1 Hartsock, N.The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays (Boulder, CO: ‘Westview Press, 1998), 241Google Scholar.

2 Hartsock, N. ‘The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,’ in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Harding, S.Hintikka, S. and Hintikka, M.B. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983)Google Scholar, and The Feminist Standpoint Revisited.

3 See Harding, S.Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 This formulation is attributed to Dorothy Smith (see Harding, ‘Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is “Strong Objectivity“?’ in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Alcoff, L. and Potter, E. [New York/London: Routledge, 1993], note 5)Google Scholar, but Harding has adopted it so that it now strikes one as the signature of her own view. For Harding's standpoint theory, see especially Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? and ‘Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology.'

5 Lukács, G.History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Livingstone, Rodney (London: Merlin Press, 1971), 149Google Scholar. Georgy Lukacs emphasized and developed the significance of the Marxist notion of standpoint. See the section of History and Class Consciousness entitled ‘The Standpoint of the Proletariat’ (149-209).

6 Hartsock, ‘The Feminist Standpoint,’ 291-92Google Scholar.

7 Beauvoir, Simone deThe Second Sex, trans. Parshley, H.M. (London: Picador, 1953), 449Google Scholar.

8 I take it that a society is patriarchal just if most of the positions of power, especially positions of professional and public office, are occupied by men — essentially the idea is that it is men who rule. “Patriarchy,” as the focus of second wave feminism, inevitably has a passé ring to it. But the term also sounds out of date for two more substantial reasons. First, there has been enormous progress in the dismantling of patriarchal structures since the beginnings of the second wave. And, second, a symbolic turn in much feminist theory has led to a focus not so much on the material circumstances of women's lives, but on the symbolic oppression of the feminine. Of course, there is no room for complacency. Patriarchal structures persist — a fact to be borne in mind whenever material concerns are passed over for symbolic ones. Nonetheless, it is right that patriarchy is no longer the sole focus of feminism.

9 Jaggar, A.Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983), 383-84Google Scholar. In Lukács it is quite dear that standpoint is not an empirical notion: “class consciousness is identical with neither the psychological consciousness of individual members of the proletariat, nor with the (mass-psychological) consciousness of the proletariat as a whole; but it is, on the contrary, the sense, become conscious, of the historical role of the class” (History and Class Consciousness, 73; original italics).

10 For an argument questioning the degree of the fidelity, see Bar, Bat-Ami On, ‘Marginality and Epistemic Privilege,’ in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Alcoff, L. and Potter, E. (New York/London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar.

11 Hartsock, ‘The Feminist Standpoint,’ 290Google Scholar.

12 In the original paper Hartsock does sound a cautionary note about the issue: “In addressing the institutionalized division of labour, I propose to lay aside the important differences among women across race and class boundaries and instead search for central commonalities … Still, I adopt this strategy with some reluctance, since it contains the danger of making invisible the experience of lesbians or women of color” ('The Feminist Standpoint,’ 290). But a cautionary note cannot dispel the difficulty.

13 Harding, S.The Science Question in Feminism (Milton Keynes:Open University Press, 1986), 192Google Scholar.

14 Hartsock begins to say something about how the subject of standpoint may be “pluralized” in the final section of The Feminist Standpoint Revisited.

15 Smith, D.E. ‘A Sociology for Women,’ in The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 166Google Scholar; quoted in Jaggar, Feminist Politics, 373Google Scholar.

16 Although the idea of women's nature is often taken to be something biological, I see no reason to think this must be the case. Certainly, something's essence need not be anything biological, given that an essential property of a (type of) thing is any property whose possession is necessary for its being the (type of) thing it is. For a helpful discussion of key anti-essentialist arguments, see Witt's, Charlotte ‘Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Theory,’ Philosophical Topics 23:2 (1995): 321-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar (special issue, Feminist Perspectives on Language, Knowledge, and Reality, ed. S. Haslanger).

17 Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited, 235Google Scholar.

18 “Conscious human practice, then, is at once both an epistemological category and the basis for Marx's conception of the nature of humanity itself. To put the case even more strongly, Marx argues that human activity has both an ontological and epistemological status, that human feelings are not ‘merely anthropological phenomena,’ but are ‘truly ontological affirmations of being'.” Hartsock, ‘The Feminist Standpoint,’ 306, n. 5.

19 Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, 149Google Scholar.

20 See, for instance, Taylor, C.Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winch, P.The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; and Searle, J.The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Searle's account is perhaps more properly categorized as a species of conventionalism than a hermeneutical view, but I use ‘hermeneutical’ in the broadest possible sense to capture the basic idea that social facts are dependent upon some human practice of meaning. The differences between approaches within this broad category are not of present concern. For a discussion of the different approaches, see Collin, F.Social Reality (London/New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar.

21 Wittgenstein, L.Philosophical Investigations, 2d ed., ed. Anscombe, G.E.M. and Rhees, R. trans. Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), section 241Google Scholar. Quoted in Scheman, N. ‘Forms of Life: Mapping the Rough Ground,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. Sluga, H. and Stern, D.G. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 386Google Scholar.

22 There is, of course, more to be said on this subject, but this is not the place to try to say it.

23 A different species of epistemic injustice is identified in my ‘Rational Authority and Social Power: Towards a Truly Social Epistemology,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1998): Part 2, 157-77.

24 Scheman, ‘Forms of Life,’ 391Google Scholar.