There have been many different historical-intellectual accounts of the shaping and development of concepts of liberty in pre-Enlightenment Europe. This volume is unique for addressing the subject of liberty principally as it is discussed in the writings of women philosophers, and as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives, during this period. The volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, with some chapters discussing women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will, and others examining the topic of women's freedom (or lack thereof) in their moral and personal lives as well as in the public socio-political domain. In some cases, these topics are situated in relation to the emergence of the concept of autonomy in the late eighteenth century, and in others, with respect to recent feminist theorizing about relational autonomy and internalized oppression.

Many of the chapters draw upon a wide range of genres, including polemical texts, poetry, plays, and other forms of fiction, as well as standard philosophical treatises. Taken as a whole, this volume shows how crucial it is to recover the too-long forgotten views of female and women-friendly male philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly enhanced, toward a more accurate and gender-inclusive history of our discipline.

Jacqueline Broad's profile page

Karen Detlefsen's profile page

Jacqueline Broad is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. Her main area of research is early modern women's philosophy. She is the author of The Philosophy of Mary Astell (OUP, 2015) and Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (CUP, 2002), and co-author with Karen Green of A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400-1700 (CUP, 2009). She recently published a modern edition of Mary Astell's Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (CRRS and Iter, 2013).

Karen Detlefsen is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She researches the relationship between metaphysics and the life sciences in the early modern period, early modern women philosophers, and the philosophy of education. She is the editor of Descartes' Meditations: A Critical Guide (CUP, 2012). Her articles on Astell, Conway, Descartes, Du Châtelet, Cavendish, Hobbes, Haller, Wolff, and Malebranche have been published in Philosophy Compass, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Perspectives on Science, and volumes by Oxford, Springer, Routledge, Acumen, Kluwer, Cambridge, and the Pennsylvania State University Press.