Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T22:58:04.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mary Wollstonecraft's Nurturing Liberalism: Between an Ethic of Justice and Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2002

Daniel Engster
Daniel Engster*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contemporary feminist scholars have devoted much attention to analyzing the relationship between justice and care theories but little to the ideas of early feminist authors. I bring the political philosophy of the Mary Wollstonecraft to bear on contemporary justice/care debates in order to highlight her unique contribution. Although usually interpreted as a classical liberal or republican thinker, Wollstonecraft is better understood as a feminist care theorist. She aimed at a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by emphasizing the importance of care-giving duties. Unlike some recent feminist scholars, however, she still recognized an important role for justice. She argued that before personal care-giving activities could transform the political, political justice had first to be extended to personal caring relationships. Wollstonecraft's political philosophy thus provides a feminist model for synthesizing justice and care theories and represents an innovative reformulation of classical liberal and republican ideas that incorporates the care perspective.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 95 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 577 - 588
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker-Benfield, G. J. 1989. “Mary Wollstonecraft: Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthwoman.” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (January): 95–115.Google Scholar
Barry, Brian. 1995. Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Edmund. [1790] 1987. Reflections on the Revolution in France. ed. J. G. A. Pocock. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1995. “Gender and Moral Luck.” In Justice and Care. ed. Virginia Held. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 79–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clement, Grace. 1996. Care, Autonomy and Justice. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Dillon, Robin. 1992. “Care and Respect.” In Explorations in Feminist Ethics: Theory and Practice. ed. Eve Browning Cole and Susan Coultrap-McQuin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pp. 69–81.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Zillah. 1981. The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Falco, Maria, ed. 1996. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Marilyn. 1993. What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Marilyn. 1995. “Beyond Caring: The De-Moralization of Gender.” In Justice and Care. ed. Virginia Held. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 61–77.Google Scholar
Gatens, Moira, ed. 1998. Feminist Ethics. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gatens, Moira. 1991. “ ‘The Oppressed State of My Sex’: Wollstonecraft on Reason, Feeling and Equality.” In Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, ed. Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Pp. 112–28.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gunther-Canada, Wendy. 1996. “Mary Wollstonecraft's ‘Wild Wish’: Confounding Sex in the Discourse on Political Rights.” In Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Maria Falco. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Pp. 61–83.Google Scholar
Gunther-Canada, Wendy. 1997. “Teaching Mary Wollstonecraft: Women and the Canonical Conversation of Political Thought.” Feminist Teacher 11 (Spring): 20–9.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1993. Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia, ed. 1995a. Justice and Care. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1995b. “The Meshing of Care and Justice.” Hypatia 10 (Spring): 128–32.Google Scholar
Hirschmann, Nancy. 1992. Rethinking Obligation: A Feminist Method for Political Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschmann, Nancy, and Christine Di Stefano, eds. 1996. Revisioning the Political. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Jacobus, Mary. 1986. Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison. 1995. “Caring as a Feminist Practice of Moral Reason.” In Justice and Care. ed. Virginia Held. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 179–202.Google Scholar
James, Susan. 1992. “The Good-Enough Citizen: Female Citizenship and Independence.” In Beyond Equality and Difference. ed. Gisela Bock and Susan James. New York: Routledge. Pp. 48–65.Google Scholar
Johnson, Claudia. 1995. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Mary Fainsod, and Laitin, David. “Politics, Feminism, and the Ethics of Caring.” In Women and Moral Theory. ed. Eva Kitty and Diana Meyers. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 261–81.Google Scholar
Kelly, Gary. 1992. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin’s.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1997. “Human Dependency and Rawlsian Equality.” In Feminists Rethink the Self. ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 219–66.Google Scholar
Koehn, Daryl. 1998. Rethinking Feminist Ethics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Landes, Joan. 1988. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mendus, Susan. 1993. “Different Voices, Still Lives: Problems in the Ethics of Care.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 10 (1): 17–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muller, Virginia. 1996. “What Can Liberals Learn from Mary Wollstonecraft?” In Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Maria Falco. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Pp. 47–60.Google Scholar
Narayan, Uma. 1995. “Colonialism and Its Others: Considerations On Rights and Care Discourses.” Hypatia 10 (Spring): 133–40.Google Scholar
Noddings, Nell. 1984. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan. 1981. “Women and the Making of the Sentimental Family.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1): 65–88.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan. 1989a. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan. 1989b. “Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice.” Ethics 99 (2): 229–49.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1989. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. 1984. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Fiona. 1999. Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1980. “Maternal Thinking.” Feminist Studies 6 (Summer): 342–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1990. “The Rationality of Care.” In Women, Militarism and War: Essays in History, Politics and Social Theory. ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain and Sheila Tobias. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 229–54.Google Scholar
Sapiro, Virginia. 1992. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sapiro, Virginia. 1996. “Wollstonecraft, Feminism, and Democracy: ‘Being Bastilled.’ “ In Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Maria Falco. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Pp. 33–45.Google Scholar
Sevenhuijsen, Selma. 1998. Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality and Politics. trans. Liz Savage. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weiss, Penny. 1996. “Wollstonecraft and Rousseau: The Gendered Fate of Political Theorists.” In Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Maria Falco. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Pp. 15–32.Google Scholar
Wollstonecraft, Mary. [1790, 1792] 1995. A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Women. ed. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1989. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. London: Pickering.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.