Before "Care": Marietta Kies, Lucia Ames Mead, and Feminist Political Theory

Marietta Kies and Lucia Ames Mead were two late nineteenth-century thinkers who anticipated the late twentieth-century feminist "ethic of care." Kies drew on Hegel's philosophy to develop a political theory of altruism. Ames Mead adopted Kant's theory of peace and established a pacifist theory based on international cooperation. Both Kies and Mead insisted that the prototypically "feminine" ideals they espoused are rational, not emotional, responses to modern political life, and are essential to good political practice. Kies was a member of the early Hegelian movement and Christian Socialist movement. Ames Mead was a member of the Woman's Peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and an early proponent of the League of Nations.