![]() ![]() At times, they made her an object of scandal, impoverished, or deeply depressed, even in such desperate straits that she twice attempted suicide. It’s not just because she didn’t conform to the mores of her time her life choices are still considered unreasonable and even self-destructive by many. Yet the life Wollstonecraft chose to live was widely criticized both during her lifetime and over the two hundred plus years since her death. Without reason, she thought, human beings are ruled by narrow self-interest, by prejudice born of ignorance, and by crude lust. She believed that reason should rule both individuals and societies because it’s the best tool we have to achieve justice and to perfect the self. ![]() She used reason to great effect to show why women should, and how they could, grow out of their socially constructed roles as under-educated coquettes and household drudges. ![]() Her seminal feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, champions reason as the ultimate guide for a moral and productive life. The life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of modern feminism, can seem to reveal a mass of contradictions. Mary Wollstonecraft, Champion of Reason, Passionate in Love One is the Traveling Philosophy series in which I followed the life and ideas of Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson in Revolution-era Paris, France in 2015. In honor of Mary Wollstonecraft’s birthday, April 27, 1759, I share two works about this great feminist thinker which I’ve published here at Ordinary Philosophy. ![]()
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