Feminist and critical philosophy is both a foundational research area in its own right, as well as a meta-philosophical lens on the others. Despite its internal diversity, it is broadly characterized by certain priorities and methodologies. It prioritizes ending oppression and seeks philosophical understanding mainly for this aim. It does so by calling attention to, and challenging, traditional norms that have made it easy for sexism, racism, ablism, and other forms of discrimination to go unnoticed or unaddressed. This includes norms implicit in other foundational research areas of philosophy. Methodologically, feminist and critical approaches tend to prefer “bottom-up” reasoning, emphasizing concrete, situated experiences over “top-down” abstract principles as sources of insight. They reject the idea that objectivity in the traditional sense of a “view from nowhere” is possible or even desirable, instead arguing that intersubjectivity – the pooling of situated perspectives – is the best way to gain understanding. These include especially the perspectives of those traditionally underrepresented, whose insights may therefore have gone unheeded.

Feminist and critical philosophy aim to end oppression by challenging traditional norms that facilitate it. Religions, with their large historical and contemporary influence, are a fertile source of traditions – both oppressive and liberating ones. On the one hand,  feminist and critical philosophy of religion calls religious traditions to task for sexism, racism, heteronormativity, and the ways in which religious power structures can appeal to divine authority to whitewash abuses including slavery and pedophilia. On the other hand, feminist and critical approaches have fruitfully deployed religious ideas, such as the Exodus, the promise of a new creation, and the focus on society’s downtrodden, as philosophical frameworks for social and political liberation movements, including the abolition of slavery and of institutionalized poverty. The “bottom-up” methodologies favored by these approaches have also yielded explorations of the way in which religious narratives, such as scriptures and mystical experiences, can inform philosophy of religion more broadly, as a potential challenge to traditionally “top-down” theological doctrines.