[The prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from Moses's poetical story; yet as very few, it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that Eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke; because she, as well as the brute creation, was created to do his pleasure.--M. Wollstonecraft (1792), A Vindication of the Rights Woman (hereafter Vindication), Chapter 2. (25). [Here and below the page-numbers refer to the Dover Thrift reprint, while the provided links refer to the third (1796) edition.--ES]
"Nature, or, to speak with strict propriety, God,"--Vindication, chapter 2, (29).
Upon re-reading the Vindication in preparation for a class discussion, the second epigraph to this post, which we may loosely translate as Natura sive Deus, startled me. Could Wollstonecraft, who so often sounds like a Deist, be a kind of Spinozist? For, Wollstonecraft is quite clear that "propriety" is just "another word for convenience." (106) So, the substitution of "Nature" by "God" is really an act of social expedience. Yet, could this really be so? For, so much of Wollstonecraft's argument seems to rely on commitments that require commitment to immortal souls and, presumably, a judging God (and one can find other Deist commitments).
I think so, as a consideration of Wollstonecraft's most extended discussion of metaphysical theology, which she describes as a self-contained "apparent digression," (46) shows. This discussion (to be more explored fully) concludes:
It is not impious thus to scan the attributes of the Almighty: in fact, who can avoid it that exercises his faculties? for to love God as the fountain of wisdom, goodness, and power, appears to be the only worship useful to a being who wishes to acquire either virtue or knowledge. (45)
Wollstonecraft, who self-consciously reads and speaks "as a philosopher," (33) suggests, first, that anybody who engages in intellectual thought (exercises one's mental faculties) will be lead to explore the nature of God. Given that it is wholly natural intellectual ascent, as it were, such exploration couldn't be impious. But it turns out that the content of such metaphysical theology does not have any implications for either "virtue or knowledge!" What God is does not matter to morality or knowledge, and this is a break with a more standard Deist position (exemplified by the position of Tindall: "the existence of a God, and the sense and practice of those duties which result from the knowledge we, by our reason, have of him and his perfections"). Rather our comportment toward God -- to love her "as the fountain of wisdom, goodness, and power," -- is what matters.
This is not the place to explore why she thinks this particular comportment will produce the desired effects for virtue and knowledge. Yet, it is not even obvious that our love for God must be reciprocated for these effects to occur. As an aside, Wollstoncraft's moral economy is mistrustful of love regulating human affairs; she prefers friendship (recall this post), which (echoing Hume and Smith) she understands as the virtue of equals.
Let's now turn to her metaphysical theology:
The only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the Supreme Being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes; and, to speak with reverence, one attribute seems to imply the NECESSITY of another. He must be just, because he is wise, he must be good, because he is omnipotent. For, to exalt one attribute at the expense of another equally noble and necessary, bears the stamp of the warped reason of man, the homage of passion. Man, accustomed to bow down to power in his savage state, can seldom divest himself of this barbarous prejudice even when civilization determines how much superior mental is to bodily strength; and his reason is clouded by these crude opinions, even when he thinks of the Deity. His omnipotence is made to swallow up, or preside over his other attributes, and those mortals are supposed to limit his power irreverently, who think that it must be regulated by his wisdom. (45)
Wollstonecraft clearly rejects an atavistic anthropomorphic ("the homage of passion") privileging of the attribute of omnipotence as a remnant of "barbarous prejudice." As she points out, the attributes seems to imply each other's necessity, and no single one is privileged over the others. But this has an implication that she does not emphasize; it also means that God's power is not subservient to his justice or his goodness. Even if we leave aside the question of anthropomorphism, this means that attempts at theodicy, which ultimately bottom out in God's goodness, cannot be entirely successful according to Wollstonecraft.
Moreover, Wollstonecraft carefully does not attribute the existence of the four attributes that she is capable of forming a "conception" (45) of -- justice, wisdom, goodness, omnipotence -- to God. Rather, she is speaking "with reverence." We learn at the end of the Vindication, that the aesthetic models that function as objects of reverence are the product of human imagination. (177) Un-"warped reason" implies that The Divine moral exemplar may also be so constructed.
[This post benefited from prior discussion with Sandrine Berges, my PhD Student, Jo Van Cauter, and my undergraduate students in Ghent.--ES]
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