 'world-travelling.' [31] World-travelling refers to the significant capacity of imaginatively engaging with the other and is necessarily for the production of less biased knowledge. World-travelling describes an essential capacity for my reading of Parita Mukta's account of Mirabai. I contend that an imaginative engagement with Mukta's account challenges the principles that inhibit 'what we know' by forcing us to think through differences of culture, class, caste, gender and sex in our representations of the religious practices and beliefs. In imagining the various configurations of bhakti I, at least, have been forced to struggle with the appearances of Western patriarchy and privilege as they have infiltrated, for instance, via Gandhi into (re)configurations of eastern religious beliefs. Far from choosing something exotic that has no critical relevance to my philosophical thinking, Mukta's socialist and humanist concern with the people who sing or have sung the song of Mirabai and so, in a mimetic sense, 'become Mira' forces me to become aware of my lack of awareness of otherness; this lack results - at least in part - from the exclusion or repression of one's (our) own otherness in the current practices of philosophy of religion.

To conclude in defence of my overall case, I insist that A Feminist Philosophy of Religion urges an engagement in the struggle to transform philosophy of religion on behalf of those women's lives that have been excluded from theistic accounts of religious belief; but also it urges an engagement in imaginative thinking by and with those who have risked forming relationships on the margins (as in practices of bhakti) in order to be transformed. The African-American feminist bell hooks - whose penname (i.e. bell hooks) reflects her own identification with non-privileged black folks - writes persuasively about this sort of two-way transformation. In her words,

I gathered [my] essays under the heading Yearning because as I looked for common passions, sentiments shared by folks across race, class, gender, and sexual practice I was struck by the depths of longing in many of us. Yet I think of all the time black folks (especially the underclass) spend just fantasizing about what our lives would be like if there were no racism, no white supremacy. Surely our desire for radical social change is intimately linked with the desire to experience pleasure, erotic fulfillment, and a host of other passions. Then, on the flip side, there are many individuals with race, gender, and class privilege who are longing to see the kind of revolutionary change that will end domination and oppression even though their lives would be completely and utterly transformed. [32]

Finding myself on what hooks identifies as 'the flip side,' my struggle to transform philosophy of religion is not philosophically neutral; this philosophical struggle is not a means to abstract myself from my own history, not to protect myself against change or to remain personally uninvolved. On the contrary, those philosophers of religion who engage with me in the struggle over the rationality and myths of religious belief are made vulnerable to having their thinking and living utterly transformed.

In the end, my case for a feminist philosophy of religion mainly rests on the actual awareness, or new knowledges, gained by allowing ourselves to be transformed. Not only will the familiar in philosophy of religion be made strange, but the distant other will be brought close in the recognition that we have excluded other persons in our preoccupation with the disembodied divine. After all the crucial, perhaps hidden, premise in the above case is that the aspiration to be infinite, that is, to be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, immortal and so on, has motivated Anglo-American philosophy of religion. Now in recognising that this aspiration is deeply flawed [33] feminist philosophers of religion are beginning to create an alternative.

Appendix
On Reconfiguring Philosophical Concepts

The example I take today to support the reconfiguring of central philosophical concepts is Hannah Arendt (1906-75). In particular, in the lectures Arendt gave on Kant's political philosophy at the University of Chicago, she offers a significant rereading of Kant's sensus communis or communal sense (gemeinschaftlicher Sinn) as a faculty of reflective judgment. [34] Certain feminist philosophers accepted Arendt's rereading as a creative appropriation of a key notion from Kant's Critique of Judgment. Most relevant is that her rereading of sensus communis as communal (or public) sense could give significant support to my definition of standpoint and the accompanying feminist account of strong objectivity.

Let me explain roughly. Arendt helps us see that in Kant's discussion of reflective judgment he explains how the free play of imagination can stir the understanding to achieve what he calls 'an enlarged mentality' sensitive to the standpoint of others; and 'the standpoint of others' is a translation of Kant's own words by James Meredith. [35] What Arendt stresses is that when the imagination stirs the communal sense, it compares 'our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgment of others.' [36] In other words, the free play of the imagination does not demand that we transpose ourselves into the actual standpoint of someone else, but that we imagine possibilities which are not merely variations of the self. So instead of trying to project ourselves into the other we project a possible intermediary position held neither by the self nor the other; but ideally this intermediary position could render a better understanding of both the self and the other. Now I might call this a productive form of mimesis; a form of which I name 'configuration' in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. [37] Ideally, the imagination of possibility in mimesis - i.e. in a new configuration or intermediary representation - can, then, provide a less biased epistemic perspective.

