Cheshire Calhoun is an American philosopher whose work spans feminist ethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of emotion. She is known for her analyses of integrity, shame, and the structural limits of moral imagination across social positions. Her scholarship examines how gender, sexuality, and social location shape both moral experience and the capacity for empathetic understanding.
Developed influential accounts of integrity as a distinctly social and feminist moral virtue
Authored Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet (2000), a foundational text in philosophy of sexuality and gender
Contributed to moral psychology through analyses of shame, guilt, and their gendered dimensions
Examined structural limits on cross-positional moral imagination, including empathy gaps across gender and experience
Authored Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality, extending her work in moral psychology