This discussion has taken place imaginatively posthumously. (They are in Philosophy Heaven) With the hindsight to understand when women were given the right to vote Wollstonecraft is asking Hume how it is possible, if all knowledge comes from experience, that she was able to argue for women’s rights long before it was a national agenda item. Hume stands his ground and argues that Wollstonecraft’s familiarity with Locke allows her to infer, from experience, that women should directly be responsible to participate in society.
Mary Wollstonecraft - How is it that I was able to correctly identify that women should be participatory members of society, 122 years before women were able to vote? I say my natural, God-given intellect showed me a more participatory way.
David Hume- Your professed influence by Locke certainly would have ingrained ideals such as equality and social participation. As a woman you read his universal principles as relating to you, and as such were able to draw conclusions that were not widely celebrated at the time.
Wollstonecraft – Can you also conclude the reason that I was able to rightly conclude that women’s participation could positively affect things as basic as home life to something as broad as national dialogue?
Hume- You were in a position of increased knowledge on the topic because of your involvement with your sister and your involvement with the school. You were able to see life from your position as well as the position of “uneducated daughters”.
Wollstonecraft- So would you agree that my ability to reason, that is to infer complex impressions from simple ones, is not affected by my gender?
Hume- yes I suppose I agree.
Hume is primarily known as an empiricist, meaning he believed that knowledge is gained through experience and that simple impressions allow us to form more complex impressions (Morris). Ultimately the ability to reason is based on the acquisition of impressions and the ability to correctly build up simple impressions into the correct complex conclusion.
Mary Wollstonecraft was heavily influenced by Locke, and was heralded after her time as the first English feminist (Tomaselli). She was especially interested in the education of young women, and felt that women should be participatory members in society. She lived in a society where women were still indebted by strict gender roles, and were often discouraged from becoming intellectual. Both authors’ works are widely influential today.
Morris, William Edward. “David Hume.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 15 May 2009. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/>.
Tomaselli, Sylvana. “Mary Wollstonecraft.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/#MorPolWri>.
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