ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the radical implications of Mary Wollstonecraft’s conception of rights for the issues of political representation and property or, to put it in terms of her theory of liberty, civic and economic independence. The relevance of the material aspect of dependence for Wollstonecraft’s feminism has not been very much noted. Despite the fact that Wollstonecraft, contrary to D. Hume, incorporates natural rights in her morality, property serves in her theory, as it does in Hume’s, as an independent variable for progress. For Wollstonecraft, an implication of the logic of rights is that the moral duty to strive towards the development of one’s intellectual faculties obliges a person only if her circumstances are such that the expectation is a reasonable one. Wollstonecraft’s observations of the harmful effects of wealth and inequality provide, in her estimation, overriding moral and political arguments for property reforms, and any reformer needs to consider what reasons people may find to resist their agenda.
