When Harding (1986) proposed her classification of feminist epistemologies into empiricism, standpoint theory, and postmodernism, she cast them as offering three fundamentally contrasting frameworks.
By contrast, the standpoint of the privileged represents social phenomena only in relation to the interests of the privileged class, but ideologically misrepresents these interests as coinciding with universal human interests.
A natural way to interpret this point of view is to contrast it with the standpoint of theoretical reason.
In his polemical essays of the late 1830s and in The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach had unfavorably contrasted the "egoistic," practical standpoint of religion, which he associated with the unrestricted subjectivity of feeling (Gemüt) and imagination (Phantasie), with the theoretical standpoint of philosophy, which he associated with reason and objectivity.
Feminist standpoint theory is often contrasted to feminist empiricism as an alternative epistemology for addressing concerns about the role of values and questions of objectivity.
In contrast, from other standpoints, such at that of caring that your reasoning not be vulnerable to criticism, a different result will be generated.
Ciphers are discussed from an engineering standpoint, and are compared and contrasted in terms of design features.
Just as Faraday's field interpretation of electric phenomena may be contrasted with action-at-a-distance interpretations, so Riemann's infinitesimal geometric standpoint may be contrasted with distance-geometry, such as, Euclidean and ordinary non-Euclidean geometry.
Nineteen Seventy's Little Big Man views the past from a modern standpoint (there is even a gay Red Indian and bluesy music), seeing the Cheyenne as "ethnic" hippies contrasted with corrupt white civilisation.
In contrast, commentators with other standpoints frequently glorify them, endowing them with transformative capacities and programmes that they do not always possess.
