Since All the World is mad, why should not I be so?” Mary Astell on Equality, Hierarchy, and Ambition

Bibliographic Data

ID6351925
AuthorsTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume47
Issue6
Pages781-808
Publication date2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0090591719852040
OpenAlexW2947241152
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the “First English Feminist” in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed “paradox” in her thought is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell’s thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and her psychology of superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell’s politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of “equality before egalitarianism” that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day

Egalitarianism · Epistemology · Hierarchy · Natural (archaeology · Normative · Political science · Politics · Product (mathematics · Social hierarchy · Social science · Sociology · Virtue · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity