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“Like a Fanciful Kind of Half Being”: Mary Wollstonecraft's Criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Martina Reuter
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Abstract

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau.

Type
Cluster on Mary Wollstonecraft
Information
Hypatia , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Fall 2014 , pp. 925 - 941
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Society for Women in Philosophy Ireland/UK Joint Conference in Dublin, November 2012; at a workshop on Wollstonecraft's social and political thought, Birkbeck College, London, May 2013; and at the 23rd World Congress of Philosophy, Athens, August 2013. I wish to thank the organizers of these events and fellow participants for their comments. Special thanks to Sandrine Bergès, Alan Coffee, Aaron Garrett, Morwenna Griffiths, Lena Halldenius, Susan James, Quentin Skinner, Barbara Taylor, Ericka Tucker, and Hypatia's anonymous referees for their substantial criticisms and support. Last, but not least, I thank the University of Jyväskylä and the Academy of Finland for funding my research.

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