Frances Power Cobbe

Introduces Frances Power Cobbe's philosophy, her views on moral theory, animal welfare, feminism, religion, the mind, and evolution.

Alison Stone (Author)

9781009160971, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 July 2022

75 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 0.5 cm, 0.13 kg

This Element introduces the philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a very well-known moral theorist, advocate of animal welfare and women's rights, and critic of Darwinism and atheism in the Victorian era. After locating Cobbe's achievements within nineteenth-century British culture, this Element examines her duty-based moral theory of the 1850s and then her 1860s accounts of duties to animals, women's rights, and the mind and unconscious thought. From the 1870s, in critical response to Darwin's evolutionary ethics, Cobbe put greater moral weight on the emotions, especially sympathy. She now criticised atheism for undermining morality, emphasised women's duties to develop virtues of character, and recommended treating animals with sympathy and compassion. The Element links Cobbe's philosophical arguments to her campaigns for women's rights and against vivisection, brings in critical responses from her contemporaries, explains how she became omitted from the history of philosophy, and shows the lasting importance of her work.

Introduction
1. Cobbe's Life, Writings, and Context
2. Moral Theory
3. Rights of Women
4. The Claims of Animals
5. Philosophy of Mind
6. Criticisms of Evolutionary Ethics
7. Heteropathy and Sympathy
8. Against Atheism
9. Duties of Women
10. Anti-Vivisection and Zoophily
11. How Cobbe Became Forgotten
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Feminism & feminist theory [JFFK], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP]