Progresso moral e a condição das mulheres na filosofia social de David Hume

Abstract

This thesis aims to defend and analyze the progress of feelings in David Hume's social and moral theory and relate it to the diversity of women's condition. The first chapter is devoted to analyzing the circumstances that give rise to justice; I defend then that justice originates in the family and that for this reason I would not exclude women from its dictates beforehand. Then I present the feminine virtue par excellence, chastity; I seek to demonstrate how it is only because of his conception of human nature and by defending a social vision in which the priority is private property that Hume points this virtue to female behavior. This point becomes even clearer when I move the analysis to the patrilineal succession of property and I argue that despite everything, a defense of matrilineality would make more sense with the principles that are presented by Hume himself. In the third and last chapter, I show how at its base the birth of government was patriarchal, but that despite this, Hume argues that the condition of women has improved thanks to the progress of feelings.