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Locke and Feminism on Private and Public Realms of Activities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Mary B. Walsh
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Extract

Feminist critics of Locke perceive a conflict between his promise of political liberty and equality and women's individual and social circumstances. Many feminists point to an incongruence in Locke's thought between formal political rights and the substantive inequalities women experience in a variety of social relationships. Emphasizing Locke's liberal distinction between private and public, these feminists explore how women's actual personal, marital, familial and economic (i.e., private) positions mitigate against the possibility of political emancipation for women. Opposing this interpretation, this article will argue that Locke's feminist critics misread Locke and misinterpret his distinction between private and public. What some feminists represent as a dichotomy between public and private is actually for Locke a multitude of interacting spheres in which individuals live. An examination of these spheres will reveal a latent potential in Locke's philosophy for addressing women's particular circumstances.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , Spring 1995 , pp. 251 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

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References

I am indebted to Professors Claudio Katz, Robert Mayer and Susan Mezey for their valuable insight on earlier drafts of this paper. Three anonymous referees at The Review of Politics also provided helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.

1. See, for example, Elshtain, Jean, Public Man, Private Woman (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 118–26Google Scholar; Eisenstein, Zillah, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman, 1981) pp. 33–49Google Scholar; Pateman, Carole, The Sexual Contract (Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

2. Hereafter Locke's, works will be cited in text as follows: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar, as Essay, Book #, Section #, paragraph #; A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Tully, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1983)Google Scholar, as Letter, page #; Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, as I. paragraph # II. paragraph #; and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Yolton, and Yolton, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), as STCE, paragraph #.Google Scholar

3. See, in particular, Pateman, , Sexual Contract, p. 3.Google Scholar Also see, Clark, Lorene “Women and Locke: Who owns the apples in the Garden of Eden?” in The Sexism of Social and Political Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979)Google Scholar and Coole, Diana, Women in Political Theory (Sussex: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988), pp. 86–94.Google Scholar

4. See Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New YorkBasic Book, Inc., 1983)Google Scholar for a recent exploration of the distinctions between various private and public spheres. Walzer, like Locke, guards against “domination” in one sphere inappropriately influencing relationships in another. For example, one should not be able to buy political office; economic dominance should not translate into political dominance.

5. “The Power of a Magistrate over a Subject, may be distinguished from that of a Father over his Children, a Master over his Servant, a Husband over his Wife, and a Lord over his Slave…. It may help us to distinguish these Powers one from another, and show the difference betwixt a Ruler of a Commonwealth, a Father of a Family, and a Captain of a Galley” (II. 2).

6. The radical status of Locke's politics is a matter of great controversy for Locke scholars. See, among others, Wootton, David, “John Locke and Richard Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics,” Political Studies 40 (1992): 79–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ashcraft's, Richard response, “Simple Objections and Complex Reality Theorizing Political Radicalism in Seventeenth-century England,” Political Studies 40 (1992): 99–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, Wood, Ellen Meiksins, “Locke Against Democracy: Consent Representation and Suffrage in the Two Treatises,” History of Political Thought 13 (Winter 1992): 657–89Google Scholar; and Ashcraft's, Richard, “The Radical Dimensions of Locke's Political Thought: A Dialogue Essay on Some Problems in Interpretation,” History of Political Thought 13 (Winter 1992): 703–772.Google Scholar

7. Mary Dietz identifies two feminist challenges to the liberal notion of citizenship which she labels maternalist feminism and marxist feminism in “Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship” Daedalus 116 (Fall 1987): 1–24.Google Scholar The two critiques I discuss here are substantially the same. I have changed the names for two reasons. The former label, “maternalist feminism” neglects, I think, the debt of these feminists to more traditional communitarian thought. The latter, “marxist feminism” collapses, too readily, feminist thought on patriarchy with marxist thought on class.

8. These individuals tend “naturally toward egoism” according to Jaggar, Alison, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Sussex: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), p. 31.Google Scholar

9. O'brien, MaryThe Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 159.Google Scholar

10. See Gilligan, CarolIn A Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 100.Google Scholar Gilligan: “The moral imperative that emerges repeatedly in interviews with women is an injunction to care, a responsibility to discern and alleviate ‘the real and recognizable trouble' of this world. For men, the moral imperative appears rather as an injunction to respect the rights to life and self-fulfillment.”

11. See Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature; Hirschmann, Nancy “Freedom, Recognition and Obligation,” American Political Science Review ** (12, 1989): 1227-44Google Scholar; Elshtain, , Public Man, Private Woman, p. 118.Google Scholar

12. Elshtain, , Public Man, Private Woman, pp. 118-26.Google Scholar

13. Nicholson, Linda, Gender and History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 30.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 156.

