Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the Transformation of the Family

Extract

Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the Transformation of the Family. By Eileen Hunt Botting. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 258p. $65.00.

This book reminds us of the importance of theorizing the family/state relationship. Eileen Hunt Botting argues that while Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke proposed different versions of a patriarchal structuring of the family in contrast to Mary Wollstonecraft's egalitarian version, the three eighteenth-century theorists shared a view of the function of the family as providing the relational and moral foundations for the state. To relate as a father, husband, son, wife, sister, or daughter was to learn how to sympathize, and to work for a common purpose, both of which were absolutely necessary for developing patriotic feelings and civic virtue. The significance of the book goes beyond taking us back to the Enlightenment origins of the notion of the family as an agent of political socialization. It raises crucial questions about Wollstonecraft's status as a canonical democratic theorist; it also suggests fascinating implications for how political theory could make a contribution to our contemporary conversations on gay families, religion and the family, and the clash of civilizations and the family.