In this survey of feminist theory, Rosemarie Tong provides coverage of the psychoanalytic, existential and postmodern schools of feminism. The author guides the reader through the complexities of even the most notoriously difficult thinkers. Students will meet and become familiar with many of the essential figures in the feminist tradition, from Wollstonecraft and Engel, on through de Beauvoir, Dinnerstein, and Daly, and up to Mitchell and Cixous. The text treats all views with respect and encourages students to think critically and (...) sympathetically about a wide range of views that have a direct relevance to their own lives. (shrink)

This remarkable book, written soon after the French Revolution, has traditionally been considered one of the founding documents in the history of socialism. It introduces the best-known and most extraordinary utopia written in the last two centuries. Charles Fourier was among the first to formulate a right to a minimum standard of life. His radical approach involved a systematic critique of work, marriage and patriarchy, together with a parallel right to a sexual minimum. He also proposed a comprehensive alternative to (...) the Christian religion. Finally, through the medium of a bizarre and extraordinary cosmology, Fourier argued that the poor state of the planet is the result of the evil practices of civilisation. Translated into English, this classic text will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history of sexuality and feminism, political thought and socialism. (shrink)

Susan Moller Okin. AFTERWORD or greater weighting of these over “masculine" values. For how are women to continue to assume all of the nurturing activities that allegedly both follow from and reinforce their “naturally” superior virtues, and  ...

Pateman challenges the way contemporary society functions by questioning the standard interpretation of an idea that is deeply embedded in American and British political thought: that our rights and freedoms derive from the social contract explicated by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau and interpreted in the United States by the Founding Fathers. The author shows how we are told only half the story of the original contract that establishes modern patriarchy. The sexual contract is ignored and thus men's patriarchal right over (...) women is also glossed over. No attention is paid to the problems that arise when women are excluded from the original contract but incorporated into the new contractual order. One of the main targets of the book is those who try to turn contractarian theory to progressive use, and a major thesis of the book is that this is not possible. Thus those feminists who have looked to a more "proper" contract- one between genuinely equal partners, or one entered into without any coercion- are misleading themselves. In the author's words, "In contract theory universal freedom is always a hypothesis, a story, a political fiction. Contract always generates political right in the forms of domination and subordination." Thus the book is also aimed at mainstream political theorists, and socialist and other critics of contract theory. The author offers a sweeping challenge to conventional understandings- of both left and right- of actual contracts in everyday life: the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract, and the new surrogate mother contract. By bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the contradictions and paradoxes surrounding women and contract, and the relation between the sexes, she is able to shed new light on fundamental political problems of freedom and subordination. (shrink)

Socialism and Feminism in the 19th century.

When Mill's The Subjection of Women was published in 1869 it was ahead of its time in boldly championing feminism. It failed to inaugurate a respectable intellectual debate. Feminist writers have tended to refer to it with respect but without any serious attempt to come to grips with Mill's actual arguments. Kate Millett's chapter in Sexual Politics is the only sustained discussion of Mill in the feminist literature that I am aware of, but it is not from a philosophical viewpoint, (...) and deals with Mill only in the service of an extended comparison with Ruskin. Philosophical books on Mill give the essay short measure. Alan Ryan in J. S. Mill heads one chapter ‘Liberty and The Subjection of Women’, but the former work gets twenty-six pages and the latter only four. Ryan says that ‘it is almost entirely concerned with the legal disabilities of women in Victorian England’. H. J. McCloskey, injfohn Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, gives the essay one and a half pages, commenting that it reads ‘like a series of truisms’ and seems so unimportant today because equality of the sexes has been achieved! (shrink)

In this lively and entertaining book, Terence Ball maintains that 'classic' works in political theory continue to speak to us only if they are periodically re-read and reinterpreted from alternative perspectives. That, the author contends, is how these works became classics, and why they are regarded as such. Ball suggests a way of reading that is both 'pluralist' and 'problem-driven'--pluralist in that there is no one right way to read a text, and problem-driven in that the reinterpretation is motivated by (...) problems that emerge while reading these texts. In addition, the subsequent readings and interpretations become more and more suffused with the interpretations of others. This tour de force, always entertaining and eclectic, focuses on the core problems surrounding many of the major thinkers. Was Machiavelli really amoral? Why did language matter so much to Hobbes--and why should it matter to us? Are the roots of the totalitarian state to be found in Rousseau? Were the utilitarians sexist in their view of the franchise? The author's aim is to show how a pluralist and problem-centered approach can shed new light on old and recent works in political theory, and on the controversies that continue over their meaning and significance. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book will provoke debate among students and scholars alike. (shrink)

This essay examines the life and work of early socialist thinker Anna Doyle Wheeler, who, with the Owenite theorist William Thompson, was author of The Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men …. In analyzing her thought, I employ a typological model for the development of a feminist consciousness proposed by Michèle Riot-Sarcey and Eleni Varikas. These authors posit three types of a feminist “pariah” consciousness: 1) exceptional woman feminism 2) subversive (...) feminism, and 3) collective feminism. Within this framework Anna Wheeler falls between positions one and two; she was an exceptional or token woman who nevertheless advocated subversive feminist doctrines of radical change, including calls for collective female action. The essay ends with a discussion of Wheeler's relationship to William Thompson as example of woman's traditional access to philosophy, that is, through a male mentor. (shrink)

This volume brings together exciting and provocative new feminist readings of famous classic and contemporary texts from Plato to Habermas.

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This essay examines the life and work of early socialist thinker Anna Doyle Wheeler, who, with the Owenite theorist William Thompson, was author of The Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men... (1825). In analyzing her thought, I employ a typological model for the development of a feminist consciousness proposed by Michèle Riot-Sarcey and Eleni Varikas (1986). These authors posit three types of a feminist "pariah" consciousness: 1) exceptional woman feminism 2) (...) subversive feminism, and 3) collective feminism. Within this framework Anna Wheeler falls between positions one and two; she was an exceptional or token woman who nevertheless advocated subversive feminist doctrines of radical change, including calls for collective female action (in which she nonetheless did not participate). The essay ends with a discussion of Wheeler's relationship to William Thompson as example of woman's traditional access to philosophy, that is, through a male mentor. (shrink)

The idea of creating a society guaranteeing equality between the sexes has never been considered by most political theorists. They have either endorsed, or simply accepted, the assumption that there is a natural inequality of the sexes which ought to be preserved in civil society. This same presupposition has excluded the family from the theorists’ framework of what are thought to be distinctively political institutions. Despite the centrality of the family to human life, it has been consigned to the domain (...) of purely natural phenomena. The related belief that women and children must be relegated for theoretical purposes to the family, to be safely ignored in a realm of brute nature, suffices to allow such theorists to exclude women from the ontology of politics.In looking at major theorists from this perspective, the task is not simply to show that they display sexist attitudes. The main purpose is to demonstrate that their theories rest on these assumptions and that they would be vastly different theories if these assumptions were not made. (shrink)

Describes the philosopher's life from his development as a child prodigy, to his near suicide at the age of twenty-one, through his growth as a philosopher and social thinker.

In this title, new and established scholars demonstrate the application of feminism in a range of academic disciplines including history, philosophy, politics, and sociology.

Wheeler's contribution in this unique partnership gives a woman's consciousness to the philosophy of sexual equality.

An answer to Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution.