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Relativism has been an important issue in epistemology ever since the dispute between Plato and Protagoras. Relativism, after struggling with counterarguments by various kinds of objectivists and realists, survives today in several different variants. The lively discussions within feminist epistemology give new interesting material and insights for this long-standing debate. As feminism prima facie seems to be committed to the idea that knowledge is in some way gender-specific, it is no wonder that current forms of relativism have attracted some advocates of feminist epistemology. However, besides facing the danger of incoherence, the most radical versions of relativism undermine the whole project of criticizing "male bias' in science and thereby weaken the emancipatory potential of the feminist movement. Somewhat surprisingly, what is usually considered as the most prominent and best developed alternative to relativism,viz- the feminist standpoint epistemology, can be seen as a transformation of the Protagorean homo mensura doctrine into the questionable thesis that "woman is the measure of all things". Feminist empiricism has criticized the standpoint theory, but has so far left the relativism-realism issue unsettled. In this paper I conclude that it would be worthwhile to try to develop the philosophy and methodology of Women's Studies on the basis of critical fallibilist scientific realism. Another suggestion is that politics for women could be served by feminist applied research.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-1742-2_8

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