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Australasian Journal of Philosophy

ISSN: 0004-8402 (Print) 1471-6828 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajp20

ROUSSEAU AND WOLLSTONECRAFT: NATURE vs. REASON Moira Gatens To cite this article: Moira Gatens (1986) ROUSSEAU AND WOLLSTONECRAFT: NATURE vs. REASON, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64:sup1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.1986.9755421 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048402.1986.9755421

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Australasian Journal of Philosophy Supplement to Vol. 64; June 1986

ROUSSEAU AND WOLLSTONECRAFT: NATURE vs. REASON

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Moira Gatens Feminist interventions into philosophical discourse have been, almost uniformly, at the politico-ethical level. That feminist theory rarely addresses the intellectual infrastructure of traditional ethical and political theory is one of its primary weaknesses. This paper will address some of the elements that I take to be foundational to traditional philosophical accounts of women's political and ethical being by a consideration of the work of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft. In particular, I will be exploring their respective treatment of three distinctions that have been central to traditional accounts of subjectivity. These distinctions are: reason/passion; culture/nature; and man/woman. The question of what are or should be the relations internal to and between these three distinctions is a particularly pertinent one in Eighteenth Century philosophy. The shift in focus from theology to nature, from a God-given social and political order to a man-given order- the social contract-puts into crisis the foundation and legitimacy of existing sociopolitical relations, including those between the sexes. Both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft address this crisis, and, central to their respective responses to it, is the question of what should be the social and political function of women. This paper will conclude by drawing attention to the relevance of the debate between Rousseau and Wollstonecraft for contemporary problems in feminist theory. Many commentators have noted the disparity between Rousseau's description of women's equality in the state of nature and his prescriptions concerning their necessary economic, social and political subjection in civilisation. This disparity is most generally interpreted, by feminist and nonfeminist writers alike, as presenting a serious inconsistency for Rousseau's egalitarianism. This inconsistency is further located as a failure in Rousseau's philosophy at the ethical level which arises from his own personal prejudices. This criticism is too superficial. I will be arguing that it is Rousseau's views on the relations between nature and civilisation, reason and passion, that makes the subjection and privatisation of women a necessary feature of his ideal form of political organisation. It is not at all clear from Rousseau's political works, for instance The Social Contract, what his views on the place of the sexes in the political and moral spheres are. To discern these views it is necessary to turn to the work he devotes especially to this question: Emile. This text is most often described as concerned with the philosophy of education. This description does Emile an injustice, as it is also a text crucially concerned with political philosophy 1

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in its broadest sense. 1 In particular it is concerned with the social and political significance of sexual difference. This work offers valuable insight not only into the question of sexual differentiation but is, according to Rousseau himself, 2 the best summary of his entire philosophy. On Rousseau's account most of the character of human beings who have left the state of nature is formed by the particular stages of social organisation they find themselves in. He considers several possible forms of human social development (some historical, others hypothetical) and presents that form which he sees as conducive both to the nature of man (or to his limits) and to the possibilities of his development. The nature of woman and her development is then derived, as will become obvious from the analysis of Emile, from what is useful to man. As the figure of the tutor in Emile says: for man, every question is one of utility, for woman the crucial factor is to conform to social expectation3 and this social expectation is reducible to what is useful to men. Clearly, for Rousseau, what is most useful to men and to the continuation of the kind of social organisation presented as desirable in The Social Contract is for women to be confined to the primitively (or naturally) organised patriarchal family and for men to have access to this private sphere which will act as both support for, and refuge from, the public sphere. The world of the family, infant education, morality and sensuality is private, domestic, whereas the world of work, citizenship, legality and rationality is public. Man's possibilities in culture are predicated on woman remaining as close as possible to nature. The derivation of woman's nature from man's is nowhere more apparent in Rousseau's writings than in Emile. At the heart of Emile lies the central conflict between nature and culture, between reason and passion, and it is Rousseau's handling of this conflict that determines his views on the proper place of men and women in social and political life. As he writes in Book IV of Emile, the difficulties connected with socialising each generation are exacerbated by the fact that ' ... there are so many contradictions between the rights of nature and the laws of society'. 4 It is the reconciliation of these contradictions that Rousseau, or the figure of the tutor, attempts to bring about through the education of Emile. The tutor's task is to be midwife to Emile's birth into culture. As Rousseau observes, 'We are all born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being and born a man'. 5 This theme of a double-birth is also present in The Social Contract. It is significant, however, that the birth into life or culture applies to men only. 6 Women are only born once: born into existence, born into nature and excluded from culture. Their natures should be left undisturbed according to Rousseau. 1

2 3 4 5

6

Rousseau himself remarks, in The Social Contract, ' ... I had come to see that everything was radically connected with politics .. .', Penguin edition, 1968, p. 13. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Tudor, N.Y. 1936, p. 900f. J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, Everyman Edition, London, 1972, p. 339. Emile, op. cit., p. 281. Ibid., p. 172. For an illuminating account of the body politic as a birth, see Pateman, C. 'Fraternal Social Contract: Some observations on patriarchal civil society' in Telos, Special Issue, (ed. J. Kene), forthcoming.

