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Liberty, Women on

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

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Synonyms

Free will; Freedom; Freedom of choice

Introduction

In the seventeenth century and early 1700s, several women thinkers discuss the concept of liberty in its various metaphysical, moral, and political guises. Among these women are Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Gabrielle Suchon, Damaris Cudworth Masham, Sarah Chapone, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Emilie Du Châtelet. Some of these writers touch on issues to do with freedom and determinism, such as the problem of reconciling the existence of human free will with a purely materialist theory of causation. Some raise problems for free will based on the fact that the mind is frequently incapable of overcoming the influence of the passions and other antecedent causes. Others extend their views about human agency to moral and political issues concerning liberty, with a specific focus on the freedom of women as a socio-political group (for overviews, see Broad and Detlefsen 2017; Broad 2014a).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jacqueline Broad

Authors
  1. Jacqueline Broad
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacqueline Broad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Dana Jalobeanu

  2. Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University Dept. Philosophy & Moral Sci, Ghent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

Section Editor information

  1. Institut für Humanwissenschaften, Philosophie, Universität Paderborn, Paderborn, Deutschland

    Ruth Hagengruber

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Broad, J. (2020). Liberty, Women on. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_424-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_424-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

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