1. Introduction
This article undertakes a critical examination of the sexism embedded in Kant’s theory of citizenship by setting it against the proposals advanced by two of his contemporaries: the civil servant Theodor von Hippel and the educator Amalia Holst. The first was initially a student and later a lecturer authorized to teach at the university [Privatdozent], a university professor, and regular interlocutor of Kant, eventually serving as mayor of Königsberg. The second was a pedagogue from northern Germany, particularly devoted to the education of women, for whom Kant constituted an undisputed intellectual authority. This contrast is intended to avoid a simplistic assessment of the position of women in Kant’s political philosophy and to provide a more contextualized understanding of the legacy of some of Kant’s theoretical and practical claims. At first glance, it may seem easiest simply to condemn Kant for his insensitivity to women’s rights while praising von Hippel and Holst for their courage in advocating reform. Rather than adopting such a binary view, the article pursues three lines of analysis with the aim of better grasping the reasons underpinning Kant’s sexism in relation to citizenship. Along these lines, I examine the tension between Kant’s conception of the household and family as completely hierarchical spheres and his commitment to public debate as a vehicle for social change. For Kant, the household was not outside the scope of right, since it belonged to the domain of private right. Yet this did not authorize state interference in its internal economic and moral logic or in the hierarchical relations constitutive of domestic life. Indeed, the family is not organized around the ideal of equality; rather, its status as a fundamental juridical unit of social reproduction is grounded in allegedly natural hierarchical relations. As a result, he did not foresee the extent to which intellectual criticism exercised through the public use of reason would come to transform domestic and gender relations.Footnote 1 In Kant, private right does not seek to extend the principles of equality, freedom, and civil independence—applicable in principle to all citizens—into the domestic sphere, defined by bonds of authority and legitimate domination. Yet the legislator remains responsible for preventing abuses of labor or violations of personal dignity within this domain.
The article also evaluates the proposals of von Hippel and Holst, showing that although they defended the education and civil recognition of women, they continued to subordinate emancipation to the fulfillment of presumedly gendered duties as wives, mothers, and household administrators. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s reflections in his anthropological and legal writings—particularly his argument that women might be freed from care and child-rearing through their husbands’ economic means—suggest a certain skepticism toward the naturalization of reproductive labor as inherently feminine. Although this position does not amount to a defense of the full civil maturity of women, it does open the door to a more nuanced reading of Kant’s treatment of gender and class prejudice. By contrast, von Hippel and Holst relied on the supposed sensitivity of women to reproductive and care work as the main rationale for their civil and intellectual repositioning.
This article first analyzes Kant’s view of women as passive citizens, confined to reproductive labor and domestic subordination, and highlights the class bias in his account. It then examines von Hippel’s defense of the intellectual and civic contributions of women, situating his proposals for legal and social reform in the wake of the influence of Kant’s practical philosophy. Next, it will explore Amalia Holst’s attempt to reconcile the gendered duties of women with their access to higher education, a pedagogical proposal that tempers feminist claims with class-based restrictions. By comparing Kant’s approach to women’s civil potential with the views of von Hippel and Holst, I seek to enrich his philosophical account with the perspectives of a contemporary intellectual engaged in reforming the public sphere and a pedagogue devoted to women’s intellectual advancement.
This article also considers recent critiques of the sexism inherent in Kant’s theory of citizenship (Pascoe, Reference Pascoe2015, Reference Pascoe2017), which confines women to a passivity beyond their control, alongside more optimistic readings of women’s civil progress within Kantian republicanism (Varden Reference Varden2017, Reference Varden2020a). Both Pascoe and Varden maintain that Kant’s republican theory of the state remains incomplete without the civil advancement of women. However, they develop slightly different interpretations of the place of women in Kant’s political philosophy. While both address the blind spots that undermine the universality of Kant’s theory of citizenship, they differ in their assessment of the emancipatory potential of Kant’s abstraction from gender when discussing the rational structure of the public sphere. I also argue that von Hippel and Holst expand Kant’s view of women’s gendered duties (Jauch Reference Jauch1988; Louden Reference Louden2022, Reference Louden and Dyck2021; Sabourin, Reference Sabourin and Dyck2021; Schmiesing, Reference Schmiesing and Niekerk2018), while exposing a tendency to naturalize feminine tasks—something Kant instead ties to women’s social class and economic power. Ultimately, the focus is on the public use of reason as a means for the gradual transformation of women’s social and civil inclusion (O’Neill, Reference O’Neill2015).
2. Kant’s Division of Household and State: A Cause of the Civil Exclusion of Women
Even the most charitable reading of Kant’s account of citizenship would acknowledge that, for Kant, the civil emancipation of women does not form part of the agenda of the republican state, even though his conception of public authority is, in principle, neutral with respect to such categories as gender, race, or social class.Footnote 2 At the same time, it remains possible that the universal quantifier employed in key passages such as MM 6: 315 is intended to include women—a possibility defended by some interpreters (Varden, Reference Varden2017). However, in my view, this is not the kind of advancement Kant has in mind, and its full realization would also jeopardize the very division of tasks that makes the domestic order possible. Kant encourages women, however, to become subjects with rights and not only privileges, to correct what contemporaries such as von Hippel will expressly—as seen in Section 3—highlight as a flaw of Prussian public right. A well-known passage in Theory and Practice suggests that the allegedly natural, biological, and seemingly immutable cultural condition of being a woman excludes her from full citizenship, aside from further requirements bearing on economic and civil independence.Footnote 3 Some interpreters have stressed the fact that in What is Enlightenment? Kant mentions “the fair sex” as an example of a social group living in epistemic and civil immaturity, which in itself might be seen as a critique of such a situation:
That by far the greatest part of humankind (including the entire fair sex) should hold the step toward majority to be not only troublesome but also highly dangerous will soon be seen to by those guardians who have kindly taken it upon themselves to supervise them; after they have made their domesticated animals dumb and carefully prevented these placid creatures from daring to take a single step without the walking cart in which they have confined them, they then show them the danger that threatens them if they try to walk alone. Now this danger is not in fact so great, for by a few falls they would eventually learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes them timid and usually frightens them away from any further attempt (WE 8: 35–36, Kant & Wood, Reference Kant and Gregor1996b, p. 17).
