Re- Framing the Democratic Intellect

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market of ideas, as it appears in Habermas's writing. The active shapers of the 'public sphere' were involved in organised reading, publication, discussion in clubs and societies in which people came together voluntarily as individuals: 'domination-free communication' (to use Habermas' term) was the goal, but to achieve this, members had to discipline themselves corporeally and mentally. A sober dispassionate atmosphere was achieved by self-censorship: many topics were taboo, such as matters of state, religion and family (p.210). Moral virtue defined the new social elite, a quality potentially accessible to everyone, yet a code consonant with only certain social groups. As the focus of associations and clubs shifted to mobilize broader social strata such as artisans and peasants, even Jews and Catholics, women were expressly shut out of early political associations, despite the fact that the first public discussion about the emancipation of women was taking place in Masonic Lodges and reading clubs. And the clergy in Germany (and Scotland) joined the Enlightenment in large numbers, thus stamping Enlightenment discourse (and practices) with something of its old outlines (and habits) even as it was being changed. Guardians of knowledge and understanding wield tremendous social power, Hull comments. Speculation about women (and there was much at the time, especially in the late period of Enlightenment) was a function (and part and parcel) of the more fundamental task of defining men because, to repeat, practitioners of Enlightenment sought primarily to re-cast relations among men (Hull, p.225). The anthropologist, Mary Douglas, has claimed that bodily symbols, including sexual ones, are especially salient in times of socio-political re­ organisation. Sexual arguments and metaphors have been useful to those engaged in redrawing social lines, by, for example, disqualifying women or poor people from expanding political participation on sexual-biological grounds. Crucially, structured debate was taken to be the motor of social change by the practitioners of civil society and their contemporaries. They saw their task as moral reform rather than setting up political clubs. Pedagogues and writers of the late enlightenment, understanding themselves as leaders of civil society, viewed this project in terms of shaping desire. The education of women should occur entirely in relation to themselves, as future wives of the practitioners of civil society. In such teachings, marriage was universally normative. Women had to actively achieve self-effacement, like Rousseau's Sophie and even Wollstonecraft's woman whose moral perfection would redeem civil society if released from domestic bondage. The figure of