“'The Mother Too Hath Her Title': John Locke on Motherhood and Equality”

Experience the complete proceedings on-line: streaming video of the lecture is now available.
Video (1:22 minutes)

In the first of his “Two Treatises of Government,” John Locke argues that the rights of mothers should be taken as seriously as the rights of fathers. In this lecture, Jeremy Waldron will explore various aspects of Locke’s argument about motherhood: his views on gestation, the ensoulment of the fetus, the punishment of Eve, the nature of queenship, the importance of the Fifth Commandment, the possibility of divorce, the nurture of children, and the ownership of property.

Jeremy Waldron is University Professor at the New York University School of Law. He is the author of more than a hundred published articles and essays in legal and political philosophy and numerous books, including his most recent God, Locke and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Law and Disagreement (Oxford University Press, 1999).

This lecture is free and open to the public.