This celebrated passage portrays women as a social group subjected to an appalling education and marital control that frightens and threatens them against the use of their own freedom. Yet, far from understanding the subaltern standing of women as a regrettable situation, Kant considers that it is precisely this civil subjection that fuels the cunning of wealthier women—no mention of aristocrats and lower-class women appears in his writingsFootnote 4—to meet the goals that they can only achieve through the mediation of men. This idea, I propose, inspires some sections of § 85 and ‘The Character of Sex’ in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anth 7: 273 and 306–310, Kant, Reference Kant and Louden2006, pp. 173–174, 207–212). In short, he finds nothing outrageous or frustrating in the reduction of women to domestic subjects incapable of governing a household, yet eager to dominate it as despots. Varden has compellingly claimed (2017, 2020a, pp. 93–94), the positive value of the “social knowledge” that Kant attributes to women—knowledge used to assess how they are perceived by others and consequently to become attractive to men—in contrast to the more objective skills associated with men. Thus, as Wollstonecraft argues in her Vindication of the Rights of Women, in Kant’s view women possess a special sense for gauging the distinctive social significance of their bodies, insofar as they are subjected not merely to regulation within the private sphere but to surveillance and judgment in the public realm.
However, it is important to highlight that the higher social abilities Kant attributes to women tend to privilege the mere possession of intellectual products over a genuine comprehension of them, which generally negates their value. Moreover, in Kant’s account of sex and gender, women learn in their social networks that they are allowed to indulge in certain tricks for faking intellectual capacities without actually possessing themFootnote 5—a widespread tendency that provoked the indignation of early feminist writers such as Wollstonecraft and Holst. In my view, a balanced account of this type of adaptive knowledge should acknowledge that it enabled the subjects to survive in a patriarchal society, to exercise an “indirect domination” (Anth 7: 309–310, Kant, Reference Kant and Louden2006, pp. 210–212) over their husbands so as to fulfill their own whims, to outsource care work to male and female servants, and finally to develop a better knowledge of their society’s prejudices than that of men. Such astute behavior helped white privileged women survive in a patriarchal society without putting their own honor at risk, but instead increase their presumed value as desired human commodities.Footnote 6 While patriarchal domination does not nullify women’s intelligence but rather spurs their search for ways to ease civil subjugation, Kant’s moral theory must still recognize an obstacle in such domination. In this light, von Hippel’s intervention on the character of the female sex exemplifies a concern for coherence between moral theory and anthropological practice.
In light of all the obstructions that determine the conduct of women in society, I consider it important to address three key issues that could explain Kant’s accommodation to the alleged civil immaturity of women on the basis of gender. First of all, Kant’s anthropological remarks about women focus on wealthy households, even if the more neutral suggestions of women’s passive citizenship in the Doctrine of Right water down any mentions of class position. Hence, the attachment of Kant’s arguments to a privileged social class does not help to shed light on the material and economic issues that may impede a harmonization of women’s intellectual pursuits and care work, as the subjects he analyzes have the resources to outsource such supposedly gendered tasks. Thereby, these women, even if mostly unwittingly, bring about further complex forms of social domination, as they consequently burden other women with their reproductive tasks.Footnote 7 In any case, beyond my agreement with Pascoe’s interpretation on this point, what interests me most is the epistemic injustice Kant commits by privileging the way of life of women belonging to a particular social class.
Second, Kant never viewed the state as a normative unit capable of absorbing the dynamics of the early liberal economic market—contrary to what later thinkers such as Fichte would argue in The Closed Commercial State ([1800] Fichte, Reference Fichte2012)—or the economic management of the household.Footnote 8 Although public authority is meant to orient these spheres and intervene to prevent violations of right, it is not authorized to subject them to exhaustive regulation or administrative control. Despite his critique of the teleological assumptions underlying cameralism, Kant conceives each unit of economic life as endowed with a distinctive end and assigned a specific function within the broader juridical order.Footnote 9 Thus, he did not consider that the state should challenge the sexual division of work ingrained in the reproductive function of the household or view household economy as an issue of public policy, as this and the market itself were expected to unitedly boost the welfare of the commonwealth. A third question hints at Kant’s misconception of the social value of reproductive work, which in his view did not deserve public attention. Namely, although he recognizes that these are tasks that must necessarily be performed, he does not question that they ought to be left in the hands of passive citizens. Consequently, unlike his friend von Hippel—as chapter V of On Improving the Status of Women stresses—Kant did not address the issue of whether women may beneficially contribute their gendered skills and knowledge to the improvement of the social and civil order, and so the economic relief of gendered tasks available to upper-class women would not entail any civil promotion for them, as if the two areas were rigidly separated. When public authority does not regard care as a universal public responsibility, reproductive work is relegated to those living in conditions of dependency—that is, to individuals whose lack of civil independence places them outside the sphere of full citizenship. The physical reproduction of the social body thus comes to rely upon agents who are themselves denied civil autonomy.
This list of reasons may in some measure explain why Kant—unlike authors such as von Hippel and Holst—also never argued that women should simply settle for their allegedly gendered vocation as wives, mothers, and housewives. This marks a differential insight into Kant’s thought, exposing his apparent toleration of the eventual enfranchisement of economically privileged women from reproductive labor. For Kant, the essential issue is not that women might cultivate education independently of such duties, but merely that some may set them aside, without envisioning that the time thus gained could be devoted to philosophy, the arts, or literature, without neglecting political engagement. In my view, the patriarchal order had inscribed itself so deeply in Kant’s conceptual horizon that he could not imagine the existence of the “intellectual woman,” despite his acquaintance with such figures in Königsberg.Footnote 10 Indeed, his anthropological writings show that he was aware that social life was rooted in gender, class, and race boundaries, structures that clearly challenge the universality of his moral principles and claims. Yet he did not activate the transformative potential of his practical philosophy for the reproductive and productive division of social and economic activities, perhaps considering—as Holst’s disclaimer against any link between her treatise and a gender revolution declares—that it would trigger a complete upheaval of the social and civil order.Footnote 11
3. Kant’s Public Use of Reason: A Driving Force for the Civil Emancipation of Women?
Kant’s philosophy thus assumes that domestic welfare involves a sexist, classist, and racist division of work, insofar as women, and also lower-class subjects of both sexes, as well as racialized subjects, are targeted as the suitable agents for sustaining this foundational dimension of society.Footnote 12 Such a bias clouds any discussion on how gender may prevent women from achieving full-fledged citizenship, insofar as female gender and civil independence were considered to be hardly compatible in status, even if women in Kant’s time had already begun to claim their rights, for example, as landowners.Footnote 13 As was argued before, the domestic contexts depicted by Kant challenge the prima facie self-fulfilling universal right that allows anyone to “work his own way up from [the] passive condition to an active one” (DR § 46, 6: 315, Kant, Reference Kant and Gregor2013, p. 92), insofar as Kant’s legal and political philosophy does not furnish any effective tool for guaranteeing women civil promotion based on their own merits and talents.Footnote 14 From my perspective, adopting a universal view of civil advancement without accounting for the particular obstacles that certain subjects may encounter along the way weakens the transformative capacity of that very standpoint. I see a fundamental difference here between the argumentative approaches of moral and juridical theory, which Kant treats as formal discourses. Furthermore, I would argue that Kant attributes greater importance to the obstacle within morality—as evidenced in the Doctrine of Virtue—than within the socio-political order. Far from being self-fulfilling, civil and political rights rely on material conditions that are not available to many subjects, specifically women, and are also hindered by biases deeply ingrained in social and religious beliefs. Yet, Kant’s sexist view of the dialectics of sex and gender should not obscure the existence of concepts in his philosophy that can stimulate a profound transformation in the social beliefs of a commonwealth, a task with which learned individuals engaged in public debate are particularly concerned with.
In the broader context of Kant’s own era, the critical approach of von Hippel and Holst toward the lack of social and civil recognition for women proves that other German intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment were eager to influence public opinion so as to achieve a degree of harmonization among reproductive tasks, intellectual training, and professional vocation. Their advocacy for women’s rights demonstrates—as will be shown in Sections 4 and 5—that Kant’s own vision of public intellectual debate as a driver of civil progress would be a powerful instrument for improving the conditions of socially vulnerable groups, which included women of the late 18th century. In this regard, while acknowledging the difficulties in identifying sources of inspiration for the social advancement of women in Kant, I show below that his well-known distinction between the private and public use of reason in What is Enlightenment? fostered the initiatives of some of his contemporaries to combat sexist prejudices through their interventions in the public sphere (at times anonymously, in order to avoid reprisals in the professions they exercised in the private sphere).
