Counting on Women and Why Women Count: A New Look at John Stuart Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women" March 3, 2011

The University of St. Thomas Women, Culture and Society Program will present, "Counting on Women and Why Women Count: A New Look at John Stuart Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women,'" a lecture by Dr. Curtis Hancock, professor of philosophy at Rockhurst University. The event will be held at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 3, in Ahern Room, Crooker Center, 3909 Graustark. A reception will precede the lecture at 6 p.m.

Hancock will address the debate, in relation to the controversial of Carol Gilligan in women’s studies, over whether women have certain psychological traits and dispositions that, as a rule, differentiate them from men. Gilligan argues that whereas women are aware that the moral experience is so intimately connected with care and nurture that it is not reducible to abstract principles of justice, male philosophers are tempted to such reductionism. Some feminists claim that John Stuart Mill is such a reductionist in his 19th century classic, “Subjection of Women.”

Hancock will argue that a deeper of this classic shows how Mill’s stance embraces not only the concern for the justice and equality but also further concerns that are of great relevance to us today.

Hancock is the Joseph M. Freeman Chair of Philosophy at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. The author of numerous books and articles on the Catholic intellectual tradition, Hancock is the president of the Gilson Society, director of the Great Books Academy and former president of the American Maritain Association.

The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available for $2 in the Moran Center at Graustark and West Alabama. For more information, contact Dr. Brooke Deely at 713-525-3148.