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1. Introduction 1. Introduction
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2. Harriet Martineau’s Feminist Sociology 2. Harriet Martineau’s Feminist Sociology
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3. George Eliot’s Literary Empiricism 3. George Eliot’s Literary Empiricism
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4. Jane May Locke Style’s Aesthetic Humanism 4. Jane May Locke Style’s Aesthetic Humanism
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5. Sybella Gurney Branford’s Applied Civics 5. Sybella Gurney Branford’s Applied Civics
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6. Conclusion 6. Conclusion
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References References
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Notes Notes
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Positivism
Get accessMatthew Wilson is an intellectual historian and an assistant professor of global architectural history, social and environmental justice, and African American Studies at Ball State University. His research focuses on the British Positivist movement and decolonization. He is the author of Moralising Space: the Utopian Urbanism of the British Positivists, 1855–1920 (2018) and Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire (2021). His current project is Positivist Dreamscapes: an Intellectual History of British Proto-feminist Women Philosophers.
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Published:16 August 2023
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Abstract
Auguste Comte’s atheistic philosophy of Positivism meshed science, government, art, economics, and religion into a utopian vision of modernity. This chapter investigates how Victorian women philosophers played a significant but overlooked role in the creation of worlds of Comtean Positivism in Britain. It reveals strands of Positivist thinking in the feminist sociology of Harriet Martineau, the literary realism of George Eliot, the humanist artworks of Jane Style, and the communitarian efforts of Sybella Gurney Branford. The chapter demonstrates how these four Victorian women of the Positivist persuasion reparticularized, applied, and built on Comte’s principles. They did so in such ways as to suit their own vocations, beliefs, talents, and social agendas. Positivism helped these women to negotiate the politics, economy, and social power of Victorian men.
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