Kant’s distinction between private and public uses of reason captures a difference between arguing in an official or professional capacity and addressing the public through publications.Footnote 15 More specifically, private use of reason is the kind of reason employed by individuals insofar as they perform their duties as part of “some particular civil post or office” (WE 8: 37, Kant & Wood, Reference Kant and Gregor1996b, p. 18). For example, when reasoning in their capacities as a military officer, a priest, a doctor, or a civil servant, these professionals engage in private uses of reason. Importantly, these individuals always remain subject to a higher authority than their own reasoning. In contrast, public use of reason may be performed by anyone, as long as they meet the economic and civil conditions required to be considered a scholar, that is, one who shares their reasoning with “the world of readers” (WE 8: 38, Kant & Wood, Reference Kant and Gregor1996b, p. 19).Footnote 16 Thus, Kant’s notion of public discussion entails a transformative dimension, although it is noteworthy that he himself did not make significant contributions to improving the social and civil recognition of certain marginalized groups—such as Jews, the ethnicity of some of his best students, and women, among whom were figures he regarded as exemplary, such as Caroline von Keyserling, whose Königsberg salon Kant frequented during his period as a private tutor, as his biographers have noted. Furthermore, the process of Enlightenment could hardly occur through the mere effort of individual agents, as it required the contribution of larger emancipatory spaces. As Kant states in What is Enlightenment?, “it is difficult for any single individual to extricate himself from the minority that has become almost nature to him. […] But that a public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, this is almost inevitable, if only it is left its freedom” (WE 8: 36, Kant & Wood, Reference Kant and Gregor1996b, p. 17).Footnote 17
In the light of such textual sources, I suggest considering intellectual criticism formulated within the public sphere as a driver of social transformation, which especially positions the civil responsibility of philosophers as the unique academics with no commands to obey, making them “free to evaluate everything” (CF 7: 19, Kant, Reference Kant, Wood, Wood and Giovanni2012, p. 249). This “everything” also extends to social contexts that cause disenfranchisement and grievance, which will thus benefit from the “maxim of enlarged thought” (CJ 5: 294, Kant, Reference Kant and Guyer2000, p. 174) and orientate the use of the Judgment. In my view, contemporary authors close to Kant, whether they belonged to his immediate intellectual circle or were simply admirers of his intellectual authority—such as von Hippel and later Amalia Holst—help to demonstrate just how much this free evaluation of every social issue could contribute to improving the civil standing of marginalized groups and subjects. Under such a lens, the profusion of sexist prejudices dotting Kant’s work should not mystify the interpreter nor conceal the potential of its critical structures for launching key societal transformations. The following sections, then, aim to show that Kant’s legacy contributed to the intellectual and civil emancipation of women by fostering an orderly public debate that helped to dismantle the limitations of rights that he himself had earlier contributed to naturalizing. Still others would have the courage to use their own understanding to remove the bonds of domination that tradition had naturalized, the very motto of the Enlightenment according to Kant (WE 8: 35, Kant & Wood, Reference Kant and Gregor1996b, p. 17).
4. Von Hippel’s Perspective: The Talents of Women Can Help Improve the Social and Civil Order
Theodor von Hippel studied theology in Königsberg in the mid-1750s, attending Kant’s lectures as a student. After a period as private tutor—like Kant himself—he began studying law in 1764 and by the late 1780s became a regular guest at dinner parties in Kant’s home when both had already become prominent figures in that city (von Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner2009, pp. 48–50). Von Hippel became a renowned jurist, and in 1780 King Frederick the Great appointed him mayor of Königsberg, the town where he began his career as a civil servant,Footnote 18 but also took on the pressures of being the author, at first anonymously, of several radical enlightened treatises that promoted the civil emancipation of women and equal rights in marriage for both partners. In 1774, von Hippel, in this role of publicist, would publish at Christian Friedrich Voß’s publishing house in Berlin an anonymous text advocating equal rights for husbands and wives and denying that procreation should be the most important goal of marriage.Footnote 19 This treatise, which did not show any disapproval of a deeply binary sexual division of capacities, met with an astonishing popularity that justified at least three re-editions. Yet von Hippel’s currently most famous treatise would not be so enthusiastically received. This was the text On Improving the Status of Women, which appeared anonymously in 1792, the same year that the proto-feminist best-seller, A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, was published.
Von Hippel takes issue—as later Amalia Holst would do—with Rousseau’s historical approach, arguing that the state and its institutions ought to progressively remove the bonds of domination that exist between men and women to the point that they are transformed into legal ties. In his account, acquiescing to the traditional domination of men over women would continue to impede social and civil progress in European societies, in contrast to the very tenets of Enlightenment. The relationship between von Hippel and Kant becomes intertwined with the hostile reception that the writings that the first authored received in his time. Indeed, von Hippel, when accused of withholding information regarding the authorship of this controversial text, would finally confess to Kant that he was the one responsible.Footnote 20 Yet rumors increased to the point that some authors affirmed that the novel Biography on an Ascending Line [Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie]—also anonymously written by von Hippel—had in fact been authored by Kant. This forced Kant to react with a public disclaimer which at first—in a text published in January 1797 in the Allgemeine Literarischer Anzeiger—did not reveal von Hippel’s secret authorship (von Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner2009, p. 48). As this did not stop the gossip, some weeks later Kant published a second disclaimer in the Intelligenzblatt der allgemeinen Literatur Zeitung, which disclosed the authorship and produced an uncomfortable situation for the progressive mayor of Königsberg.Footnote 21 The affair of this hazardous, secretive authorship serves as an example of the obstacles that the public sphere established in Kant’s time for intellectuals aiming to substantially transform the widespread traditional beliefs about the sexes. History confirms that what is correct in theory is no simple matter in practice.
