Mary Wollstonecraft as the “Mother of Human Dignity”

Abstract The roots of the concept of human dignity have habitually been traced back to Immanuel Kant. However, recent scholarship suggests that this might be a false parentage, and feminist theorists have long criticized the gendered nature of Kantian dignity. This paper suggests looking to another thinker for the origins of human dignity: Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft’s notion of dignity more closely resembles present currents of thought about the concept and offers a sterner defence of moral equality for women as well as men. To demonstrate this, the paper first analyses what Wollstonecraft understood by the term “dignity,” and then explores the wider role that it played in her thought, and especially her analysis of the French Revolution.