Covenant and Feminist Reconstructions of Subjectivity within Theories of Justice

Abstract:     
This Article bridges the dichotomy between communitarian and liberal social contract conceptions of subjectivity by excavating the deeply rooted meaning of covenant as a promissory relationship constitutive of identity. I trace the covenant paradigm’s role in formative debates over the creation of “We the People” as a constitutional subject. I connect tensions in that debate with polarities between freedom and equality and between the private and social construction of first-order value claims. I argue that feminist-intersubjectivist critiques of Rawls’ Theory of Justice can benefit from a careful mining of the covenant paradigm’s emancipatory potential for metaethical and constitutional doctrine.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 39

Keywords: covenant, contract, critical theory, feminist theory, Rawls, intersubjectivity

Accepted Paper Series