Hello, I'm Catherine Carr, producer of Talking Politics. This is the second in our series,

History of Ideas. Today David talks about Mary Walsdencraft's

a vindication of the rights of women, a book that came out of the French Revolution

was about so much more than that. Talking Politics History of Ideas is brought to you

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After each episode, continue your exploration of the history of ideas in their unrivaled

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This talk is about a book that like a lot of the books and other pieces of writing I'm

going to be discussing comes out of a time of political turmoil. Political turmoil produces

good writing about politics. It's true for Hobbes, and when I talked about before, it was the

turmoil of the English Civil War and all that followed it that produced his greatest book.

The event that this book comes out of is the French Revolution, another world changing up

evil. It was not written by someone who comes from France, it's written by Mary Wollstonecraft

from England, but she went to France and she was there during the Revolution, not all of it,

but its most dangerous phase. There isn't a huge connection between this book and what I had to

say about Hobbes, but there is some, and I just want to sketch that out before I talk about what

Wollstonecraft had to say and why it matters. It might seem odd to think that there's a connection

between the French Revolution and Thomas Hobbes' political philosophy, because Hobbes is known as

the philosopher, not just of order, but of sucking up the order you have. In the terms of Hobbes'

argument, you are not meant to overthrow your sovereign, even if your sovereign does not work for you.

...