The Ship of State: Statecraft and Politics from Ancient Greece to Democratic America By Norma Thompson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 256p. $35.00. Nature, Woman, and the Art of Politics Edited by Eduardo A. Velasquez. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000. 385p. $80.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Abstract

These books have similar aims and are written from a similar perspective. There are, however, important differences in content, emphasis, and form. Norma Thompson explicitly seeks to show that the Western intellectual tradition is not misogynist. One reason that it is not, she urges, is that it is not univocal. Within the tradition one can find several very different views of the character and relation of men and women. Introducing the volume he edited, Eduardo Velasquez states, “This collection of essays does not purport to give an answer to the question of what are ‘nature’ and ‘woman,’ at least not in an immediate, definitive sense. Rather, the comprehensive aim here is to reopen questions as to the ‘nature of nature,’ the ‘nature of woman’ with consideration given to the consequences of pairing some understanding of ‘nature’ with that of ‘woman’” (p. xi). A collection of essays necessarily contains a variety of voices.