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Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory Summary:By Nancy J. Hirschmann
In Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, Nancy Hirschmann demonstrates not merely that modern theories of freedom are susceptible to gender and class analysis but that they must be analyzed in terms of gender and class in order to be understood at all. Through rigorous close readings of major and minor works of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill, Hirschmann establishes and examines the gender and class foundations of the modern understanding of freedom. Building on a social constructivist model of freedom that she developed in her award-winning book The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, she makes in her new book another original and important contribution to political and feminist theory. Despite the prominence of "state of nature" ideas in modern political theory, Hirschmann argues, theories of freedom actually advance a social constructivist understanding of humanity. By rereading "human nature" in light of this insight, Hirschmann uncovers theories of freedom that are both more historically accurate and more relevant to contemporary politics. Pigeonholing canonical theorists as proponents of either "positive" or "negative" liberty is historically inaccurate, she demonstrates, because theorists deploy both conceptions of freedom simultaneously throughout their work. Contents Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory 1 Negative and Positive Liberty in the Western Canon 2 The Social Construction of Freedom 13 The Gender Politics of Freedom 21 CHAPTER ONE Thomas Hobbes: Desire and Rationality 29 The Will to Freedom 30 Freedom and Obligation: From Choice to Contract 35 Warrior Women, Invisible Wives 44 Natural Freedom, Civil Contract 49 The Social Construction of Freedom 63 The Containment of Difference 70 Conclusion 77 CHAPTER TWO John Locke: Freedom, Reason, and the Education of Citizen-Subjects 79 The Role of Reason 80 Nature versus Nurture: The Role of Education 87 The Gendered Property of Freedom 91 Consent, Choice, and a Two-Tiered Conception of Freedom 99 The Construction of Individuality, the Discipline of Freedom 106 Conclusion 115 CHAPTER THREE Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Force, Freedom, and Family 118 Rousseau’s Three Kinds of Freedom 119 Politics and the Will 125 Education, Will, and the Social Construction of Citizens 133 Gender, Education, and Virtue 138 Julie, or The Woman as Model Citizen 152 Gender, Passion, and Politics 161 Conclusion 166 viii • Contents CHAPTER FOUR Immanuel Kant: The Inner World of Freedom 168 Transcendence and Phenomena 169 Ethics and Politics 178 Class, Education, and Social Construction 188 Sexual Constructions 195 Conclusion 207 CHAPTER FIVE John Stuart Mill: Utility, Democracy, Equality 213 The “Two Mills” 216 Internal and External Realms 223 The Will to Utility 229 Democracy, Class, and Gender 238 The Class of Education 249 Politics, Participation, and Power 260 Conclusion 266 CONCLUSION Rethinking Freedom in the Canon 274 Freedom in Its Two Forms 274 Gender, Class, and Berlin’s Typology 281 The Social Construction of Freedom 287 Notes 291 References 317 Index 331 Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK is to examine the concept of freedom in five key canonical figures: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill. The importance of the concept of freedom is, I assume, self-evident to readers of this book: it is clearly a, if not the, key concept of the modern canon. Defining “the canon” of modern political theory in terms of these five figures, rather than Hume, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, or any number of other figures, is justified because of their centrality to at least the West’s understanding of freedom, and particularly to Western political theory arguments about freedom; they are all key figures in modern liberalism, which is arguably the ideology that has been responsible for translating the political theory ideal of freedom into the common collective consciousness of the modern West. For Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, the “natural freedom” of the state of nature posited by each theorist has had profound effects on how we understand, think about, and talk about freedom in theWest today.1 Mill made vital contributions to this understanding in his famous defense of individual liberty of conscience and speech, and his articulation of the notion of a zone of privacy into which the state may not intrude. Kant, perhaps better known as a moral philosopher who posited the “categorical imperative,” also defended liberal freedoms such as freedom of speech in his political writings and is associated by many scholars with social contract theory and the liberal tradition. As the ensuing chapters will demonstrate, I do not always agree with these dominant readings, but these readings make the selection of these five theorists obvious and central for anyone writing on freedom. In one sense, then, this book is a very traditional work of political theory: it selects some major canonical figures, examines their texts, analyzes their arguments, and develops an account of freedom out of that. But it is not traditional in the three related themes that I use to guide my reading of the texts: Isaiah Berlin’s typology of negative and positive liberty in its historical, rather than analytic, dimensions; the idea of social construction; and the place of gender and class in the concept of freedom. At first glance, the first and third might not seem that untraditional: but instead of justifying those themes here in summary fashion, I will break down my introduction to this book along the lines of those three themes, to present 2 • Introduction the reader with a picture of how I see the argument unfolding, and why I believe that this argument poses a challenge to the mainstream to take up a set of issues and questions that it has tended to resist. 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