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Ethics and Political Philosophy

Series

2023

Liberalism

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Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson Apr 2023

Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about …


'Kevin Vallier' Trust In A Polarized Age, Chandran Kukathas Mar 2023

'Kevin Vallier' Trust In A Polarized Age, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Vallier offers a defence of liberalism that is publicly justified as an answer to political polarization. This critique argues that the philosophical solution he offers - a version of liberalism more likely to be endorsed by moderately idealized agents - may not succeed because the source of polarization lies elsewhere: in resentments arising out of changed social conditions and the alienation of parts of society unhappy with the very liberal narrative in question.