Pateman: Sexual Contract
Part I: Read: Carol Pateman: Chapter 3 “Contract, the Individual and Slavery” from The Sexual Contract(only pages 39-60) (you’ll also find the outlines of some of the thinkers Pateman discusses to attached for your convenience:-)
- According to Pateman, what is the difference between Social Contract Theory and other theoretical strategies that justify subjugation and present it as freedom?
- With the exception of Hobbes, what is the origin of political right? How is man’s right over women justified (again with the exception of Hobbes)
- Pateman claims that in order to make their natural beings recognizable, social contract theorists smuggle social characteristics into the natural condition (or their readers supply what’s missing). What is being “smuggled” in? What is not included in Rawls’ “original position”?
- Hobbes as opposed to the other contractarians, assumes that there is no natural mastery of male over female. Hobbes also argues that the original political right comes from the right of the mother over the child. Political rights is originally maternal and not paternal. Why isn’t this original right paternal? How is this over turned?
- Pateman argues Hobbes’ patriarchalism is not paternal but conjugal. Please explain what she means by this. What does it have to do with Hobbes’ definition of family?
- Why, according to Pateman, is accounting for the survival of the infants part of the general problem of contractarianism?
- Discuss how Locke may be seen (at first glance) to be a proto-feminist but closer examination does not bear this out. Fully discuss the first glance view and close view of Locke’s theory.
- What’s the basis of Rousseau’s argument that civil order depends on the right of the husband over their wives?
- Please explain the “individual’ found in Hobbes’, Locke’s, and contemporary contractarians. What are the properties/qualities of the individual’s relation to property? To others?
- What are the socialist and feminist arguments against the contract?
