Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes

Chapter 8: When Is a Contract Theorist Not a Contract Theorist?: Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulayas Critics of Thomas Hobbes

8 When Is a Contract Theorist Not a Contract Theorist? Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay as Critics of Thomas Hobbes Karen Green Thomas Hobbes’s version of social contract theory has played an important part in twentieth-century feminist critiques of liberalism. Despite the clear historical roots of contemporary feminism in eighteenthcentury republicanism, and in those tendencies that led to the rise of liberal democratic institutions, feminist philosophers, since the 1980s, have developed a critique of liberalism based on a reading of its origins that accepts that commitment to social contract theory implies commitment to a Hobbesian, egoistic, instrumental rationality. Alison Jaggar, for instance, asserted in her influential overview of feminist political theory, published in 1983, that ‘‘liberal theorists assume that all individuals tend towards egoism, even though they may be capable of a greater or lesser degree of limited altruism.’’1 The first strand of the feminist critique of 170 Hobbes and His(torical) Women liberalism rejects this psychological egoism, which, it is assumed, grounds contract theory. Slightly earlier, Carole Pateman and the late Teresa Brennan had also criticized liberal social contract theory, basing their arguments on a close reading of Hobbes.2 Pateman subsequently argued that the social contract is in reality a ‘‘fraternal social contract’’ forged between men for the sake of sexual access to women.3 It cannot, therefore, provide the basis for a coherent feminist politics. The importance of Hobbes for these feminist critics is that his arguments both ground contract theory, as it is usually characterized, and demonstrate that actual contractual relationships may be no better than relationships of submission and domination. Taking off from Marxist critiques of the employment contract as establishing wage slavery, Pateman argues that other contracts, such as marriage or prostitution , which are represented by contract theorists as entered into by free individuals, are in fact mechanisms for masking relations of domination and subordination and are ‘‘tainted by the odor of slavery.’’4 In this chapter, I raise some doubts about the general validity of these feminist critiques of liberalism by questioning the centrality of Hobbes’s philosophy for historical women writing in the liberal democratic tradition . When we turn to read the texts written by actual women with republican leanings during the eighteenth century, we find both reference to the social contract and a clear rejection of Hobbes’s theory of human nature. This is particularly true of Catharine Macaulay, whose political thought will be the subject of the second half of this chapter. This raises the question of whether the standard account of the origins of liberal social contract theory is accurate. It suggests, at least, that this critique is grounded in, at best, a partial account of historical liberal traditions. In fact, early liberal feminists shared with their illiberal sisters a rejection of psychological egoism and a belief in a God who has made us by nature sociable creatures, who are at least potentially disposed to act virtuously.5 The most influential eighteenth-century female democrat , and ancestress of the liberal feminist tradition, Catharine Macaulay was a severe critic of Hobbes.6 Her multivolume republican history of England was popular in England and the American colonies prior to the American Revolution, and it was translated into French during the first years of the French Revolution. Since she exerted a direct influence on Mary Wollstonecraft, an appreciation of her philosophical views is important for understanding the historical roots of liberal feminism. Astell and Macaulay as Critics 171 Macaulay was not the only eighteenth-century female political thinker who rejected Hobbesian assumptions. More than fifty years earlier, Mary Astell had also made disparaging remarks about his views and about social contract theory in general, which, according to two recent commentators , anticipate modern feminist critiques.7 Yet, although Astell has been called a feminist, even her defenders acknowledge that her conservatism makes it difficult for modern feminists to identify with her.8 Macaulay more clearly anticipates modern feminism, for while she shares a good deal of Astell’s general outlook and has similar assumptions about God and humanity, she also manages to erect a democratic edifice on these foundations. Thus, she bases her social contract theory on assumptions quite different from the problematic egoism of Hobbes.9 An unalloyed defense of feminist contract theory won’t emerge from the political theory built up on this basis, for atheistic liberals will find Macaulay’s...