Question 2: The goals of the philosophies were meant to exercise a set of ideals. Which common tenets of enlightened thinking do writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Denis Diderot advance in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and the selection from "Encyclopedie." Contemporary connections: Discuss how you see the tenets you identified in these works as having informed/influenced our contemporary experience.
Although Mary Wollstonecraft speaks about the rights of women specifically, her "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" stresses the value of rationality and reasonable discourse in keeping with Enlightenment principles that were particular to many other Enlightenment thinkers, including Diderot. Wollstonecraft argues one of the defects of male oppression of women is that it limits female education, and makes women more irrational. When men criticize women, men have essentially created a self-fulfilling prophesy. Women have not been allowed full venues to enrich themselves, which is the right of all human beings. Rational thought and education, Enlightenment thinkers such as Wollstonecraft, saw as the true purpose of human life.
In Denis Diderot's "Encyclopedie," the values of the Enlightenment over past superstition are advanced for all humanity, both men and women. Diderot saw understanding the world, rather than obeying the tenants...
Like Wollstonecraft saw ideas about female empowerment as rooted in outdated and cruel customs and superstition, Diderot saw Catholic dogma and social institutions that limited people's ability to express thoughts freely, experiment, and maximize their potential, as damaging to the true purpose of human life. Enlightenment thinking's embrace of reason, the individual, and a rejection of past tradition are all reflected in Diderot's distain for accepting authority based upon history, and his belief that the human mind could set us all free.
The debate about nature vs. nurture in terms of the socialization of the sexes still continues to this day, as does the value of rationality. In many states in America, the controversy over teaching evolution in schools is still raging, and although women are accepted in most positions of power, the notion of the similarity and equality of the sexes, and whether this is rooted in biology or socialization remains controversial. Through personal empowerment and social engineering, how much can we change human society? Wollstonecraft and Diderot argued that a great deal of change was possible, while conservative advocates of tradition and faith fear the repercussions of such change, and even some scientists argue that such social engineering is limited, ironically, by biology.
