Assignment on comparing on equity
Write a five-six page essay (substantiated by key textual analysis and references) on one of the following three topics or on a topic of your own making. In choosing to do any of the three topics below, you should also consider whether or not Rousseau and Wollstonecraft's analyses still have relevance to contemporary society and social relationships? Or have we transcended the concerns they had in the 18 th century in regards to the pernicious effects of radical economic and political inequality (Rousseau) and of gender inequality (Wollstonecraft).
Again, please refer to the handouts on how to write an analytic essay that I gave out before the first short essay and that are up on Blackboard.
1. On Gender Inequality and Economic and Political Inequality Both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft claim to be theorists of equality. What types of inequality are they, respectively, critical of? And what are their respective solutions to the particular type of inequality they attack? Could using the intellectual framework of one theorist help provide an antidote for some of the limits of the other theorist's analysis?
2. On Reason, Property and Inequality
Wollstonecraft and Locke are much less ambivalent towards the use of reason than is Rousseau.
Why do both have a more positive view of reason and rationality than does Rousseau? And why do both seem to think that inequalities of property based on rational and industrious use of one's labor are justified? Could this Lockeian viewpoint make Wollstonecraft somewhat insensitive to the pernicious effects of class distinction among women?
In contrast, Rousseau's Second Discourse offers a Janus-like vision of both civilization and reason. How does the rise of civilization, private property, and the use of human reason (and the development of an advanced division of labor) promote inequality? But in what way does Rousseau believe that reason (and his own rational political analysis) could reform society in a way that would create greater social equality and justice?
3. On Sentiment and Reason
Contrast Wollstonecraft's critique of sentiment and emotionally-driven behavior with Rousseau's view that the pre-rational sentiments of "pity" and "self-preservation" can be a basis upon which we could found a more rational, democratic and egalitarian society? Why is Wollstonecraft so hostile to the role of sentiment and emotions in women's subjugation? Why does Rousseau both "go back" to the pre-rational emotional independence of humans in his fictive state of nature (as autonomous beings), but also want to use reason to create a new form of modern society that would recover (in a new, more rational form) some of humanity's prerational sentiments?