At the very least this goal of an enlarged mentality as reconceived by Arendt, by way of what I call a configuration, should support the double imperatives presented in A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: (i) 'to think from the lives of others' and (ii) 'to reinvent ourselves as other'; these crucial components of a feminist objectivity should be, similarly, enhanced by the imagination of new possibilities in mimesis; and note that this is a feminist objectivity insofar as it seeks to think from the lives of marginalised women. Although I derive the double imperatives of thinking from the lives of others and reinventing ourselves as other from Sandra Harding's feminist standpoint epistemology, these imperatives bear a strong resemblance to Arendt's rereading of the Kantian maxims of common human understanding in reflective judgment. [38] The first maxim of autonomy in Kant's account of sensus communis assumes that community, or a social dimension, is essential even for one's own self-understanding; the second maxim of the enlarged thought in judgment requires us, again in a translation of Kant's own words, 'to think from the standpoint of everyone else'; the third maxim of consistency in reason brings together the previous two maxims of understanding and judgment. Overall, Arendt's creative appropriation of Kantian communal sense stresses that reflective judgment ought to result in the communicability of 'a shared feeling.' And I would go so far as to claim that this conception of a shared feeling exhibits an affinity with the African-American feminist bell hooks' account of yearning - as, in hooks words, 'the shared space and feeling [which] opens up the possibility of common ground where differences [of race, gender, class privilege] might meet and engage one another' (1990, 13).

Note that the above use of the imagination in achieving a feminist objectivity, or in Arendt's terms a communal sense in reflective judgment, assumes that certain mediating principles and mimetic thinking necessarily come into play in the process of knowing and, similarly, believing, whether acknowledged or not. I try to take into account such principles by demonstrating that the application of feminist standpoint epistemology to configurations of religious belief is usefully enhanced by certain principles of interpretation which can mediate our differences.

