Mary Astell

Abstract

Mary Astell (b. 1666–d. 1731) is a philosophical mind best remembered for her early work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694). Astell presents a kind of interpretive puzzle to modern scholars. Astell was a pamphleteer on the Tory side of the occasional conformity debate, was a staunch Anglican, and yet A Serious Proposal to the Ladies and Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700) seem to imply a much more radical, feminist critique than would seem to be consistent with her stated religious and political convictions at first blush. She was a strident critic of Locke and Hobbes, both on metaphysical and political grounds, and yet she uses some of those conventional arguments in seemingly ironic, rhetorical ways. This philosophical irony is on display throughout Some Reflections upon Marriage. Astell has been interpreted as holding Cartesian and Malebranchean metaphysical and epistemological views and as incorporating elements of Lockean political theory in her critiques of marriage and gendered subordination. Understanding Astell on her own terms has been and continues to be a philosophically nuanced project. While Astell’s major social and political philosophical works, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies and Some Reflections upon Marriage, have been the subject of intense scholarly scrutiny, her writings on metaphysics, especially love and religion, are also rich with philosophical theorizing. Some scholars have argued that it is precisely from Astell’s faith and subsequent religiously informed metaphysics that she acquires her feminist moral and political commitments about women’s equality and social standing. Her Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695), a published correspondence with Cambridge Platonist philosopher John Norris, provides early insight into the entanglement of Astell’s social and epistemological commitments alongside the principles of her faith. Astell’s The Christian Religion (1705) is the most mature and detailed expression of her metaphysical and epistemological views, but even this work illustrates the sociality that pervades her thinking. This article lists some general overviews of Astell scholarship, Astell’s major philosophical works, modern editions, encyclopedic resources, and secondary literature on several philosophical strains of Astell’s thought: Astell’s philosophical conversations, her epistemology, her theory of friendship, her metaphysical and religious commitments, and her political theorizing with special emphasis on gender.