关键词: 女性主义 , 认识论 , 传统科学观 , 后现代主义认识论

Abstract: Contemporary feminist epistemology consists of three main theoretical sources: 1) Western feminism and its development; 2) traditional perspective on science and; 3) postmodernist epistemology. Specifically,it embraces four parts: 1) gender awareness based on womens psychology; 2) the feminist view of politics of liberation;3)critique of scientific reason; 4) a mode of sympathetic understanding. Women's psychology and gender awareness produce the notion of gender oppression and gender equality; the feminist view of politics of liberation as a political cultural gene,after a number of transmutations,leads to the dichotomy of male and female,as well as that of male cognition and female cognition; reflections on scientific reason naturally involve the idea that faith can be changed,and provide men with a gender-based criterion on the shaping of knowledge as a social process; and the mode of sympathetic understanding satisfies men's value-focused quest for the origin of knowledge,raising the idea of cognitive relativity,non-neutrality and the possible existence of subjective preference. A brief introduction above concerning the relation between these four factors and feminist epistemology is to show that contemporary feminist epistemology is a branch of philosophical thought based on the Wes'ts unique socialhistorical background and political culture.

Key words: feminism;epistemology , traditional idea about science , postmodernist epistemology