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From The Social Contract, however, it is not clear that women are excluded in this sense. Rousseau writes there that 'Whoever ventures on the enterprise of setting up a people must be ready, shall we say, to change human nature, to transform each individual, who by himself is entirely complete and solitary, into a part of a much greater whole, from which that same individual will then receive, in a sense, his life and his being.'7 The apparent neutrality of the language in this quotation disguises what becomes clear only in Emile, that is, that entry into civic life is restricted to men only. Women and children are connected to society only indirectly through a father/husband/brother, as is evid·ent from the following extracts from Emile:' . .. the family is only connected to society through its head .. .'; 8 ' ••• when Emile became your husband, he became your head .. .'; 9 and finally, 'When you become the head of a family, you will become a citizen of your country.' 10 This theme of a double birth goes some way towards explaining the disparity between the detailed education of Emile and the rather sketchy comments concerning the education of Sophy. Rousseau is concerned, in Emile, with the second birth, the birth into public social life, and as such, he is concerned only with men. Women figure in this entry into social life only in so far as 'It is not good that man should be alone.' 11 In other words, Sophy and her character are important in so far as she is indispensable to Emile's ability to function as a citizen. It is not that Rousseau is uninterested in the education of women but rather that they should be left as close to their natural state as possible. If necessary, women should be guarded against the ill-effects of a corrupt social life and in this task we have the model of Emile's early negative education. The aim of the education of Emile, at least in his youth was 'to prevent anything being done .. .', 12 that is, the' ... education of the earliest years should be merely negative .. .'. !3 Rousseau extends this maxim throughout the whole of a woman's life. She has no need, on his account, of instruction in the sciences, in ethics, or in political life. All these aspects of culture are to be managed by men, women's role is to merely reproduce the conditions necessary for the continuation of culture. This involves the bearing, caring and rearing of children and the provision of the emotional and physical well-being of her husband. 14 The most important aspect of these tasks, according to Rousseau, is that they are undertaken in a spirit of chastity, modesty and submission. A detailed analysis of Rousseau's recommendations concerning the education of Emile and Sophy is necessary in order to demonstrate the way in which Rousseau lends philosophical justification to the sexual specification of reason and passion, nature and culture. In order to determine the 7 8

9 10 11

12

13 14

Social Contract, op. cit., p. 84. Emile, op. cit., p. 370. Ibid., p. 442. Ibid., p. 412. Ibid., p. 321. Ibid., p, 9. Ibid., p. 57. See ibid., p. 328.

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possibilities of Emile it is first necessary for Rousseau to determine the nature of man. What man can or cannot become is largely determined by what he is in his primitive or original state. In the state of nature there are only two original passions, self-love and pity which are more like instincts in their character than like passions in the classical sense. Rousseau often reserves the term 'passion' for those impulses that are secondary transformations or perversions of this primary impulse of self-love. 15 These modifications of the primary impulse, most of which are considered destructive by Rousseau, are the result of social and cultural influences. Man in a state of nature does not need to control his natural impulses as ' ... the first impulses of nature are always right .. .' 16 but the moment that he leaves the state ~f nature and enters society, the dictates of natural appetite can no longer be trusted and Rousseau warns, 'Distrust instinct as soon as you cease to rely altogether upon it.' 17 This view of human nature is what prompts Rousseau to isolate Emile as far as possible from society which can 'hasten the development of the passions'. 18 This isolation, argues Rousseau, will allow Emile's feeling and passion to develop naturally, hence harmlessly, and will further ensure that by the time he begins to be affected by the violent passions (particularly sexual passion) his reason will have developed to a stage that will enable him to control them. The problem, as Rousseau sees it, is that due to the influence of society man is capable of desires that he does not have the natural strength to satisfy. If nature took her course uncorrupted by social influence, the passions and desires would develop at a rate that man's natural strength would be capable of satisfying. Since we no longer live in this state, it is, paradoxically, necessary for the educator to employ artificial means to ensure natural development. It is only when 'the last and choicest growth', 19 reason, is developed that Emile can be safely admitted into society. It is Rousseau's aim to allow both the development of Emile's natural disposition and yet ensure that he will be a fit member of civil society. This task requires that Emile be made as independent as possible from his fellow men, yet not so independent that he is not able to cohabit with or have respect for them. The various lessons that the tutor arranges for Emile are all designed with this double purpose of promoting Emile's independence and sociability. Thus Emile, in late adolescence, is a figure who can support himself and hence is independent of all others and yet he is able to mix in all kinds of company with ease. The coping-stone of Emile's development is, of course, his reason, and it is to the proper cultivation of this faculty that the tutor pays close attention. Reason, Rousseau claims, is not to be cultivated in a pupil by the use of scholarly books, as a book ' ... does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little'. 20 Rather, true reason, 'the reason of intellig1:nce' 15

