Winner, 2023 Junior Faculty Scholarly Works Award, Saint Louis University

“The fact that Dumler Winckler has so ably demonstrated Wollstonecraft’s relevance to contemporary debates is all the more reason to celebrate this book. While it may be the first book of its kind, Modern Virtueâs convincing case for Wollstonecraft’s significance to religious ethics almost certainly guarantees that it will not be the last. The field will no doubt be richer for it.” — Ryan Darr, Yale University, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

“Virtue-thinking survived the Enlightenment? Wollstonecraft was a virtue theorist? She had a theology? She has something to offer to people who care about Cone, Gutierrez, Daly, Butler, and MacIntyre? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. You can find the evidence in Emily Dumler-Winckler’s stunning book, Modern Virtue.” — Jeffrey Stout, author of Democracy and Tradition, Professor emeritus Princeton University

“A scholarly tour de force, this book is the first systematic treatment of Mary Wollstonecraft as a religious thinker. Through close readings of her work and situating it in a wide-ranging set of debates, both historical and contemporary, Dumler-Winkler recovers Wollstonecraft the theologian, virtue ethicist, and political theorist. Troubling current understandings, the book also develops a constructive account of the relationship between both character and liberation and tradition and critique in radical, democratic forms of politics.” — Luke Bretherton, Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral & Political Theology, Duke University

“Wollstonecraft has long merited such a philosophically insightful study as Emilly Dumler-Winckler’s. Beautifully written and imaginative in the way it presents Wollstonecraft’s conception of virtue and her faith in their historical context as well as within contemporary debates, Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent will engage all, whether for or against this approach to ethics” — Sylvana Tomaselli, author of Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics

“Modern Virtue offers a hefty and hard-to-ignore argument for Wollstonecraft’s ongoing relevance for philosophy, gender studies, feminist theology, and the fight for women’s rights today…This book does what a good book should do: provoke further thinking about how to respond to the world’s moral and political conundrums.” — Margaret D. Kamitsuka, The Marginalia

“The author’s ambition is fascinating in more than one way: not only does she propose an original contribution to the almost sclerotic debate between the ethics of rights and the ethics of virtues, but moreover, she reinscribes the premises of feminist thought in a theological filiation that beats the discredit thrown a priori by religious thought on feminist theories…The great originality of the book is to dedicate Wollstonecraft’s contributions to current theoretical debates that cross Christian ethics and theology and political theory.” — Anne Guillard, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology

“Dumler-Winckler’s content is solid, and her style compact. The intended audience is the academy, but nonetheless, particularly in summative passages, her arguments are more widely accessible. Her discussion of the unveiling of Mary Wollstonecraft’s statue in Newington Green in north London alongside the elevation of Kamala Harris to the vice-presidency of the United States signpost where the conversation might go, where feminism, democracy and Christianity may indeed merge in the modern era…Dumler-Winckler has achieved what she set out to do, that is, to vindicate the pursuit of virtue in its broadest modern sense, and to introduce every reader to Mary Wollstonecraft as theologian and ethicist.” — Hugh P. Kemp, St Kentigern College, Auckland, New Zealand, Practical Theology

“The aim of Modern Virtue is not simply to place Wollstonecraft in her contemporary context, but to interpret her for contemporary benefit…Modern Virtue seeks to erode, if not dissolve, the tensions between them by arguing that Wollstonecraft contributes to a continuing tradition of both virtue and dissent which is capacious enough to admit multiple strands, such that pre-modern may be integrated with modern as a microcosm of later traditions and later types of dissent…this is a study which confirms the importance of religion in Mary Wollstonecraft’s intellectual formation, offering much insight and food for thought for historians, feminists, theologians and virtue ethicists alike.” — Sarah Hutton, University of York, Intellectual History Review

“In Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent, Emily Dumler-Winckler looks beyond the moderns to show Wollstonecraft’s kinship with ancient and medieval thinkers, especially Aristotle and Aquinas. It’s in the rich Christian tradition especially that Wollstonecraft finds the dynamic resources to treat her “modern” subjects (abolition and women’s education, in particular).” — Erica Bachiochi, Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute , Public Discourse

“Modern Virtue is essential reading for Wollstonecraft scholars.” — Megan Gallagher, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

“This book offers a masterful presentation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s virtue ethics… Modern Virtue powerfully commends Wollstonecraft for deliberation on the relationship between virtue, justice, and political responsibility in our time.” — James Calvin Davis, Middlebury College, USA