A review of the issues raised in von Hippel’s essay will make it easier to identify the specificity of his positions in relation to the contributions that women can make to society. A curious preliminary element, belonging to the strategy to secure the reader’s sympathy for the essay, is his comparison of the civil misrecognition of women with the civil vulnerability of the Jews and American Indians.Footnote 22 The main objective of the treatise, in any case, is to remove the prejudices that obstruct women from full-fledged civil participation, moved by the conviction that an equality of sexes fosters the building of an organic and virtuous society. Throughout the essay, von Hippel highlights the historically neglected contributions of women to the welfare and civil progress of their societies, considering that they provide skills, perceptions, and arts that men rarely possess. In the light of this, he affirms that preventing women from accessing the social and public spheres has in fact damaged these spaces. Moreover, in open divergence from the guiding voices of the French Revolution, such as Rousseau and Sieyès, who linked citizenship with civil independence and the masculine sex, von Hippel claims that excluding women from the deliberation and management of public affairs constitutes a desertion of the goals of enlightened reason and historical progress.Footnote 23 Even if the influence of Kant’s practical philosophy is quite evident in von Hippel’s writing, it should also be stressed that the latter was willing to allow women to actively partake in the social and civil life in order to transform society, in an attempt to develop the key Enlightenment aim that half of society should not be excluded from civil progress.Footnote 24
Von Hippel’s arguments for granting middle- and upper-class women active citizenship, for the benefits this would bring to Prussian society, reveal an interpretation of the Enlightenment that extends beyond Kant’s proposals. I will break these down into five basic arguments that von Hippel claims will help women to achieve the civil recognition they deserve.Footnote 25 First, he states that the differences between men and women stem from the nature of the two sexes, lauding the epistemic virtues and natural strength that women have shown throughout history. In a key passage, he criticizes the fact that women have known only privileges, but no rights, which has brought about what he labels as the present degradation of both sexes:
As long as women have only privileges and not rights; as long as the state treats them as mere parasitic plants, which are indebted for their existence and worth as citizens only to that man with whom they have been united by fate, will not the woman fulfill only very incompletely (and the longer it takes, the more incompletely) that great calling of the nature: to be the wife of the husband, the mother of the children, and, by virtue of these noble designations, a member, a citizen—and not merely a denizen—of the state? […] But let one give them their rights back, and he will soon discover just what this sex truly is, and what it can become! (Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner1979 [1792], p. 80).
This passage might well enter into a stimulating dialogue with § 46 of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, where the author declares that “all women” (DR 6: 314, Kant, Reference Kant and Gregor2013, p. 92; Kant uses the derogatory term “Frauenzimmer”) as dependent subjects lack a “civil personality,” and thus may only claim state protection as passive citizens, renouncing any active participation in legislative issues.Footnote 26 It seems clear that von Hippel shares with early feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft the intention to challenge the boundaries that exist between the public sphere and the private space, as both he and Wollstonecraft felt that domestic relations deserved a political analysis (Frazer, Reference Frazer2020; Halldenius, Reference Halldenius, Alan, Berges and Botting2019). Along these lines, von Hippel puts forward a second argument, one that deeply criticizes the domination that men exert over women as an obvious civil regression. He partly follows Rousseau, as he praises the ancient customs of German tribes, insofar as they showed great respect for women that the influence of Roman right would suppress. Moreover, in von Hippel’s view, men generally consider that they gain advantage from dominating women because they do not examine closely enough the advantages that might ensue from their emancipation. In fact, such a process would also relieve men from responsibilities that in 18th-century Prussia could not be shared with their partners. This view demonstrates that, unlike Kant’s assumption of masculine domination in the household, both in the economic market and government, von Hippel puts his pen at the service of the civil rights of women.
A third argument rebukes the reproach often raised against the obsession of women with social networks and encounters; that is, that such activities would radically weaken their dedication to child-rearing and care work. With regard to the role that the body should fulfill in women’s lives, von Hippel is more sympathetic than Wollstonecraft, who decidedly condemns the beauty industry of her time.Footnote 27 Von Hippel offers two observations that help the reader to better grasp his intention to promote the attachment of women to society. The first claims a principle of co-responsibility between partners, so as to foster a balanced household. Moreover, if mothers have not had any experience of social codes and conversations, how can they help their children to adapt to social circles and play an active role in them? Thus, not to confine women to the domestic space would have a positive effect on their maternal role. The second rejects condemning the attention that women give to their bodies and external aspects, as these esthetic skills can, in von Hippel’s view, largely benefit the state. The following excerpt summarizes this idea:
In all social gatherings in which women take part, propriety is proclaimed; and should this not also be the case with the state, into whose affairs a different light and life would enter if women were permitted access to it, as to let their light shine therein and impart a different energy and animation (Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner1979 [1792], p. 62).
As Hippel outlines at the outset of his treatise, women have a special attachment to the production of social harmony, bringing “a different energy and animation” not only to social gatherings, but also to public institutions that may count on their opinion.Footnote 28 Furthermore, participating as active members in public affairs would distract women from an excessive concentration on their external beauty, enlarging their practical horizons and making them also more attentive to other dimensions of life. Thus, von Hippel recommends viewing the bodies and minds of women as a helpful input for the state, as their sensibility and abilities will ultimately enrich the commonwealth. This claim entails a criticism of the patriarchal account of the female body, insofar as it is incorrectly reduced to a “mere ballast which the soul has taken on simply to facilitate its passage through the world” (von Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner1979 [1792], p. 173). Put in slightly different terms, women should not renounce the exhibition of their bodies in the social and public space, as if only their minds could produce useful knowledge. On the contrary, they should take an active part in social and institutional spaces so as to infuse them with new and different sensibilities and tastes.
A fourth argument recommends the inclusion of women as a specialized workforce, under the belief that as doctors, teachers, and preachers, they would decidedly improve the medical, educational, and spiritual care to be given to the commonwealth. The extended custom of encouraging men to appear in the public sphere while women are confined exclusively to the household would only serve to shrink their mental capacities.Footnote 29 It is important to note that von Hippel does not see paid jobs as a tool for boosting the social promotion of women, as throughout the treatise he only refers to middle- and upper-class individuals, that is, those able to receive the education required to become liberal professionals. He does, however, provide a detailed account of the epistemic virtues he finds in women, lauding their ability to gather empirical observations and draw useful conclusions from them. Moreover, he stresses their capacity to grasp the emotions that words and gestures might conceal, which he analyzes as combining a natural giftFootnote 30 and a skill stemming from their anthropological wisdom. He mentions, for instance, that women do not attempt to heal by dominating nature, but rather rely on natural remedies. Von Hippel consequently urges public investment to consolidate this empirical art and place it at the service of the citizenry:
Fathers of the state, instead of erecting clinics and medical institutes, build schools for women—schools in which our foods and beverages could be studied and tested more closely; where women would be taught to prepare meals in such a way that they are both good-tasting and free from harmful ingredients of any kind; in short, where they could learn to safeguard the lives and health of the citizens of the state (von Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner1979 [1792], p. 163).
