Good fathers and rebellious daughters: reading women in Benhabib's international political theory

Abstract

The paper traces the role of ‘women’ in Seyla Benhabib's work. It argues that this tracing helps to make clear the way that Benhabib's latest work relies on assuming distinctive political temporalities between the international (cosmopolitan and moral) and the domestic (democratic and political) spheres. The international is characterised by an unlocatable linear temporality of moral learning that draws on Habermas's reading of Kant's philosophy of history. In contrast, in the domestic, cosmopolitan temporality enters into a dialectical relation with an Arendtian, republican temporality that is open and unpredictable and is clearly located within the (revisable) boundaries of political community