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"Nietzsche has the reputation of being a virulent misogynist -so why are feminists interested in his philosophy ?" (p.2)
"Many feminist philosophers have pointed out that philosophy has traditionally been written by men who promote specific values over others in the name of objectivity and truth. Traditionnaly, philosophers have valued mind over body, culture over nature, reason over irrationality, truth over illusion, and good over evil. Women, feminity, and maternity have been associated with body, nature, irrationality, illusion, and even evil. Because of the associations among women, feminity, maternity, and nature or irrationality, discussions of women and feminity have been topics traditionally excluded from serious considerations by philosophers. Many feminists have challenged the traditional associations among women and irrationality and evil by questioning the supposed objectivity of philosophy. [...]
Feminists have taken various approaches to challenge the male biais in philosophy. Some feminists have argued that what has passed for objectivity and truth must be reexamined and that only when different people are involved in philosophy can it hope to become objective or speak the truth about human experience. Other feminists have maintened that all objectivity or truth result from certain perspectives and that it is deceptive to discuss the truth apart from particular contexts. In his writrings, Nietzsche makes similar criticisms of objectivity and truth. He argues that all truth is perpectival ; every truth comes from a particular perspective. He maintains that objectivity in the sense of a detached observation or a perspectiveless truth is impossible. He even suggests that perhaps the most objective truth would include all different perspectives.
In addition, Nietzsche discusses the ways in which some truths and values develop out of particular situations to benefit certains groups of people. In On the Genealogy of Morals, for example, he describes values that give priority to mind over body as the result of resentment and cruelty. There, he also suggests that these values cause us to be weak and accept suffering and guilt. In this work, and in others, Nietzsche invests the priority given to mind over body. Since women have been identified with the body, and since it is the erasure of differences between bodies that make the illusions of objectivity possible, Nietzsche's emphasis on the importance of body seems promising for feminist philosophy." (pp.2-3)
"In his early essay, "On truth and lie in the ultramoral sense", Nietzsche argues that words are not just reflections of things ; rather they pick out, even create, some things at the expense of others. The notion that language creates rather than merely relfects reality hold out the promise to feminists that we can not only diagnose sexism, patriarchy, and women's "inferiority" as creations rather than natural facts but also use language differently in order to create a new nonsexist reality." (p.4)
" [Some feminists] view his sexual dualism within the context of Nietzsche's anti-essentialism and anti-dualism. They cite his ironic treatment of an "eternal feminine" or essential woman. They see his perspectivism as questioning the fixity of sexual difference in favor of a social constructionism. In his critique of the will of truth or the ascetic ideal, some find affinities with feminist emphasis on the bodily and "playfulness". Others hold that Nietzsche's perspectivism supports the transvaluation of value for women and the feminine." (p.12)
-Kelly A. Oliver & Marilyn Pearsall, Introduction à Kelly A. Oliver & Marilyn Pearsall (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pennsylvania University Press, 1998, 340 pages.
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-Sarah Kofman: "Baubô: Theological Perversion and Fetishism" in Kelly A. Oliver & Marilyn Pearsall (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pennsylvania University Press, 1998, 340 pages.
"I shall argue that the wider philosophical context of Nietzsche's thought provides grounds for taking seriously several passages of The Gay Science that reveal a more sympathetic understanding of woman, since these passages take seriously Nietzsche's antidualism, his perpectivism, and his early existentialist notion of the self." (p.200)
"Nietzsche nonreductive monism leads hm to claim that the soul or mind is not a different kind of substance than the body ; it is a refinement of the same stuff [...] Nietzsche also rejects the association of the unconscious with the body and the conscious with the soul, saying that "consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic"." (p.204)
"Nietzsche [...] recognize the difference between being female and being a woman, takink the latter to be a socially constructed way of being.
[...] Today we know that the strict biological sexual dualism is false. Most humans are born ether male or female, but some researchers estimate that perhaps 5 percent of the population are born with ambiguous genitalia, neither male nor female hormonal structures, etc." (p.206)
-Lynne Tirrell, "Sexual Dualism and Woman's Self-Creation : On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading Nietzsche for Feminists", in Kelly A. Oliver & Marilyn Pearsall (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pennsylvania University Press, 1998, 340 pages.
"For feminism the ideal of an impartial normative rationality, which animates modern moral and political philosophy, expresses a logic of identity which "seeks to have everyting under control, to idealize the bodily fact of sensuous immersion in a world that outruns the subject, to eliminate othersness" (Young, 1987: 61). To achieve its "desire" of a homogeneous unity, the ideal of impartiality as "the point of view of a solitary transcendent God" (Young, 1973: 62) requires that normative reason expel from itself all that is particular, contingent, bodily." (p.315)
"Nietzsche's perspective theory of affects offers a conception of philosophical activity which is not predicated on the opposition of reason and affectivity but, rather, through the idea of will to power articulates an understanding of "affective reason" which does not abstract from the particularity of bodily desire." (p.317)
-David Owen, "Nietzsche Squandered Seductions: Feminism, the Body and the Politics of Genealogy", in Kelly A. Oliver & Marilyn Pearsall (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pennsylvania University Press, 1998, 340 pages.
