[Music]
[Music]
you are about to meet the original nasty
woman remember that phrase and you’re
going to find out why her legacy is so
very important right now I use the word
nasty in its newly minted sense post
American elections where who could
forget the spectacle of a very ambitious
man and a very ambitious woman in a
debate she smiled politely he called her
names will be returning to that but for
now let’s go back back to the source
back to prehistoric nasty woman who’s
that well done very good of course have
you heard of Frankenstein’s granny
anybody know you are about to you should
have the mother of the author of
Frankenstein Mary Shelley was the
original nasty woman and to boot she was
an extraordinary person I met her almost
entirely by accident and it changed
everything so let’s meet her hichy is
it’s 1795 Europe and the Western world
is erupting it’s the era of revolution
it’s the time when humanity is in charge
this is the Enlightenment reason is come
to town and the Enlightenment is there
in this new world order human beings no
longer need to ask their God their king
or their dad for permission to change
the world one human
in particular and here she is in a
little boat on a rocky shore she’s
traveled far north
from revolutionary Paris she’s on the
wild coast of the scag Iraq see what’s
she doing who is she she is Mary
Wollstonecraft and a couple of centuries
later she became my inspiration some of
you might have heard of her
she wrote famously the original call for
equality of the sexes a vindication of
the Rights of Woman 1792 in which she
argued apparently preposterous Lee that
women are capable of reason who knew all
they needed was education but what does
she mean by reason reason she goes on
about it all the time reason reason
reason with a capital R what does this
mean she’s talking about the human
capacity for rational thought she’s
talking the language of the
Enlightenment when Western civilization
moved from the dark ages from fear and
superstition into the light how did they
do that they did it with their minds it
is what she calls the universal human
privilege of applying our capacity for
rational thought to an established order
and challenging it of actively using our
own minds instead of merely accepting a
handed-down tradition now Wollstonecraft
applied her order to a hierarchy a rigid
hierarchy which had been in place since
time immemorial and it went like this
God King men women non-white people
children animals and she looked at this
and did not accept it she wrote the
following
it is necessary emphatically to repeat
that there are rights which men she
means people inherit at their birth as
rational creatures who were raised above
the brute creation she means animals by
their improvable faculties we have only
to cultivate our reason she argues that
reason is the only thing that lifts
humans above animals above the brute
creation and that it’s reason that
places each and every human on an equal
footing with each and every other human
she applied reason herself she had a big
argument with the Enlightenment
philosopher jean-jacques Rousseau who
said women aren’t capable of reason and
so she proved him wrong by reasoning
with him look at me I’m doing it right
now
QED she tackles monarchy slavery
she had a go at the Hindu caste system
as an ancient handed down tradition this
is a ready target for human reason and
she described it as debasing to humanity
the application of Reason led directly
to the rights of man which is what we
now call human rights
Wollstonecraft was fighting that fight
right at the beginning before the
terminology even existed now reason was
not new as a concept I don’t if you
remember your Hamlet ah what a piece of
work is man how noble in reason how
infinite in faculty he goes on to list a
number of other virtues but first of
course is reason what’s happening now
though in walleston crafts time is
different it’s being applied much more
dangerously because if women can have
reason and black people and slaves to Oh
for heaven’s sake where will it all end
naturally she encountered some fairly
fierce hostility to her ideas but her
radical writings shook the world
she was quoted by the then President of
the United States of America imagine
that happening today no I can’t
so the historian the mighty historian
Mary beard says of Wollstonecraft every
woman that has a stake in how her
country is run has Mary Wollstonecraft a
frank and the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
has described her as perhaps the most
underestimated thinker of the 18th
century now a quick aside I should
confess that it wasn’t all this noble
human rights and reason that kind of
captivated me into the Wollstonecraft
story I kind of wish it should be but no
it was her adventures remember when you
first met her the incident with the
rocky bow in a wild dark sea we’ll wait
till you hear this Mary Wollstonecraft
the great Enlightenment philosopher and
human rights champion was on a treasure
hunt a treasure hunt it’s because she
heard dodgy boyfriend that she met in
revolutionary Paris she got pregnant he
was smuggling out of this revolutionary
hotbed one of his cargos of smuggled
silver went missing somewhere off the
coast of Norway guess who goes off to
find it cause she does off she goes
and even better she takes their ten
month old baby with her
which makes Mary Wollstonecraft the
world’s first and only single mum
enlightenment treasure hunting
philosopher on the high seas we you
couldn’t make this up so it was this
moment this dark adventure with a baby
in tow that completely caught my
imagination and it never let go and I
became a bit obsessed I ended up
retracing this journey and took my baby
with me and wrote a book about it like
she did on the way so trying to channel
her there and it was the adventure of my
life it was the most empowering
thing which calls to mind
Wollstonecraft’s perfect distillation of
feminism I quote I do not wish women to
have power over men but over themselves
so this was all very wonderful
adventures in a boat women’s empowerment
yeah fantastic but and there’s always a
but there is tragedy at the heart of the
Wollstonecraft story she died young and
she died twice first she died in
childbirth
aged only 38 giving birth to the Future