16 17

18 19

20

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. p. p. p. p. p.

173. 56. 299. 222. 53. 90.

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is based on 'the reason of sense-experience'. In other words, Emile shall not be merely told that two adjacent angles are equal to two right angles, he will be shown that this is the case. In this way the tutor will, again, increase Emile's independence from authority or opinion. Emile will have more than mere knowledge, he will also have a reliable and independent judgement. The power of making reliable judgements is indispensable not only in the arts and sciences but also in matters of morality. When Emile's reason is considered sufficiently developed he is introduced to society, and it is in this sphere that his capacity to make accurate moral judgements becomes most pertinent. This is certainly the case in affairs of the senses or heart, for 'the most dangerous snare, the only snare which reason cannot avoid, is that of the senses. 21 Rousseau makes it quite plain that he considers the most dangerous sensual snare to men to be ' ... the wiles of wanton women' and from this snare Emile's tutor vows to' ... guard him with [my) utmost care'. 22 Emile's tutor is good to his word and takes such care with Emile's dealings with women that he actually chooses, though Emile is not aware of this fact, a wife for Emile: Sophy. 23 The match is successful and both Emile and Sophy are anxious to marry. For a man to enter marriage, which is a civil contract, involves duties and responsibilities that Emile had not anticipated. His tutor rebukes him with the following: 'You hope to be a husband and father: have you seriously considered your duties? When you become the head of a family you will become a citizen of your country. And what is a citizen of the state? What do you know about it? You have studied your duties as a man but what do you know of the duties of a citizen?'24 Marriage, then, for Emile but not for Sophy, involves his proper insertion into the body politic which, in turn, involves certain responsibilities and duties that include, minimally, '. . . the duty to instruct [himself] in public affairs'. 25 It is clear from a comment Rousseau makes in The Social Contract that he regards marriage as the foundation stone of civic life. 26 The domestic sphere can support or subvert the public sphere and the responsibility for ensuring that the private sphere supports the public sphere falls on both Emile's and Sophy's shoulders. Their respective duties are different yet equally necessary. By the time Emile returns from his two years of travel spent familiarising himself with the governments, laws, and peoples of various countries, he is considered ready for marriage. He is now both a man and a citizen. His education is considered complete. It may be worth taking stock of Emile's accomplishments and experience in order to contrast these with those of Sophy. Emile, the man-citizen, has a knowledge of man's nature in general, of woman's nature in general, and a particular knowledge of his own nature and of Sophy's nature. He can, 21 22

23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 364. Ibid., p. 208. See the tutor's observation concerning Sophy's mother who ' ... smiles at the success of our schemes' Emile, p. 378. Ibid., p. 412. The Social Contract, op. cit., p. 49. See ibid., p. 187f.

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if necessary, support himself by means of his trade, hence he is independent of the good-will or charity of men. He has not merely accumulated knowledge but also has an independent faculty of judgement. He is familiar with the morality of his own country and that of other countries, yet he is his own judge in matters of conscience. He is familiar with the arts and sciences, the government, the laws and public affairs in general. In sum, Emile is a man who is independent yet not misanthropic. It will become apparent to what degree Sophy differs from this description. It is impossible to consider the education of Sophy independently of Emile's education. Rousseau has certainly satisfied his own requirement that 'A woman's education (must) be planned in relation to a man.m In fact Sophy's entire nature is derived from Rousseau's description of Emile's nature. The strongest single factor of what her nature should be is reducible to the question 'what would be most useful to Emile both as an individual man and as a citizen?' It is Rousseau's insistence on reducing woman's nature to a question of utility for man that makes it unprofitable, or misleading, to follow Sophy's education or development chronologically. Emile's education, though clearly directed, is designed to allow the development to the full, of each of his capacities as they arise. The character of Sophy's education is quite different. She will be formed or deformed, overstimulated in some directions, stunted in others, to make her a useful 'helpmeet' to Emile. For this reason it is appropriate to start in the middle of Book V because it is there that the rationale behind Sophy's educative programme can be found. The programme set out for Sophy is one which results in the construction of a very precarious subjectivity. Contrary to Emile, she is entirely dependent on others for her sense of worth and reputation, in fact, her entire being. It is not sufficient that she be virtuous, she must also be socially acknowledged as virtuous. 28 Her entire existence is dictated by those around her. As Rousseau observes " 'What people will think' is the grave of a man's virtue and the throne of a woman's". 29 He places women, by his recommendations for their education, in an impossible situation. By making the giving or refusing of sexual favours to men the only power that women have, Rousseau effectively forbids the possibility of women's sexual pleasure. The tutor's parting words to Sophy include the advice: 'You will long rule him [Emile] by love if you make your favours scarce and precious, if you know how to use them aright.' 30 One of the implications of Rousseau's recommendations is that women do not have access to the passionate and the natural for their own enjoyment but rather they embody the passionate only for the enjoyment of men. In other words it is man who has access to both reason in civic life and passion in the private sphere. Women are excluded from both in that they are neither citizens nor the consumers of privatised pleasure, but rather they provide the conditions necessary for men to have access to both. 27

28 29 30

Emile, op. cit., p. 328. See ibid., p. 325 and p. 328. Ibid., p. 328. Ibid., p. 443.

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For Rousseau the question of woman's social role is not one of 'truth' but of rational utility or reasoned expedience. He is not concerned with isolated individuals or with abstract metaphysical or ontological questions. Rather, he is concerned with social man and with promoting a certain kind of social organisation that is as strong and as long-lived and as equitable- for men- as possible. In this task, Rousseau has several problems to resolve, notably the tension between reason and passion, culture and nature. The way he resolves this tension is to promote and lend rational justification to a form of social organisation where these aspects of human nature are sexually divided. To Rousseau's mind, there is already a precedent for this division which is provided by nature: women are 'naturally' associated with domesticity and child-rearing. Therefore, to educate women, regardless of their capacities, to fulfil this domestic role is both 'natural' and reasonable. It is reasonable to do this because of the necessity, in a highly developed society, to separate private concerns from public ones and to diffuse any possible subversive effects of the private on the public. Clearly, there are private interests that conflict with the general public interest. Sophy's education, then, is designed to fit her for the private domestic sphere where the potentially socially disruptive qualities engendered by her education will be privatised and hence converted into qualities that actually support the society. This fine line between the construction of women as providing support for, and possible subversion of, the body politic will be discussed later. It is becoming clearer, then, why Rousseau fears the breakdown of rigid sexual differences. For him the consequences of women entering the public sphere would be disastrous. Either they would become masculine, which would undermine the natural basis of society, or, if they remained feminine, they would subvert the body politic. Sophy's education is therefore crucial in that it is she who will provide the basis for civic life. Her teacher is unimportane 1 because she is to be instructed by social expectation. Her reason is to be left uncultivated not because she is incapable of it 32 but because rationality may destroy those natural feminine qualities that Rousseau sees as so essential to the survival of civil society. To stray too far from the socalled natural hierarchy of the sexes would, on Rousseau's model, mean the end of social life altogether. He writes, in this context, 'if women could discover principles and if men had as good a head for detail, they would be mutually independent, they would live in perpetual strife, and there would be an end to all society'. 33 The basis of .Rousseau's fears, concerning what the artificiality of a highly developed social organisation can lead to, is expressed most succinctly in his reflections on the place Plato assigns to women in The Republic. Rousseau writes: I am quite aware that Plato, in The Republic assigns the same gymnastics to women and men. Having got rid of the family there is no place for 31

32 33

Ibid., p. 338. See ibid., p. 345. Ibid., p. 340.

