Mary Astell's Ironic Assault on John Locke's Theory of Thinking Matter

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4456095
AutoresE Derek Taylor (autor correspondente)
Ano2001
Volume62
Fascículo3
Páginas505-522
Data de publicação2001-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222
EditoraProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jhi.2001.0030
OpenAlexW1983353821
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas4

Mary Astell (1666-1731), most famous today for her call for the establishment of Protestant nunneries in Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I (1694) and for her acute Reflections Upon Marriage (1700), has lurked for years at the edges of that infinitely contentious category "feminism," but she is only now beginning to receive her rightful inheritance as a theological and philosophical thinker, probably the title she would most have preferred. 1 This is not to say that Astell's Christian-Platonism has been ignored. In her 1986 biography Ruth Perry gave cogent expression to the centrality of Astell's idealist Christianity to all aspects of her thought 2 and in the same year, Bridget Hill thoughtfully warned her readers against attempting to force Astell, a religious conservative, "into some preconceived idea of what late seventeenth and early eighteenth century feminism ought to have been." 3 More recently, Patricia Springborg has written two significant essays that rely in part on Astell's more neglected theological-philosophical works, Letters concerning the Love of God (1695), a collection of Astell's correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton (1657-1711), and The Christian Religion, As Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705; 3d edition 1730), far and away her most developed theological-philosophical [End Page 505] statement. 4 Despite these important forays, however, both Letters and Christian Religion continue to be largely ignored, as is suggested by the relative dearth of scholarly work on either text and the short shrift each receives in anthologies of Astell's works. 5 Despite the great popularity of Letters throughout the eighteenth century and despite the fact that, as Springborg points out, Astell considered Christian Religion "her magnum opus," neither text has found new life in a modern edition. 6

Psychoanalysis · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Philosophy and Science · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment