In Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls, Ruth Abbey collects eight essays responding to the work of John Rawls from a feminist perspective. An impressive introduction by the editor provides a chronological overview of English-language feminist engagements with Rawls from his Theory of Justice onward. Abbey surveys the range of issues canvassed by feminist readers of Rawls, as well as critics’ wide disagreement about the value of Rawls’s corpus for feminist purposes. The eight essays that follow testify to the continuing ambivalence among feminist readers of Rawls. From the perspectives of political theory and moral, social, and political philosophy, the contributors address particular aspects of Rawls’s work and apply it to a variety of worldly practices relating to gender inequality and the family, to the construction of disability, to justice in everyday relationships, and to human rights on an international level. The overall effect is to give a sense of the broad spectrum of possible feminist critical responses to Rawls, ranging from rejection to adoption.
Aside from the editor, the contributors are Amy R. Baehr, Eileen Hunt Botting, Elizabeth Brake, Clare Chambers, Nancy J. Hirschmann, Anthony Simon Laden, Janice Richardson, and Lisa H. Schwartzman.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Biography of a Bibliography: Three Decades of Feminist Response to Rawls
Ruth Abbey
1 Radical Liberals, Reasonable Feminists: Reason, Power, and Objectivity in MacKinnon and Rawls
Anthony Simon Laden
2 Feminism, Method, and Rawlsian Abstraction
Lisa H. Schwartzman
3 Rereading Rawls on Self-Respect: Feminism, Family Law, and the Social Bases of Self-Respect
Elizabeth Brake
4 “The Family as a Basic Institution”: A Feminist Analysis of the Basic Structure as Subject
Clare Chambers
5 Rawls, Freedom, and Disability: A Feminist Rereading
Nancy J. Hirschmann
6 Rawls on International Justice
Eileen Hunt Botting
7 Jean Hampton’s Reworking of Rawls: Is “Feminist Contractarianism” Useful for Feminism?
Janice Richardson
8 Liberal Feminism: Comprehensive and Political
Amy R. Baehr
References
List of Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Ruth Abbey is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
Review :
“This volume provides readers with a series of diverse, refreshingly open-minded, and very insightful feminist perspectives on the works of John Rawls. The essays are impressive on their own. Together they expand the parameters of feminist philosophy.”
—Marion Smiley, Brandeis University
“This is an extensive and very important collection that covers both the feminist potential of Rawls’s theory and the major trends in liberal feminism. The emergence of feminism as a public political philosophy will owe a great deal to Ruth Abbey’s careful and balanced presentation and to her choice of thought-provoking contributors who all engage in serious critical debates with Rawls’s main conceptions.”
—Catherine Audard, London School of Economics
