Women in Society: The Critical Potential of Stein’s Feminism for Our Understanding of the State

Abstract

In this paper I intend to place Stein’s philosophy of woman in the context of, on one hand, her (earlier) work on society and the state and, on the other hand, her (later) work on philosophical and theological anthropology. I want to do this in order to assess Stein’s understanding of the role of women in society (as a special case of the relationship of human beings with society) and in order to evaluate the critical potential of Stein’s thought for the organization of the state. First, I briefly discuss the nature and context of Stein’s works on women, society and the human being. Second, I then focus on three key terms: vocation, power and state in order to bring out their relationship to one other. Finally, I address the question of whether Stein’s thought on woman and the state can be summed up by the idea that a significant part of the vocation of the human being is to manage power in and of the state.