book.) However, it is hard to see how we can engage in this ongoing empathetic task
without reliance on evidences, and without a fundamentally realist commitment to
universal “truth” as at least a teleological ideal. If so, then much of Anderson's initial
animus against analytic philosophy of religion's empiricism and realism must surely fall
away.^18
This first and central epistemological puzzle relates directly to another problem on
standpoint that is also not successfully tackled in the book. When Anderson first lays out
the three epistemological options open to feminism (see discussion above), she does not
sufficiently explain how the adoption of a standpoint epistemology would differ
qualitatively from an expanded feminist empiricism that simply takes more facts into
account. Such a line is in fact notoriously hard to draw, as was demonstrated long ago in
Donald Davidson's famous article “On the Very Idea of a `Conceptual Scheme' ” (1984):
the bounded edges, so to speak, of a standpoint (or conceptual scheme) are often so
difficult to delineate that one is caused to query whether it exists at all as an identifiable
epistemological filter. But if Anderson cannot say what a feminist standpoint (as opposed
to a set of long-neglected facts about women's issues) finally is, then she is in a
worryingly weakened position philosophically. Her whole project of the distinctiveness
of feminist insight is at stake. She would seemingly do better to withdraw to her
end p.514
first feminist epistemological option (feminist empiricism), which would still be fully
compatible with the Quinean form of epistemological revisability suggested by the image
of the Neurathian ship. However, Anderson's more recent work has clarified the notion of
standpoint and thus blocked the reduction to a mere feminist empiricism. Here, Anderson
not only helpfully distinguishes a confusing range of possible meanings of standpoint in
previous feminist standpoint epistemology (2001, 137–38), but herself now opts for an
idea of standpoint as ethical achievement rather than as epistemological filter. This
signals a considerable shift; no longer is there the hovering suggestion that women
possess, qua marginalized, a distinctive epistemological apparatus (a view that tends
towards gender essentialism), but rather, “A standpoint signifies a particular point of
view, orepistemically informed perspective, that is achieved—but not without struggle—
as a result of gaining awareness of particular positionings within relations of power”
(145). Anderson notes that this definition no longer suggests that “a standpoint
necessarily claims any epistemic privilege” (145)—a significant new admission. But it
does allow men to share such a standpoint with women, given goodwill and commitment.
Presumably, then, the difference from mere feminist empiricism in this new view resides
in the ethical dimensions of attempting to take empathetic account of others'
perspectives; as such, one might dub it a “virtue ethics” more than a strictly feminist one.
But therein lies the puzzling surd: has this shift of Anderson's actually taken the teeth out
of an epistemological project that originally claimed special insight from the feminist
camp? The original goal was to release female desire into an explicit acknowledgment in
the discourses of philosophy of religion; whereas Anderson's more recent project seems
to flatten or sideline gender difference and aim instead for a greater self-“reflexivity” and
recognition of “partiality” in all our epistemic negotiations (146–47).