author of Frankenstein as we discussed
but then she died
via her reputation her reputation was
murdered by the man who loved her most
her partner William Godwin deeply
bereaved and grieving wrote the first
biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and he
included the things that Virginia Woolf
describes as her experiments in living
by which she means having a baby without
being married that kind of thing Oh so
this unleashed a torrent of abuse
Wollstonecraft had a lot of enemies and
this was what they’d been waiting for
this was proof that she was a whore a
hyena in petticoats her friends were
silenced her enemies came galloping to
the feast poems were circulated about
her naked body
overnight her legacy became toxic Mary
Wollstonecraft was thrown onto the
historical scrap heap for over a century
the campaign group Mary on the green is
fighting to change this to celebrate her
life and her legacy so please check out
their website but this brings me back to
the opening thought to the nasty woman
to the name-calling to the trolling and
to the endless spectacle of the backlash
we’ve seen it over the centuries again
and again it’s
hiring the response to this has to be to
be true to Wollstonecraft’s legacy her
legacy of reason reason or in our
current case the lack of the lack of
reason because we’ve just been through a
year that took absence of reason to new
heights when you think back where was
reason in 2016
reason you abandoned er so we abandoned
you in the words of the American
founding father Benjamin Franklin if you
will not hear reason she will surely rap
your knuckles well let’s face it that’s
exactly what happened isn’t it we’ve
been through a troll rich loud knuckle
rapping year not so much enlightenment
as in schouten Munt many of us found
2016 destabilizing irrational we’re here
about things like the death of
liberalism the rejection of the secular
state the rise of religious nationalism
my favorite the so called post factual
error the most scary part we’ve seen
people all around the world
voting according to their feelings their
feelings they feel scared or they feel
angry I’ll come on humanity you can do
better than that
remember the brute creation animals
animals can feel scared or angry don’t
vote like an animal Wollstonecraft
demands that we try harder and we aim
higher we have only to cultivate our
reason there are two ways in an age of
unreason fake news misinformation and
feelings feelings feelings all over
social media won the restoration of
facts facts evidence based data that
needs to get fashionable again to ask
yourself why you believe what you
believe why you vote the way you vote
where did that come from
was that just handed down to you
like a tradition challenge it test your
beliefs explore their opposites subject
them to reason and I’ll end with the
words of the ancient Scottish
philosopher William Drummond he who does
not reason is a bigot he who cannot
reason is a fool and he who dares not is
a slave the fools and bigots are having
a field day out there
don’t let Wollstonecraft down it’s time
for a new age of reason thank you
[Music]
[Music]
you
[Music]
you are about to meet the original nasty
woman remember that phrase and you’re
going to find out why her legacy is so
very important right now I use the word
nasty in its newly minted sense post
American elections where who could
forget the spectacle of a very ambitious
man and a very ambitious woman in a
debate she smiled politely he called her
names will be returning to that but for
now let’s go back back to the source
back to prehistoric nasty woman who’s
that well done very good of course have
you heard of Frankenstein’s granny
anybody know you are about to you should
have the mother of the author of
Frankenstein Mary Shelley was the
original nasty woman and to boot she was
an extraordinary person I met her almost
entirely by accident and it changed
everything so let’s meet her hichy is
it’s 1795 Europe and the Western world
is erupting it’s the era of revolution
it’s the time when humanity is in charge
this is the Enlightenment reason is come
to town and the Enlightenment is there
in this new world order human beings no
longer need to ask their God their king
or their dad for permission to change
the world one human
in particular and here she is in a
little boat on a rocky shore she’s
traveled far north
from revolutionary Paris she’s on the
wild coast of the scag Iraq see what’s
she doing who is she she is Mary
Wollstonecraft and a couple of centuries
later she became my inspiration some of
you might have heard of her
she wrote famously the original call for
equality of the sexes a vindication of
the Rights of Woman 1792 in which she
argued apparently preposterous Lee that
women are capable of reason who knew all
they needed was education but what does
she mean by reason reason she goes on
about it all the time reason reason
reason with a capital R what does this
mean she’s talking about the human
capacity for rational thought she’s
talking the language of the
Enlightenment when Western civilization
moved from the dark ages from fear and
superstition into the light how did they
do that they did it with their minds it
is what she calls the universal human
privilege of applying our capacity for
rational thought to an established order
and challenging it of actively using our
own minds instead of merely accepting a
handed-down tradition now Wollstonecraft
applied her order to a hierarchy a rigid
hierarchy which had been in place since
time immemorial and it went like this
God King men women non-white people
children animals and she looked at this
and did not accept it she wrote the
following
it is necessary emphatically to repeat
that there are rights which men she
means people inherit at their birth as
rational creatures who were raised above
the brute creation she means animals by
their improvable faculties we have only
to cultivate our reason she argues that
reason is the only thing that lifts
humans above animals above the brute
creation and that it’s reason that
places each and every human on an equal
footing with each and every other human
she applied reason herself she had a big
argument with the Enlightenment
philosopher jean-jacques Rousseau who
said women aren’t capable of reason and
so she proved him wrong by reasoning
