Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill on sexual equality : : historical, methodological and philosophical issues / / by Vincent Guillin.

• Superior document: Studies in the history of political thought, v. 1
• Author: Guillin, Vincent.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in the history of political thought ; v. 1.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Vincent Guillin uses the issue of sexual equality as a prism through which to examine important differences – epistemological, methodological and theoretical – between Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill. He succeeds in showing how their differing conceptions of science and human nature influence and affect their respective approaches to philosophy and to the analysis of female (in)equality in particular. Guillin shines a bright searchlight into long-neglected aspects of both men’s thinking – for example, Mill’s proposal to construct an ‘ethology’, or science of character-formation, and Comte’s seemingly bizarre interest in phrenology – and the ways in which these shaped their views of women’s intellectual and political capacities. Guillin’s wide-ranging study examines both men’s major and minor works, their correspondence with one another, and the reasons for the final acrimonious break between two of the nineteenth century’s most original and important thinkers.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- Comte and Mill on sexual equality : context and problems -- The female brain and the subjection of women : biology, phrenology and sexual equality -- The phrenological controversy -- The explanation of moral phenomena : Comte and Mill on the architectonics of the moral sciences -- A never ending subjection? : Comte, Mill, and the sociological argument against sexual equality -- The ethological fiasco : the methodological shortcomings of the Millian science of the formation of character -- How to discover one's nature : Mill's argument for emancipation in the Subjection of women -- Conclusion.