Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination - Hardcover

Springborg, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521841046 ISBN 13: 9780521841047

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Philosopher, theologian, educational theorist, feminist, and political pamphleteer, Mary Astell was an important figure in the history of ideas of the early modern period in many contexts. (She contributed to the British debate over toleration and dissent from the 1690s, which inaugurated the modern secular state.) Patricia Springborg's study recovers the historical and philosophical contexts of her thought. She demonstrates that Astell was not alone in her views but, rather, part of a cohort of early modern women philosophers grappling with the existential problems of a new age.

About this title

Book Description

Philosopher, theologian, educational theorist, feminist, and political pamphleteer, Mary Astell was an important figure in the history of ideas of the early modern period. She is best known for the famous question which prefaces her Reflections on Marriage: "If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?" She is claimed by modern Republican theorists and feminists alike, but as a Royalist High Church Tory, the peculiar constellation of her views sits uneasily with modern commentators. Patricia Springborg's study addresses these apparent paradoxes and recovers the historical and philosophical contexts for her thought.

About the Author

Patricia Springborg received her first degrees in Political Science from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and her doctorate from Oxford University. She has taught political science in New Zealand, and as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley, and held a personal chair in Political Theory in the Department of Government at the University of Sydney before being appointed professor ordinario in the School of Economics of the Free University, Bolzano. Elected to the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences in 1999, she has been a stipendiary fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars in Washington DC, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford, and was the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award in International Peace and Security, taken up at the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. As a political theorist she works across a wide field, from political economy (The Problem of Human Needs, 1981), to theory of the state (Royal Persons, 1990), Orientalism (Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince, Cambridge University Press, 1992), and the history of political thought. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and co-editor of the first English translation and critical edition of Thomas Hobbes's long Latin poem 'Historia Ecclesiastica'. She has published articles in journals such as The American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Political Studies, the Journal for the History of Political Thought and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521841046
• ISBN 13: 9780521841047
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396