Copyright

Alison Stone

Published On

2026-07-16

Language

  • English

Print Length

14 pages

THEMA

  • QDTQ
  • QD
  • QDTJ
  • JPA
  • JH

BISAC

  • PHI005000
  • PHI019000
  • PHI009000
  • PHI022000
  • POL028000

Keywords

  • Victorian philosophy
  • Ethics
  • Metaphysics
  • Religion
  • History
  • Feminism

11. Romans and Christians

Chapter of: The Philosophy of Julia Wedgwood: Imperfect Antithesis

This chapter is on Wedgwood’s account of the transition from the Roman world to Christianity. She argues that the Greeks and Romans felt contempt for the lowly, whereas Christians feel sympathy for the lowly; and that the ancients recognised either spirit (Platonism) or matter (Epicureanism) but not our dislocation between spirit and matter, as Christianity does. Writing about Virgil, she identifies further antitheses between the ancient and post-Christian worldviews: allegiance versus loyalty, regret versus remorse, submission versus rebellion, piety versus pity. Christianity differs by recognising the dislocation between ideals and reality, whereas the Roman outlook collapses ideals and reality together.For Wedgwood, Christianity is liberatory; it emancipates slaves and women and recognises the inviolable moral claim and worth of each individual. Yet this outlook is not the perfect antithesis of the Roman empire, but shares one of its presuppositions, the separateness of the individual. Christianity incorporates part of the world it rejects. In this way, imperfect antithesis makes possible historical learning and progression. These latter concepts tie together the phenomenological and historical sides of Wedgwood’s thought.

Contributors

Alison Stone

(author)
Professor of Philosophy at Lancaster University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9621-8263

Alison Stone is Professor of Philosophy at Lancaster University. Her most recent books are on nineteenth-century women philosophers. They are Frances Power Cobbe: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Feminist Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2022), Frances Power Cobbe (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2023), and Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770-1900 (Oxford University Press, 2024). With Charlotte Alderwick, she co-edited Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in Britain and America (Routledge, 2024), and with Lydia Moland, she co-edited The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2025).