Introduction

To summarize the point at which chapter 7 concluded, there is a central dilemma or tension that pragmatic critique must address in order adequately to incorporate feminist ethical/political concerns. The problematic moral situation takes the following form: how might pragmatic critique proceed in a way that properly interrogates the discursive and material power structures of communities, enabling radical critique, such that reformism is not all we have available. This has implications not only for extending moral inclusion to women in international practice, but for the extent to which pragmatic critique generally is able to facilitate moral inclusion. Can this pragmatic synthesis rely upon its answer to the authentic critique problem: the projection of alternative discourses and practices through moral imagination? Can we assume that the tensions which set immanent critique rolling will be readily and always apparent, and that social contradictions will at times be so glaring that we will be motivated and able to seek their determination through metaphor and the transformation of social practice? This is where power considerations must come into play.

However, at the same time, there is an associated danger with pursuing avenues of authentic critique in this way: that is, whether this pragmatic approach can have anything to say about the possibilities for consensus around ethical criteria and how such convergence might be facilitated. Bringing power considerations to the fore means that it matters whether or not one finds criteria of ethical judgement by and for oneself, because, if one does not, such criteria are likely to be felt as an external imposition by the individual concerned, which could lead to the occurrence of further morally problematic situations in the future.