john stuart mill's on the subjection of women

In the development of liberal feminism, a crucial role was played by John Stuart Mill, implicitly through On Liberty, but especially by writing On The Subjection of Women (1869). As women’s roles have been (and are) prescribed and more predetermined than men’s, their path to autonomy and self-assertion is even harder, and longer. A society evolves towards a liberal democracy when it creates the norms, institutions and practices that give its people the chance to develop and manifest themselves as fully and freely as possible. More, “the true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to every one else” (p. After a unit on feminist accounts of the place of women’s work and the body in the polis, the course concludes with investigations of feminism’s intersections with racial politics the emergence of queer theory and its impact on feminist politics and how transgender politics expands the scope of feminist thought and action today.The autonomy of the human being is a common central value in ethics and political theory and a political theory is devoid of moral purpose unless it seeks to increase a person’s autonomy.

Next, we move into the twentieth century by reading key sections of Simone de Beauvoir’s classic The Second Sex and exploring how this text inaugurates more radical feminist accounts of the state and revolution. We then examine foundational texts in the liberal-humanist tradition of feminist thought. We begin by studying ancient representations of women in politics by reading perhaps the oldest and most enduring “feminist” text, Sophocles’s Antigone, alongside Aristophanes’s comedy Lysistrata. The course proceeds through various thematic units. This course offers an introduction to feminist political theory by asking questions like: what is patriarchal political power? how does the modern state conceive of the place of women in social, political, and economic life, and to what extent can the state be utilized to improve the condition of women? what is the relation between feminism and other struggles for social, economic, and racial justice? how does feminist political thought vary across diverse ideologies, cultures, and ethnicities? what is queer feminism, and how does it interpret and engage in contemporary political processes? Students will read, discuss, and write about historical and contemporary texts that address these and other questions.

Feminist political thought challenges the absence or subordination of women in the theory and practice of politics.

John stuart mill's on the subjection of women