15. Pateman, , Sexual Contract, p. 168.Google Scholar

16. Clark, “Women and Locke,” p. 38.Google Scholar

17. O'brien, Politics of Reproduction, p. 159.Google Scholar

18. See Macpherson, C. B.The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962) for the origins of the argument.Google Scholar

19. Eisenstein, Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, p. 44Google Scholar; see also, Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature; and Coole Women in Political Theory, p. 98.Google Scholar

20. Quoted in Jaggar, , Feminist Politics and Human Nature, p. 32.Google Scholar

21. Nicholson, , Gender and History, p. 137.Google Scholar

22. Eisenstein, , Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, p. 49.Google Scholar

23. Pateman describes the liberal distinction between private and public as a dichotomy and argues that “Locke's theory…shows how the private and public spheres are grounded in opposing principles of association which are exemplified in the conflicting status of women and men; natural subordination stands opposed to free individualism.” See Pateman, Carole, “Feminist Critiques of the Public/ Private Dichotomy” in Feminism and Equality, ed. Phillips, Anne (New York: New York University Press, 1987), p. 106.Google Scholar Eisenstein also identifies this dichotomy. In discussing the woman as mother she argues that “derived from this are the more subtle forms of patriarchal organization: … the division between public and private life, and the divorce of political and family life. The separation of male from female constructs a dichotomous world view that limits insight into the structure of patriarchal organization itself” (my emphasis). Eisenstein, , Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, p. 16.Google Scholar

24. Feminists use the term “reified” to describe what they perceive as the liberal abstraction of public from private life, an abstraction founded on an inappropriate understanding of reality. Pateman states that in Locke, “a reified conception of the political is built upon what I shall call the fiction of citizenship.” She continues “Liberal-democratic theory today…continues to present the political as something abstracted from, as autonomous or separate from, the social relationships of everyday life.” Pateman, Carole, The Disorder of Women (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), pp. 91–92.Google Scholar Nicholson also describes Locke's distinction between private and public as “reified” and argues that modern feminism, in contrast, recognizes the “complex interconnections” between the family and other spheres of society. Nicholson, , Gender and History, pp. 2–4,137.Google Scholar

25. Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman, pp. 212–20Google Scholar, points this out. Elshtain remarks that for radical feminists, “Nothing ‘personal' is exempt, then, from political definition, direction, and manipulation—neither sexual intimacy, nor love, nor parenting” (Public Man, Private Woman, p. 217). Some feminists, rightly identify patriarchy in the variety of spheres which it surfaces, but fail to clearly distinguish among these spheres.

26. Walzer, , Spheres of Justice, p. 19Google Scholar, explains the relationship between private and public spheres and the protection against tyranny more explicitly. “The regime of complex equality is the opposite of tyranny. It establishes a set of relationships such that domination is impossible. In formal terms, complex equality means that no citizen's standing in one sphere… can be undercut by his standing in some other sphere.”

27. For example, O'brien, Mary, Reproducing the World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), p. 79Google Scholar, distinguishes between “intimate” space and “public” space. Elshtain (1981) also criticizes radical feminists for forgetting about this important distinction. Pateman claims that the feminist critique of the liberal distinction between private and public does not “necessarily suggest that no distinction can or should be drawn between the personal and political aspects of social life.” Rather “Feminism looks toward a differentiated social order within which the various dimensions are distinct but not separate or opposed.” Pateman, , “Feminist Critiques,” pp. 119,122.Google Scholar

28. See Ashcraft, Richard, Locke's Two Treatises on Government (London: Unwin Hymen, 1987), pp. 47–48,168.Google Scholar Locke explains, “Thus we are born Free, as we are born Rational; not that we have actually the Exercise of either: Age that brings one, brings with it the other too” (II. 61).

29. Polin, Raymond, “John Locke's Conception of Freedom” in John LockeProblems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, J. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 3–6.Google Scholar See II. 6.

30. Grant, Ruth, John Locke's Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 67–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 234.Google Scholar

32. Locke makes this same point many times. “The Equality, which all Men are in, in respect of Jurisdiction or Dominion one over another… being the equal Right that every Man hath, to his Natural Freedom, without being subjected to the Will or Authority of any other Man” (II. 54).

33. Nicholson, , Gender and History, p. 141.Google Scholar

34. Yolton, and Yolton, , Some Thoughts Concerning Education, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar Locke states, “He therefore, that is about Children, should well study their Nature and Aptitudes, and see, by often trials, what turn they easily take, and what becomes them, observe what their Native Stock is, how it may be improved…. He should consider, what they want; whether they be capable of having it wrought into them... and whether it be worth while to endeavor it” (STCE, 122).

35. II. 2 clearly distinguishes parental from political authority; II. 54 identifies “that equal right every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man.” Children differ from adults in that they have not yet reached a state of full equality. “Children, I confess are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into the world, and for some time after, but 'tis but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling cloths they are wrapt in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy. Age and reason as they grow up, loosen them till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal” (II. 55).

36. See Ashcraft, , Locke's Two Treatise's, pp. 109–112Google Scholar, for a discussion of the role of intimacy in Locke's family.

