Table Of Content

To Kate and Anthorry Chromey and the memory of Harry Pateman Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory Edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman The Pennsylvania State University Press Copyright individual essays: I © 1977 Princeton University Press; 2 © 1985 Praeger Publishers; 3 © 1989 Carole Pateman; 4 © 1978 American Political Science Association; 5 © 1981 SociaL Theory and Practice; 6 © 1991 Moira Gatens; 7 © 1991 Seyla Benhabib; 8 © 1991 Christine Di Stefano; 9 © 1981 Sage Publications, Inc.; 10 © 1989 Basic Books, Inc.; II © 1988 Elizabeth V. Spelman; 12 © 1986 Hypatia, Inc.; 13 © 1991 Mary G. Dietz; 14© 1989 The Regents of the University of Minnesota. This collection and the introduction © 1991 Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pa ternan First published 1991 in the United States by The Pennsylvania State University Press, Suite C, 820 North University Drive, University Park, PA 16802 ISBN 0-271-00736-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-271-00742-7 (paper) Library of Congress' CataLoging-in-PubLicatinn Data Feminist interpretations and political theory / edited hy Carole Pateman and Mary Lyndon Shanley. p.cm. ISBN 0-271-00742-7 (pbk) ISBN 0-271-00736-2 (alk. paper) l. Feminist theory. 2. Political science. I. Pateman, Carole. II. Shanley, Mary Lyndon, 1944- HQ1l90.F46 1991 90-43290 305.42'01-dc20 Typeset in 10 on 12pt Baskerville by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd. Printed in Great Britain Contents Contributors VII Acknowledgments IX Introduction Carole Paleman and Mary Lyndon Shanley Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family Susan Moller Okin 11 2 Aristotle: Defective Males, Hierarchy, and the Limits , of Politics Arlene Saxonhouse 32 3 "God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper": Hobbes, Patriarchy and ConjugaJ Right Carole Pateman 53 4 Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy Melissa A. Butler 74 5 Rousseau and Modern Feminism Lynda Lange 95 VI Contents 6 "The Oppressed State of My Sex": Wollstonecraft on Reason, Feeling and Equality M oim Catms 112 7 On Hegel, Women and Irony Seyla Benhabib 129 8 Masculine Marx Christine Di Stefano 146 9 Marital Slavery and Friendship: John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women Mary Lyndon Shanley 164 10 John Rawls: Justice as Fairness - For Whom? Susan Moller Okin 181 11 Simone de Beauvoir and Women: Just Who Does She Think "We" Is? Elizabeth V. Spelman 199 12 Foucault and Feminism: Toward a Politics of Difference J ana Sawicki 2]7 13 Hannah Arendt and Feminist Politics Mary C. Dietz 232 14 What's Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender Nancy Fraser 253 Index 277 Contributors Seyla Benhabib is associate professor of philosophy and women's studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is the author of Critique~ Norm and UtoPia (Columbia University Press, 1986) and co-editor with D. Cornell of Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (University of Minnesota Press and Polity Press, 1987). She is currently working on a reinterpretation of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy from a feminist perspective. Melissa Butler is associate professor of political science at Wabash College. She is currently completing a book on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the idea of self-love. Mary G. Dietz is associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. She is author of Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil (Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), and editor of Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory (University of Kansas Press, 1990) as well as articles on the history of ideas and feminist political theory. Christine Di Stefano teaches political theory at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is currently at work on a study of "Autonomy: The Fate of an Ideal." Her forthcoming book, Corifigurations of Mascu[inif'v: A Feminist Rereading in Modern Political Theory, offers gender-inflected read ings of Hobbes, Marx and J. S. Mill. Nancy Fraser teaches philosophy at Northwestern University. She is the author of Unruly Practices: Power~ Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press and Polity Press, 1989). She is currently at work on a new book, Keywords of the Welfare State, which she will co-author with Linda Gordon. VUI Contributor.r Moira Gatens lectures in philosophy at the Australian National Univer sity. She is author of Feminism and Philosoplry (Polity Press, 1990). Her current research concerns philosophies of the body (Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Freud) and their relations to theories of ethics. Lynda Lange teaches feminist philosophy at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. She has published articles on Rousseau and feminist theory, and is co-editor (with L. Clark) of The Sexism of Social and Political Theory: Women and Reproductionfrom Plato to Nietzsche (University of Toronto Press, 1979). Her current research is mainly on the development of demo cratic feminist thought. Susan M. Okin is professor of political science at Stanford University. She is the author of Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 1979) andJustice, Gender, and the Family (Basic Books, 1989). Carole Pateman is professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her most recent books are The Sexual Contract and The Disorder rif Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (both Polity Press and Stanford University Press, 1988 and 1990). She is cur rently continuing her research on women and democratic citizenship. Jana Sawicki is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Maine. She has published many articles on Foucault and feminism which address issues in the philosophy of desire, motherhood, and technology. A collection of her essays on sexuality and reproduction will be published by Routledge Press in 1991. Arlene Saxonhouse is professor