On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. First, we learn about the unexpected origin of The Royal Humane Society and how they assisted Mary Wollstonecraft. Next, we learn about the many ways Wollstonecraft challenged societal conventions and why she believed that women were essentially slaves to their husbands during her time. Finally, we consider the behavioral conditioning that is perpetuated by society even today and think about how we enact change when we’re not satisfied with the results. All this and more on the latest episode of Philosophize This!
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So it seems clear that in the year seventeen fifty nine there were two guys, one named William Hawes when named Thomas Cocaine, and they started a charity together now, if you're trying to google this charity in today's world, it be known as the Royal humane society, but at the time these guys started it. It was well a highly controversial thing. The reason why is because both William Halls and Thomas Coke and were doctors, they cared about people
and they were starting this charity as to staunch advocates of a very controversial medical practice in the year. One thousand seven hundred and fifty nine one that was very new at the time and
largely denounced by the general public and medical community
you? The modern listener might know it better as resuscitation which, by the way, is a very difficult word to say and not sound weird where such attention resuscitation, you know it as resuscitating. You know the thing we're
people stop breathing and bring him back to life. Right point is what is now known as the Royal humane society at its inception was known as the society for the recovery of persons apparently drowned, but less catchy. I think, by the way, real quick. What a great example of the fact that one ages controversial matter
practice, can be another ages medical norm, but anyway, when these guys are sitting around having their charity, kick off meeting there
brainstorming all the ways they can resuscitate more people. How do people
since. It is the most amount of people today, one of the
big ideas that they had what's it they're gonna have a sort of cash bounty for people that had recently drowned seriously. Their idea was that they
paid fishermen and boulders and people that are out by the water anyway and if they came from
body floating in the river. They floated over Diana Smidgen.
Wife coursing through it they would pay the seafaring gentlemen ORB lady a monitor reward, a bounty
both drawn to the shore and try to save their life. They didnt pay just to bring these half lifeless bodies to these disparate safe houses along the river that they had set up. There was a start of something great now. One of these bodies, it was pulled out of the River Thames near London glint and was successfully resuscitate back to life, was a woman that had tried to commit suicide by throwing herself into the river just a few hours before this woman found herself at a terrible crossroads in our life subjugated misunderstood castigated by society around her largely ignored by her contemporaries as an intellectual. But despite all this, she may have been my favorite philosopher in the history of the world, this woman, that at one point in her life, was brought back to life after a failed suicide. Attempts would eventually become a crucially important thinker and the enlightenment, essentially single handedly, link the groundwork for anything that we call power.
Groundwork. For anything that we call proper feminism in today's world, her name was Mary Wollstone Craft, but I make it catches gloss over. That kind of anecdote. Can I I mean like what brings some one to feel like they're, so trapped
situation is so hopeless that more use
every ounce of intellect that they have the only possible way that their brains and come up with is to end it all. This comes even more fascinating when you consider just how brilliant and passionate of a woman she was, but the question remains right: what kind of life what situation brought her to this place, where she's been pulled out of a river by fishermen in being brought back to life, not many
philosophers space the kind of adversity that Mary Wollstone Crap went through. Not many philosophers have a life story. We look back at NGO Yap, given Platos life
It's no wonder he wrote the stuffy did now, there's all kinds of different cocktails of experiences that produce great thinkers right. Many philosophers didn't have interesting lives. They were just people born into a financially or socially privileged living situation. They just kind of it. You know
locked themselves in a pantry and and road everything in solitude, but not all of them were like this. Epictetus comes comes to mind. Is a slave Descartes famously horribly sick. Most of his life, Mary Wollstone Craft, is another. Her life vividly shows just what kind of woman in
for she was from even the earliest years. Inner life, her life in many ways, was her work and taking a closer look at it. I think you can help us understand why she
talk the way she did and why she got such a bad rat from the people writing about her after she died so started the beginning. She was born on April twenty seven, seventeen, fifty nine, which positions her
perfectly as a thinker during the same time that many, the great thinkers of enlightened than we already talked about we're doing their best work, Rousseau, Voltaire, Burke, pain, etc, now more important than the particular dates
let's born on is the particular living situation. She was born into every report. Pretty conclusively agrees that she was born into a very conservative household. Were her parents had far from a perfect relationship and when I say far from perfect relationship, I mean that her dad would get drunk
and beat her mother senseless on the regular, like she recounts, lying on the floor outside of our moms room, in an attempt to try to protect her from him. That's the kind of childhood this girl
So, even from very early on, we can see this desire to protect the women around her right, deliver them from injustice by the way. This is not the only example. We have of this of this tendency of hers early in life it no famously, and they are seventeen. Eighty four cheap at a cistern Eliza who was in this I mean
abusive, terrible marriage, Mary Walston Craft in the very early years of her life or self, with so much to lose by the way. So much bad could have come from this. She pulled strings and facilitate her sister, the scape from this abuse of merit here,
again yet. Another example, early on and Mary will stone craft life. That demonstrates the courage to challenge the conventions of society in the favour of equality, even if it meant potentially horrible things happening to her now, not long after helping her sister Eliza, she lands a job as the governess. You know these sort of personal Tudor for
prominent family with four young daughters, now she writes about how, when she met these for young girls for the first time, they were just like most other women back then conditioned by society and the people around them to be this. This unqualified thing: that's just
signed to get married, someday Mary Wool craft notice it from the very moment these four girls were born and most all women back them for that matter. By the way they were fed cues by everyone around them. That,
successful life for a woman is a life for your needs are tended to. So how do you do that? As a woman? Well, yeah
married and the way get married as you have to be a good wife? What is a good wife?
one more, you stay quiet and you look really good and a corset
So if you are a young woman coming of age in the society- and you want to have a quote successful life in the eyes of the people around you,
you weren't dreaming of owning your own mining operation. One day you're, not
of working your way up to the professor ship in a major university, now the people around you constantly tell you, statistically speaking, that your job, if you want your needs met, is to look pretty and be submissive, be the sexual please
he thinks of men, and if you follow up your into the arrangement, will maybe some guy some nice guy. Some will be generous enough to bestow upon you everything that you need for a couple three decades.
And in that point you can cross your fingers. Eddie won't kicking the carbon you're, not the bell, not the belle of, but his
for doing that won't be for you, it'll, be out of that in the fear that society will judge him and ruin his reputation anyway.
It is when you are young woman living in this world. The behaviour set that yields you a successful life is one of submission. It's one of us.
Ex it's, not one of education or critical thinking or independence. Even if these things were possible for a woman back then know Mary Wollstone crafts as at the past,
I took the average woman living during her time- is to be forced into the role of a sexual. So
eve on behind the way she points out. How ironic is that, given
a time period that she's living like considering the fight
we're. Having all these conversations about things like unalienable rights into and slavery yoke, considering
discussion, we're having about the ethical implications of enslaving,
indigenous people on the grounds of race alone. Why is there a double standard here? She asked she
that women in this regard are nothing more than convenient slaves and coat sleeve
We even in this case, will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent and quote now but slow down for things like of one zero to sixty two quick and upset, but slow down,
if you think that is wrong, if you think that maybe Mary Wollstone Crass has been a little melodramatic right, not like now come on
guess you got a bad Mary, but you know you know what
sexual slave Comer. If that's what you think
just listen to the narrative she's, responding to John Locke. He comes out.
This famous tabular rasa right. Blank slate we learned about
and, as you know, by now, it's a really controversial work at the time that its released thinkers are finally
starting to really consider the fact that maybe the content of some
character, might really just be contingent on the collection of experience.
They have had thus far in their life and, if that's true,
well, what are the moral implications of that, and how can we use that fact to our advantage as we explore this daunting
Ask of nation building right so because these
thinkers, are seriously considering this concept. For the first time, you can imagine that a topic that almost every great
think or during the enlightenment, is going to have thoughts on with education. One of the most grand and commented on of any of the works on education during this time was Jean Jacques Rousseau meal. Right now, a meal is unique in a certain regard, because Russo explicitly talk not only
about the education of men, but he makes a clear distinction between how men should be educated and how women should be educated, acknowledging in that way that there are obvious huge differences between men and women to their education should be created specifically to those differences. Here's what Rousseau says about how women should be educated specifically are. I quote, the whole education of women ought to be relative to men too pleased them to be useful to them to make themselves loved and honored by them to educate them when young
care for them when grown the council them to consult them and to make life agreeable and sweet to them. These are the duties of women at all times and what should be taught to them from their infancy. End quote now, no good.
