On the Philosophical Significance of Eighteenth-Century Female ‘Republicans’

Australasian Philosophical Review 3 (4):371-380 (2019)
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Abstract

While agreeing with Bergès on the importance for philosophy of reading the works of women such as Roland, Gouges, and Grouchy, her account of them as committed to the concept of liberty as non-domination, articulated by Philip Pettit, is questioned. It is argued that their views are more accurately described as involving a commitment to the tradition of positive liberty, that was criticised by Berlin in his famous essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. The republican writings of Catharine Macaulay are shown to be part of the context in which these women wrote, and similarities between her philosophical outlook, which involves a clear commitment to positive liberty, and the positions developed by the French authors are explored. It is argued that, in general, it is methodologically problematic to uncritically apply concepts that were developed by intellectual historians who failed to include works written by women in their histories, in order to understand the philosophical commitments of neglected works by such women.

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Karen Green
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

Sophie de Grouchy on the Problem of Economic Inequality.Getty L. Lustila - 2023 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 61 (1):112-132.

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References found in this work

Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government.Philip Pettit (ed.) - 1997 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government.Philip Pettit - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (196):415-419.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Feminist Republicanism.Lena Halldenius - forthcoming - In Sandrine Berges, Alan M. S. J. Coffee & Eileen Hunt Botting (eds.), The Wollstonecraftian Mind. Routledge.
Feminism and republicanism: Is this a plausible alliance?Anne Phillips - 2000 - Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (2):279–293.

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