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women in his system of government, so he is forced to turn them into men ... but he has not succeeded in meeting the real difficulty ... I refer to that subversion of all the tenderest of our natural feelings, which he sacrificed to an artificial sentiment which can only exist by their aid. Will the bonds of convention hold firm without some foundation in nature? Can devotion to the state exist apart from the love of those near and dear to us? Can patriotism thrive except in the soil of that miniature fatherland, the home? Is it not the good son, the good husband, the good father who makes the good citizen? 34 Plato's recommendations here, concerning the destruction of the family, seem entirely unreasonable to Rousseau. On this point Rousseau is consistent, having observed previously that 'women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made laws; the inequality is not of man's making, or at any rate, it is not the result of mere prejudice; but of reason'. 35 In other words, the inequalities may well be of man's making but they have their basis in rationality, not prejudice, and are, moreover, supported by nature. To allow the artificial influence of society to alter these 'natural' relations between the sexes would be to stray so far from the natural bases of social life as to destroy it. It is this destruction that Rousseau sees Plato's recommendations to invite and it is Rousseau's concern for the survival of society that leads him to protest against the behaviour that he perceives to be encouraging the dissolution of sexual difference. Clearly then, on his view, a society that does not enforce rigid sexual difference is a society that will be very short-lived. Having no foundation in nature, such a society would be unstable. Rousseau allows that no society can survive indefinitely but argues that the longevity of any given body politic, just as with the human body, is directly related to its constitution, in the broadest sense. 36 A healthy social constitution is not to be gained by artificial means but rather by ensuring its basis in nature. Just as Rousseau condemns the artificiality of swaddling babies, which stunts their constitution, 37 so too he sees excessive interference with what he takes to be the natural basis of social life as being injurious to the general health of society. This natural basis is the patriarchal family. Rousseau writes in The Social Contract, 'The oldest of all societies, and the only natural one is that of the family'; which he views as 'the first model of political societies: the head of the state bears the image of the father, the people the image of his children and all, being born free and equal, surrender their freedom only when they see advantage in doing so'. 38 The legitimacy of the social contract is thus assured by an appeal to nature or to a natural order. It is the family that is the basis of social life, which is at the very heart of social life and to suggest the dissolution of the family would, eventually, be to initiate the 34

35 36

37 38

Ibid., p. 325, emphasis added. Ibid., p. 324. Social Contract, op. cit., p. 134. Emile, op. cit., pp. 10-11. Ibid., pp. 142-3.

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dissolution of society itself. A mere convention (the social contract) will not survive without its foundation-stone (the family). Culture would not survive without some connection to nature and social relations between men could not survive without women's subjection in the family. Rousseau's partiality for the useful and the pragmatic also invites a consideration of his observations on slavery. These observations are enlightening when placed alongside his views on the social place and function of women. In The Social Contract, where Rousseau considers the function of slaves in the Greek state, which he so often admired, he asks 'Is freedom to be maintained only with the support of slavery?', and answers 'Perhaps. The two extremes meet. Everything outside nature has its disadvantages, civil society more than all the rest. There are some situations so unfortunate that one can preserve one's freedom only at the expense of the freedom of someone else ... ' 39 The disadvantages of civil society for women involves, on Rousseau's account, the forfeit of their freedom to ensure the freedom between men. In Rousseau's account of the transition from the natural and primitive stages of human development to the more advanced stages, the inevitable conflicts between the cultural and the natural are resolved in three stages. Firstly, by advocating a process of socialisation that promotes the containment of these contrary aspects of human life by making the natural and the passionate the province of women and the cultural and the rational the province of men. Secondly, by an appeal to woman's reproductive capacity, Rousseau presents this division as mirroring nature. Finally, by constructing women as both the natural support for and the possible subverters of cultural life, he justifies their privatisation and exclusion from civic life. The subjection of women to this role is further rationalised by the necessity for reason (or man) to govern passion (or woman). It is the sharp division between the public and the private spheres that lends the appearance of 'common sense' to Rousseau's sexual specification of passion and nature on the one hand, and reason and culture on the other. The advice that Rousseau offers, in Emile, concerning the necessity for constant restraint in a woman's life40 also takes on an added significance. Rousseau recommends the construction of woman as, on the one hand, keeper of socially subversive human passions (she is responsible for both male and female passion) and on the other, as having access to neither privatised passion nor public reason. He constructs her then, as privately dissatisfied and publically subversive. Hence, restraint becomes necessary to control her dissatisfaction and her exclusion from the public sphere becomes necessary to forestall her subversiveness. I have attempted to show that Rousseau's proposals concerning the sexes are quite consistent in the terms of his overall philosophical view. This, of course, does not imply that these terms are justified. It is Wollstonecraft who is the first to challenge these terms. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was specifically written as a 39

Ibid., p. 143.

40

Emile, op. cit., p. 332.

