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Reason and Sensibility: The Ideal of Women's Self-Governance in die Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Catriona Mackenzie
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Abstract

It is standard in feminist commentaries to argue that Wollstonecraft's feminism is vitiated by her commitment to a liberal philosophical framework, relying on a valuation of reason over passion and on the notion of a sex-neutral self. I challenge this interpretation of Wollstonecraft's feminism and argue that her attempt to articulate an ideal of self-governance for women was an attempt to diagnose and resolve some of the tensions and inadequacies within traditional liberal thought.1

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Fall 1993 , pp. 35 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by Hypatia, Inc.

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