Stone, Alison (2023) Science, Religion, and Morality : Debates among Cobbe, Wedgwood, Lee, and Besant. In: The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century :. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780197558898
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The relations among science, morality, and religion were intensely debated by Victorian intellectuals, but generally, women’s contributions to these debates have been ignored. This chapter restores them to the record. It looks, first, at Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) and her account of how morality necessarily depends on religion, specifically Christianity. Second, the chapter considers the different engagements with Darwinism of Cobbe and Frances Julia Wedgwood (1833–1913). Third, the chapter introduces a pair of debates, one between Cobbe and Vernon Lee (1856–1935), the other between Cobbe and Annie Besant (1847–1933). Both Lee and Besant defended versions of secularism while Cobbe counterargued that no secularist morality was possible.