Ruddick, Sara

Sara Ruddick (b. 1935), an American philosopher and feminist theorist, is best known for theorizing maternal practice, maternal thinking, and feminist maternal peace politics. She wrote the influential article “Maternal Thinking” (1980), where she argues that maternal practice, like the practice of any discipline, has the capacity to produce distinct forms of thought. She developed this idea further in Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (1995), arguing that maternal thought is a resource for a feminist politics of peace. In these and other works, Ruddick treats mothers as thinking persons and maternal thought as potentially valuable to community, national, and global relations. In so doing, she debunks traditions in Western thought that elevate abstract reason over anything defined as particularistic, emotional, bodily, or feminine. ...