Aristotle objected to Plato’s argument on the grounds that abolishing the
family, rather than ensuring impartial and equal concern for all citizens, will
ensure that nobody cares strongly about anything—but he still held that the
good lies outside the family structure, in the political sphere. Christian
thinkers typically endorsed the Aristotelian view that the family is a necessary
condition for social production and reproduction, but the good life lies in the
‘‘City of God,’’ where just rewards are handed to all those deserving to be in
paradise and the focus of attention is the soul’s relationship with God, not
relationships between particular family members. Traditional liberal thinkers
further enshrined the devaluation of the ‘‘private.’’ In fact, it is diYcult toWnd
any arguments in the Western canon that obligations to the family matter as
much as public or spiritual duties. Those who addressed the issue tended to
explicitly argue in favor of the opposite: The English thinker William Godwin
( 1756 – 1836 ), who believed that only social utility could be justly employed to
adjudicate between the competing claims of individuals, provided the
notorious example of someone being morally compelled to save Archbishop
Fenelon from a burning room instead of a common chambermaid (a being of
less social worth than the Archbishop), even supposing that the chambermaid
had been the rescuer’s mother.
One great contribution of feminist theory has been its focus on the family as
an actual or potential source of virtue. Far from being a secondary ‘‘private’’
sphere, what happens within the structure of family has great impact on
human well-being. It also impacts on what happens in other spheres, and
largely explains the subordination of women in economic and political life. So
long as women are treated as subordinate within the family, and denied the
equal opportunity to develop their talents, they will be subordinate outside the
family as well. Hence the feminist slogan, ‘‘the personal is the political.’’
The impact of feminist theory on Western ethics and practice is perhaps
the most dramatic development in contemporary Western political theory.
Few political thinkers in Western societies question the need to treat women
as equals within the family and to structure society so as to allow for women’s
equality in diVerent realms. Still, there remain many disputes and questions
regarding the role of the family in promoting human well-being, the impli-
cations of the various family practices for women’s interests outside the
family, and the kinds of public policies that best encourage healthy family
life and the overall well-being of women and children. As a result, some
Western political theorists, including feminist theorists, have looked to East
Asian political theories, Confucianism in particular, for inspiration.
confucianism and anglo-american political theory 271