ABSTRACT
In this introduction to the section on contemporary feminist perspectives on the social contract, I start with Carole Pateman and her paradigmatic analysis of the social contract theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. She asks why it is that, from Locke onwards, their attacks on political theories, which were based upon an assumption that subordination was natural, did not extend to women. In comparison to those feminists influenced by Kant, she rejects the approach of asking “what would hypothetical people agree to?” in favour of asking real people within a participative democracy. I will then return to the way that these questions are employed in the work of continental philosopher, Drucilla Cornell and, analytic philosopher, Jean Hampton, whose work is considered in detail in the next chapter. I will finish by considering Charles Mills’ racial contract in relation to Susan Moller Okin’s correction of Rawls; and Pateman, Monique Wittig, and Paul Preciado on the “heterosexual contract,” which is discussed further in Chapter 8.
