Beginning.

[Sauwelios]

"I'm not against anyone who says, 'I'm for feminism because that's the way I feel.' But if anyone says, 'I'm for feminism because it's really right,' that's a swindle! Morality and prejudice mean the same thing. To elevate one morality above another as if it were in some way objectively right, that is swindle! That's how I understand a strong defense of feminism--as if there's some kind of non-arbitrary right. I don't think anyone has a right to anything." (Harry Neumann, Liberalism, "Feminist Propaganda at Scripps College".)

The above quotation raises a question: is not the view that elevating one morality above another as if it were in some way objectively right is swindle, itself just the way Neumann felt, and not really right? Indeed, Neumann would be the first to acknowledge that. And yet there is a difference between the two that, to me, speaks in favour of Neumann and against strong feminism: unlike Neumann, strong feminism appeals, consciously or not, and openly or not, to some kind of divine revelation. Someone who claims that feminism is really right implies that that has been revealed to him, by an authority which is beyond question. Whoever claims such revelation, however, is in my view probably a madman or a liar or both. This is because I have, as far as I know, not experienced any such revelations whatsoever. For me, therefore, the most rational thing is to philosophise: to try and get as close to truth as is possible with unaided reason--reason unaided by divine revelation. And in this--though only in this--sense, I am actually "feministic" to some extent: I think women should have the same opportunities as men inasmuch as they are equally capable of philosophising or of enabling others to philosophise (I think most men are at best only capable of the latter).

I'm a philosophical supremacist. This means I consider philosophers to be the supreme beings. Why? Because I don't believe in revelation, that is, human reason's being aided by some higher intelligence. I think the highest achievements of unaided reason are the highest achievements, period. They certainly are the highest I know of. And which do I consider the very highest? Philosophy, as the valuing of valuing. Philosophy is the love of wisdom or, in other words, the valuing of wisdom. But the closest unaided reason can approach wisdom, or the highest wisdom it can attain, is to know, nay to experience, that that love, that valuing, is pleasurable in itself; nay more, that all valuing, all positing values or attaching value, all insisting on the value of something, all struggling to actualise and preserve values, indeed all struggle, period--for what is struggle other than a struggle to actualise or preserve values?--is pleasurable in itself. But most beings are not fully aware of that, to say the least. They feel that only achieving their aim will bring pleasure, whereas their struggling to achieve it is merely a necessary evil. But if the struggle is only unconsciously pleasurable, is it really pleasurable? This, in my view, is the meaning of Socrates' famous assertion that the unexamined life is not worth living. Indeed, in my view it is only the philosopher who makes all life, all Being worth it, by experiencing the positive counterpart of the logical necessity that it's impossible to disvalue valuation...