Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the
Transformation of the Family. By Eileen Hunt Botting. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2006. 258p. $65.00.
This book reminds us of the importance of theorizing the
family/state relationship. Eileen Hunt Botting argues that while
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke proposed different versions of a
patriarchal structuring of the family in contrast to Mary
Wollstonecraft's egalitarian version, the three eighteenth-century
theorists shared a view of the function of the family as providing the
relational and moral foundations for the state. To relate as a father,
husband, son, wife, sister, or daughter was to learn how to sympathize,
and to work for a common purpose, both of which were absolutely necessary
for developing patriotic feelings and civic virtue. The significance of
the book goes beyond taking us back to the Enlightenment origins of the
notion of the family as an agent of political socialization. It raises
crucial questions about Wollstonecraft's status as a canonical
democratic theorist; it also suggests fascinating implications for how
political theory could make a contribution to our contemporary
conversations on gay families, religion and the family, and the clash of
civilizations and the family.