ABSTRACT
What makes Hampton’s contractarianism feminist according to Sample (2002: 266) is its extension to relationships in the private sphere. In this sense, Hampton follows feminist critics of liberalism by interrogating the publicprivate (or public-domestic) separation. Invoking the contractarian test as a way of identifying exploitation, dominance, disrespect or injustice in personal relationships, she is in eff ect proposing that many of the same values apply to each realm. As Hampton declares, liberal arguments “require that all social arrangements, to be morally acceptable, must be morally acceptable from the individual standpoint” (1997a: 188). is suggests that if a value or practice threatens or transgresses liberal values, this creates a problem wherever it occurs. Pressure is placed on any strong normative separation between the public and domestic realms when Hampton uses traditionally liberal terminology to describe rape, spousal abuse and unfair divisions of domestic labour as “equality-denying and liberty-limiting social practices” (1996: 17; 1997a: 197). She warns that “unless this wrongness [of the subordinating use
of sex] is addressed, it threatens the values of freedom and equality that are taken to be the hallmarks of liberal states such as ours” (DWDR: 152). While Hampton is not going so far as to say that there are no diff erences between the two spheres, the public-domestic distinction does not license the neglect or overriding of central liberal values such as liberty, equality and respect in the household.
