Duringthe Enlightenment, rationality becomes not a property belonging to all humansbut something that one must achieve. This transformation has the effect ofexcluding non-whites and non-males from the domain of reason. Heikes seeks touncover the source of this exclusion, which she argues stems from the threat ofsubjectivism inherent in modern thinking. As an alternative, she considers post-Cartesian reactions of modernrepresentationalism as well as ancient Greek understandings of mind as simplyone part of a functionally diverse soul. In the end, she maintains thattreating rationality as an evolutionarily situated virtue concept allows for anunderstanding of rationality that recognizes diversity and that groundssubstantive moral concepts.
