A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Where does Wollstonecraft appeal to logic and reason?

Where does Wollstonecraft appeal to logic and reason?

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Reason is of utmost importance in Wollstonecraft's writing. Like John Locke before her, who wrote of reason being fundamental to governance for a man emerging from a state of nature, Wollstonecraft argues that women should stop focusing on their emotions and try to use their rational faculties. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, "Wollstonecraft wanted women to aspire to full citizenship, to be worthy of it,and this necessitated the development of reason. Rational women would perceive their real duties. They would forgo the world of mere appearances, the world of insatiable needs on which eighteenth-century society was based, as Adam Smith had explained more lucidly than anyone, and of which France was the embodiment, in Wollstonecraft's conception." God created men and women and endowed them both with immortal souls; thus, both sexes are capable of reason. It is not "natural" for women not to exercise reason. Women must develop reason so as to be effective and fair parents and to develop virtue, which will suppress tyrannical impulses and free women from their shackles.

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman