Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T02:41:26.559Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Childhood, Growth, and Dependency in Liberal Political Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Laura Wildemann Kane
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political philosophy presents a static conception of childhood as a state of lack, a condition where intellectual, physical, and moral capacities are undeveloped. This view, referred to by David Kennedy as the deficit view of childhood, is problematic because it systematically disparages certain universal features of humanity—dependency and growth—and incorrectly characterizes them as features of childhood only. Thus there is a strict separation between childhood and adulthood because adults are characterized as fully autonomous agents who have reached the end of their moral and cognitive development. I argue that this view is mistaken, and limits both the developmental abilities of adults and ongoing moral development within an organized state. I propose that we view dependency as a human condition. By doing so, children and adults form the kind of relationship with one another that encourages the growth and development of our moral sense in both childhood and adulthood.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Winter 2016 , pp. 156 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 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.)

References

Ariès, Philippe. 1962. Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Aristotle. 1966. Ethics: The nichomachean ethics. Baltimore: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Arneil, Barbara. 2002. Becoming versus being: A critical analysis of the child in liberal theory. In The moral and political status of children, ed. Archard, David and Macleod, Colin M.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Augustine. 2005. Of marriage and concupiscence. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing.Google Scholar
Augustine. 2009. City of God. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers.Google Scholar
Augustine. 2014. Confessions: Books 1‐8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, Joe. 2002. Answering Susan: Liberalism, civic education, and the status of younger persons. In The moral and political status of children, ed. Archard, David and Macleod, Colin M.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1997. Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Duschinsky, Robbie. 2013. Augustine, Rousseau, and the idea of childhood. Heythrop Journal – Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology 54 (1): 77–88.Google Scholar
Eekelaar, John. 1986. The emergence of children's rights. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 6 (2): 161–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elshtain, Jean B. 1981. Public man, private woman: Women in social and political thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Herbert, and Opper, Sylvia. 1979. Piaget's theory of intellectual development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. 1991. Elements of the philosophy of right, ed. Wood, Allen W. and trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, Virginia. 2006. The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 2012. Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, Noel. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, David. 2006. The well of being: Childhood, subjectivity, and education. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva F. 1999. Love's labor: Essays on women, equality, and dependency. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder, Jennings, Bruce, and Wasunna, Angela A. 2005. Dependency, difference and the global ethic of longterm care. Journal of Political Philosophy 13 (4): 443–69.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1946. The second treatise of civil government: And a letter concerning toleration, ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Matthews, Gareth B. 1994. The philosophy of childhood. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Narayan, Uma, and Aaron, Julia J. 1999. Having and raising children: Unconventional families, hard choices, and the social good. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2009. The capabilities of people with cognitive disabilities. Metaphilosophy 40 (3–4): 331–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, gender, and the family. New York: Basic Books, Inc.Google Scholar
Plato. 1968. The republic. Trans. Allan David Bloom. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Plato. 1985. Theaetetus. Trans. John Henry McDowell. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 2005. Political liberalism (expanded edition). New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Riley, Patrick, and Welchman, Jennifer. 2003. Rousseau, Dewey, and democracy. In A companion to the philosophy of education, ed. Curren, Randall R.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 2009. Emile, or, on education: Includes Emile and Sophie, or, the solitaries, ed. and trans. Christopher Kelley and Allan David Bloom. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press.Google Scholar
Schapiro, Tamar. 1999. What is a child? Ethics 109 (4): 715–38.Google Scholar
Scholz, Sally J. 2010. That all children should be free: Beauvoir, Rousseau, and childhood. Hypatia 25 (2): 394–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why we cooperate. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tronto, Joan C. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tronto, Joan C. 2013. Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar