Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797 · British Moral Philosophy · Renowned
Wollstonecraft was an English writer. Women look frivolous because they are raised to be, she argued. Deny anyone a real education and you produce the weakness you then call natural. Any being that can reason has the same claim to run its own moral life. She turned the Enlightenment's case for reason back on the men who made it, and founded liberal feminism doing so, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.
Signature
The position Wollstonecraft is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Polity
- leans Liberalism
- Human Nature
- Tabula Rasa / Imago Dei
Positions on the 16 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Individualism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (70 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- mildly leans Realism (35 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- mildly between Mastery and Harmony (50 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (70 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- leans Means (70 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- mildly between Uncertain and Certain (40 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
4 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Wollstonecraft refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Deism / Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Tabula Rasa / Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?