ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Wollstonecraft’s views on reason, passion and the imagination with a special focus on the interconnections between these mental capacities. Wollstonecraft’s moral and political philosophy puts much emphasis on the power of reason, but the author shows how the activity of reason is in many respects dependent on the passions and the imagination. It is argued that when Wollstonecraft emphasises that reason must govern the passions and the imagination, her aim is not to subdue the latter capacities, but rather to create reasonable passions and imaginings. The chapter divides into three sections, focusing respectively on reason, passion and imagination. The following questions are addressed: Why does Wollstonecraft think that feminist arguments need to be based on reason? How does her view on the relation between reason and passion differ from the dichotomous view often assumed by twenty-first-century philosophers? How does the imagination contribute to human cognition as well as to the creation of a just and equal future? In order to clarify Wollstonecraft’s views, the author also illuminates similarities and differences between her positions and the positions of some of her main interlocutors, particularly Richard Price, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Catherine Macaulay.
