SOURCE: “Battle of the Bien-Pensant,” in New York Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 7, April 27, 2000, p. 42.

In the following essay, Appiah discusses the tensions and divisions among academic feminist theorists as they are reflected in Critical Conditions.

1.

Academic moralism is one of the oldest traditions of the university, which began, after all, as an ecclesiastical institution whose students were mostly destined to be members of the clergy. In the early part of the twentieth century, the ethical voice in the American university was to be heard from the philosophy department as well as the divinity school, both of which were dominated by varieties of Protestantism. When William James or John Dewey spoke to the educated public on the conduct or meaning of life, they were only doing their job. They were not-so-terribly secular clerics, whose voices were heard alongside—occasionally even above—those of the official priesthood.

Sometime before...