Women in Western Political Philosophy: Kant to Nietzsche

THIS IMPORTANT NEW book analyzes the position of women in the writings of the major political philosophers. The authors argue that the moral status of women both affects and is affected by the conception of their political status. Women have only recently been given the rights of citizens. Hitherto they were thought not to be eligible for citizenship and have been considered members of the political community only through the mediation of their husbands and fathers. These issues are placed in a broad philosophical framework. Moral and political beliefs about women are often found to be consequent upon deeper metaphysical, or even biological, beliefs. This book successfully presents a feminist perspective on questions central to political philosophy and raises issues about the philosophical underpinning of political theory. ---ELLEN KENNEDY is Lecturer in Politics at the University of York and Visiting Lecturer in the University of Freiburg. During 1984-6 she was a Fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foun¬dation. SUSAN MENDUS is Lecturer in Philosophy and Morrell Fellow in Toleration at the University of York. She is the co-editor, with John Horton, of Aspects of Toleration (1985). She is the author of Freedom and the Open Society: Henri Bergson's Contribution to Political Philosophy (1986) and the editor and translator of Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parhamentary Democracy (1985).