Gender and Connective Virtues

Abstract

Until recent decades political thought (historical and contemporary) was, according to feminists, so called ’male-stream’. It was based on the false generalizations and male-based conceptions, i.e. claims made about human nature, behaviour or values turn out to be true of man, but not of woman. There are several options how to approach. We are going to research the idea that there are (considering gender) separated concepts and separated ethics. So, the question that we are interested in is whether there are moral and political values that can be understand as a female-based conceptions. With this we mean virtues that are, opposite to the male-based virtues, symbiotic, i.e. that are open and have a connective, bound up function in the society. If this is true we have something that is iintrinsically feminine and the consequence would be that we have a special female ethics as well as female epistemology. In article we present that this does not hold water, because (i) we cannot divide people only to two groups (considerin gender or sex); (ii) ethics of care, which is based on female comprehension of reality, could not be counted for new and original ethical theory; and (iii) therefore, we cannot, on a base of the intrinsic features such as sex or gender, separate virtues into two poles.