A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 641 Philosophy; in its metaphysical depth it iscomparable to DieterJ~ihnig's study of the 1799 System of Transcendental Idealism, which also pursues the thematic of art.~ Barth follows the general structure of Schelling's lectures: a metaphysical introduction to the phenomena of art, a consideration of art's absolute content (mythology, the divine shapes of the new Olympian divinities), then a consideration of its 'form', the productive activity of artist ('genius') and critic. The presentation is complicated, not inaccurate though sometimes prosy. Citations from Schelling's lectures did help to clarify for this reader the author's conceptual drift, but is it outdated or undialectical to expect the reverse? Philosophically, the first section of the study is the most important. It is devoted to a systematic "placement" of art in the whole, a derivation of it from metaphysical first principles; this is what Schelling terms "construction." Barth does a finejob of explaining Identity Philosophy, bringing to bear litde-read texts from the period such as Fernere DarsteUungen aus dera System der Philosophie (t 802) and Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie (i 8o6). But the clarity of the exposition in this most abstract and conceptual section of the book is undercut by the author's tendency to adopt a neutered Hegelian terminology of "mediation" and "reflexion" to express the conceptual workings of Schelling's static Identity Philosophy. Barth makes clear that the result of Hegefian dialectic (self-mediating negativity) is analogous to Schelling's nonprocessive and nontemporal self-affirmation of the Absolute (56-57n.), but to this reader it seems both unnecessary and confusing to concoct a hybrid terminology--mediation sans negativity, intellectual intuition explained in terms of reflection rather than the reverse--to express the analogy. Schelling and Hegel did share a common philosophy from 1801-18o3; they shared a common conceptual vocabulary, including "reflexion," "construction," and "potency." Afterwards, Hegel evolves a dynamic and negative concept of reason's function of intellectual intuition, one which locates it in a thisworldly discursive process of conceptual specification and transcendence. Schelling looks back to the history of philosophy to model his own solution to the paradox of intellectual intuition (the identity of discursiveness and unmediated wholeness) with his frankly metaphysical talk of Ideas and their "fall" into time and history. Hegel achieves a theory that connects empirical and metaphysical frames of discourse, Schelling leaves them disconnected. This is a difference which is hard to ignore. MICHAEL G. VATER Marquette University Virginia Sapiro. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, x992. Pp. xxviii + 366. Paper, $16.95. In this carefully researched book, Virginia Sapiro argues that the history of political philosophy shortchanges Mary Wollstonecraft. The canon consigns Wollstonecraft to sSee Dieter J~ihnig, Die Kunst in der Philosophic. Bd. I: SchellingsBegriindung yon Natur und Geschichte.Bd. a: Die Wahrheitsfunktion derKunst (Pfullingen, 1966/69). 64~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31"4 OCTOBER a993 the associate status of founder of feminism. No one recognizes her broader legacy in political theory. Rewriting Wollstonecraft, Sapiro hoPes to right Wollstonecraft. In prose often playful and irreverent, she reintegrates Wollstonecraft's political theory into the systematic body of knowledge Sapiro believes Wollstonecraft possessed. She offers a comprehensive analysis of Wollstonecraft's political theory in order to educate political philoso~ phers as to the practical wisdom and sensibility of one of the eighteenth century's most important thinkers. She has succeeded in doing so very admirably, and A Vindication of Political Virtue Will be a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in the history of political philosophy. Sapiro organizes Wollstonecraft's ideas into an argument intended to canonize her. She asserts that Mary Wollstonecraft stretched the "liberal temperament to incorporate into political thinking explicit concern for the quality of the personal relations and dayto -day conditions of the lives of citizens" (xiv). Assiduously reconstructing Wollstonecraft 's life and work, Sapiro maintains that she possessed not only a famous theory of the "unnatural distinctions" arising between men and women, but also theories of the "reasoned, passionate self," the state and the family, politics and language. These chapters deserve the close attention of all who teach...