266 Eileen Hunt Botting
Wollstonecraft then presents three basic principles of human nature:
reason exalts humans over other species; virtue is the end-goal of human
rationality; and the passions enable humans to gain knowledge from their
experiences. These three principles of human nature are, for Wollstone-
craft, the “rights and duties of man thus simplifi ed”: in other words, the
recognition and practice of human rights and their corresponding moral
duties are the realization of humanity’s true nature (37). Using these prin-
ciples to frame her philosophical argument for the rights of woman, she
develops a positive account of how human beings ought to develop in so-
ciety if their reason and passion are indeed directed toward the realization
of virtue and knowledge. As Natalie Taylor and Ruth Abbey show, Woll-
stonecraft’s account of human nature establishes a morally perfectionistic
standard of “reason, virtue, and knowledge” as the norm by which the just
development of individuals and societies ought to be judged (37; Taylor
2007, 102; Abbey, this volume, 235).
Despite her moral perfectionism, Wollstonecraft is a political realist
about the possibility of putting the “rights and duties” of humanity into
practice. Early in chapter one, she acknowledges that “deeply rooted preju-
dices” and cultural “prescription” are the main obstacles to the realiza-
tion of her three “abstract” principles of human nature: reason, virtue, and
knowledge (37–38). The remainder of the book can be read as an exercise
in critical political theory, by which she exposes the artifi ce and hypocrisy
of Enlightenment patriarchalism in order to clear the way for the accep-
tance and implementation of her egalitarian theory of human rights.
With witty insights grounded in her personal experience, she draws a
striking contrast between what women are capable of doing with rights and
duties, and the degraded roles that society imposed on them. For example,
she laments the practical moral tension between women’s capability for
modesty and other human virtues, and the societal double standards which
dangerously impute an exclusively “sexual character” or sexual function
to their gender (45). To lend credence to her critique, perhaps especially
for her female readers, she ironically refers to the spinster fate that awaits
modest women in their time: “Where, indeed, could modest women fi nd
husbands from whom they would not continually turn with disgust?” (155).
Indeed, this was the likely reason for her own single status at the age of
thirty-two.
A holistic account of education stands at the core of Wollstonecraft’s
political theory. Education — mental, physical, and social— is the means
by which human nature is perfected via exercising reason, learning from
experience, and practicing universal moral rights and duties. She employs