Publication Details

Abstract

The paper focuses on the changing relation between subjectivity and objectivity as articulated in contemporary feminist epistemological conceptions. Most feminist theoretists share the criticism of traditional dichotomic thinking, within which subjectivity and objectivity were conceived of as mutually excluded opposites. The feminist criticism focuses further on domination of objectivity (seen as a positive property of knowledge) over subjectivity (seen as a negative and an undesirable one). The feminist inquiries in the origins and development of the ideal of „pure" objectivity show its social-cultural background and its being implied in particular values. The roles of subjectivity, resp. intersubjectivity are changing in contemporary feminist epistemological conceptions: both of them are accepted as insepparable from and detremining the objectivity of knowledge.