SOURCE: Waters, Kristin. “Sources of Political Authority: John Locke and Mary Astell: Introduction.” In Women and Men Political Theorists: Enlightened Conversations, edited by Kristin Waters, pp. 5-19. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Waters summarizes Astell's political philosophies and arguments on marriage, comparing them to the writings of John Locke and several other writers of the time.

Astell's Theory

[Descartes'] radical epistemology put women on a theoretical par with men.¹

A study of Mary Astell's philosophy is not for the faint of heart. Her political views have an affinity with those of Hobbes and Edmund Burke in their common defenses of monarchy, but she differs from Hobbes, criticizing his mechanistic individualism and atheism, which were anathema to her. Her feminism, or protofeminism, foreshadows certain aspects of radical feminism and even the separatist feminism of the late twentieth century. Her arguments about political foundations are radical-conservative and...