with him look at me I’m doing it right
now
QED she tackles monarchy slavery
she had a go at the Hindu caste system
as an ancient handed down tradition this
is a ready target for human reason and
she described it as debasing to humanity
the application of Reason led directly
to the rights of man which is what we
now call human rights
Wollstonecraft was fighting that fight
right at the beginning before the
terminology even existed now reason was
not new as a concept I don’t if you
remember your Hamlet ah what a piece of
work is man how noble in reason how
infinite in faculty he goes on to list a
number of other virtues but first of
course is reason what’s happening now
though in walleston crafts time is
different it’s being applied much more
dangerously because if women can have
reason and black people and slaves to Oh
for heaven’s sake where will it all end
naturally she encountered some fairly
fierce hostility to her ideas but her
radical writings shook the world
she was quoted by the then President of
the United States of America imagine
that happening today no I can’t
so the historian the mighty historian
Mary beard says of Wollstonecraft every
woman that has a stake in how her
country is run has Mary Wollstonecraft a
frank and the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
has described her as perhaps the most
underestimated thinker of the 18th
century now a quick aside I should
confess that it wasn’t all this noble
human rights and reason that kind of
captivated me into the Wollstonecraft
story I kind of wish it should be but no
it was her adventures remember when you
first met her the incident with the
rocky bow in a wild dark sea we’ll wait
till you hear this Mary Wollstonecraft
the great Enlightenment philosopher and
human rights champion was on a treasure
hunt a treasure hunt it’s because she
heard dodgy boyfriend that she met in
revolutionary Paris she got pregnant he
was smuggling out of this revolutionary
hotbed one of his cargos of smuggled
silver went missing somewhere off the
coast of Norway guess who goes off to
find it cause she does off she goes
and even better she takes their ten
month old baby with her
which makes Mary Wollstonecraft the
world’s first and only single mum
enlightenment treasure hunting
philosopher on the high seas we you
couldn’t make this up so it was this
moment this dark adventure with a baby
in tow that completely caught my
imagination and it never let go and I
became a bit obsessed I ended up
retracing this journey and took my baby
with me and wrote a book about it like
she did on the way so trying to channel
her there and it was the adventure of my
life it was the most empowering
thing which calls to mind
Wollstonecraft’s perfect distillation of
feminism I quote I do not wish women to
have power over men but over themselves
so this was all very wonderful
adventures in a boat women’s empowerment
yeah fantastic but and there’s always a
but there is tragedy at the heart of the
Wollstonecraft story she died young and
she died twice first she died in
childbirth
aged only 38 giving birth to the Future
author of Frankenstein as we discussed
but then she died
via her reputation her reputation was
murdered by the man who loved her most
her partner William Godwin deeply
bereaved and grieving wrote the first
biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and he
included the things that Virginia Woolf
describes as her experiments in living
by which she means having a baby without
being married that kind of thing Oh so
this unleashed a torrent of abuse
Wollstonecraft had a lot of enemies and
this was what they’d been waiting for
this was proof that she was a whore a
hyena in petticoats her friends were
silenced her enemies came galloping to
the feast poems were circulated about
her naked body
overnight her legacy became toxic Mary
Wollstonecraft was thrown onto the
historical scrap heap for over a century
the campaign group Mary on the green is
fighting to change this to celebrate her
life and her legacy so please check out
their website but this brings me back to
the opening thought to the nasty woman
to the name-calling to the trolling and
to the endless spectacle of the backlash
we’ve seen it over the centuries again
and again it’s
hiring the response to this has to be to
be true to Wollstonecraft’s legacy her
legacy of reason reason or in our
current case the lack of the lack of
reason because we’ve just been through a
year that took absence of reason to new
heights when you think back where was
reason in 2016
reason you abandoned er so we abandoned
you in the words of the American
founding father Benjamin Franklin if you
will not hear reason she will surely rap
your knuckles well let’s face it that’s
exactly what happened isn’t it we’ve
been through a troll rich loud knuckle
rapping year not so much enlightenment
as in schouten Munt many of us found
2016 destabilizing irrational we’re here
about things like the death of
liberalism the rejection of the secular
state the rise of religious nationalism
my favorite the so called post factual
error the most scary part we’ve seen
people all around the world
voting according to their feelings their
feelings they feel scared or they feel
angry I’ll come on humanity you can do
better than that
remember the brute creation animals
animals can feel scared or angry don’t
vote like an animal Wollstonecraft
demands that we try harder and we aim
higher we have only to cultivate our
reason there are two ways in an age of
unreason fake news misinformation and
feelings feelings feelings all over
social media won the restoration of
facts facts evidence based data that
needs to get fashionable again to ask
yourself why you believe what you
believe why you vote the way you vote
where did that come from
was that just handed down to you
like a tradition challenge it test your
beliefs explore their opposites subject
them to reason and I’ll end with the
words of the ancient Scottish
philosopher William Drummond he who does
not reason is a bigot he who cannot
reason is a fool and he who dares not is
a slave the fools and bigots are having
a field day out there
don’t let Wollstonecraft down it’s time
for a new age of reason thank you
[Music]
[Music]
you
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