Mary Wollstonecraft and Relational Autonomy

Abstract

Although best known as an early and pioneering feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft has more recently become recognised as a wide-ranging moral and political philosopher (Bergès and Coffee 2016, Bergès, Botting and Coffee 2019). One ideal that is of central importance within her philosophical framework is that of social and personal freedom understood as independence from arbitrary control. Although I generally prefer to speak of ‘freedom’ or ‘independence’ with respect to Wollstonecraft, these being her own terms, the concept that she uses can be understood in terms of a form of autonomy. In particular, it can be argued that Wollstonecraft develops an idea that anticipates and foreshadows the contemporary notion of relational autonomy (Mackenzie 2016, Coffee 2018).

Keywords: Mary Wollstonecraft, Relational Autonomy, Autonomy, Freedom, Non-Domination, Republicanism