Moral Voices, Moral Selves: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Moral Theory

In her landmark 1982 study In a Different Voice , Carol Gilligan argues that there is not only one, true moral voice, but one masculine, one feminine. Moral values and concerns associated with a feminine outlook are relational rather than autonomous; they depend upon interaction with others. Susan J. Hekman argues that the approach to morality suggested by Gilligan’s work marks a radically new departure in moral thinking. In a far-reaching examination and critique of Gilligan’s theory, Hekman seeks to deconstruct the major traditions of moral theory that have been dominant since the Enlightenment. She challenges the centerpiece of that the disembodied, autonomous subject of modernist philosophy. Hekman argues that the logic of Gilligan’s approach entails multiple moral voices, not just one or even two, and that factors other than gender—class, race, and culture—are constitutive of moral voice. Using the work of Wittgenstein and Foucault, she outlines the parameters of a discursive morality and its implications for feminism and moral theory.