As this excerpt shows, the proposal of absorbing women as a workforce focuses especially on the care work that they could provide to the entire commonwealth.Footnote 31 As teachers, public officers, administrators, but above all as chemists and doctors, women can be of great benefit to society without renouncing their allegedly female skills. Here it is evident that von Hippel’s support for the civil promotion of women stealthily introduces a dark side into his account of the tasks and activities that make them valuable for the state; since the forms of knowledge that render women subjects of communal concern are invariably tied to care work or seek to limit their interaction with men outside marriage (as in medical or clerical contexts), it is worth noting that von Hippel, unlike Kant, aimed to extend active citizenship to women as part of an Enlightenment project consistent with his time, though he still accepted the rigid gendering of women’s capacities.Footnote 32
A fifth and final argument endorses the recognition of political rights to women as colegislators, as they may promote with their ideas the flourishing and welfare of their communities. Political equality would thus complete the social transformation initiated by the French Revolution, a principle that von Hippel clearly shares with Wollstonecraft, as the moral and political progress made so far had only benefited men, “while the fair sex has been left to lie in ruins” (von Hippel, Reference Hippel and Sellner1979 [1792], p. 62). This reading of von Hippel’s essay in favor of the emancipation of women makes clear that Kant’s call to intellectuals to transform, with their pens, the prevailing ideas of their society was by no means an easy task. Nor was the path of defending women’s civil rights one that Kant himself chose to follow. In von Hippel’s case, it was a path marked by evident solitude—a solitude that Kant’s companionship did not help to alleviate. As we have tried to show, von Hippel does not challenge a sexist notion of the public visibility of women. He commends women as social actors capable of taking responsibility and caring for the physical and mental health, as well as for the education, of the population with greater competence than many men, but, above all, his concern is that women contribute to their community through tasks grounded in their gendered roles. Thus, von Hippel may be considered a proto-feminist intellectual who nevertheless maintains the gender gap within the sexual division of labor, despite conceiving the domestic sphere as a political institution that should be organized according to equality and transformed beyond the unequal relations that characterized it in his time.Footnote 33 By failing to recognize reproductive and care work as a responsibility belonging to humanity as a whole, he inevitably reproduces biases usual in eighteenth-century Prussia—biases that remain deeply embedded in contemporary societies.
Nevertheless, soon after this, a female pedagogue would take up her own pen to argue that intellectual training does not contradict women’s duties as wives, mothers, and housewives. By downplaying the more political dimension of von Hippel’s work, she would defend the view that an educated woman could fulfill her gendered calling even more conscientiously.
5. The Effort to Reconcile Women’s Gendered Duties with Their Intellectual Formation: Holst’s Pedagogical Proposal
Amalia Holst, an educator and early feminist based in Hamburg, diverges significantly from the image of woman that Kant constructs, even if she composed her treatise On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802) considering him—as well as Leibniz—an exemplary living figure of philosophy. In that essay, she argues that the men who have spoken about the vocation and duties of women have offered only a partial view of the matter. This blind spot prompts her to intervene—drawing also on her experience as a pedagogue—in the public sphere, with the aim of fostering a debate on a question that, in its very premise, is marked by conservatism, as it focuses on the reconciliation between a solid intellectual education and the fulfillment of attributed roles as “advising wives, active housewives, and careful educators of [their] children” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 63). Far from considering that gendered tasks and intellectual training involve any contradiction, she deems that higher education “elevates and ennobles” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 42) the allegedly natural vocation of women to perform care work. In this vein, she asks whether a woman who aspires to be a new Kant or Leibniz could not also fulfill her gendered duties—without questioning them—and goes on to offer solutions that reconcile both facets, each of great existential value. Moreover, Holst recommends that her “women friends… read von Hippel with a fervent striving for ever greater education” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 8), not without stressing that she is “no friend of paradoxes” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 10) and thus does not advocate any radical emancipation for women, which would include the recognition of their civil rights. Put differently, she presents herself as an educator and philanthrope—one critical of the Philanthropinum,Footnote 34 a well-known Prussian educational institution in the Enlightenment, eagerly celebrated by intellectuals such as Kant and Mendelssohn for not promoting the higher education of women—whose aim was to “extend women’s sphere of influence” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 41). This brief remark reflects both the novelty and the limitations of this intellectual intervention within a space that Kant regarded as capable of accelerating reforms in the society’s way of thinking. The following comments on von Hippel’s treatise are quite telling:
He criticizes the oppression and neglect of women, and even goes further to argue that they ought to take part in various state offices. Yet […] I believe that such a complete upheaval in civil relations would likely give rise to a lot of confusion. The general question of whether both sexes will ever rise to the level of education where this could be achieved without harm cannot yet be answered with certainty. And I do not want to be a preacher of revolution. Satisfaction with one’s conditions is the first requirement of happiness. Let us be satisfied with our threefold calling and put all our honour into fulfilling its obligations (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], 10 f.).Footnote 35
Although any call for a revolution of the social and civil order is ruled out—a step back from von Hippel’s proposal—Holst leaves open the possibility that education could substantially transform the prevailing tastes and beliefs of society.Footnote 36 Nevertheless, Holst’s moderate reformism pertains mainly to women’s education and does not foresee significant transformations in the sexual division of labor—apart from a few exceptional cases that would never threaten the underlying logic of social reproduction. This prospect in itself may well draw inspiration from the Kantian notion of the public use of reason, grounded in calm and reasoned discussion among intellectuals.Footnote 37 Yet this plea to extend higher education to women begins with an explicit criticism of Rousseau for advocating a reform of the civil sphere without adequately accounting for the role that education could play in transforming women’s lives (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], pp. 13–14). Against the misogynistic intellectual ideas of her time, Holst joins von Hippel and Kant by arguing that women do not exist for the sake of men, but rather both sexes are intended to promote their happiness reciprocally (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 43). Holst thus argues that women should be left free to explore any intellectual field their “genius” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 31) may incline them to follow. In her account, world history itself rebuts Rousseau’s claims, as it is marked by major achievements accomplished by women in different epochs. Moreover, she tacitly hearkens back to one of von Hippel’s arguments when she highlights the role that women perform in the education of humankind: “Look around in cities both large and small. Notice the tone that prevails among society. You will immediately be able to discern the degree to which the women are morally and spiritually educated. The realm of moral beauty is our territory” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 28).
As mothers are considered the first educators of their children, they are the bearers of a great responsibility, which urges them to gain a wide knowledge about the origin of natural beings and the best uses and purposes of animals and plants through the cultivation of botany and cosmology. They will otherwise fall prey to superstitions leading them, for instance, to refuse to vaccinate their children, a trend she sees as due to the spread of ignorance.Footnote 38 Holst’s assumption about the influence of women in giving an emotional shape to their societies connects very well with Kant’s sexist understanding of the disposition to beauty and the sublime, and also remains very close to von Hippel’s earlier considerations. Yet an important nuance should be noted, as she does not claim that educational institutions should be democratic. In fact, it corresponds to talented minds, and is unrecommended for “the wife or a day labourer or a tradesman” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 32), as the lower classes “must satisfy themselves with subordinate purposes” (Holst Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 32), a remark that spotlights not only a sexist, but deeply classist perspective that Holst holds regarding the structure of a functional society. It is precisely this idea that challenges Holst’s main aim, insofar as she sees herself forced to address how to deal with learned women—for instance, philosophers—who may come to renounce their gendered roles. She concludes that such cases would always be so rare that they could not really jeopardize the gendered structure of society:
If a woman were to rise so high as to create her own philosophical system, she would have no time left to fulfil her taxing duties. I concede this point, but only in the case of real genius. But since such minds are extremely rare among men, and always will be, they would likewise be rare among women. If one of them were to give herself entirely to these serious sciences, if she were to find in these lofty regions the satisfaction for all her strivings for happiness and thereby become useful to the world, who could forbid her from remaining unmarried, as Kant is and Leibniz was? (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 41).Footnote 39
This passage is of interest because it sets out, without ambiguity, the demand for concentration that philosophical activity imposes on those who dedicate themselves to it, while adding two relevant considerations. First, philosophical “geniuses”—those capable of generating their own conceptual systems—are rare. In such cases, it may be preferable to renounce marriage and live as a kind of lay monk—much like the lifelong bachelor Kant himself, whose commitment to his intellectual vocation appears to have outweighed any inclination to marry, an option that should likewise be open to women. This is a path that Kant does not consider, as evidenced by his well-known ironic remark about Madame du Châtelet and the masculine beard he could not help associating with the intensity of her intellectual activity (BSE 2: 229–230, Kant, 2011, pp. 36–37).Footnote 40 Second, philosophy can be cultivated at many different rhythms, and, understood in a popular register—always a flaw for Kant—it proves compatible with the fulfillment of gender duties. In the case of unmarried women, Holst estimates that their degree of culture will vary according to their talents and recommends that women choose to become educators, as “men have taken all the lucrative offices and trades for themselves” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 108).
Moreover, the cultivation of philosophy and science should not lead to a unilateral learnedness, which Holst sees as “harmful to human and civil relations” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 58). She parodies a polymath who not only neglects his duties as husband to the point of causing the death of his wife, but freezes rather than reacts when his own home catches fire with his children inside, “[letting] them perish in the flames, for he has saved the immortal children of his mind” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 57). This example of one-sided thinking recalls Kant’s own example of a scholar incapable of reacting in a timely manner to a fire in his home, as he deems this an issue to be dealt with by his wife.Footnote 41 Holst calls on the art of prudence to refute the misogynistic arguments of her time, which claim that education will prevent women from attending to their domestic duties. On the contrary, an enlightened woman—a frequently used expression in the treatise—“knows in every aspect of life how to take hold of the circumstances and adapt herself to them” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 100). The point is that education would enable women to carry out their presumed gender duties even more conscientiously, among them the goal of creating a happy marriage.
Moving on to the issue of gender equality in marriage, Holst seems to have important messages to convey, most of them based on her reading of Luther. Contrary to Kant’s legal account of this intimate bond, Holst considers that it is not authority, but love which is capable of creating equality, and is therefore the core of this “intimate and tender bond” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 47) that promotes social reproduction and lies at the very heart of the commonwealth as well. Furthermore, she advises against spouses concealing important aspects of their shared life, such as those related to the administration of the household—a matter that Kant, in his Anthropology, presented as a necessary game through which the husband effectively comes to dominate the household, governing it while giving his wife the illusion that she is dominating him by having some of her whims satisfied.Footnote 42 In this vein, Holst states that the husband should not hide from his wife whatever economic crises that their household patrimony may suffer. On the contrary, the wife should be given some training in the management of a home, eschewing the promises of vanity that Wollstonecraft derided. Thus, the educated woman “always want to be, and never to shine” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 85). Beyond building honest and intelligent social networks to provide company to their marriages (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 64), women are meant to maintain order and cleanliness in their homes, which requires them to organize domestic servants and supervise their diligence and morality (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 93), which is often ruined by contact with wealth and luxury.Footnote 43 In sum, Holst advocates making the intellectual development of women “a business and a duty” (Holst, Reference Holst and Cooper2023 [1802], p. 110) under the rule of the state, as the moral and civil advancement of humankind depends on it. By taking up her pen to advocate the improvement of women’s education, she sought to intervene in the public sphere to emphasize the importance of the care work carried out by women and to affirm their belonging as active members—if not necessarily active citizens—of the society to which they contribute.
6. Conclusions
This article has sought to shed light on some of the reasons behind Kant’s blatant indifference toward the exclusion of women from full citizenship, an exclusion justified by alleged biological conditions rooted in the origins of civilization. I have sought to challenge Kant’s strict divide between the domestic and civil spheres through von Hippel’s social and Holst’s pedagogical projects, both more ambitious in redefining women’s civic role. At the same time, I highlight the potential of Kant’s public use of reason to question women’s social position, while recognizing the limits of von Hippel’s and Holst’s projects, still too bound to the sphere of care. Although Kant acknowledges that the status of women had undeniably evolved since the “barbaric” times in which they were treated as mere beasts of burden (ApH 7: 304, Kant, Reference Kant and Louden2006, p. 205), in “civilized” society their position remains nevertheless subordinate; they may become despots within the household, but never its mature administrators. Although a woman might be progressively freed from the more burdensome aspects of her supposed activities through civilization, for Kant this does not imply that her intellectual capacities—nor other capacities legally recognized under German law, such as property ownership—should render her eligible for active citizenship. Thus, he seems to assume that being classified culturally as natural caregivers inherently renders women incapable of cultivating their minds and taking on the responsibilities and duties of full-fledged citizens.
As I have previously argued, the rigid separation of household and state in Kant’s political philosophy—mirroring his distinction between private and public right—prevents the state from intervening in the patriarchal reproductive economy that underpins the bourgeois family.Footnote 44 Moreover, such a division also overshadows the value of reproductive tasks and care work, whose performance tends to be understood as a natural burden to be squared up within the household. Hence, this belief entails a bias that largely undermines the universal scope of whatever emancipation he may espouse, as a result of a selective form of universalism that prioritizes male white owners as the ideal pattern of active citizen. Yet Kant’s defense of the public use of reason, which empowers intellectuals to challenge long-standing traditions and religious impositions, did in fact inspire an intellectual activism capable of challenging the entrenched structures of domination at the boundary between private and public. Such activism is exemplified by authors like von Hippel and Holst, whose respective defenses of women’s rights nonetheless framed the sensitivity of women in reproductive tasks as a resource that could enhance the state’s provision of health, education, and religion. Beyond the dichotomy posed by these thinkers—that is, the inevitability of domination within the household and the role of women’s care work in improving public institutions—it becomes necessary to theoretically break with the association of caregiving and child-rearing as exclusively female responsibilities. Instead, these tasks should be socialized and recognized as subjects of political design.
In any case, the implicit dialogue between Kant, von Hippel, and Holst reveals a classical strand of German thought that has helped to explore and analyze the causes behind the social domination of women. Although these thinkers differ on the state’s role in domestic and reproductive labor, all regard women—especially the economically disadvantaged—as chiefly responsible for it. Exposing how this assumption shapes their view of social and political community is essential for any political theory sensitive to the forms of domination that still hinder the democratization of rights.
Acknowledgments
This article has been supported by the following ongoing research projects: the Spanish Research Project Cultures of Oppression, Labour Exploitation, and State Transformations: Intersectional Approaches to Some Contemporary Forms of Domination. A Social Philosophy Research (PID2024-156672NB-I00), awarded by the MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER (UE), and the Interuniversity Program in Culture of Lawfulness 4TRUST-CM (PHS-2024/PH-HUM-65), awarded by the Community of Madrid. I am grateful to the audiences of previous drafts of this article at the University of Illinois, the Université of Laval, the University of Warsaw, and the University of Cagliari, in particular for the stimulating and helpful remarks of Helga Varden, Jordan Pascoe, Alessandro Pinzani, Garrath Williams, Sylvie Loriaux, Sofie Møller, Angela Taraborrelli, Charlotte Sabourin, and Olga Lenczewska. I also thank the remarks received from two blind peer reviewers of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and Donald Murphy for the accurate copy-editing of this article.
Nuria Sánchez Madrid is Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Society and a member of INSTIFEM at the Complutense University of Madrid. Since 2018, she has co-led the Complutense Research Group GINEDIS. Her main research interests are the history of philosophy, with a particular focus on classical German philosophy, and social philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of social exploitation and the domination of women.
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