The family in John Locke's political thought

Polity

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 593-617

  Pfeffer, Jacqueline L ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

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EID: 0035646728     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3235518     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. This debate about family life is an instance of the debates described by Alasdair MacIntyre, in the second chapter of After Virtue, that remain interminable so long as the larger questions at stake are obscured. After Virtue, rev. 2nd. ed. (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1982).
2. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
3. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
4. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
5. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
6. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
7. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
8. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
9. Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). Crittenden's book has been widely reviewed, from George Will's Washington Post column entitled, "Book Shows Feminist Foibles" (Washington Post, 4 February 4 1999, A27) to a vituperative editorial in Glamour subtitled, "Why you should block out June Cleaver Fever and keep living your liberated life" (August 1999, 170). Other noteworthy reviews are: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "This Is Liberation?," Crisis 17 (1999): 40-43; Francis Fukuyama, "Something's Missing," Wall Street Journal, 26 January 1999, A16, col. 5; Elizabeth Gleick, "When Having It All is Not Enough," New York Times Book Review, 31 January 1999, 7; Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation 268 (1999): 25-29; Danielle Crittenden, "American Feminism," interview by David Gergen, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 1 March 1999.
10. For Edmund Burke, nature and tradition are interwoven in two somewhat contradictory ways. Both are indicated in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987). First, nature indicates an order that cannot be changed (or, at least, an order that cannot be changed without disastrous consequences). Thus Burke wrote of a "natural sense of wrong and right" (72), which indicated that the revolution in France was "unnatural" and from this unnatural event there were consequences that followed "in order" (34); in particular, the "metaphysic rights [championed by the French revolutionaries] entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are by the laws of nature refracted from their straight line" (54). Second, nature indicates a model of change, where change may be growth and maturation or decline and death. Burke wrote, "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation" (19). But change should follow "nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it" (29), since "by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete" (30).
11. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 22, 171.
12. Okin explicitly draws on Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Rawls's revised views about justice and particularly about the family, presented in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), do not so well support Okin's position, as she acknowledges in her article, "Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender," Ethics, 105 (1994): 23-43. Okin decries Rawls's changes of position and stays her own course.
13. Okin explicitly draws on Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Rawls's revised views about justice and particularly about the family, presented in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), do not so well support Okin's position, as she acknowledges in her article, "Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender," Ethics, 105 (1994): 23-43. Okin decries Rawls's changes of position and stays her own course.
14. Okin explicitly draws on Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Rawls's revised views about justice and particularly about the family, presented in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), do not so well support Okin's position, as she acknowledges in her article, "Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender," Ethics, 105 (1994): 23-43. Okin decries Rawls's changes of position and stays her own course.
15. Even twenty-five years ago, Carol B. Stack, in her ground-breaking study All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), did not find families in the sense of a father, mother, and children in the poor Midwestern African-American community she investigated.
16. Jane Mattes, Single Mothers by Choice: A Guidebook for Single Women Who Are Considering or Have Chosen Motherhood (New York: Times Books, 1994). Times Books brought out a new edition in 1997. Information about printings from correspondence with the author.
17. Often "chosen family" is contrasted favorably with "first family," family understood in the sense of those connected by blood or marriage. Susan G. Cole wrote, "we are sharing a renewed sense of respect for and even passion about the importance of our chosen families. By chosen I mean the family of friends." Cole's comments concern particularly friendships between gays and lesbians, but the notion of "chosen family" certainly is not limited to the gay and lesbian community. See Canadian Dimension 29 (1995): 46.
18. Michael P. Zuckert provides a spirited overview of the debate about the importance of Locke to the Founding Fathers and to the public during the Founding period, and defends the importance of Locke to the Founding in his Natural Rights and the New Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 15-25.
19. John Locke, Two Treatise of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Hereafter cited in the text with reference to the treatise (IT for First Treatise of Government, and 2T for Second Treatise of Government) and paragraph number. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. John W. and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Hereafter cited in the text as STCE with the paragraph number.
