ABSTRACT
Adam Smith accounts for the psychological basis of authority in the British regime. In doing so, Smith sets out to explore the character structure pertaining to middling rank and the corresponding set of manners. Deference to the ‘natural’ aristocracy of merit and achievement should complement deference to titled aristocracy in a ‘mixed’ affective economy that allegedly underpins constitutional balance. On the other hand the real merit of Wollstonecraft’s appropriation of Adam Smith lays in its paradoxical nature; her core position consisted in gender equality within a frame of middle class manners and the rule of law Although radical and uncompromised in demystifying any patriarchal, racial and socio-political form of domination, she promotes ideals of emancipation and independence of character that are inclusive and ‘centrist’ rather than exclusive and extremist. To this regard, she elaborates on Adam Smith’s liberalism of domestic virtues and middle-class manners. However in vindicating the rights of women qua universal human rights she restored the emancipatory dimension of ‘middling rank’ manners.
