ABSTRACT
When she died in 1996 at the age of forty-two, Jean Hampton left behind a substantial body of work, comprising two monographs, one co-authored book, an unfi nished manuscript that would be published posthumously1 and many articles. Not all of her oeuvre concerned feminism however, so these chapters confi ne themselves to those components that do. e separate, but interesting, question of how Hampton’s feminist liberalism informs, is informed by or comports with the positions outlined in her other writings on topics such as jurisprudence is not examined here.2 is chapter begins with Hampton’s best-known feminist writing, “Feminist Contractarianism” (FC). It goes on to consider her relation to the ethic of care, portraying her use of the contract device as a way of making the ethic of care more consistently and robustly caring. e next section argues, however, that the contractarian apparatus is not essential for Hampton’s purposes: the real normative and theoretical work is done by her belief in the intrinsic worth of each person that should be respected in most human association.
