Question 2: The goals of the philosophies were meant to exercise a set of ideals. Which common tenets of enlightened thinking do writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Denis Diderot advance in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and the selection from "Encyclopedie." Contemporary connections: Discuss how you see the tenets you identified in these works as having informed/influenced our contemporary experience.

Although Mary Wollstonecraft speaks about the rights of women specifically, her "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" stresses the value of rationality and reasonable discourse in keeping with Enlightenment principles that were particular to many other Enlightenment thinkers, including Diderot. Wollstonecraft argues one of the defects of male oppression of women is that it limits female education, and makes women more irrational. When men criticize women, men have essentially created a self-fulfilling prophesy. Women have not been allowed full venues to enrich themselves, which is the right of...
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