20. John Locke, Two Treatise of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Hereafter cited in the text with reference to the treatise (IT for First Treatise of Government, and 2T for Second Treatise of Government) and paragraph number. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. John W. and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Hereafter cited in the text as STCE with the paragraph number.
21. A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983).
22. Zuckert claims that Locke ordered his discussion of the various societies in chapters IV through VIII of the Second Treatise according to "the increasing artificiality of the relations, or better, their increasing dependence on consent, compact, or conscious making" (17). However, the society of parents and children, take up in chapter VI, is not more artificial (less natural) than the society of master and servant, taken up in chapter V: rather, the society of parents and children has a natural origin, while the society of master and servant is found in contract. Moreover, the society of husband and wife, taken up in chapter VII, is established by express consent in the marriage ceremony, which indicates a conscious choice, while political society, taken up at the end of chapter VII and in chapter VIII, may be established by men who do not "much trouble themselves to think" of government (2T§107); recall too that an established political society may be entered by some (even most) citizens by tacit consent rather than conscious choice (2T§121).
23. Edmund Leites remarks that "Locke does not make clear how . . . children come to the idea that the use of reason is an essential element of maturity." "Locke's Liberal Theory of Parenthood," in Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood, ed. Onora O'Neill and William Rudduck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 310. Somehow it seems that our natural capacity for reason is uncovered or asserts itself within each one of us, even as children: "[Children] understand [reasoning] as early as they do Language; and, if I mis-observe not, they love to be treated as Rational Creatures sooner than is imagined" (STCE§81).
24. There is merely a plausible presumption made on the part of the members of political society in their judgment of a young person, no test of reasonableness or intelligence such as that proposed in Plato's Republic or imposed in the Jim Crow south. Locke wrote, "What made him free of [i.e., under] that Law? What gave him a free disposing of his Property according to his own Will, within the compass of that Law? I answer; State of Maturity wherein he might be suppos'd capable to know that Law...Which is supposed by that Law, at the Age of one and twenty years, and in some cases sooner" (2T§59, see also 2T§170). On the other hand, those who are plainly without full use of reason are not admitted to political society: "Lunaticks and Ideots" and "Innocents," who cannot attain reason, cannot quit their subjection to their parents and enter political society (2T§60). My thanks to Nathan Tarcov for reminding me of this point.
25. In the discussion below I do not discuss education in "Wisdom". Locke concluded that children cannot be taught wisdom, which is "a Man's managing his Business ablely, and with fore-sight in this World," because wisdom rests in part on experience, which children necessarily lack (STCE§140). However, parents must prepare their children to gain in wisdom by ensuring that they do not develop crafty, cunning dispositions that incline them to seek to succeed by guile rather than honest management.
26. Locke was writing particularly about virtue when he wrote this statement, but it seems from his account that men in lower stations should have some share in each of these parts of education, even in breeding, which seems to be that part of education most reserved for gentlemen. He indicates the general applicability of his prescriptions when he expressed his hope that a reader of his treatise would be encouraged to "set his helping hand to promote every where that Way of training up Youth, with regards to their several Conditions . . . to produce vertuous, useful, and able Men in their distinct Callings" (STCE, Epistle Dedicatory). Certainly children of lower social standing will need that part of learning entailed in learning a manual trade. And, while Locke suggested that a "Plough-man" typically is poor example of breeding (STCE§145), he seemed to suggest that some measure of good breeding contributes to the welfare of each: "The happiness that all Men so steadily pursue, Consisting in pleasure, it is easie to see why the Civil, are more acceptable than the useful" (STCE§143). Indeed, Locke emphasized the importance of good breeding in dealing with persons of more distinguished social rank (STCE§142), which would be common for those of lower social standing.
27. Locke to Mrs Clarke, February 1685, The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James L. Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 345.
28. Locke did not say it, but it is a reasonable additional inference that if not schooled in good behavior by their parents, the parents will be unable to hire a virtouos tutor - who ia a rare find, according to Locke (STCE§§88-94) - or receive invitations to bring their children into good company, and thus will be deprived of the education in virtue and good breeding to be found under an able tutor and in good company (STCE§70).