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Notes
[1] Terri Elliott, 'Making Strange What Had Appeared Familiar', The Monist: An International Journal of Philosophical Inquiry, Special Issue on Feminist Epistemology: For and Against 77:4 (October 1994), 424-33. Cf. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1991), p. 150; Onora O'Neill, 'Justice, Gender and International Boundaries', in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds) The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 316-17.
[2] A. W. Moore, Points of View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 274-9, also 105-6, 210-15, 250-1.
[3] W. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Logico-Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), p. 79.
[4] Moore suggests that Kant faces a decisive problem by employing a limit to distinguish the knowable from the unknowable: this limit cannot be determined without having access to an unknowable beyond - but 'There is no unknowable beyond.' Hence Moore proposes a more modest claim (than Kant's) that we be content to distinguish between what we do and do not know; see Moore, Points of View, pp. 250-1.
[5] We might compare this with William K. Clifford's story of a man and his old ship. This man believed that 'she' (his ship!) was seaworthy, but this belief was not established by evidence before a voyage which subsequently lead to the death of her passengers and the loss of her. So the man was guilty because his action had not been preceded by the assessment of the origin of his belief. See Clifford, 'The Ethics of Belief', in Lectures and Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1901), pp. 163-76.
[6] However, Sarah Coakley has been developing a feminist reading of William Alston, in particular, which retains an empiricist conception of experience as the basis for an epistemology of religious belief; see Sarah Coakley, 'Knowing Otherwise,' Riddell Memorial Lectures, University of Newcastle, March 1999.
[7] Or, I might say from the 'philosophical imaginary' in the sense defined by Michèle Le Doeuff, The Philosophical Imaginary, trans. Colin Gordon (London: The Athlone Press, 1989); see footnote 10 below.
[8] Kathleen O'Grady makes this criticism in 'Where Bodies Embrace: Pamela Sue Anderson's A Feminist Philosophy of Religion,' Review Essay, Feminist Theology, issue 20 (1999), p. 106.
[9] Le Doeuff develops a distinctive account of the philosophical imaginary. According to Le Doeuff, the philosophical imaginary is a style of 'thinking in images' with which past philosophers have denied engagement. Unacknowledged elements in the practice of philosophy are located in the imagery and symbolism of a philosophical text. This constitutes the philosophical imaginary that is not incidental to philosophy as a decorative aspect of a text, but functions to mask aspects of philosophy not readily articulated and to organize the values implicit in the text. An exercise of the philosophical imaginary by feminist philosophers would be to imagine alternative thought patterns and intellectual spaces in which they can glimpse possibilities excluded through polarizations of reason and imagination. See Le Doeuff, The Philosophical Imaginary, especially pp. 1-20, 100-28.
[10] O'Grady, 'Where Bodies Embrace,' pp. 100, 106-7.
[11] Ibid., p. 107.
[12] Grace Jantzen, Becoming Divine, pp. 96-8, 120-7, 213-7. The question is, does Jantzen remain merely someone who resists? In Nancy Hartsock's terms the colonizer who resists 'is a figure who also fails to provide an epistemology that is usable for the task of revolutionalizing, creating, and constructing'; 'the colonizer who attempts [to refuse yet lives within a culture] is a traitor, but he is still not the colonized' (Nancy Hartsock, 'Postmodernism and Political Change,' in Feminist Standpoint Revisited. Oxford: Westview Press, 1998, p. 215); 'Foucault reproduced in his work the situation of the colonizer who resists and in so doing rendered his work inadequate and even irrelevant to the needs of the colonized or the dominated' (ibid., p. 217; also see pp. 215- 22).
[13] Anderson ,'Standpoint,' unpublished paper.
[14] Cf. Pamela Sue Anderson, 'Myth and Feminist Philosophy,' in Kevin Schilbrack (ed.), Myth and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).
[15] Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, pp. x-xiii.
[16] The exploration of the gendered nature of this yearning, or craving, remains to be done. However, the suggestion that there is a conative difference between the craving for infinitude and the aspiration to be infinite has been made by Moore, Points of View, pp. 275-6. Arguably the aspiration should be held in check, while the craving is a basic human motivation. Yet is either the craving or the aspiration more characteristic of men, or certain men, than women?
[17] Of course this sort of criticism is nothing new: English philosophers have claimed not to understand French philosophers long before now - prior to any third wave feminist concerns with marginalised persons the English have charged the French with unintelligibility.
[18] The 'therapeutic terms' I would reject include those of Jantzen in Becoming Divine. But Clack suggests another alternative in her 'Critic's response paper.' Instead of the elitist discourse of poststructuralism feminist philosophers of religion should turn to literature - which she does helpfully in her recently published Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). Yet I remember thinking at the time of the 'Author Meets Critics' conference that Clack's suggested alternative was slightly ironic: I was then preparing a paper in which I discuss the banality of evil as illustrated in Julia Kristeva's own novel, The Old Man and the Wolves (I delivered this paper at a conference in Poland on 27 April 1998). So her alternative is not so new nor is it untried by poststructuralists: Kristeva herself a poststructuralist writes and uses literature to present issues on women and religion. Her The Old Man and the Wolves covers issues such as the loss of identity and love, the malaise - especially of women - concerning death, grief and atheism.
[19] Luce Irigaray, Elemental Passions, trans. (London: The Athlone Press, 1992), pp. 92, 93; italics added.
