Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was the author of acclaimed works about subjects including the education of children, political philosophy, and human liberty. She is perhaps best remembered for her great pioneering book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a key text in the rise and development of both feminism and liberal theory.

What is perhaps less remembered today is the fact that her landmark case for women's rights owed an important intellectual debt to the work of the political philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who argued that the proper role of government was to protect humanity's preexisting natural rights.

Locke is sometimes mislabeled as a conservative by certain modern academics and pundits. But his ideas were deemed to be quite radical in their own day. And for the teenaged Mary Wollstonecraft, that Lockean radicalism was as welcome as the first taste of food after a grueling starvation.

The year was 1775 and Wollstonecraft was 15 years old. She was a brilliant and independent-minded young woman, increasingly outraged by the vile behavior of her drunk, domineering father. He abused Wollstonecraft's mother and maintained a strict, sexist hierarchy at home, favoring her brother while she was made to suffer.

It was at this low point in her life when Wollstonecraft first read Locke. Certain passages from his greatest work, The Second Treatise of Government (1689), caught hold of her mind and never really let go. A properly constituted social order "gives the husband no more power over [his wife's] life than she has over his," Locke wrote. "The power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch that the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to separate from him, where natural right or their contract allows it, whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs or laws of the country they live in."

In her superb book, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley (2015), the historian Charlotte Gordon memorably described the far-reaching effect that Locke's ideas had on the teenaged Wollstonecraft:

She had always felt that her father had no right to tyrannize her family and that the preferential treatment he and her mother bestowed on [brother] Ned was unjust. Now, after reading Locke, she had an ethical foundation for her feelings. Not only was it her right to shape her own future; it was everyone's right. In fact, Locke's social contract made protest seem the only rational response to injustice; it was humanity's obligation to overthrow tyranny.

One of the reasons why Locke is sometimes mislabeled as a conservative today is because of his writings in favor of property rights, an issue that we now associate with conservative and libertarian thinkers. But it is worth remembering that Locke's whole case for property rights began with the idea that "every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself."

Is it any wonder that Locke's radical case for self-ownership would appeal to a young woman like Wollstonecraft, who longed to break free from the sexist laws and cultural strictures that held her back? Nobody was going to convince her that she did not have a right to her own body.

We might say something similar about the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), who also drank deep from the principles of Lockean liberalism. "You are a man and so am I," Douglass wrote in his famous open letter to his former enslaver. "In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner." That is about as clear and effective a restatement of Lockean self-ownership principles as you are going to find.

Locke's influence on the American Revolution, particularly on Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, is well-known. That Locke also had a key influence on both the women's rights and abolitionist movements is perhaps worthy of further remark.

The post When Mary Wollstonecraft Read John Locke appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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Há mais de trezentos anos, John Locke escrevia que “as coisas deste mundo estão num fluxo tão constante que nada permanece por muito tempo no mesmo estado”. Talvez seja esta uma das verdades mais simples e, simultaneamente, mais difíceis de aceitar por quem governa. As sociedades mudam, as pessoas mudam e as suas expectativas também. E, quando os problemas persistem sem resposta, acabam inevitavelmente por encontrar uma forma de se tornarem visíveis.

Penso muitas vezes no dia 18 de dezembro de 2013. Não pela dimensão mediática que alcançou, nem sequer pelo desfecho que viria a ter. Recordo esse dia porque me permitiu compreender algo que os livros explicam, mas que apenas a experiência verdadeiramente ensina: as pessoas não se mobilizam porque partilham uma ideologia – mobilizam-se porque partilham uma realidade! Estive envolvido, desde cedo, na organização nacional daquela contestação. O que nos unia não era uma doutrina, uma corrente partidária ou qualquer projeto ideológico, mas sim a convicção de que existia um problema que afetava a nossa profissão, a sua dignidade e a própria ideia de escola pública.

Foi então que compreendi melhor Hannah Arendt quando escreveu que a desobediência civil significativa nasce de uma comunidade de interesses. Não é o indivíduo isolado que produz mudança, é o momento em que pessoas diferentes reconhecem numa dificuldade aparentemente individual uma preocupação coletiva. Aquilo que parecia privado revela-se, afinal, uma questão pública. Mas foi precisamente nesse momento que muitos deixaram de discutir o problema para discutirem os seus protagonistas. Em vez de se ouvirem razões, distribuíam-se rótulos. O movimento foi apresentado como uma iniciativa da extrema-esquerda, como se uma etiqueta ideológica explicasse a mobilização de milhares de professores ou anulasse as causas que os levaram a agir.

Passados mais de dez anos, continuo a observar o mesmo fenómeno. Vejo-o nas manifestações estudantis em França, percebo-o nos protestos sociais que atravessam a Europa e observo-o cravado em tantas outras expressões de descontentamento coletivo. Antes de se compreender o que move as pessoas, procura-se classificá-las. Talvez porque seja mais fácil atribuir um rótulo a um protesto do que enfrentar as razões da sua existência. Mas ninguém reúne milhares de cidadãos em torno de uma mera etiqueta política. O que une as pessoas é algo mais profundo, é uma preocupação partilhada, uma dificuldade comum, uma injustiça sentida. É essa experiência que transforma vidas dispersas numa causa coletiva. Quando olho para a Europa de hoje, não vejo apenas manifestações. Eu vejo cidadãos que procuram ser escutados antes de serem interpretados. Porque a verdadeira questão nunca é quem está por detrás dos protestos. A verdadeira questão é aquilo que está diante das pessoas. E é precisamente nesse momento que a política deveria começar a ouvir. Não para concordar com tudo, não para ceder a tudo, mas porque a primeira responsabilidade de uma democracia não é classificar os seus cidadãos, mas compreendê-los.

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