The Rights of Woman and Their Afterlives: A Narrative Review of Feminist Philosophy from Wollstonecraft to Living a Feminist Life

Abstract

Feminist philosophy---the philosophy whose subject is the woman's condition and whose method is the critique of the given---moved from Wollstonecraft's 1792 vindication and Mill's subjection and Beauvoir's second sex through Millett's sexual politics, Firestone's dialectic, hooks's and Collins's black feminism, and Okin's justice to MacKinnon's state theory, Butler's gender trouble, Harding's science question, and Ahmed's living a feminist life. This article presents a narrative review of that arc's canonical line: Wollstonecraft's 1792 Vindication, Mill's 1869 Subjection of Women, Beauvoir's 1949 Le Deuxieme Sexe, Millett's 1970 Sexual Politics, Firestone's 1970 Dialectic of Sex, hooks's 1981 Ain't I a Woman, Harding's 1986 Science Question, Okin's 1989 Justice, Gender, and the Family, MacKinnon's 1989 Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Collins's 1990 Black Feminist Thought, Butler's 1990 Gender Trouble, and Ahmed's 2017 Living a Feminist Life. The review is organized around three themes: the rights' founders, in which the vindication's education, the subjection's chains, and the second sex's becoming made the woman's condition the philosophy's; the radical and the intersectional, in which the politics's, the dialectic's, the margins's, and the matrix's dominations multiplied the feminism's voices; and the theory's turn, in which the state's dominance, the gender's performativity, the family's justice, the science's question, and the life's living reorganized the discipline's tools. It is concluded that feminist philosophy is the philosophy's conscience---and that its arc is the woman's question's widening from the rights to the structures to the life.