The Man of Reason

Summary

Lloyd describes the work as an, "overview of the successive alignments between maleness and ideals of reason throughout the history of western philosophy". Philosophers Lloyd discusses include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Mainstream media

The Man of Reason was reviewed by Astrid M. O'Brien in Library Journal, and K. Russell in Choice. O'Brien gave The Man of Reason a mixed assessment, writing that it was "well researched" but also "wordy, repetitious, and tedious to read." Russell gave the book a positive review, calling it "an extensive, careful historical analysis of the claim that Western standards of rationality and morality are masculine in orientation".

Academic journals

The Man of Reason was reviewed by Naomi Scheman in The Women's Review of Books, philosopher Virginia Held in Ethics, philosopher Mary Tiles in Philosophy, Kathryn Jackson in Signs, Ruby Riemer in Women & Politics, Sara Shute in Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Marjean D. Purinton in Southern Humanities Review.

Scheman praised the book, calling it a "brilliantly concise rendering of the history of the association of the social constructions of maleness and of reason." She credited Lloyd with being "admirably sensitive to the historical changes in the characterization of reason", and argued that while most academic philosophers believe that "the current competing pictures of the normatively rational self are in theory gender-neutral", Lloyd made a strong case to the contrary in her "utterly devastating" book. She wrote that the book is "paradoxically rooted in the very norms of rational discourse whose nature, function, and origin she is calling into question." However, she predicted that many academic philosophers would not be convinced by Lloyd's arguments. Scheman wrote that Lloyd's attempt to show that "discourses based on inegalitarian projects and interests are unable to live up to their own norms" is a strategy largely inspired by the work of Karl Marx, a philosopher whom Lloyd does not discuss. Scheman endorsed Lloyd's view that Beauvoir's attempt to put Sartre's and Hegel's "notions of transcendence" to feminist use is problematic, since transcendence is in its origins transcendence of the feminine.

In 2000, Martina Reuter and Laura Werner interviewed Lloyd about her work, including The Man of Reason, in NORA: Nordic Journal of Women's Studies. Reuter and Werner wrote that The Man of Reason "has prompted new ways of reading the history of philosophy and has become a feminist classic widely read in the Nordic countries."

Evaluations in books

S. A. Grave wrote in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy that The Man of Reason has been called a twentieth century classic of feminist thought.