Cornell University Press Rethinking Obligation: A Feminist Method for Political Theory

Product Description In Rethinking Obligation, Nancy J. Hirschmann provides an innovative analysis of liberal obligation theory that uses feminism as a theoretical method for rethinking political obligations from the bottom up. In articulating a feminist method for political theory, Hirschmann skillfully brings together theoretical categories and methods previously seen as opposed: feminist standpoint and postmodernism, gender psychology and anti-essentialism, empiricism and interpretivism. Rethinking Obligation mounts a vital challenge to central aspects of liberal theory. Students and scholars of political philosophy, political theory, feminist theory, and women’s studies will want to read it. Review Rethinking Obligation is a highly intelligent and clearly written book, one that should be of great interest to all political theorists, as well as to all those concerned about the gendered nature of our political concepts.-- "American Political Science Review" Hirschmann argues that voluntarism in liberal political theory reflects a masculinist propensity to deny relations to others and to repress women. She draws on the resources of gender psychology, object relations theory, and feminist standpoint epistemology to develop this argument.-- "Philosophical Review" About the Author Nancy J. Hirschmann is Professor and Graduate Chair of Political Science at The University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory and The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom.