Philosophy, Progress, and Real Politics

Wollstonecraft, like most philosophers of the enlightenment period, had a deep trust in the power of reason to change the course of human history, and thought that religion, provided it was not dogmatic and allowed for dissent, was a crucial element of what it meant to be a good human being. Yet she was also an applied philosopher who engaged with revolutionaries proposing social and political reforms. In this chapter, I look at how her work was shaped by the political acts that took place around her, and how it in turns attempted to help shape the new social and political frameworks that were developing at the time – the French Revolution, which she commented on in her Moral and Historical View of the French Revolution .