Impossible Dreams

Modern philosophy and everyday moral thinking both assume that people have autonomy and integrity. Yet in an unjust social order, those qualities may be out of reach for some people, and the author asks what that means for ethics.

Babbitt follows this idea through feminist and antiracist political theory, contemporary analytic ethics, philosophy of mind, and a range of non-philosophical writing about the lives of oppressed people around the world. She contends that when injustice is systemic, reason may demand that people reshape their long-held goals, interests, and values rather than pursue them as they are. In such conditions, she argues, imaginative moral thinking is needed to identify and justify a fairer vision of society.

The book is as much about method as argument, showing how scholarship usually kept in separate academic fields can be brought into conversation. It shows how feminist philosophy can engage with mainstream philosophy and speak to the experiences of real people.