Feminism and Rethinking Philosophical Categories

This paper attempts to locate the feminist critique of philosophy within the broader feminist goal of seeking equality in society. The argument for achieving the stated feminist goal purportedly begins within the conceptual world. In particular, the paper attempts at unveiling the philosophic core of the feminist project. This is done by showing that both in the analytic as well as the continental tradition of feminist critical theory there is the common concern over issues of gender and sex, social justice and psychoanalytic criticism, and that underlying all three are philosophical premises of the conception of self. The notion of self and subjectivity has further linkage with the traditional philosophy of God is shown with reference to the work done by Grace Jantzen, in paving the way for an alternative feminist philosophy of God. The feminist critique of western philosophical categories attempted in this paper is equally an Indian Christian philosophical critique, located as the latter is within the eastern religio-philosopical matrix, offering a possible rethinking of the approach to the divine.