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TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, and ARENDT on WOMEN's ROLE a Dissertation FREEING WOMEN: TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, AND ARENDT ON WOMEN’S ROLE A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By Lorraine E. Krall, M.A. Washington, D.C. August 28, 2012 Copyright 2012 by Lorraine E. Krall All Rights Reserved ii FREEING WOMEN: TOCQUEVILLE, MILL, AND ARENDT ON WOMEN’S ROLE Lorraine E. Krall, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Patrick Deneen, Ph.D. ABSTRACT As modern democracies pushed to expand suffrage, they encountered the gendered public/private split, eliciting new theories about the role of women: Alexis de Tocqueville advocates women restricting themselves to the home in order to have a stronger, indirect political impact. John Stuart Mill conversely maintains that women should be equal to men and free to participate in public life; he largely leaves out the family in his analysis. After women’s suffrage was an established fact, women began to seek not only political rights, but also social equality, asking if sexual difference was natural and how separate public and private ought to be. Hannah Arendt brings the concerns of Mill and Tocqueville to bear on the developing question of the role of women. She argues that public and private spheres should remain separate, but ungendered: women, like men, should participate in politics; however, they should not seek equality in every sphere of life. In the process of considering what it means for women to be free and the limits of their freedom, Tocqueville, Mill and Arendt draw upon and adjust the categories of nature and custom, sometimes discarding them altogether. They see freedom as situated within both political participation and other iii associations, including the family. Insight into this modern question of women’s role can be found by looking back to the ancients: Aristotle understands the need for a plurality of interrelated associations in society, including the polis and the household. He also sees that human nature, habits, and freedom are interwoven. And he recognizes that despite the private role of women in his age, they nevertheless shared in human nature and political potential in the same way men do. These concerns continue to be relevant in contemporary life: civic republican recognition of a need for political participation has much to offer liberalism. The best advocates of public freedom praise it without denigrating private life, affirming the family and other forms of civil association. For both women and men, sustainable freedom is bounded—situated within civic and political associations and shaped by nature and custom. iv To my family, in spite of all your graduate school teasing, especially Kathryn, who always gives the best advice, and to Lewis--no one should have to date someone who is writing a dissertation. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The process of writing this dissertation has given rise to many debts, which it is my privilege to acknowledge. First, I am grateful for the work of my committee members, Patrick Deneen, Joshua Mitchell, Jean Elshtain, Peter Lawler, and Arlene Saxonhouse, for reading this dissertation and for your frequent conversations with me about its contents. Your insights have stimulated my own thinking. In addition, I want to thank my colleagues at Georgetown, many of whom have read various pieces of this dissertation and been part of the conversations from which these ideas arose. Particularly, I want to thank Paula Olearnik, Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, Julia Schwarz, Karen Rupprecht, and Lewis McCrary. I am grateful to Kathryn Krall for reading, editing, and discussing the entire dissertation with me. Thanks also to John Lee, Joe Prever, and Emily Krall for your editorial assistance. I want to thank the organizations whose generous funding eased that financial burdens of graduate school and permitted the timely completion of this dissertation: the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Tocqueville Forum, the Earhart Foundation, and the Acton Institute. vi Many thanks to my family for your patience and support during this project and for always offering me a room with a view in which to work. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Tocqueville: Democracy and the Domestic ................................................................... 19 Chapter 2 Mill’s Woman: Mind, Individuality and Equality ......................................................... 63 Chapter 3 Women in Dark Times: Natality, Plurality, and the Pariah in Hannah Arendt……… 102 Chapter 4 The Ancient Answer to the Contemporary Problem: Aristotle on Women, Nature, Custom and Reason………………………………………………………………….. 140 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………… 186 Works Cited ................................................................................................................. 192 viii INTRODUCTION “The freedom of society is thus made necessary by the fact that human vitalities have no simply definable limits. The restraints which all human communities place upon human impulses and ambitions are made necessary by the fact that all man’s vitalities tend to defy any defined limits. But since the community may as easily become inordinate in its passion for order, as may the various forces in the community in their passion for freedom, it is necessary to preserve a proper balance between both principles, and to be as ready to champion the individual against the community as the community against the individual.” —Reinhold Niebuhr1 Today women’s political and social rights are mostly established, although discrimination and the force of public opinion still hinder women from pursuing some vocations and activities. Nevertheless, women are engaged in both public and private life. Couples pursue creative solutions to balance their public and private commitments; sometimes men stay at home or work part-time to contribute to the care of the children. These developments are laudable, but women’s role is not by any means settled. Contemporary debates over issues like attachment parenting and breast-feeding show that how women balance their public and private roles is still at the forefront of the public imagination. This dissertation examines women in their private and public roles, asking what can be done to ensure freedom for women. I examine the move of women from subject to citizen through political participation and the broader implications of this transition for politics. Given the potential for changes to the democratic political order to be disruptive, I examine the reflections of Tocqueville and Mill on who should enter politics, as well as Arendt’s reflections on how women ought to engage in political life once they are there. My concern, 1 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 76–78. 1 also a priority of Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt, is ensuring that once women gain political freedom, they not be transformed from citizens back to subjects. The insights that these three thinkers offer regarding the transition to the right of women to participate in politics, and the change in what the content of that political participation includes, are applicable today as we ask how to preserve women’s citizenship. Because public and private cannot be completely and neatly separated, understanding what women’s public freedom involves requires defining women’s role in the family and the good of the individual. There are two primary elements present in this dissertation: first, a consideration of the accounts of women’s freedom seen in Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt; second, an examination of the theoretical underpinnings of their position. These two elements are mutually enlightening: the foundations of these thinkers’ positions enlighten their view of women; in addition, looking at something as concrete as their view of women provides an entry point for us to better understand their theoretical grounds for freedom. Moreover, critically examining their theoretical foundations allows me to propose an alternative basis for women’s public participation. I am attentive to the way in which Tocqueville, Mill, and Arendt found their notions of women’s freedom on nature and history. Freedom, even in the most laissez-faire of political systems, is never entirely unrestricted. There are limits on human freedom, including from non-political sources. One of these limits is from what we call “nature,” which refers to restrictions on our freedom that are rooted in the order of things that exists apart from human intervention. James Ceaser writes of nature, “Roughly speaking, a foundation in nature provides justification by reference to something in the structure of reality as it can be 2 accessed by reason.”2 This involves “something unchanging or permanent, which can provide a standard of right.”3 “History” is also a restriction on human freedom: “A foundation in History offers ultimate explanation or justification by situating things in the flow of time.”4 History has been understood in a variety of ways. Ceaser identifies three forms of history: sacred history, customary history and philosophy of history.5 I focus primarily on customary history and philosophy of history, as these are the forms of historical thinking that arise in Tocqueville, Mill and Arendt.6 Customary history,
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