17.000/24.611  Political Philosophy

Topics in Feminist Political Philosophy: Gender, Objectification and Pornography

In this course we’ll focus on some topics to which feminist thinking has made important philosophical contributions: the controversial topic of pornography, in political and legal philosophy; and the related topic of objectification, which begins in moral philosophy but has connections with epistemology and politics. We’ll naturally look at the issue of gender along the way, and draw on a variety of philosophical resources, ranging from liberal and feminist political theory, to speech act theory. We’ll be looking at Rae and Sally’s own work in these areas, and that of others including Simone de Beauvoir, Catharine MacKinnon, Ronald Dworkin, and Martha Nussbaum.