ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft emphasizes the importance of the presentation of ideas, but she holds that honesty and genuine sensibility on behalf of the writer—rather than subtle disguises—are necessary for significant philosophical content. The ideals of the type of rationality practiced by the moral agent of the dominant model come into play in a provocative way in an examination of the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft holds that rational philosophical argument for social and political reform must be grounded upon a reflective principled sensibility, and in so doing she breaks down the disciplinary boundaries between “the poetic” and “the philosophical". Ideals of the moral agent and the activities of this agent will, for example, play out in the ways that a text should be written or read in a philosophical manner; and thus, by definition, exclude or devalue other possibilities.
