CHAPTER 9 Feminist Social and Political Philosophy Elizabeth Edenberg Postdoctoral Fellow, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University, Washington, DC Emily McGill-Rutherford Assistant Professor of Philosophy Keene State College, NH On July 4, 1776, delegates to the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, freeing Britain’s American colonies from tyrannical rule. Its most famous passage is familiar to many of us: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration goes on to claim that governments among men should be democratic and that mankind is meant to be free. At the bottom of the document are the signatures of fifty-six men, America’s Founding Fathers. But where are the women? In signing the Declaration, the founders are making a specific moral claim about government: democracy is better than tyranny because democratic government is based on the consent of the governed. This claim reflects several central themes in contemporary political philosophy. For example, what role should the government play in our daily lives? And what exactly does it mean to say that citizens consent to be governed? Do we consent by voting in elections? If so, what if we don’t vote for the people who win? What if we think their laws are unfair? For feminists, the founders’ claim raises a further question: if men are created equal, if governments among men should be democratic and mankind is meant to be free, and if these self-evident truths are handed down to us by our Founding Fathers, what does this say about the political status of women? Aren’t women free and equal too? Obviously, a lot of time has passed since 1776. But the androcentrism of the Declaration of Independence is still present in our current political world, as are sex-based inequality, domination, and oppression. The goal of this chapter is to explore how contemporary feminist philosophers have contributed to ongoing debates in social and political philosophy. Specifically, the chapter discusses how feminist philosophers answer the following three questions. First, who are the subjects of political philosophy? When we talk about government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” to quote Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg 215 COPYRIGHT 2017 Macmillan Reference USA, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company WCN 02-200-210