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counterattack on the wide influence of Emile, large sections of it being a detailed analysis of various passages from that text. Wollstonecraft's explicit critique of Rousseau's philosophy of education is limited to his views on the proper social role and function of men and women, and it is this explicit critique that is most prominent to the casual reader of A Vindication. However, a deeper analysis yields a further implicit critique of Rousseau's work that stems from the particular view of the role of reason and passion in human subjectivity that Wollstonecraft supports. That this latter implicit critique is extremely underdeveloped in A Vindication is borne out by Wollstonecraft's failure to capitalise on its implications for both Rousseau's stance and her own. This implicit critique will be examined later. Superficially, A Vindication argues for a 'revolution in female manners', that is, Wollstonecraft is arguing for a revolution in the way in which the female social role is executed rather than a revolution or change in those roles per se. She does not, for example, suggest the reorganisation or dissolution of the split between the public and private spheres; rather she recommends that both spheres be managed according to the same principles. As she writes: 'Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.•n In other words, all human activities should be guided or governed by the same principle: reason. That women do not conduct themselves and their duties rationally may not, she argues, be traced to any innate or natural disposition but rather, to the influence of environment. Her faith in the capacity of the environment to encourage or dwarf the development of reason stems largely from her utilisation of Locke's associational and environmental psychology. Chapter Six of A Vindication, entitled 'The Effect which an Early Association of Ideas has upon the Character', reveals the extent to which Wollstonecraft accepts Locke's tabula rasa conception of consciousness. Her argument, following Locke, is that if you educate girls to be concerned only with their appearance, with trivialities, and with the sensuous, then the result is a woman who is vain, trivial and irrational. This form of female education disadvantages not only women but the entire society as, on Wollstonecraft's account, the excellence or otherwise of a society is reducible to the excellence, or otherwise, of its individual members. A major disagreement between Rousseau and Wollstonecraft concerns what the purpose of education should be. For Rousseau the most important purpose of education is to reconcile the natural with the cultural in such a way that neither is overly compromised. A successful reconciliation of nature and culture ensures, on his account, the stability of the social organisation. This conception of education as the harmonisation of conflicting forces is not one that Wollstonecraft cares to concede. In fact she claims that Rousseau has made a grave error in viewing education in this way. The true purpose of education, according to Wollstonecraft, is to provide the control or 41

Wollstonecraft, M., A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Penguin, London, 1975, p. 139, emphasis added.

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elimination of passion and instinct by reason and in this sense to cultivate the autonomy from nature that reason can provide. This, she argues, represents '. . . the first step to form a being advancing gradually towards perfection' .42 To hinder women from this advancement by improper education is thus not only a sexually specific social injustice, it also retards human progress in general. Contrary to Rousseau, she introduces (or re-introduces) a conception of subjectivity that is in essence sexually neutral. Her conception of the soul and passion holds much more in common with the rationalists than with Rousseau. She argues that all souls are alike in their constitution. As a human being is made up of both a body and a soul, all human beings, regardless of sex, are susceptible to the passions. Since all human beings have a soul they all have the capacity to restrain the passions by the exercise of their rational capacities. Empirical differences between individuals, and especially between the sexes, regarding the dominance of passion or the dominance of reason are wholly, she argues, an effect of environment and education. The notion of instinct and natural order have no positive or directive role to play in Wollstonecraft's writings. Far from thinking that instinct is 'always right', Wollstonecraft, preferring the more passive conception, argues that the passions are part of human nature so that we ' ... by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes . . ."' 3 Wollstonecraft reintroduces the strong distinction between nature and the divine, and clearly, the human subject is located somewhere in between the two. What separates human beings from the rest of nature is the capacity for reason. 44 The explicit critique that Wollstonecraft offers then is double-pronged. Firstly, she argues that essentially all human consciousness starts from the same point, all are equally capable of reason- and secondly, that the apparent differences between people and between the sexes are the result of environment and education. Her response to Emile is to argue that Rousseau is mistaken in claiming a different education, morality and reason for the sexes. Rather, Wollstonecraft argues, ' ... the nature of reason must be the same in all, if it be an emanation of divinity, the tie that connects the creature with the Creator'. 45 She further argues that true virtue and morality are possible only for a being who is rational. The argument of A Vindication thus amounts to the claim that Rousseau's conception of female morality is incoherent. According to Wollstonecraft '. . . the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason'. 46 Since virtue is dependent on reason, it becomes crucial, on her account, to educate both sexes according to the same rational principles. The manifest content of Wollstonecraft's reply to Rousseau is to recommend that the principles that he applies to the education of men be extended to the education of women. 47 42 43 44 45

46 47

Ibid., pp. 142-3. Ibid., p. 91. See ibid., p. Ibid., p. 142. Ibid., p. 316. Ibid., p. 103.

