The Sceptical Feminist

"Parfit was my BPhil supervisor, Janet was my DPhil supervisor. I kept it in the family. This is another book that comes from the same generation of 25 years ago. It may be that books of that era have had more influence on me because I was young and impressionable, or it may be that it was simply a generation of really talented philosophers. I love this book because it is again incredibly rigorous, analytic and not at all sentimental or wishy washy. It is what it says on the cover – there’s a feminist component to it, and a sceptical component to it. It came out in the late seventies, a time when people were still barred from jobs on grounds of sex. Janet makes the point – which others had made before, including John Stuart Mill – that this makes no sense. If you say no women should be bus drivers because they’re not capable enough or whatever, then you don’t need a rule that no women should be bus drivers. All you need is a rule saying that no one who isn’t capable of driving a bus should be a bus driver, which removes sex from the issue. That’s the feminist bit. And the book is sceptical because it doesn’t take a position on some of the empirical claims about sex, such as whether men’s and women’s brains are different in any way, or whether men and women have naturally different interests or approaches. It doesn’t take any position on that, and leaves the empirical facts to be uncovered and argued about elsewhere. So she is feminist, but sceptically so. Janet’s most recent book is about the morality of organ donation. People die every day because there is a shortage of organs. One moral question is if we should allow people to sell their organs. Would that help to solve the shortage problem? It might not. It might be that if you put a price on it, fewer people would sell their organs – or it might be that lots of people would and you would solve the crisis. That’s the empirical problem. The philosophical dispute is whether it would be justifiable to have a trade in organs. Somebody from the conservative wing of bioethics is Michael Sandel. He would be aghast at the commodification of certain things, including organs. But it’s difficult to figure out just why it would be wrong for you to be allowed to sell your organs. If you’re presented with all the choices, and you think this is your best choice, why should I deprive you of the opportunity of exercising your liberty? Who am I to say you can’t do what you want with your body? If you fully understand the implications, what right do I have to deny you that decision? From a utilitarian perspective, it certainly could be. I think the reason why people recoil from that idea is because they think the person is making an empirical mistake. They think that they are falling for short termism, and will get a pleasure boost but in the long run will live to regret it. That may be true, in which case from a utilitarian point of view they are making a blunder. But perhaps they will survive to a good old age with one kidney, without noticing the absence of their other one, and get enormous pleasure from using their iPad to access Five Books. I would sell my kidney for my son’s life, or a Nobel prize."