Mary Wollstonecraft

Considering her transformation of texts by European writers and orators such as Rousseau, Mirabeau, Stéphanie-Félicité Genlis, Christian Gotthilf Salzmann and Margareta de Cambon, as well as British sentimental philosophers and the radical theologian Richard Price, this book redefines Mary Wollstonecraft as a cosmopolitan thinker. Not only was she driven to reject national allegiances, her works were shaped by the European exchange of enlightened ideas and her experiences of travel and expatriation in Revolutionary France. To this transnational perspective, she brought a cosmopolitan ethic grounded in her belief in universal justice and a moral imperative to subordinate local and national allegiances to philanthropy, or love of humankind. Drawing on modern philosophers of cosmopolitanism such as Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah, the book demonstrates that Wollstonecraft recurred consistently to questions that still divide theorists of cosmopolitanism, including how far our imagined communities can extend, and whether we can reconcile cosmopolitan values with the claims of culture and the realities of human psychology. For Wollstonecraft, implementing any framework of political justice depends on people extending compassion beyond the local and particular to embrace a global community of sentiment. The book also analyses her growing appreciation of cultural diversity and her belief that cosmopolitan values take root most effectively in nations with distinctive literary and cultural systems. At a time of international conflict, burgeoning capitalism and colonial enterprise, Wollstonecraft represents philanthropy and cultural authenticity as the means to resist tyranny and imperialism in all their forms and light the way to global justice.