Continental Feminist Ethics

Abstract

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in continental feminist philosophical engagements with ethics. It considers how continental feminist ethics is an extension and deepening of certain threads of critical and constructive work in feminist ethics in general by exploring two overarching themes: the intersection of ethics and politics through the operation of norms and normalization, and the ethical significance of how subjects are formed. Four related ethical concepts—embodiment, vulnerability, relationality, and alterity—characterize the more profound conditions and processes of subject formation. The chapter suggests that, overall, continental feminist ethicists share the insight that embodied existence is ambiguous and contends that the most promising future for continental feminist thinking about ethics lies in critical analysis of actual specific practices.