[20] In Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Simon Blackburn has recently portrayed Kant's conception of reason as the Captain of a crew on the open sea; here the Captain representing reason has authority over the crew who include various figures of desire and other 'ruling passions.' Clearly this picture of Kantian practical reason, if accepted, would be highly detrimental to any feminist appropriation of Kant. However, I would argue that this imagery of a Captain and his crew suggests precisely the conception of reason which Kant rejects when he disassociates himself from the rationalist tradition, especially from Plato's conception of the rational authority of the philosopher king. In contrast, in his conception of reason Kant squarely confronts the inevitable disagreement and difficulty which accompany all efforts to work with others as is necessary to construct an edifice of practical reason; see the quotation and discussion of Kant. The Kantian scholar Onora O'Neill distinguishes Kant from the rationalist tradition which preceded him as follows: 'rationalism failed because it took no account either of the paucity of materials or of the disagreements about the plan among the fellow workers. It relied on the fiction of a unitary and authoritative architect, whose innate ideas correspond to their real archetypes, to construct the edifice of human knowledge. Like the Tower of Babel, the edifice of rationalism was doomed to collapse. [Instead] The plan [for the edifice] must be one that can be followed by a plurality of "fellow workers" whose coordination is guaranteed neither by instinct nor by preestablished harmony' (O'Neill 1989, 12).
[21]It is interesting that Clifford describes the ship as female and later discovers that she was not 'seaworthy'; hence unreliable - the implication? - as female beliefs.
[22] How much is this like Kant's 'commodious' 'dwelling house'? Does this imagery also represent an evolving conceptual scheme? See footnote 30 below.
[23] Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, p. 12.
[24] Again it is interesting that in his 'Ethics of Belief' Clifford describes the ship as female which goes out to sea and is sunk; later he concludes that she was not 'seaworthy'; hence unreliable as female beliefs.
[25] Consider the following passage: 'the land of truth [is]... surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him (sic) in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion. Before we venture on this sea, to explore it in all directions and to obtain assurance whether there be any ground for such hopes, it will be well to begin by casting a glance upon the map of the land which we are about to leave. ...enquire (for instance) by what title we... consider ourselves as secured against all opposing claims (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith London: 1950, p. 257).
[26] Drucilla Cornell, At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex and Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially, pp. 8-19, 31-2, 191-2.
[27] Cornell, At The Heart of Freedom, p. 8.
[28]Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, pp. 215-6.
[29] To quote Kant concerning the aspects which limit theoretical or speculative reason, 'If we look upon the sum of all knowledge of pure speculative [or theoretical] reason as an edifice for which we have at least the idea within ourselves, it can be said that [in the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements] we have made an estimate of the materials, and have determined for what sort of edifice and for what height and strength of building they suffice. We have found, indeed, that although we had contemplated building a tower which should reach to the heavens, the supply of materials suffices only for a dwelling-house, just sufficiently commodious for our business on the level of experience, and just sufficiently high to allow of our overlooking it. The bold undertaking that we had designed is thus bound to fail through lack of material - not to mention the babel of tongues, which inevitably gives rise to disputes among the workers in regard to the plan to be followed, and which must end by scattering them over all the world, leaving each to erect a separate building for himself, according to his own design. At present, however, we are concerned not so much with the materials as with the plan; and inasmuch as we have been warned not to venture at random upon a blind project which may be altogether beyond our capacities, and yet cannot well abstain from building a secure home for ourselves, we must plan our building in conformity with the material which is given to us, and which is also at the same time appropriate to our needs.' (Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, A707/B735).
[30] For more discussion on this passage in terms of the constructions of practical reasoning, see Onora O'Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 60-5, 211-12.
[31]Maria Lugones, 'Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception,' in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds) Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, second edition (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 419-34; originally published in Hypatia 2,2 (Summer 1987). Lisa Jane Disch has made a relevant connection between Hannah Arendt's use of the imagination in achieving a standpoint of 'enlarged mentality' and Maria Lugones' world-travelling; but Disch makes a critical distinction between the two as well. See Lisa Jane Disch, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy, second edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 160-71.
[32] bell hooks, Yearning: Race,Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990), pp. 12-13. For a more recent account of her own yearning to become a fully autonomous woman in 'a writing life,' see bell hooks, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (New York, NY: Owl Books, 1999).
[33] Revealed as 'flawed' in the sense of exposing the hubris of aspiring to be divine and biased in favour of the privileged sex, race, class and ethnicity.
[34]Immanuel Kant , 'Taste as a kind of sensus communis,' in Critique of Judgment, trans with analytical indexes by James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), pp. 150-4, 295-6; cf. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy edited with an interpretative essay by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Rudolf Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); and Patricia Moynagh, 'A Politics of Enlarged Mentality: Hannah Arendt, Citizenship, Responsibility and Feminism', Hypatia, vol. 12, no. 4 (Fall 1997), 27-53
[35] Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 153, line 11-12 (p. 295 in the original).
[36] Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 151.
[37] A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, pp. 19, 21, 143-7.
[38] Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, pp. 5, 25-27, 39-49; Onora O'Neill also reads Kant's maxims in terms of the social construction of reason, see O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 4, 24-27. For further discussion of Arendt on reflective judgment, see Seyla Benhabib, 'Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics', in Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 133, 137, 141; also see, pp. 53-4.