Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics

Penny A. Weiss

Published by New York University Press 1993

Gendered Community

Rousseau, Sex, and Politics

Penny A. Weiss

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814784938.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Rousseau's writings reflect paradoxes and apparent inconsistencies with his principled commitments to freedom and equality. In this engrossing work, Penny Weiss wrestles with issues of gender in the works of Rousseau.
Weiss attempts to resolve apparent inconsistencies by placing them within the context of Rousseau's political philosophy, while avoiding the impulse to attribute his remarks on the sexes to the sexist times in which he wrote, or to his personal idiosyncracies.
A significant contribution to feminist theory, this book addresses the debates concerning Rousseau's understandings of gender, justice, freedom, community, and equality. She also examines how Rousseau's political strategies give rise to a range of important contemporary questions regarding families, citizens, and communities.
This new, more complete picture of Rousseau's work will challenge scholars and students of philosophy, politics, and women's studies to look at, and understand, Rousseau in a whole new way. Penny A. Weiss addresses the apparent male/female contradictions that run through the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She argues that Rousseau's defense of sexual differentiation is based on the contribution he perceives it can make to the establishment of community, not on an appeal to some version of natural sex differences. Weiss convincingly demonstrates that Rousseau's political strategy is ultimately unworkable, undermining the very community it was meant to establish.

Author / Editor information

Weiss Penny A. :

Penny A. Weiss is Professor and Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Saint Louis University. She is the author of numerous books, including Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics, Canon Fodder: Historical Women Political Thinkers, and Conversations with Feminism: Political Theory and Practice.

Reviews

Clear, rich, and coherent, the book succeeds splendidly.

Jane Bennett,Goucher College:
In a thoughtful, lucid and graceful book, Penny Weiss shows how Rousseau's attempt to combine a sexual division of labor with a communitarian politicsas good a try as there ever wascannot succeed. Weiss offers a convincing feminist reading of Rousseau, one that genuinely gives the other side of the gender equality argument, Rousseau's side, its due.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
PART ONE
1. Introduction: Gender, Rousseau, and Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Producing Gender: Sex, Freedom, and Equality in Rousseau's Emile Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	10
3. Anatomy and Destiny: Rousseau, Antifeminism, and Woman's Nature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
4. Families and Politics: Sex Roles and Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
5. The Justice of Sex Roles: "Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
6. Rousseau and Feminist Revolution: The Impossibility of Gendered Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
PART TWO
7. Feminism and Communitarianism: Exploring the Relationship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
8. Gender Bias in Political Theory: (Un)Seeing and (Un)Doing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: October 1, 1993
ISBN: 9780814784938