Jacqueline Broad explores the writings of such women philosophers as Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell and Catherine Trotter Cockburn. Broad demonstrates their relevance to current feminist scholarship. Her book is an accessible study of thinkers whose importance to the history of philosophy is increasingly recognized.

This volume serves as an introduction to a rich and as yet under-explored period in the history of women s ideas. The volume provides a partial insight into the richness and complexity of women s political ideas in the centuries prior to the French Revolution. The essays in this collection examine women s political writings with particular reference to the themes of virtue (especially the virtue of phronesis or prudence), liberty, and toleration.

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Jacqueline Broad explores the writings of such women philosophers as Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell and Catherine Trotter Cockburn. Broad demonstrates their relevance to current feminist scholarship. Her book is an accessible study of thinkers whose importance to the history of philosophy is increasingly recognized.

This ground-breaking book surveys the history of women's political thought in Europe from the late medieval period to the early modern era. The authors examine women's ideas about topics such as the basis of political authority, the best form of political organisation, justifications of obedience and resistance, and concepts of liberty, toleration, sociability, equality, and self-preservation. Women's ideas concerning relations between the sexes are discussed in tandem with their broader political outlooks; and the authors demonstrate that the development of a distinctively sexual politics is...

This volume serves as an introduction to a rich and as yet under-explored period in the history of women s ideas. The volume provides a partial insight into the richness and complexity of women s political ideas in the centuries prior to the French Revolution. The essays in this collection examine women s political writings with particular reference to the themes of virtue (especially the virtue of phronesis or prudence), liberty, and toleration.

"

This ground-breaking book surveys the history of women's political thought in Europe from the late medieval period to the early modern era. The authors examine women's ideas about topics such as the basis of political authority, the best form of political organisation, justifications of obedience and resistance, and concepts of liberty, toleration, sociability, equality, and self-preservation. Women's ideas concerning relations between the sexes are discussed in tandem with their broader political outlooks; and the authors demonstrate that the development of a distinctively sexual politics is...

Mary Astell (1666-1731) is best known today as one of the earliest English feminists. She is also known as a Tory political pamphleteer, an Anglican apologist, an eloquent rhetorician, and an educational theorist. In this book, Jacqueline Broad interprets Astell first and foremost as a moral philosopher, or as someone committed to providing guidance on how best to live and how to attain happiness. The central claim of this work is that all the different strands of Astell's thought--her theory of knowledge, her metaphysics, her philosophy of the passions, her feminist vision, and her...

There have been many different historical-intellectual accounts of the shaping and development of concepts of liberty in pre-Enlightenment Europe. This volume is unique for addressing the subject of liberty principally as it is discussed in the writings of women philosophers, and as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives, during this period. The volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, with some chapters discussing women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will, and others examining the topic of women's freedom (or lack thereof) in...