Amalia Holst and the Paradox of Public Reason

Amalia Holst’s book On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802) challenged the reading public in many respects. Not only did she argue that “the education of women must be entirely free.” She grounded this demand in a universal duty to develop one’s intellectual powers, a duty that is shared equally by men and women. And she accused men that they had been denying women the right to education simply because they “were afraid that in the course of their higher development women may think of calling to account the many injustices they have had to endure.”
These are radical claims, with the potential to shake the foundations of the gendered system in the German states. Yet, Holst’s political conclusions are conservative. “I do not want to be a preacher of revolution,” she writes at one point. At another, she encourages her female readers to “satisfy [them]selves in the colourful hustle and bustle of the world theatre with […] small inconspicuous roles.”
In this paper, we investigate the tension between the morally radical and the politically conservative elements of Holst’s argument. We interpret this tension as an expression of the paradox of public reason expressed in Kant’s essay on Enlightenment. The public use of reason requires one to accept two imperatives that an agent of public reason cannot necessarily fulfil at the same time: (1) have the courage to use your own understanding, and (2) respect the (gendered) boundaries of the public sphere. This interpretation removes focus from an inconsistency on Holst’s part to the structure of public reason that she must navigate if she is to present her thoughts to the world of readers.