The Wollstonecraftian Mind

Across disciplines, languages, and nations: Recent scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft

“…In their introduction to The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft (2016), Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee acknowledge the immense significance of Wollstonecraft's ‘analysis of the nature and causes of women's subjection’ (Bergès & Coffee, 2016, p. 2), but rightly insist on the value of embedding her feminism within a wider conceptual framework. Bergès and Coffee subsequently joined with Eileen Hunt Botting to edit The Wollstonecraftian Mind (2019), the first collection on a woman philosopher to feature in the Routledge Philosophical Minds series. The Wollstonecraftian Mind gives precedence to the Vindications, especially A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but offers an impressive range of perspectives on Wollstonecraft's philosophical frameworks and subject matter, as well as a diverse array of familiar and less expected ‘interlocutors’—those she herself confronted or credited, including Edmund Burke, Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, and Catharine Macaulay, and those who engaged with her legacy, including Jane Austen, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Taylor, Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir (Bergès et al, 2019, pp.…”

“…The ‘interlocutor’ essays not only cast new light on the far‐reaching effects of Wollstonecraft's work, they also invite us to reconsider the interlocutors themselves. For instance, Madeline Ahmed Cronin's essay resists common caricatures of both Wollstonecraft and Austen by outlining their comparable challenges to the ‘reason/feeling dichotomy’ (Ahmed Cronin, 2019, p. 227), whereby they advocate the management but never eradication of sentiment. Another highlight is Lisa Pace Vetter's essay on Lucretia Mott, which demonstrates that Wollstonecraft is often invoked as ‘a kind of badge of honour for Mott's own radicalism’ (p. 236) and that, because the American fight for women's suffrage was often dated from the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention, she also functioned as a ‘reminder of the transnational roots of the struggle for women's rights' (Pace Vetter, 2019, p. 237).…”

O Projeto educacional iluminista de Mary Wollstonecraft na obra Reivindicação do direito da mulher (1792)

“…Virginia Sapiro (2019) aponta que Wollstonecraft foi profundamente influenciada pela obra de Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), ao enfatizar uma educação doméstica dirigida aos pais, desconfiança nos empregados, proibição de histórias supersticiosas e irracionais, como os contos de fadas, e defesa de regras claras. Ainda de acordo com Sapiro, Wollstonecraft foi também influenciada por Rousseau ao advogar que as crianças possuem sentimentos inatos que servem de base para buscar a virtude.…”