Rethinking feminist ethics : care, trust and empathy /

Building on some familiar critiques of major feminist theorists' work in ethics, Koehn (DePaul Univ.) offers an interesting, alternative ethical position based, in part, on Plato's Crito. Abstracting from underlying structures and concerns in the early work of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, Koehn constructs "a dialogical ethic" that is meant to retain the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of "feminine/feminist" ethics. A strength of the text is its placement within contemporary appeals to narrative theory. A weakness concerns broadly sketched discussions of traditional moral theories that, at times, include sweeping generalizations that result in unhelpful caricatures of important positions and seminal ideas in the history of ethics. This book complements Bat-Ami Bar On's Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle (CH, Jun'94) and Nancy Tuana's Feminist Interpretations of Plato (1994). Recommended for collections with substantial feminist holdings. Upper-division undergraduate students and above. S. Martinelli-Fernandez; Western Illinois University