Abstract
Together with David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft thought modern commercial society exacerbated the psychological need of most of their members to seek the approbation of others. Like them, she thought the better part of her contemporaries were caught in a hall of mirrors and sought to be esteemed for their appearance. In her view the contrivances this entailed distorted individual characters, relationships, and society as a whole. Though she partook of a European wide philosophical debate, she came to it from the very unique perspective of a largely self-taught English woman and in a large part from what might be meaningfully conceived as a Platonist perspective. In examining how this might be so, this chapter does not seek to make Wollstonecraft a Platonist as opposed to, say, an Aristotelian, much less a Christian. Her moral and political critique made her eclectic in her use of ideas and argument. She seems however to have been inspired by conceptions of the soul, love, truth and virtue that have their origins in Platonism. Considering her in this light provides greater insights into her philosophy of mind as well as her social and political views and provides a greater understanding of the continued importance of Platonism in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
All references to the Vindications are from this edition. The edition of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 7 vols., Vol 5, 23, n. b gives a reference to Phaedrus, 274. The relevant passage in Phaedrus is 246. As will be discussed further in what follows, this way of speaking about the soul and its wings can be found in Phaedrus more generally as well as Phaedo and other of Plato’s dialogues that might well have been read and discussed by Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, who shared his knowledge of Plato and Platonism with her, when the Wollstonecraft family had taken lodgings with him in 1777 or in subsequent meetings. Given that he worked as a bank clerk during the day, his translations must have been undertaken over a prolonged period of time before they appeared in print. See Raine and Mills (1969, 15, 113, 125–126); Todd (2000, 27).
- 2.
Hutton (2003) has explored the philosophical aspect of Wollstonecraft’s relation to Price.
- 3.
One might note that Wollstonecraft never argued for the rights of women on the basis of their physical equality to men. Indeed, equality of ability of any kind was not the foundation of her argument. See Tomaselli (forthcoming).
- 4.
Plato’s Republic was not translated into English until 1794. Whether Wollstonecraft had unmediated access to its content prior to that date is difficult to establish, but as is discussed below she did know of it. Rousseau repeatedly urged the readers of his Emile, of which Wollstonecraft was one, to read Republic claiming that those who thought it a political treatise were much mistaken; it was a pedagogical work.
- 5.
There are a number of ways in which Wollstonecraft may have drawn upon Taylor’s work on antiquity. The first is relatively simple, that Wollstonecraft read Plato in translation in her late teens. In the late 1770s, Taylor and his wife, Mary Morton, were landlords to the young Mary Wollstonecraft. At the time, Taylor had embarked on the translation of the complete works of Plato and of Plotinus, in particular the Phaedrus, and Plotinus’ ‘On the Essence of the Soul’. Of another channel through which Taylor’s translations and Platonism may have reached Wollstonecraft we can be more certain. In 1788, Taylor gave a series of lectures at the artist John Flaxman’s house. Attending those lectures was an informal ‘academy’ of artists and poets, including William Meredith, William Fordyce, Mrs. Damer, Mrs. Coswar and, according to Kathleen Raine, William Blake. Blake was an intimate friend of Flaxman’s and frequently references Taylor’s translations in his later work. But Blake was also a client of Joseph Johnson’s, Wollstonecraft’s publisher, and the two moved in the same circle of Dissenters.
- 6.
It comes at Plato’s Phaedo 77A. Price’s quote is in Greek. I am grateful to Professor Malcolm Schofield for this translation, who remarks that Price more literally wrote something like this: ‘Surely nothing is so evident to me personally as this? That the beautiful and the good certainly exist’.
- 7.
See also notes 12 and 17. From the late 1780s, William Blake began working with Joseph Johnson, who helped Blake open a print shop in 1794. According to Kathleen Raine, Johnson held regular discussions at his house, attended by Joseph Priestly, Richard Price, William Blake, Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. It is possible, therefore, perhaps even probable, that Blake and Wollstonecraft met at one of Johnson’s evening discussions. At the very least, the two were undoubtedly aware of the others’ ideas and writings.
- 8.
- 9.
Hutton comments on the extensiveness of Macaulay’s engagement with King and the importance of her religious views to her feminism more generally in Hutton (2005, 538-50).
- 10.
The italics are Wollstonecraft’s.
- 11.
The emphasis is mine.
- 12.
See for instance, Phaedo 70c sq., 81, 113a, Phaedrus 248c sq., and Republic 10.617d sq.
- 13.
I am grateful to Joshua Simons for pointing out that in describing the authority of reason, Wollstonecraft uses an analogy found in Plato’s Republic (488e-489d), of the captain of a naval vessel.
- 14.
For a further discussion of her views on love and respect, see my ‘Reflections on Inequality, respect and love in the political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (note 5 above).
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Tomaselli, S. (2019). ‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft. In: Hedley, D., Leech, D. (eds) Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_11
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