Table Of ContentTo 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
