First Principles: The Path to Women’s Emancipation in Wollstonecraft’s Rights of Woman

Sarah Bonfim

Abstract

The First Principles function as a strategic resource and an argumentative basis for the emancipation project envisioned by Mary Wollstonecraft. The importance of them lies in understanding more deeply the origins of the arguments Wollstonecraft outlines for the emancipation of women. Using Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a standpoint, this article presents the First Principles, the conceptions of reason, virtue and knowledge that work in an interconnected way to demonstrate that women are as much a part of humanity as men. Divided into four sections, I present in this paper each of these conceptions, starting from a general plan, that is, presenting how Wollstonecraft recognizes these conceptions, to a more specific plan for the case of women, their impacts and implications.

First Principles: The Path to Women’s Emancipation in Wollstonecraft’s Rights of Woman

From the book Women Philosophers on Economics, Technology, Environment, and Gender History

Abstract

Chapters in this book (37)