Search
Submit an article RU
Kantian Journal

2025 Vol. 44. №3

Back to the list Download the article
ENG
Сохранить XML для: JATS (вып.)
RUS
Сохранить XML для: JATS (вып.)
Sánchez Madrid N.

Kant and Gender Oppression: Privileged Eighteenth-Century Women, ‘Indirect Domination’ and Gender Emancipation

DOI
10.5922/0207-6918-2025-3-1
Pages
7-42
Kant women sexism gender oppression domination caregiving

Abstract

This paper critically addresses the unwitting gender oppression underpinning Kant’s anthropological and legal approach to domestic labour, highlighting the helpfulness of his analysis of reproductive tasks for casting light on some of the historical causes behind the current view of such labour. With this general aim in mind, I first address the multiple meanings of the term ‘social domination’ as it is used in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Second, I focus on the figurative sense Kant assigns to this term in his account of the domestic order in the section ‘The Character of Sex’ from the same essay. Third, I highlight the social class biases that determine Kant’s examination of the role that women play in bourgeois families, where they are expected to outsource their caregiving and childrearing tasks thanks to the patrimony their husbands have accumulated. Finally, I draw some conclusions regarding the social agency that Kant considers available to women, suggesting that his account prioritises the privileged circumstances of wealthy women in eighteenth-century Prussia, neglects key challenges faced by more vulnerable groups in his time, and fails to support the extension of citizenship rights to the entire commonwealth.

Reference

Anderson, E., 2017. Private Government. How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It). Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press.

Brace, L., 2002. The Tragedy of the Freelance Hustler: Hegel, Gender and Civil Society. Contemporary Political Theory, 1, pp. 329-347.

Brosch, A., 2024. Haus, Markt, Staat. Ökonomie in Kants praktischer Philosophie und Anthropologie. Berlin & Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

Davis, A., 1983. Women, Race & Class. New York: Vintage Books.

Deyo, D., 2016. Jane Austen and the economic way of thinking. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 7(2), pp. 170-182.

Foucault, M., 2008. Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology. Edited by R. Nigro, translated by R. Nigro and K. Briggs. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Fraser, N., 2022. Cannibal Capitalism. How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet — and What We Can Do about It, New York & London: Verso.

Fricker, M., 2007. Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frierson, P., 2017. Kant’s Empirical Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hay, Carol, 2013. Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression. Cham: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Heller, A., 1985. Can “True” and “False” Needs be Posited? In: A. Heller, 1985. The Power of Shame. London: Routledge, pp. 285-298.

Hippel, T. G. von, 1792. Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber. Berlin: Voß, 1792.

Hippel, T. G. von, 1979. On Improving the Status of Women. Translated and edited by T. F. Sellner. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Honneth, A., 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Translated by J. Anderson. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hume, R. D., 2013. Money in Jane Austen. The Review of English Studies, 64(264), pp. 289-310.

Huseyinzadegan, D., 2018. For What Can the Kant­ian Feminist Hope? Constructive Complicity in Appropriations of the Canon. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 4(1), pp. 1-25.

Kant, I., 1996a. Metaphysics of Morals. In: I. Kant, 1996. Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 365-603.

Kant, I., 1996b. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In: I. Kant, 1996. Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37-108.

Kant, I., 1996c. On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice. In: I. Kant, 1996. Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 273-309.

Kant, I., 1996d. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? In: I. Kant, 1996. Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15-22.

Kant, I., 1996e. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In: I. Kant, 1996. Religion and Rational Theology. Translated and edited by A.W. Wood and G. di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 54-215.

Kant, I., 1997. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by P. Heath, edited by P. Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I., 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Edited and translated by R. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I., 2012a. Lecture of the Winter Semester 1775—1776 based on the transcriptions Friedländer 3.3 (Ms 400), Friedländer 2 (Ms 399) and Prieger. Translated by G. Felicitas Munzel. In: I. Kant, 2012. Lectures on Anthropology. Translated and edited by R. Clewis, R. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 43-255.

Kant, I., 2012b. Lecture of the Winter Semester 1781/82 [?] based on the transcriptions Menschenkunde, Petersburg. Translated by R.B. Louden. In: I. Kant, 2012. Lectures on Anthropology. Translated and edited by R. Clewis, R. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 289-333.

