Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:49:21.349Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

What Nature Makes of Her: Kant's Gendered Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Abstract

Women's exclusion from political enfranchisement in Kant's political writings has frequently been noted in the literature, and yet has not been closely scrutinized. More often than not, commentators suggest that this reflects little more than Kant's sharing in the prejudices of his era. This paper argues that, for Kant, women's civil incapacities stem from defects relating to their capacities as moral agents, and more specifically, to his teleological account of the conditions within which we, as imperfect beings, develop our moral capacities. Women are not incidentally or tangentially excluded from the boundaries of political and moral agency, but rather must adopt an explicitly nonmoral character if we are to understand humanity as moving toward its naturally given, moral ends. I argue (1) that Kant's teleological view of human development requires women to develop an explicitly nonmoral character; (2) that this teleology is inextricable from his view of the moral agency that human—and not merely rational—beings are capable of; and (3) that taken together, these suggest that women's subordinate status is internally connected to Kant's view of moral personhood.

Type
Open Issue Content
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Kiran Banerjee, Lisa Ellis, Alex Livingston, Chris Meckstroth, and the journal's two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

References

Aristotle. 1958. The politics of Aristotle, ed. and trans. Ernest Barker. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert. 2001. Who invented the concept of race? Kant's role in the enlightenment construction of race. In Race, ed. Bernasconi, Robert. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Cooke, Vincent M. 1991. Kant, teleology, and sexual ethics. International Philosophical Quarterly (31): 313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1986. Kant and rational politics: Woman as a suspect category. In Meditations of modern political thought: Masculine/feminine themes from Luther to Arendt. New York: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Frierson, Patrick. 2003a. Freedom and anthropology in Kant's moral philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frierson, Patrick. 2003b. Moral anthropology in contemporary neokantian ethics. Presented at the Kantian Ethics Conference at the University of San Diego on Jan. 16, 2003. For a video of the paper presentation, see http://ethics.sandiego.edu/video/USD/Kant2003/Frierson/index.html (accessed January 2, 2012).Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara. 1993. The practice of moral judgment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1965. Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime. Trans. John T. Goldthwait. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1987. Critique of judgment, ed. Pluhar, Werner S.Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. The metaphysics of morals. In Practical philosophy, ed. and trans. Gregor, Mary J.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1997. Lectures on ethics, ed. Heath, Peter and Schneewind, J. B., trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 2006. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, ed. and trans. Louden, Robert. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klinger, Cornelia. 1997. The concepts of the sublime and the beautiful in Kant and Lyotard. In Feminist interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Schott, Robin May. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Kofman, Sarah. 1982. The economy of respect: Kant and respect for women. Social Research (49): 383404.Google Scholar
Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant: A biography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuehn, Manfred. 2006. Introduction. In Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, ed. and trans. Louden, Robert. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
La Vopa, Anthony J. 2005. Thinking about marriage: Kant's liberalism and the peculiar morality of conjugal union. Journal of Modern History (77): 3334.Google Scholar
Louden, Robert. 2000. Kant's impure ethics: From rational beings to human beings. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas. 2009. Race, empire, and the idea of human development. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1982. Women and the making of the sentimental family. Philosophy and Public Affairs (11): 6588.Google Scholar
Rumsey, Jean P. 1989. The development of character in Kantian moral theory. Journal of the History of Philosophy (27): 247–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumsey, Jean P. 1997. Re‐visions of agency in Kant's moral theory. In Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Schott, Robin May. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Schott, Robin May. 1998. Feminism and Kant: Antipathy or sympathy? In Autonomy and community: readings in contemporary Kantian social philosophy, ed. Kneller, Jane and Axinn, Sidney. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Schröder, Hannelore. 1997. Kant's patriarchal order. In Feminist interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Schott, Robin May. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Sally. 1997. Can Kant's ethics survive feminist critique? In Feminist interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Schott, Robin May. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Shell, Susan Meld. 2003. Kant's “true economy of human nature.” In Essays on Kant's Anthropology, ed. Kain, Patrick and Jacobs, Brian. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sherman, Nancy. 1997. Kantian virtue: Priggish or passional? In Reclaiming the history of ethics: Essays for John Rawls, ed. Reath, Andrews, Herman, Barbara and Korsgaard, Christine. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Holly. 1998. Kant's evolutionary theory of marriage. In Autonomy and community: Readings in contemporary Kantian social philosophy, ed. Kneller, Jane and Axinn, Sidney. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen. 1999. Kant's ethical thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar