ABSTRACT
Mary Astell's rationalist critique of John Locke's epistemology, but Astell is generally not considered a theorist worth contemplating with regard to the emerging arena of human subjectivity to which Locke's postulation of a rights-bearing subject, conflicted between desire and will, is seen as an important early contribution. This chapter explores how Astell's conservative critique of the emergent Whig compromise, and in particular of Locke's arguments, can lead us to see aspects of the radical, or at least the modern Mary Astell. It examines Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies as a response to the revived interest, among mainstream Anglican thinkers, in the theory of 'law written in the heart' and as a response to Locke's emerging ideas about subjectivity. The task of political theorists of the seventeenth century was to link philosophy of the mind with a political theory that could guarantee social stability.
