WHO IS A SLAVE AND WHO SHOULD BE FREED? ASTELL, MARRIAGE AND CHATTEL SLAVERY.

Tuesday 11th November | 6pm

WHO IS A SLAVE AND WHO SHOULD BE FREED? ASTELL, MARRIAGE AND CHATTEL SLAVERY.

A lecture by Professor Sandrine Bergès

Mary Astell (1666-1731), ‘the first English feminist’, was born in Newcastle, and is commemorated with a blue plaque on Newcastle cathedral.

Emma Goldman | Image provided by promoterImage sourced from Sandrine Berges – Home

Scholars disagree as to how to interpret Astell’s analogy of marriage as slavery. Here I lookn at this problem again taking into account a context Astell was writing in, that of transatlantic slavery. I draw the following conclusions: that Astell chose to ignore the plight of chattel slaves shows that she did not think slavery was a great evil. This applied not only to chattel slaves, but also to married women (and likely also to men who called themselves enslaved because they lived under the rule of a king). She did not wish them to be freed, but rather wanted to help ameliorate their conditions through education. I show first that Astell was fully embedded in the slave economy that flourished in London in the late 17th and early 18th century so that she had to make a choice not to mention transatlantic slavery. Then I follow the argument made by Rickless and Wasel that Astell thinks that that true freedom is freedom of the mind, and that one can be enslaved bodily but essentially free, but show that even for Astell, such freedom was in fact largely illusory, and that she did not mean women, or anyone else that was enslaved, to be freed. I conclude that the liberatory potential of Astell’s arguments on marriage consists only in the method she offers for strengthening the mind. But even that method would need to be subverted to be at all useful, i.e. employed to strengthen our ability to seek freedom, rather than to resolve ourselves to obedience.

This talk is the British Society for the History of Philosophy’s 2025 Antognazza Lecture. The BSHP promotes and supports academic and public understanding of all aspects of the history of philosophy. Find out more https://bshp.org.uk/

A LIVE Lit & Phil Event | FREE

(If you would prefer to book directly over the phone, please call the Library Desk team on 0191 232 0192 and they will be happy to help)

‘Pay what you wish’

There is no set ticket price for this event, but if you would like to make a small donation to support the good work of The Lit & Phil we would be very grateful. Click the link above to donate via Paypal.