of political science at the University of Michigan. She is author of Women in the History of Political Thought: Ancient Greece to Machiavelli (Praeger, 1985). She has published widely in the area of ancient political theory, and is currently working on a book, The Fear oj Diversiry in Greek Thought. Mary Lyndon Shanley is professor of political science at Vassar College. She is the author of Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, /850-/895 (Princeton University Press, 1989) and many articles on the history of political theory. She is currently working on a book on liberal theory, feminism, and contemporary family law. Elizabeth V. Spelman teaches in the philosophy department at Smith College, and is the author of Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Beacon, 1988). Her writings have focused on the mutual construction of gender, raee and class and the implications of their inter connections for feminist theory and politics. Her next long-term project is an examination of the treatment of suffering in Western philosophy. Acknowledgments The editors and publishers are grateful for permission to reproduce the following: Susan Moller Okin, "Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family," first published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6 (4), Summer 1977, pp. 34S-69. Reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. The essay has also appeared in Jean Elshtain (ed.), The Family in Political Thought (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp. 31-S0. Arlene Saxonhouse, "Aristotle: Defective Males, Hierarchy and the Limits of Politics," abridged from the original published in Arlene Saxonhouse, Women in the History of Political Thought: Ancient Greece to Machiavelli (New York: Praeger, 1985). Abridged and reprinted with permission of the author and Praeger Publishers, a division of Greenwood Press, Inc. Melissa Butler, "Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy," first published in the American Political Science Review, 72, 1978, pp. 13S-S0. Reprinted by permission of the American Political Science Association. It appears here in a shortened version. Lynda Lange, "Rousseau and Modern Feminism," which originally appeared, in a longer version, in Social Theory and Practice, 7, 1981, pp. 24S- 77; by permission of the editorial board of Social Theory and Practice, Florida State University. Mary Lyndon Shanley, "Marital Slavery and Friendship: John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women," first published in Political Theory, 9(2), May 1981, pp. 229-47. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc. x Acknowledgments Susan Moller Okin, ''John Rawls: Justice as Fairness - For Whom?" which is drawn from "Justice and Gender," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 16(1), Winter 1987, pp. 42-72, copyright © 1987 by Princeton University Prcss, excerpt adapted with pcrmission of Princcton Univcrsity Prcss; and "Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice," Ethics, 99(2), January 1989, pp. 229-49, by pcrmission of Univcrsity of Chicago Prcss. This version is adapted from that in Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989) and is reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, Ncw York. Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Simonc dc Bcauvoir and Women: Just Who Docs She Think 'We' Is?" abridged from the original published in Elizabeth V. Spelman, Inessential Woman (Boston: Bcacon Press, 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Elizabeth V. Spelman. Rcprinted by permission of Bcacon Press. Jana Sawicki, "Foucault and Feminism: Toward a Politics of Difference," which originally appeared in Hypatia: A Journal oj Feminist Philosophy, ] (2), Fall 1986, pp. 23-36. Nancy Fraser, "What's Critical about Critical Theory: Thc Casc of Habennas and Gender": a longer vcrsion of this essay was published in New German Critique, 35, Spring/Summcr 1985, pp. 97-131, and in Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Cambridgc: Polity, 1989). Reprinted by pcrmission of thc U nivcrsity of Minncsota Prcss. Introduction Carole Pateman and Mary Lyndon Shanley Since the early I 970s, feminist theorists have been examining the familiar, and some not so familiar, texts of political theory. Their rereadings and reinterpretations have revolutionary implications for an understanding not only of the books themselves, but also of such central political categories as citizenship, equality, freedom, justice, the public, the private, and democracy. Despite the importance of the new feminist scholarship, it has developed for the most part alongside rather than as part of ,' mainstream" political theory. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the implica tions of feminist arguments in the ever-increasing volume of commentary on the famous texts, or in discussions of contemporary political problems. This volume illustrates the range and depth of feminist studies of the texts and, by collecting the essays together, we hope that their significance for political theory and practice will be more readily acknowledged. Some contributions have been published before, the earliest in 1977 and the most recent in 1989; others have been specially commissioned for this collection. The interpretations presented here could be challenged by other feminist readings of each of the texts, but we arc not aiming to collect together a set of definitive accounts. Rather, our aim is to make a reasonably wide selection of feminist scholarship more easily accessible to political theorists and to the general reader. Each of the chapters raises the question of how useful the texts of political theory are or can be to feminist theorists. The standard com mentaries on the texts invariably either ignore or merely mention in passing the arguments of the great writers about sexual difference. These essays show, on the contrary, that arguments about the characters and attributes of men and women arc fundamental to political theory. As