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What she fails to take account of is the integral role of Rousseau's philosophy of education to his overall project. Instead, Wollstonecraft argues that Rousseau's recommendations concerning the education of women arise from his poorly controlled passions. 48 Had she noted the consistency between Rousseau's educative programme, his political treatises, and the underlying view of human nature which informs both his politics and his philosophy of education, her critique would have been more powerful. As it stands the explicit critique that she offers of Rousseau is inadequate to meet certain claims that he makes concerning the necessity to ground the social organisation in nature and his insistence on the necessity to control passion by privatising it. A thorough critique of Rousseau necessitates engaging with these foundational aspects of his philosophy. Wollstonecraft's scattered comments on passion, and particularly on passion between the sexes, indicate her agreement with Rousseau concerning the avoidance or the control of passion. Marriage, for example, she claims, should be based on friendship not sexual passion. 49 She goes so far as to prescribe that 'a master and a mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion. I mean to say that they ought not to indulge those emotions which disturb the order of society .. .'50 However, she offers no useful advice on how passion is to be controlled apart from indicating her faith in the power of a well-developed reason. In this sense her recommendations concerning social roles and social cohesion are much less developed than Rousseau's. A close reading of A Vindication reveals the extent to which Wollstonecraft's conception of human subjectivity differs from Rousseau's. Her implicit critique may be represented as an attempt to undo theoretically what Rousseau had done before. She attempts to desexualise reason and passion, nature and culture; to minimise the importance of sexual difference in the structuring of subjectivity and social role; and to humanise (or sexually neutralise) both the private and the public spheres. Where Rousseau favours a conception of human subjectivity and social organisation that has its basis in instinct and nature, Wollstonecraft favours a conception of human subjectivity and social organisation that has its basis in reason and God. Rousseau seeks a foundation for the body politic in nature whereas Wollstonecraft seeks to found human activity in reason. For Rousseau passion and instinct have a positive and active role in human behaviour and human social organisation. For Wollstonecraft passion is to be overcome or minimised by the activity of reason. The social contract, on her account, requires no further justification than reason. Oppression, whether it be monarchical or patriarchal in character, goes against reason since it hinders not only the development of individuals but of the society as a whole. 5 1 Contrary to Rousseau, who sees the conflicts between culture and nature, reason and passion, as inevitable aspects of human existence, Wollstonecraft 48

49 50

51

See ibid., p. 189. See ibid., pp. 113-114. Ibid., p. 114. See ibid., pp. 99, 126, 293.

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sees human nature as progressing towards a, presumably, conflict-free perfection. 52 Whereas Rousseau would claim to locate the foundation of behavioural sexual differences in nature, W ollstonecraft would claim that these differences are environmental, i.e. they are reducible to the differential education and treatment of the sexes. Wollstonecraft's implicit argument is that the conflicts that Rousseau sees between nature and culture, the man and the citizen, are resolvable by way of reason. Given that, for Wollstonecraft, all individuals possess reason which is the power of discerning truth, 53 and that truth is the same for any individual of either sex, 54 then provided a population is educated adequately, there is no room for conflict. Rationality is a universal standard. Rousseau would certainly see in this view a misplaced optimism concerning the power of reason. If Wollstonecraft's faith in the power of reason were justified it would make redundant the need for a public or judicial ethic. It is on the relation between private morality and public morality that Rousseau and W ollstonecraft disagree most strongly. On Rousseau's account 'The subjecting of man to law is a problem in politics which .. .' can be likened ' ... to that of the squaring of the circle in geometry'. 55 The rights of the individual, for Rousseau, are not always consistent with the necessary social pragmatism involved in the public ethic, and if society is to survive, disruptive private interests must, on his account, be sacrificed to the public good. Rousseau would be extremely sceptical of Wollstonecraft's claim that public virtue is reducible to the sum of private virtues. For him, even though public virtue is dependent on private virtue for its genesis and legitimation, they are, nevertheless, qualitatively different. W ollstonecraft's project of synthesising a civil and a domestic ethic would be as contradictory, for Rousseau, as a square circle. There are some situations, he would argue, that make it impossible for a person to be, for example, a good parent and a good citizen. 56 These roles are sometimes necessarily in conflict. The repercussions, for women, of Rousseau's method of minimising, if not resolving, the social disruptiveness of the asymmetry between public and private interests are considerable. The feminisation of private familial interests and the masculinisation of public interests entails the location of ultimate authority in the public sphere. Rousseau does not claim a logical or analytic connection between passion, nature and woman, on the one hand, and reason, culture and man, on the other, but rather claims that these connections are productions of a rationality which seeks to guarantee social cohesion. His task of privatising and naturalising women is, of course, greatly facilitated by conceptions of women dominant in our culture and in the history of philosophy. Women have long had a very 52 53 54 55

