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

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6351925
AutoresTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, University of Oxford, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume47
Fascículo6
Páginas781-808
Data de publicação2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0090591719852040
OpenAlexW2947241152
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6

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