37. Schochet, Gordon, Paternalism and Political Thought (New YorkBasic Books, Inc., 1975), pp. 249–50.Google Scholar

38. Melissa Butler has shown that Locke often consciously departs from traditional views about women in the interest of individualism. Locke understood that his individualism required a consideration of women as well as men as individuals. Butler, Melissa “Early Liberal Roots of Feminism,” APSR 72 (03, 1978): 135–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similarly, Mary Lyndon Shanley's study of seventeenth century marriage contract theory leads her to conclude that Locke revolutionized marriage, not in basing it in a voluntary contract, but in making the terms of the contract negotiable. “Locke's notion that contract might regulate property rights and maintenance obligations in marriage was an astonishing notion, and not for the seventeenth century alone.” Shanley, Mary Lyndon, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought” Western Political Quarterly 32 (06 1979): 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Locke, a woman could control not only who her partner was to be, but also the terms of her relationship to that chosen partner.

39. See Nicholson's, , Gender and History, p. 142.Google Scholar Also Ashcraft, , Locke's Two Treatise's, p. 72.Google Scholar

40. Supporting this Locke identifies the “Community of Goods, and the Power over them, mutual Assistance and Maintenance, and other things” as “belonging to Conjugal Society” (II. 83).

41. An anonymous referee for The Review of Politics pointed this out.

42. Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 209.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 76.

44. Ibid., pp. 89–90.

45. Locke explains, “Thus the Law of Nature stands as an Eternal Rule to all Men, Legislators as well as others. The Rules that they make for other Mens Actions, must, as well as their own and other Mens Actions, be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the Will of God, of which that is a Declaration, and the fundamental Law of Nature being the preservation of Mankind, no Humane Sanction can be good, or valid against it” (II. 135).

46. Lemos, Ramon, Hobbes and Locke (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1978).Google Scholar

47. Grant, , John Locke's Liberalism, p. 71.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 92.

49. Butler, , “Early Liberal Roots,” p. 145.Google Scholar

50. More exactly, absolute monarchy is in principle illegitimate. As Ashcraft points out, absolute monarchs exist and historically people have consented to them; but, in principle this consent, and those absolute monarchies, are illegitimate. People living under an absolute monarch remain, in fact, in a state of nature (Ashcraft, , Locke's Two Treatises, pp. 118–20,155–57Google Scholar).

51. Locke limits authority in various contexts. “For the exceeding the Bounds of Authority is no more a Right in a great, than a petty Officer, no more justified in a King, than a Constable” (II. 202).

52. Later in this article I will provide a detailed discussion of the relationship between the economy and politics, and specific examples of the ability of the latter to interfere in the former.

53. Locke, throughout the Second Treatise, asserts this individual capability to discern natural law: “The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it … which … teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions: (II. 6). The people, the oppressed, serve as judge of the oppression: “If a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going, it is not to be wonder'd, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was first erected” (II. 225).

54. It should be noted that Locke is not inciting citizens to immediate or imprudent revolution. “And he that appeals to Heaven, must be sure he has Right on his side; and a Right too, that is worth the Trouble and the Cost of the Appeal, as he will answer at a Tribunal, that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the Mischiefs he has created to his FellowSubjects” (II. 176). Only a “long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifaces, all tending the same way” (II. 225) will incite a majority which is typically rather complacent (II. 168). Locke is, however, emphatically defending a people's right to protect their own liberty when circumstances demand it.

55. O'Brien, Reproducing the World.

56. Shanley, , “Marriage Contract,” p. 70.Google Scholar

57. See Locke's preface to the Two Treatise. See also 1.125; Letter, 29.

58. I am indebted to an anonymous referee at The Review of Politics for this preceding argument.

59. Polin, , “John Locke's Conception of Freedom,” p. 6.Google Scholar

60. Myers, Peter, “John Locke on the Naturalness of Rights” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University Chicago, 12, 1991).Google Scholar

61. Lemos, , Hobbes and Locke, pp. 140–41.Google Scholar Putting the individual's right to property within the context of each person's duty to preserve God's workmanship also supports this conclusion. In this interpretation, a right to property is based upon appropriate use, upon its promotion of human preservation. See Tully, James, A Discourse on Property (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 121–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, Ashcraft, , Locke's Two Treatises, pp. 123–47.Google Scholar

62. Myers, , “John Locke,” pp. 327–29.Google Scholar

63. “Man can no more justly make use of another's necessity, to force him to become his vassal, by withholding that relief, God requires him to afford to the want of his Brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his Obedience, and with a Daggar to his throat offer him Death or Slavery” (I. 42). Quoted in Tully, , A Discourse on Property, p. 138.Google Scholar

64. The introduction of money provides that “he who appropriates land to himself by his labor, does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind” (II. 37). With or without the presence of money, however, when procurement lessens the common stock of mankind, obstructs the rights of others to acquire property through labor, Locke would, in this interpretation, curtail appropriation.

65. Furthermore, Locke limits the right to property. “And thus Man's Property in the Creatures, was founded upon the right he had, to make use of those things, that were necessary or useful to his Being” (I. 86).

66. Rosenblum, Nancy, Another Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. Ashcraft, , Locke's Two Treatises, p. 175.Google Scholar

68. Ibid., pp. 167–73.