Kant, I., 2012c. Lecture of the Winter semester 1784-1785 Based on the Transcription Mrongovius, Marienburg. Translated by R. Clewis. In: I. Kant, 2012. Lectures on Anthropology. Translated and edited by R. Clewis, R. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 339-509.

Kant, I., 2016. Drafts for the ‘Metaphysics of Morals’. Translated by K.R. Westphal. In: I. Kant, 2016. Lectures and Drafts on Political Philosophy. Translated and edited by F. Rauscher and K. R. Westphal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233-358.

Khader, S. J., 2011. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Laitinen, A., 2015. Social Pathologies, Reflexive Pathologies, and the Idea of Higher-Order Disorders. Studies in Social and Political Thought, 1, pp. 44-65.

Laitinen, A. and Särkelä, A., 2019. Four conceptions of social pathology. European Journal of Social Theory, 22(1), pp. 80-102.

Lenczewska, O., 2025. Karolina on Confining Women to Domestic Labor and Private Reason. In: R. Maliks & E. Widmer, eds. 2025. Kant’s Early Followers in Political Philosophy. London: Routledge, pp. 90-113.

Lorini, G. and Louden, R., eds. 2018. Knowledge, Morals, and Practice in Kant’s Anthropology. Cham: Palgrave McMillan.

Louden, R., 2000. Kant’s Impure Ethics: from Rational Beings to Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford U.P.

Morini, C., 2020/21. Life is Mine. Feminism, Self-Determination, and Basic Income. Radical Philosophy, 2(9), pp. 75-80.

Pascoe, J., 2015. Domestic Labour, Citizenship, and Exceptionalism: Rethinking Kant’s “Woman Problem”. Journal of Social Philosophy, 46(3), pp. 340-356.

Pascoe, J., 2017. Working Women and Monstrous Mothers: Kant, Marx, and the Valuation of Domestic Labour. Kantian Review, 22(4), pp. 599-618.

Pascoe, J., 2018. A Universal Estate: Kant and Marriage Equality. In: L. Krasnoff, N. Sánchez Madrid and P. Satne, eds. 2018. Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the 21st Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 220-240.

Pascoe, J., 2022. Kant’s Theory of Labour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pascoe, J., 2024. A Kantian Theory of Employment, or How Domestic Right Structures Contemporary Work: A Reply to Williams. Con-textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy, 20, pp. 17-25.

Pateman, C. and Mills, C.W., 2007. Contract and Domination. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Sabourin, C., 2021a. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel on the Status of Women in the State. In: C. W. Dyck, ed. 2021. Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 157-175.

Sabourin, C., 2021b. Kant’s Enlightenment and Women’s Peculiar Immaturity. Kantian Review, 26(2), pp. 235-260.

Sánchez Madrid, N., 2025a. Kant on Labor Relations: An Account of Economic Dependence from the Perspective of Social Philosophy. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 55(4), pp. 330-347.

Sánchez Madrid, N., 2025b. Who Is the Caregiver in Kant’s Theory of Labour? Examining Social Domination in Classical German Philosophy. Kantian Review, First View, pp. 1-18.

Sarti, R., 2023. Slaves, Servants and other Dependent People: Early Modern Classifications and Western Europe’s Self-Representation. In: J. Whittle and ‎T. Lambrecht, eds. 2023. Labour Laws in Preindustrial Europe. The Coercion and Regulation of Wage Labour. C. 1350-1850. New York: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 103-123.

Sarvasy, W. and Longo, P., 2004. The Globalization of Care. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(3), pp. 392-415.

šuma, L., 2022. On Man’s Right to Be Jealous, and Woman’s Duty to Induce Her Own Demise. Problemi International, 60(11-12), pp. 65-80.

Varden, H., 2020. Sex, Love, and Gender. A Kantian Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Williams, G., 2024. Employment, status, hierarchy: on Jordan Pascoe, “Kant’s Theory of Labour”. Con-textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy, 20, pp. 7-15.

Zurn, C., 2011. Social Pathologies as Second-order Disorders. In: D. Petherbridge, ed. 2011. Axel Honneth: Critical Essays: with a Reply by Axel Honneth. London: Brill Academic, pp. 345-370.