While I was doing some reading about Mary Godwin Shelley and about her mother Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, I read a story about a criticism written by Thomas Taylor, of Mary Wollstonecraft’s book ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’.
Thomas Taylor, by Thomas Lawrence (1812), at the National Gallery of Canada
[the following is from Wikipedia]
“Taylor responded to [Mary] Wollstonecraft’s 1792 magnum opus … in his satirical essay, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes’. In it, Taylor attempted to demonstrate the absurdity of Wollstonecraft’s arguments by arguing that if the argument for equality was sound when it applied to women, why not for animals too? Wollstonecraft’s reasoning seemed to hold for brutes too; yet, Taylor argued, to hold that brutes had rights was manifestly absurd. Therefore, Taylor contended, Wollstonecraft’s reasoning must be unsound; the same arguments were used in each case, and if unsound when applied to animals, they must also be unsound when applied to women.”
One may wonder why someone who spent his entire adult life in translating philosophical writings from ancient Greek into English, would suddenly write his one and only political tract against Mary Wollstonecraft and against the rights of women? And so, who was this Thomas Taylor, you may ask?
First off, Taylor was the Assistant Secretary to the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Art, through which he acquired the financial backing to carry out his translations.
Although Benjamin Franklin was asked to be a member of this Society during his stay in London, he later criticized the Society’s ‘bounties’, as seen in Dr. Franklin’s comments written in the margin of a pamphlet by Mr. Joshua Tucker that attacked the colonies as an encumbrance that the mother country could do without.
Rev. Tucker had written that:
“Parliament now gives you a Bounty of £8 per Ton for exporting your Hemp from North America; but will allow me nothing for growing it here in England; nay, will tax me very severely for fetching it from any other country; though it be an Article most essentially necessary for all the Purposes of Shipping and Navigation.”
Dr. Franklin wrote about the Society’s bounties, that:
“Did ever any North American bring his Hemp to England for this Bounty? We have yet not enough for our own Consumption. We begin to make our own Cordage. You want to suppress that Manufacture and would do it by getting the raw Material from us: You want to be supply’d with Hemp for your Manufactures, and Russia demands Money. These were the Motives for giving what you are pleased to call a Bounty to us. We thank you for your Bounties. We love you and therefore must be oblig’d to you for being good to yourselves. You do not encourage raising Hemp in England, because you know it impoverishes the richest Grounds; your Land Owners are all against it. What you call Bounties given by Parliament and the Society are nothing more than Inducements offered us, to induce us to leave Employments that are more profitable and engage in such as would be less so without your Bounty; to quit a Business profitable to ourselves and engage in one that shall be profitable to you; this is the true Spirit of all your Bounties.”
Dr. Franklin does not seem to be a fan of Taylor’s friends at the Royal Society of Arts.
Later, Thomas Taylor would become better known, as having published the first collection of all of the English translations Plato’s dialogues in 1804.
[Note: However, some of the dialogues were not translations of Taylor – 9 dialogues were translations done earlier by Floyer Sydenham, and the Republic dialogue was translated by Rev. Harry Spens (and slightly edited by Taylor).]
Taylor considered himself a ‘neo-Platonist’, and he translated the writings of Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphyry, and he also translated the writings of Aristotle. Additionally, as he journeyed deeper into the mysticism of the ‘so-called’ neo-platonists, Taylor wrote ‘A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries’, and then translated ‘Orations of the Emperor Julian’, and ‘Arguments of Julian against the Christians’.
[Note: It was soon after Taylor wrote ‘A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries’ that he would write his satire of Wollstonecraft’s ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’.]
And then, I began to wonder why Taylor was so interested in Julian, who, as Roman Emperor, had also tried to promote neo-Platonism, but who, unlike his uncle Constantine, had tried to suppress Christianity. And apparently, while fighting against the Persians, Julian tried to rebuild the temple (of Solomon) in Jerusalem.
[next - part 2 - Julian and Edward Gibbon]