Patriarchal power as unjust: tyranny in seventeenth-century Venice

ABSTRACT

In the debate about the worth of women in sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy three pro-woman authors of the period, Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, and Arcangela Tarabotti, developed analyses of male power, particularly as embodied in husbands and fathers. I argue that these analyses identify the wrong of patriarchal power by construing it as a kind of tyrannical rule, in which the tyrant acts in his own interest and fails to recognize the equality (or superiority) of those over whom he rules. Fonte, Marinella and Tarabotti offer similar accounts of the motives and practices of tyrannical men, but differ in their arguments for the moral equality of the sexes – Fonte and Tarabotti base that claim on natural liberty and freedom of the will, whereas Marinella focuses on the intellectual and moral superiority of women grounded in physiology. Two conclusions follow from their arguments: (i) that the rule of men over women is illegitimate and unjust and (ii) that women are better suited than men to legitimate political rule. Although these works have not often been treated as philosophical, their analyses of male tyranny constitute contributions to feminist political philosophy.