Online research in philosophy

The social history of childhood usually identifies Rousseau as the origin of our contemporary understanding of the topic. The literature describes how Rousseau's notion of childhood as a time of natural innocence became embedded in key social forms such as the family and universal education. Scholars working in the history of political thought, however, have uncovered a fundamental relationship between Rousseau and Augustine. Analysis shows that Rousseau's philosophy of childhood recapitulates many Augustinian elements, and was not therefore an ex nihilo creation.

This essay offers a reading of Rousseau and Durkheim against the background of the current debate between those labeled liberals and those labeled communitarians. I show how the present false option of the debate (defend "the individual" or protect "the community") deflects our thought from a more promising direction that attempts to relate--not merely juxtapose--liberalism to communitarianism. Both Rousseau and Durkheim offer a middle way between liberalism and communitarianism, thereby rescuing us from the forced option. Durkheim's middle way, however, unlike Rousseau's, fails to address the contingent yet seemingly irradicable tension between the private and public in liberal society. I conclude by championing Rousseau over Durkheim precisely because Rousseau is willing to entertain such friction.

The present paper aims to analyze Okin’s critique of Rawls’s theory of justice via a held argumentative dialogue. This critique is centred on Rawls’s dichotomy between public and private sphere, and its commitment to a purely political liberalism, both hindering the application of justice within the family. Hence, gender inequality is not inhibited at its origin, at the level of the patriarchal family. In order to achieve this inhibition, Okin aspires to use Rawls’s theory of justice as an epitome in a pro modo manner, so that the personal becomes the political. With the aim to apply justice directly within the family, this paper argues that Okin’s critique emphasizes the imperative for the Rawlsian theory of justice to be reconstructed as a teleological comprehensive liberal model. The form that public action should take will be critically analyzed. It will help to sustain the need to deconstruct gender as a nomos inherently responsible for hierarchical relations. With this aim, this paper has developed a new feminism, the so-called “feminism of opposition”. In addition, it will be evidenciated that the political and the private must form a symbiosis governed by the prerequisite of “the moral point of view”, enabling impartiality and autonomy.

The present paper aims to analyze Okin’s critique of Rawls’s theory of justice via a held argumentative dialogue. This critique is centred on Rawls’s dichotomy between public and private sphere, and its commitment to a purely political liberalism, both hindering the application of justice within the family. Hence, gender inequality is not inhibited at its origin, at the level of the patriarchal family. In order to achieve this inhibition, Okin aspires to use Rawls’s theory of justice as an epitome in a pro modo manner, so that the personal becomes the political. With the aim to apply justice directly within the family, this paper argues that Okin’s critique emphasizes the imperative for the Rawlsian theory of justice to be reconstructed as a teleological comprehensive liberal model. The form that public action should take will be critically analyzed. It will help to sustain the need to deconstruct gender as a nomos inherently responsible for hierarchical relations. With this aim, this paper has developed a new feminism, the so-called “feminism of opposition”. In addition, it will be evidenciated that the political and the private must form a symbiosis governed by the prerequisite of “the moral point of view”, enabling impartiality and autonomy.

Feminist thinkers have long criticized liberal theory’s public/private distinction for perpetuating indifference to injustices within the family. Thinkers such as Susan Okin have extended this criticism in evaluating the theory of political liberalism, suggesting that this theory’s reliance on a public conception of citizenship renders it indifferent to the way in which the internal politics of the family can undermine equality.However, I argue in this article that the feminist concern to ensure equality within the domestic sphere can in fact be incorporated into a reconstructed account of political liberalism. Central to my strong public reconstruction is the principle of publicly justifiable privacy, according to which the public/private distinction itselfmust be formulated with reference to the values of free and equal citizenship. On my account, the public values of citizenship should figure prominently in evaluations of family life. This reformulation of the public/private distinction answers feminist critics who suggest that political liberalism fails to offer a politics of the personal.