Rethinking the paradox of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s sexual politics: From woman’s alienation, psychological oppression and bad faith to liberty

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important thinkers on the topics of social freedom and inequality, and his views of these matters are typically taken to be progressive. However, Rousseau's views on women sit in tension with his philosophy of freedom and equality. On the one hand, Rousseau argues that women are naturally equal to men. On the other hand, he sees women not as potential citizens but as the servants of men. This presents the interpreter of Rousseau with something of a paradox: Rousseau is the philosopher of freedom for men and yet the philosopher of servitude for women. I will argue in this thesis that there is no paradox here if we see Rousseau as interested only in the freedom and equality of men. I shall argue thatwomen are, for Rousseau, the means to an end.

In Chapter I of this project, I will show that Rousseau's sexual politics is grounded on his identity politics, or his version of essentialism. In Chapter II, I will show that Rousseau's definitive philosophical project is the restoration and maximization of man's liberty, and I will show that woman's place in Rousseau's philosophical project is with regard to the restoration of virtue and the family. In Chapter III, I will illuminate the psychological implications of Rousseau's theoretical treatise on woman in his unfinished novel Les Solitaires and Gustave Flaubert's social commentary, Madame Bovary. In Chapter IV, I will illuminate logical problems for essentialism (or identity politics) and I will propose a philosophy of liberation for women that integrates Simone de Beauvoir's account of liberty and Rousseau's various senses of liberty, perfectibilité, and pitié.