29. In the pages below, I shall discuss property in the limited sense of possessions, even though Locke's views was that "Nature gives . . . Parental Power to Parents for the Benefit of thier Children during their Minority, to supply their want of Ability, and understanding how to manage their Property. (By Property I must be understood here, as in other places, to mean that Property which Men have in the Persons as well as Goods.)" (2T§173). I shall emphasize in property the sense of possessions because, it seems to me, Locke too emphasize the sense of property in the STCE. This emphasis makes sense in light of Locke's observation that young children scarcely have "Language and Understanding enough to form distinct Notions of Property [in the sense of possessions]," let alone property in more abstract senses (STCE§110).
30. For poor children on parish relief, whose parents were either working during the day or dissolute in their habits, Locke proposed that working-schools be established, in which the children would learn skills and "be inured to work, which is of no small consequence to the making of them sober and industrious." John Locke, "Draft of a Representation Containing a Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor. Proposed by Mr Locke, the 26th October 1697," in Political Writings of John Locke, ed. David Wootton (New York: Mentor, 1993), 453.
31. Nathan Tarcov offers a careful exegesis of Locke's cure for a sauntering disposition. Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 175-77.
32. On Locke's argument in STCE§130, see Tarcov, Locke's Education, 177-79.
33. On covelousness, see Tarcov, Locke's Education, 142-45.
34. For a discussion of the hold of habits as children grow into adulthood, and "the great power of habit to overcome even self-interest," see Tarcov, Locke's Education, 142. Tarcov associates Locke's discussion of liberality in STCE§110 not with Locke's stipulation that legitimate acquisition is limited by the requirement to leave "as good and as large a Possession" for others but with Locke's concerns about injustice by illegitimate acquisition of another's goods (see 141-45). While Locke's discussion of liberality is germane to his discussion of injustice by illegitimate acquisition, I think that this passage points more to the development of the disposition to honor the Lockean proviso than to the development of the disposition not to violate other's good: Locke wrote of checking the "Desire . . . of having more than we have need of" (a check necessary to honor the Lockean proviso when satisfying our desire would make the satisfaction of another's needs imposissible), not of checking the desire of having what we have no right to (which is the desire associate with incursion on the goods of another). True, desire for superfluities may incline us to acquire goods unjustly, but Locke did not discourege the satisfaction of desire for "more than we have need of" in general (Tarcov discusses this point), but only when the Lockean proviso would be violated. Perhaps more important to this point, Locke wrote of "Readiness to impart of others" (which is necessary if we are to forsake claims to good when a claim would deprive another of "as good, and as large a Possession") not of readiness to honor the rights of others (which makes one disinclined to seize the goods of another).
35. For a full discussion of these issues, see Tarcov, Locke's Education, 145-19.
36. See Tarcov, Locke's Education, 167-69.
37. See n22.
38. Quoted in Two Treatise of Government, ed. Laslett, 321n. On this point and on Locke's view of conjugal arrangements, see Melissa Butler, "Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy," American Political Science Review 72 (1978): 142-45.
39. Quoted in Two Treatise of Government, ed. Laslett, 321n. On this point and on Locke's view of conjugal arrangements, see Melissa Butler, "Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy," American Political Science Review 72 (1978): 142-45.
40. "Virtus," from the Commonplace Book, in Political Writings of John Locke, ed. Wootton, 241.
41. Peter Laslett, introduction to Two Treatises of Government, 7.
42. "Virtus," from the Commonplace Book, in Political Writings of John Locke, ed. Wootton, 241-42.
43. Letter Concerning Toleration, 49, 39, 42.
44. Letter Concerning Toleration, 41-42.
45. I have not attempted to master the sociological literature on this subject. However, I recommend Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994) as a fairly recent study on the subject of single parent families.
46. Locke's interest in and use of "anthropological" (what one might call sociological) evidence is discussed in Ruth W. Grant's "Locke's Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism," Journal of Politics 50 (1988): 42-63. Grant argues that Locke's arguments about the origin of legitimate political authority are ultimately independent of the evidence he drew from anthropology, because anthropology shows us how authority in a particular society is, or was, exercised, not how it ought to be exercised.
47. Letter Concerning Toleration, 40.
48. Of course, this example arises not only from Locke's medical interests but because he wished to compare bathing children to baptizing children. The point that Locke would countenance interference in family matters (like bathing children) stands.
49. On the other hand, a Lockean may well have no objection to ready divorce for childless couples and those couples with grown children, whose "Education [is] secured, and Inheritance taken care for" (2T§81).
50. Robert Nozick's reservations about the libertarian position he famously defended in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), are, in part, motivated by concerns about provision for children under a libertarian scheme. See Robert Nozick, "Parents and Children," in The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 28-33, esp. 30-32, and Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-2. For his original defense of the friendliness of libertarianism to the family, see Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167-68.
51. Robert Nozick's reservations about the libertarian position he famously defended in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), are, in part, motivated by concerns about provision for children under a libertarian scheme. See Robert Nozick, "Parents and Children," in The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 28-33, esp. 30-32, and Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-2. For his original defense of the friendliness of libertarianism to the family, see Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167-68.
52. Robert Nozick's reservations about the libertarian position he famously defended in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), are, in part, motivated by concerns about provision for children under a libertarian scheme. See Robert Nozick, "Parents and Children," in The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 28-33, esp. 30-32, and Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-2. For his original defense of the friendliness of libertarianism to the family, see Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167-68.
53. Robert Nozick's reservations about the libertarian position he famously defended in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), are, in part, motivated by concerns about provision for children under a libertarian scheme. See Robert Nozick, "Parents and Children," in The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 28-33, esp. 30-32, and Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-2. For his original defense of the friendliness of libertarianism to the family, see Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167-68.
54. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, "Dan Quayle Was Right," The Atlantic, 271 (1993): 47-48.
55. Letter Concerning Toleration, 27.
56. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 175-83. Okin's prescriptions for contemporary America echo her approving discussion of Republic V, in which Socrates seems to establish that sex has no more relevance to capacity to rule than length of hair has to capacity to practice shoemaking and then shows himself willing to mandate "public policies" that intrude into private family life, requiring, inter alia, that male and female rulers alike be freed fron, all burdens of child-rearing. Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), ch. 2 passim, but esp. 30-40. See Republic 451a-466d.
57. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 175-83. Okin's prescriptions for contemporary America echo her approving discussion of Republic V, in which Socrates seems to establish that sex has no more relevance to capacity to rule than length of hair has to capacity to practice shoemaking and then shows himself willing to mandate "public policies" that intrude into private family life, requiring, inter alia, that male and female rulers alike be freed fron, all burdens of child-rearing. Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), ch. 2 passim, but esp. 30-40. See Republic 451a-466d.
58. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 175-83. Okin's prescriptions for contemporary America echo her approving discussion of Republic V, in which Socrates seems to establish that sex has no more relevance to capacity to rule than length of hair has to capacity to practice shoemaking and then shows himself willing to mandate "public policies" that intrude into private family life, requiring, inter alia, that male and female rulers alike be freed fron, all burdens of child-rearing. Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), ch. 2 passim, but esp. 30-40. See Republic 451a-466d.
59. Okin adopts John Rawls's two principles of justice, the second of which requires that goods be distributed to "the greatest benefit of the least advantaged" (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 83). It may be that, on Okin's account, among the least advantaged may be children raised in non-egalitarian families because these children "clearly have far less freedom to develop into whatever kind of person they want to be" than children who are raised in egalitarian households (Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 185).
60. Okin adopts John Rawls's two principles of justice, the second of which requires that goods be distributed to "the greatest benefit of the least advantaged" (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 83). It may be that, on Okin's account, among the least advantaged may be children raised in non-egalitarian families because these children "clearly have far less freedom to develop into whatever kind of person they want to be" than children who are raised in egalitarian households (Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 185).