56

See ibid., p. 142. Ibid., p. Ibid., p. 139. From 'Consideration on the Government of Poland' quoted in The First and Second Discourses (eds. R. D. & J. R. Masters) St Martins Press, N.Y., 1964, p. 25. This conflict between private and public interests has historically had much greater significance for women than for men. Freud, in Civilization and its Discontents locates this conflict in Women and their 'hostile attitude towards society' and Hegel in The Phenomenology of Mind uses Antigone as the embodiment of this conflict.

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precarious relation to those aspects of human activity that are considered the epitome of culture- the production of knowledge and the production of value through labour. Rather, women have a long history of being conceptualised as providing the natural and indispensable material basis of civilisation. What is interesting about the interaction between Rousseau and W ollstonecraft is the theoretical connections that run from their debate on women through to contemporary debates in feminist theory. Rousseau's fears concerning the erosion of the family and the effect of this erosion on civilisation are shared by many of our contemporaries. Likewise, W ollstonecraft's equation between sexual equality and sexual neutrality holds much in common with feminist writers ofthe early 1970's. The features which remain most consistent in these lines of thought are: (i) the location of women's difference from men in the consequences of the essential materiality of human life, i.e. what Rousseau would call the 'natural' basis of culture; and (ii) the attempt by feminists to deny, remove or minimise the social import of this materiality-specifically to remove or minimise the sexual asymmetry involved in the social significance of biological reproduction. 57 The first line of thought generates and justifies, as I have tried to show in the analysis of Rousseau, its own rationale for a specific female morality, social role and political function. The second line of thought attempts to create a sexually neutral society and a universal morality which, in fact, involves the collapsing of sexual difference into what has, historically, been associated with masculinity. The creation of alternative modes of conceptualising and living human materiality is a minimal condition of getting beyond the impasse created by these two lines of thought. This would also involve engaging critically with the distinctions between nature and culture, the private and the public and reason and passion. Such an engagement would need to expose and erode both the basis of the overvaluing, in our culture, of masculinity and rationality and the denigration of femininity and passion and emotion. Clearly a simple reversal of the differential value attached to these distinctions, as some radical feminists propose, 58 is not adequate. Neither is it adequate to propose, as many feminists who support a politics of equality do, 59 the absorption of 57

58

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The most extreme version of this view is Firestone's 'cybernetic communism'. See The Dialectic of Sex, Paladin, Englana, 1972, especially Chapter Ten. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer much detail concerning why and in what way this approach is inadequate. My basic objection to the position of some Radical Feminists is their uncritical acceptance of the traditional associations between women, nature and emotion. Susan Griffin, for example, accepts these associations in the following terms: 'We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature'. (From Woman and Nature, N.Y. Harper Colophon, 1980, p. 226.) This approach is perhaps typified by the arguments of many Liberal feminists who see the solution to women's oppression in terms of their progressive approximation to male rights and privileges. SeeS. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, op. cit. It is clear, even in Mill's early articulation of this view in The Subjection of Women, that one of the aims of this approach

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of the under-valued side of these distinctions into the valued side. Both these strategies of feminists reflect an overly passive acceptance of what was termed, at the beginning of this paper, infrastructural aspects of traditional philosophy. In more recent years feminist theory has taken up a more active and interrogative attitude to some of the distinctions and dichotomies that operate at this infrastructural level. 60 What I have tried to indicate in this paper is that the continuation of this active interrogation, at both an infrastructural and a superstructural level, is essential to the viability of feminism.

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is the progressive overcoming of nature and instinct by reason, which involves the premiss that the 'natural' differences between men and women are increasingly eroded by the progress of civilisation. What is objectionable in this view is the implicit equation between masculinity, reason and progress. In other words the presumed future equality between men and women in fact involves· the masculinisation of women. For example, G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason: 'Male' and 'Female' in Western Philosophy, Methuen & Co., London, 1984. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (eds. S. Harding & M. B. Hintikka), Synthese Library, Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1983; Feminism in Canada (eds. G. Finn & A. Miles), Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1982; Feminist Politics and Human Nature, A. M. Jaggar, Rowman & Allanheld, New Jersey, 1983.