The Burke-wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy

by O'neill, Daniel I.

• ISBN13: 9780271032016
• ISBN10: 0271032014
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-07-31
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr

Summary

Many modern conservatives and feminists trace the roots of their ideologies, respectively, to Edmund Burke (17291797) and Mary Wollstonecraft (17591797), and a proper understanding of these two thinkers is therefore important as a framework for political debates today. According to Daniel ONeill, Burke is misconstrued if viewed as mainly providing a warning about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian visions into political reality, while Wollstonecraft is far more than just a proponent of extending the public sphere rights of man to include women. Rather, at the heart of their differences lies a dispute over democracy as a force tending toward savagery (Burke) or toward civilization (Wollstonecraft). Their debate over the meaning of the French Revolution is the place where these differences are elucidated, but the real key to understanding what this debate is about is its relation to the intellectual tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Author Biography

Daniel I. O'Neill is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

The Scottish Enlightenment, the moral sense, and the civilizing process	p. 21
Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment	p. 51
Wollstonecraft and the Scottish Enlightenment	p. 89
"The most important of all revolutions"	p. 125
Vindicating a revolution in morals and manners	p. 157
Burke on democracy as the death of Western civilization	p. 195
Wollstonecraft on democracy as the birth of Western civilization	p. 227
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