Lynda Lange

Was für Menschen sind Frauen? Welche Rolle spielen sie oder sollten sie in der Zivilgesellschaft spielen? Diese Fragen waren seit der Antike nur Fußnoten in der politischen Philosophie. Gleichzeitig war der Inhalt dieser Fußnoten auffallend konsistent, nämlich dass Männer das öffentliche oder bürgerliche Leben gestalten und Frauen im privaten oder häuslichen Leben anzutreffen sind. Dieser beständige Refrain verlieh diesen Behauptungen einen Hauch von Unvermeidlichkeit und schien die allgemeine Annahme zu untermauern, dass dies auf inhärente Unterschiede zwischen Frauen und Männern zurückzuführen sei. Im revolutionären Frankreich, als Frauen sowohl aus den Salons der Oberschicht als auch aus der Unterschicht begannen, ihre Rechte einzufordern, wurde diese Selbstgefälligkeit gegenüber Frauen jedoch ernsthaft untergraben. Rousseaus umfangreiche Schriften über Frauen und Familie zeigen, dass er sich der Argumente für die Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter bewusst war, denn er versuchte, sie zu bekämpfen, indem er die klassische Rolle der Frau in modernen Begriffen neu thematisierte.

Rousseaus Werk hatte einen großen Einfluss auf das Ende einer wichtigen sozialen Frauenbewegung in der Frühen Neuzeit. In den intellektuellen Diskussionszirkeln (Salons) der Oberschicht zu Beginn der Revolution wurde die potentielle Gleichberechtigung der Frauen (mit den Männern) propagiert, aber es gab auch andere politische Frauenvereine und sogar Aufstände von Frauen aus der Dienstbotenklasse und der Marktfrauen in Paris. Diese Bewegung wurde von der Revolutionsführung rigoros unterdrückt. Eine der führenden Intellektuellen, Olympe de Gouges, die die Erklärung der Rechte der Frau und Bürgerin (Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne) als Antwort auf die berühmte revolutionäre Erklärung der Menschenrechte verfasste, wurde 1793 durch die Guillotine hingerichtet.

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds to these essays.

A progenitor of modern egalitarianism, communitarianism, and participatory democracy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a philosopher whose deep concern with the relationship between the domains of private domestic and public political life has made him especially interesting to feminist theorists, but also has made him very controversial. The essays in this volume, representing a wide range of feminist interpretations of Rousseau, explore the many tensions in his thought that arise from his unique combination of radical and traditional perspectives on gender relations and the state. Among the topics addressed by the contributors are the connections between Rousseau’s political vision of the egalitarian state and his view of the "natural" role of women in the family; Rousseau’s apparent fear of the actual danger and power of women; important questions Rousseau raised about child care and gender relations in individualist societies that feminists should address; the founding of republics; the nature of consent; the meaning of citizenship; and the conflation of modern universal ideals of democratic citizenship with modern masculinity, leading to the suggestion that the latter is as fragile a construction as the former. Overall this volume makes an important contribution to a core question at the hinge of modernism and postmodernism: how modern, egalitarian notions of social contract, premised on universality and objective reason, can yet result in systematic exclusion of social groups, including women. Contributors are Leah Bradshaw, Melissa A. Butler, Anne Harper, Sarah Kofman, Rebecca Kukla, Lynda Lange, Ingrid Makus, Lori J. Marso, Mira Morgenstern, Susan Moller Okin, Alice Ormiston, Penny Weiss, Elie Wiestad, Elizabeth Wingrove, Monique Wittig, and Linda Zerilli.

The philosopher Enrique Dussel offers a critical analysis of European construction of indigenous peoples which he calls "transmodern." His theory is especially relevant to feminist and other concerns about the potential disabling effects of postmodern approaches for political action and the development of theory. Dussel divides modernity into two concurrent paradigms. Reflection on them suggests that modernism and postmodernism should not be too strongly distinguished. In conclusion, his approach is compared with that of Mohanty

This paper analyzes the historical and cultural genealogy of the presumed separation between ethics and economic theory, taking publicly supported care for children of working mothers (or parents) as a case that illuminates problems for thinking about gender justice that arise because of these disciplinary boundaries and the particular concept of “the human individual” that is implicit in them. Care for children of working mothers is an issue that has been important in the West since the inception of “second wave” feminism. However, I argue that the global expectation that women are responsible for care of small children, coupled with the reality that small children really must have caregivers, makes this issue pertinent to women everywhere, and it has lately been recognized as an issue for development and global justice. Predominant political philosophies and neoclassical economics have a common philosophical root in abstract individualist method. I argue that this has made possible a claim of intellectual respectability for neo-liberal politics that resists feminist and postcolonial critique, even though these critiques show its inability to deal with matters, such as the need for child care, that have moral issues inextricably involved in them. The economy of rationalindividual self-interest has so far only generated child care with a very large component of exploitation of caregivers.