Thought that the education of women involved, so many domestic chores being done. I don't like
yes, I really like Dona Canister anyway. This is what this craft is reading and trying to respond to, and you can see how it starts to sound
vaguely familiar to slavery right. Why your duty is to be useful to me too.
The council made a concern me to make life agreeable and sweet to me. Always let me get this straight. Basically, your entire existence
everything that you do,
is in relation to something in my existence, right
sounds a little slavey to me, but what Mary bolstering craft
saying here is that this is the sort of thinking that's propagating the problem. In the first place, I mean, after all, if what John Locke says is true
then almost everything comes from the education and experiences that you ve had so far. Why would women be excluded from that and how convened
She says that women who do have access to the educational opportunities at men do end up doing just as good as men do she said quote,
strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an inn,
to blind obedience, but, as
blind obedience has ever sought for by power, tyrants and central.
We are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the
Former only want slaves and the latter a plaything end quote what she sang a beautiful way,
I love her writing. More than most philosophers is that this system that keeps women
sexual and domestic slaves, the nature of the institution of marriage during her time for it, it's like a tyrant, tyrants want playthings, enslaves right, she sang it, benefits the tyrant to keep women in the dark if they gave them the educational opportunities that men had wealth, they wouldn't have. The constant
replenishing stock of slaves. Depart from it would be an end to blind obedience. Keep in mind
This may not be revolutionary to most people listening to this, but I want to make sure it said by this
point in time. There is a long history of society, perceiving women to be mentally and physically inferior commit. But the great question marrables from cross raising hair is isn't this sort of like a chicken or the egg thing
is it that women are inferior to men or is it that us
under serving in subjugating women. In response to that long tradition of perceived inferiority,
does that create an illusion that they are weaker than men and she raises this question- is all of this
using the very same tools at all the other great enlightenment. Thinkers were using at the time. What what Mary bulls
craft is doing, is pointing out in a brilliant way that all of this
discourse. That's going on in the name of equality and rights is not something just reserved for men that true we call
we would be for men and women, not equal,
ready for men and women can be this sub species of slaves for the more equal right may it's funny. We often look back on these enlightenment thinkers. Why we, we think of them as are for
Others, these great liberty, loving dude, say that that ushered in a new age of equality, but here's marry one
don't cry living in the thick of it, showing
how even they even our forefathers we're taking equality seriously enough she's critiquing those guys this pursuit of true
who were quality is something that underlies almost all of our work:
although she is most known for her vindication of the rights of women retrieve touched on years before, and so
one thousand nine hundred and ninety. She read Edmund Burke reflections on the revolution in France, which, as you know, is a very conservative fanfare, denouncing the way that the french Revolution was handling and exalted tradition as our ultimate guide.
Waiting to see how many wollstone craft may disagree. With that I mean tradition. If you're Mary Wollstone Craft, I mean that's what got women like her and her mother and her sister,
look at them in the situations they found themselves in the first place, this appeal to tradition in her eyes, tradition needs to be constantly questioned.
Point is when Mary Wollstone Craft got the job as the governance of the four young girls when when she first met them, there were ordinary women of their age, right, submissive, quiet, just sexual slaves, waiting to be loaded up onto a boat and carried off to some distant sure, but the for them would end up being a profound case study that is emblematic of her entire by
They have workmen all four of them, reportedly after being taught by Mary, were highly intelligent, clever, passionate, independent
they all went on to do incredible things with their lives and Andrews. No doubt it was the education that made the difference after Mary, whilst on craft died, she was castigated by people for being a vixen a poor. Basically, they looked at her life. They saw that she had kids with multiple different guys outside of that the sacred bonds of merit
How dare she she's not a proper lady? What woman would ever allow herself to stoop solo? What what many
you wouldn't understand is that yeah Mary Wilson
Drafted it Mary these guys, and that was because she protested the institute.
Marriage as a whole, it was legalised slavery for women back then it should read the marriage loss back than the American
for all that women had over their life. Once I got married was just atrocious, EVA signing over your life
this misunderstanding, be constant heckling of the society around her the troubled past? These are the sorts of things that will contribute to her being the
the person that was pulled out of a river and brought back against her will. After a suicide attack, see Mary Wollstone craft dared to question the social conventions around her
in a world filled with extraordinary thinkers questioning the status quo. She went further
and they did arguably, and she did it world treated or horribly
and one where that descent could very easily lead to her death, and I get that's true of many other revolutionaries from this time, but just imagine imagine trying to garner respect being a
women as well, we all the other adversity plus being a woman. Just imagine trying to get your ideas out. There is something to behold. Really. She dared to question this conditioning this conditioning, that's spoon, fed into us since birth. It tells us what a a quote successful life is: maybe it isn't just
look beautiful and speak when spoken to. You know there's an even more interesting point that I get when I read very wollstone craft and
comes down to analyzing the term successful life right. What is a successful life? That's misleading here. Here's! What I mean by that
back, then women were being condition to believe that a successful life is one where you are submissive to your husband, who buys you everything right. That was wrong.
We'd like to think that were no longer giving women that message. Ok, so what
The message were giving them now. In other words, what are we
the conditioning women to become now now. The bigger point is
that men were being condition to be something back than to or thing mean there.
Some ideal of a successful life that society and culture was in viewing into them from the moment they were born and are still is
Every single one of us
The very moment were boy has been conditioned by our
parents and our teachers and the media are friends, you name it. We have been candy
kinda believed that a certain behaviour set is admirable. We respect people than embody this behaviour set. Sometimes we may be looked down on people that don't embody our particular one.
But is this just another, albeit more modern version of the quote: successful life
entirely arbitrary, isn't it just as legitimate as the one from
most own crass time where women are conditioned to be slaves. On that same note,
the random scale, nobody knew what a type now fast for today's world. It may be one of the most useful skills it could possibly eminent now. People are learning
the random scale. Nobody knew how to type now fast for today's world,
may be one of the most useful skills it could possibly eminent now. People are learning to type on untouched screens, and I haven't prediction: people
the behaviour and skills at the Danube to somebody is gonna constantly change. As the culture and world changes around now. Here's the thing, your conception of what proper etiquette is of how to treat your spouse in a relationship of what sort of things are worth thinking about
between what an admirable set of behaviors is. So the important question to ask, I think, is what makes it change if we truly think that the way we condition women now is better than the way we condition than back, then what is responsible for that? Why don't know, but I have a guess,
change if we truly think that the way we condition women now is better than the way we condition than back, then what is responsible for that change? Why don't know? But I have a guess, I think I may talk about it for a living. It's weird see this
progress. Doesn't just sort of slowly fade into existence right it, it happens and birth there revolutions these cultural paradigm shifts occur when someone,
Hence the rise. They they see the way were conditioning people to behave. They point out some sort of
layering injustice or inconsistency.
Press the society realises that their right and change occurs? The people make an adjustment to what we condition people to become or what they see a quote: successful life ass, I think, philosophy and religion are largely responsible for these cultural paradigm shifts Mary will stone craftsmen. Her niece was responsible for one of these cultural parent,
shifts, and it raises a really good question. I think what are you being condition to believe? What have you been condition to believe since birth? Who is the tyrant giving you this condition? One is the tyrant. What do they want you to become? What are you being conditioned into internet
his world, because one things for certain right. The way that you look at the world in and what acceptable behaviour is, is no doubt can we look back on by people in the future and ridicule.
In the same way we're ridiculing Rousseau for believing that women are inferior to men, they're gonna, ridicule, you, I'm sorry you and I both my friend
we're gonna, be Lamb basted by future generations, and it so easy to grow complacent right, o o cable. I realise that the case I realize I may be patronising causes. The future generations are gonna, think orbit:
Eric, but that's the thing I don't know what the next thing will be. I live in this generation, I'll just defend the best behaviour said I can, but the tyrant gives me during my lifetime and held up a college good, but what, if Mary, Wollstone Craft had that attitude? What? If,
tear had that attitude, maybe won't know what the next thing is, but simply acknowledging how fleeting and arbitrary this value set that you ve arrived at truly is is actually very free. Just imagine the Maginot crazy world where people looked at other people. It didn't do things the exact way they do or believe in the same things they do and even meet them with hostility or in a bidding go on. A witch hunt didn't try to publicly flogged them on the news, but instead they asked the question: what conditioning might have led to this behaviour, because once you ask that you can ask? Is it possible that would just a few conversations of conditioning that their minds might be changed? I inflate like a balloon when I think about the fact that Mary Wollstone Craft realise this. Thank you for listening I'll talk to next time.
Transcript generated on 2020-03-23.