PHIL 150 · Set Texts — Mill's The Subjection of Women

Led by John Stuart Mill

The fourth set text of the Cambridge Part IA Philosophy syllabus, read with Mill himself — one of the earliest systematic philosophical arguments for the equality of the sexes. Mill argues that the legal subordination of women is the last surviving form of the law of the strongest, that the appeal to women's nature cannot defend it because that nature has never been observed in freedom, and that equality would enlarge the happiness of the whole species. The student works through the argument and its still-living refutation of appeals to nature.

1. Module 4 ○ Open

   Mill's The Subjection of Women: Equality, Nature, and the Marriage Law

   Led by John Stuart Mill

   The question

   Can the subordination of women to men be justified — and in particular, can it be justified by appeal to the different "natures" of the sexes? Mill answers no on both counts, and *The Subjection of Women* shows why: the subordination is the last surviving instance of the rule of the stronger, in an age that has repudiated that rule everywhere else; and the appeal to nature fails because women's nature has never been observed except in the distorting medium of their subjection, so no one is entitled to claim knowledge of it — the experiment of equality having never been tried. The module reads the essay as the tightly built argument it is, follows it into the legal reality of marriage, and weighs the benefits Mill claims equality would bring to women, men, and humanity.

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