On one hand, the philosopher Immanuel Kant argued against the skepticism of Hume that pure reason was of no use in understanding the world. On the other hand, his philosophy is also a challenge to the Enlightenment proposition that reason is unlimited in scope. Thus, Kant would admit to some degree that reason is limited as a tool in understanding the world. Reason may be limited solely because of prejudices of the time, such as those who were unable to reason the world was round because of prevailing prejudices in their time that it was definitely flat. So too, in Kant’s time, there were prejudices of thought regarding the female gender. These prejudices are historical as well and are definitely still embedded on some level in modern thought and society. Thus, looking at Kantian philosophy, especially as regards the female person, may demand feminist critique to understand the limits of reason involved in Kant’s views of sexuality, the female person, and the marriage contract “Feminism and postmodernism are the only contemporary theories that present a truly radical critique of the Enlightenment legacy of modernism. No other approaches on the contemporary intellectual scene offer a means of displacing and transforming the masculinist epistemology of modernity. This fact alone creates a bond between the two approaches,” (Hutchings 174-175).
Before addressing Carol Pateman’s critique of Kant’s views of sexuality, the female person, and the marriage contract, in Feminism and the Marriage Contract, we must first examine Kant’s views of all three as proposed in his The Metaphysics of Morals. Sexual passion is a passion degrading to the person in Kant’s view. He views sexual passion as a desire to use another person’s sexual organs for personal (i.e. sensual) gratification. Since Kant views all parts of a person as interdependent to the whole person, he views sex as the use of another person for one’s own ...