inference from the fact that people create and uphold states.

She writes that

this suggests that the people want them (187). But all that follows is that
states are not natural entities and are not divinely created. Without further
investigation it is not possible to know who created a state, the military, elites,
or the people, or whether a state was developed through conquest and
impositionshe notes that warfare has been common but that such a story
does not reveal the kind of state we should createor through the invisible
hand of leadership conventions. Yet Hobbes was surely right when he says at
the conclusion of Leviathan, there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world,
whose beginning can in conscience be justied.
Hampton knows that when people create a state, they create a monster
(218). In her agent/principal discussion of subjects obedience to their rulers,
she notes that rulers, who are always helped by some subjects, can be masters
and that even if widely disliked can maintain their position by preventing the
dislike from becoming common knowledge. She comments in her concluding
section that, while the convention model has nothing to say about masters, it is
in keeping with the assumption of contract theory that only an agency
relationship with rulers can be justied. But the hands are far from invisible in
the classic texts. The problem with the dispensable contract of contemporary
philosophy and the focus on moral reasoning is that it glosses over the
relationships of subordination laid out in the pages of the classic texts, and has
nothing to say about actual contracts and the maintenance of power in everyday
life. But, very sadly, Hampton is no longer with us to discuss these issues.
Hipparchias Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc. 2nd
Ed. By MICHE
`
LE LE DUFF. Translated by TRISTA SELOUS. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007.
Marguerite La Caze
This new edition of Hipparchias Choice, rst published in French in 1989 and
in English in 1991, is very welcome and is as fresh as when it was rst published.
The book has been invaluable to courses and research in feminist philosophy,
and the analyses of existentialism represent a major contribution to our
understanding of both Beauvoirs and Sartres work. It comes with an epilogue
reecting on how the book has been received and on the importance of
understanding the involvement of women in philosophy and the imaginary
elements in philosophical texts.
Book Reviews 191
The book is written in a conversational style addressed directly to the
reader. As Miche`le Le Duff notes, she will not stick to the topic, as she
believes digressions are essential to a serious philosophical work, yet in fact
each of the four notebooks into which the book is divided has a specic theme
that is rigorously pursued in a sustained way. The rst notebook considers
the relation among women, philosophy, and feminism. For Le Duff, there are
intellectual obstacles to any such discussion, the rst being the idea that there is
radical discontinuity between the present and the past, which can lead to
either the view that philosophy is essentially masculine or the view that
philosophical reason is impersonal and there are no issues raised by women
engaging in philosophy. The other obstacle is the view that womens access to
philosophy is of minor importance (56). In both cases, Le Duff presents a
more nuanced view that recognizes womens role throughout the history of
philosophy, while simultaneously considering the signicance of the ways in
which women have been and continue to be excluded or deected from a full
and happily unself-conscious participation in philosophy. She characterizes a
feminist as someone who knows that something is still not right in the
relations between a woman and everybody else, in other words men, other
women, the supposedly impersonal agents of institutions and anyone else: some
hitch that is strictly potential, of course, simply liable to manifest itself, but
which you must learn to identify in everyday situations and conversations
(28). This work of identication is something Le Duff carries out in order to
lead the way to a less exclusionary philosophy and approach to human
relations. Her discussion of the need for a more open relation to philosophy
and learning in general both develops from her earliest work and looks forward
to The Sex of Knowing (2003).
Although Le Duff is optimistic concerning the way feminism links women
and philosophy in a dialectic, she also worries about the difculties in
articulating ones thoughts when one is both a woman and a philosopher.
Simone de Beauvoirs life and work shed light on these difculties, and the
analysis of these and her relation with Jean-Paul Sartre form the heart of the
work. In the second notebook, Le Duff examines the philosophical relation
between the two existentialist thinkers in order to answer the question, in
what respect, if any, is the choice of this or that philosophical frame of
reference a crucial one for feminist studies? (56). She nds that existentialist
ethics enabled Beauvoir to expose womens oppression in spite of Sartres lack
of theorization of oppression and the horror of womens bodies expressed in his
texts.
A notable feature of Le Duffs method here is showing the link between
images in a philosophical text, such as that of the frigid woman and the
woman on a date in Being and Nothingness (2003), and the fundamental views
expressed therein. She uses this method to great effect in The Philosophical
192 Hypatia
Imaginary (1989). Her analysis of Sartres Being and Nothingness in Hipparchias
Choice is especially signicant as, while she details sexist elements in his work,
she assesses it by his own standards of argumentation. This pointthat in sexist
and racist remarks philosophers fail by their own standards (12)is a
cornerstone of Le Duff s work and an extremely fruitful way of thinking
about the role of prejudice in philosophical texts. At the same time, imaginary
elements provide support for concepts in a philosophical system, such as
Sartres concept of bad faith. She argues that what women often nd off-
putting in philosophical texts is a masculinist or macho attitude of superiority
to women and other men and other discourses (78). It would be very
interesting to examine the relation between imaginary elements and concepts
in Sartres later work in the light of this discussion.
In contrast to Sartres text, Beauvoir is able to transform existentialism from
a closed system into an invaluable perspective for feminist inquiry. In The
Second Sex (1983), she shows how oppression is built up from myriad symbolic
and concrete injustices that constrain womens lives and self-conceptions.
The transformations of existentialist concepts that Le Duff elaborates include
Beauvoirs introduction of the notion of reciprocity between consciousnesses,
which reveals variety in our experience of otherness. Nevertheless, she also
notes epistemological obstacles to Beauvoirs thinking, derived from existenti-
alism, that lead to an excessive focus on individual rather than collective
liberation and a neglect of the exploitation of women, obstacles that Beauvoir
later overcame (123, 131).
Although she is critical of Beauvoir on these points, Le Duff constructs a
wonderful image to explain Beauvoirs articulation of the relation between
freedom and bad faith, writing: The Second Sex seems to be saying that once a
crack has opened in the wall, it is the duty of the woman who benets from it to
use it to the maximum to establish herself at last as a subject condemned to be
free (131). This is an excellent summation of Beauvoirs point of view;
however, Le Duff suggests that an understanding of the way liberation struggles
are interconnected would be more useful to feminism. The method that she uses
here to link the conceptual and imaginary elements in the texts is an extremely
productive one that has and will continue to inspire other readings.
1
In the third notebook, Le Duff shifts to the more personal relations
between Beauvoir and Sartre in order to explore issues around Beauvoirs
notable declaration that she is not a philosopher, in spite of her philosophical
production. She develops her view of the Heloise complex through
Beauvoirs experience and claries how important it is for male philosophers
not only to be recognized by an admiring partner but also by an admiring world.
In Sartres case, Le Duff argues, he also demanded to be accepted as the only
speaking subject (186), and controlled the interactions among their friends
and lovers.
Book Reviews 193
The fourth notebook is even more wide-ranging than the others, dealing
with such topics as education, debates over difference and equality in feminism,
women and public employment, the need for sexual balance or mixite, the
phenomenon of trans-subjectivity, laws concerning contraception and abor-
tion, the nature of justice, clitoridectomy, and Tocquevilles views on race.
Nevertheless, Le Duff is still pursuing a theme. She argues that when
something damaging exists which only causes harm to women and little girls, it
is never considered serious; the phenomenon can easily be minimized in
unquestioned ethnographic categories: its their culture, and since women
alone suffer from it, it is certainly a symbolic way of marking sexual difference
(293). There is much worth engaging with here in relation to the issue of the
interaction of sexism with racism and other forms of oppression.
The freedom of thought (317) Le Duff refers to in the epilogue is
fundamental to all her work. This freedom is to follow philosophical ideas
wherever they lead, for women to engage in the intellectual work that interests
them, and in general not to be limited by boundaries, prejudices, or
exclusionary imaginaries against thought. The title of the book refers to a
quote from the ancient philosopher Hipparchia: I have used for the getting of
knowledge all the time which, because of my sex, I was supposed to waste at the
loom (ix). Thus Hipparchias choice is between weaving and philosophy, and
she chooses the latter, a choice Miche`le Le Duff sees as one of throwing off
the shackles of an expected identity (20506). This is not to suggest that we
must choose philosophy over traditional pursuits, but that we can choose
philosophy and enjoy it in our own way. Hipparchias Choice is a rare and
inspiring work of philosophy in that it is scrupulous in argumentation and a
great pleasure to read.
NOTE
1. For discussions of Le Duffs work, see Morris 1988, Grosz 1989, Paddle 1991,
Arens 1995, Grimshaw 1996, David 1997, P. Deutscher 1997, Anderson 1998,
Goulimari 1999, M. Deutscher 2000, Lloyd 2000, Kail 2002, La Caze 2002, Fornasiero
and Sankey 2003, and Lehtinen 2007.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Pamela Sue. 1998. A feminist philosophy of religion: The rationality and myths of
religious belief. Oxford: Blackwell.
Arens, Katherine. 1995. Between Hypatia and Beauvoir: Philosophy as discourse.
Hypatia 10 (4): 4675.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1983. The second sex, Trans. H. M. Parshley. London: Penguin.
(Le deuxie`me sexe. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.)
194 Hypatia
David, Anthony. 1997. Le Duff and Irigaray on Descartes. Philosophy Today 41 (34):
36782.
Deutscher, Max, ed. 2000. Operative philosophy and imaginary practice: Miche`le Le Duff.
Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books.
Deutscher, Penelope. 1997. French feminist philosophers on law and public policy: Miche`le
Le Duff and Luce Irigaray. Australian Journal of French Studies 34 (1): 2444.
Fornasiero, Jean and Margaret Sankey eds. 2003. Autour de Miche`le Le Duff.
Australian Journal of French Studies 40 (3).
Goulimari, Pelagia. 1999. A minoritarian feminism? Things to do with Deleuze and
Guattari. Hypatia 14 (2): 97120.
Grimshaw, Jean. 1996. Philosophy, feminism, and universalism. Radical Philosophy
76: 1928.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1989. Sexual subversions: Three French feminists. Sydney: Allen &
Unwin.
Kail, Michel. 2002. Miche`le Le Duff: Une philosophie a` luvre. Les Temps modernes
619: 144162.
La Caze, Marguerite. 2002. The analytic imaginary. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press.
Le Duff, Miche`le. 1989. The philosophical imaginary. Trans. Colin Gordon. London:
Athlone Press. (Recherches sur limaginaire philosophique, Paris: Payot, 1980.)
. 1991. Hipparchias choice: An essay concerning women, philosophy, etc. Trans.
Trista Selous. Oxford: Blackwell. (LEtude et le rouet, Paris: Les Editions du Seuil,
1989.)
. 2003. The sex of knowing. Trans. Kathryn Hamer and Lorraine Code. London:
Routledge. (Le sexe du savoir, Paris: Aubier, 1998.)
Lehtinen, Virpi. 2007. On philosophical style: Miche`le Le Duff and Luce Irigaray.
European Journal of Womens Studies 14 (2): 109125.
Lloyd, Genevieve. 2000. Feminism in history of philosophy: Appropriating the past. In
The Cambridge companion to feminism in philosophy, ed. Miranda Fricker and Jennifer
Hornsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 245263.
Morris, Meaghan. 1988. Operative reasoning: Reading Miche`le Le Duff. In The
pirates ancee: Feminism, reading, postmodernism. London: Verso, 71102.
Paddle, Sarah. 1991. Ideology and culture: Towards feminist cultural history. Hecate 17
(1): 714.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2003. Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology.
Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. London: Routledge. (LE

tre et le neant, Paris: Gallimard,

1943.)
Book Reviews 195