ABSTRACT
Catharine Macaulay refuted Hobbes’s political philosophy from the point of view of a eudaimonist natural law theory, according to which humans are naturally social and there are immutable moral truths, knowable on the basis of reason and experience. Since this theory depended on the existence of a good God, she was led to respond to the problem of evil and offered a version of the free will solution, arguing that God had allowed evil so that humanity can progress in virtue and understanding. Education is therefore necessary, in order to foster this progress toward perfection, and in her Letters on Education she argued that it is equally necessary for both sexes. It is then shown that this work influenced Mary Wollstonecraft and argued that the latter’s works should be seen as falling into three phases, in the first she was heavily influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the second by Catharine Macaulay, and in the third she began to develop her own ideas according to which imagination plays a central role in humanity’s progress toward perfection.
