A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex

Selected Philosophical and Moral Writings

Gabrielle Suchon, Domna C. Stanton, Rebecca M. Wilkin, Domna C. Stanton, Rebecca M. Wilkin

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780226779218, 9780226779201
• eBook ISBN: 9780226779232
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Renaissance History
• Index: Social Sciences

During the oppressive reign of Louis XIV, Gabrielle Suchon (1632–1703) was the most forceful female voice in France, advocating women's freedom and self-determination, access to knowledge, and assertion of authority. This volume collects Suchon's writing from two works—Treatise on Ethics and Politics (1693) and On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen; or, Life without Commitments (1700)—and demonstrates her to be an original philosophical and moral thinker and writer.

Suchon argues that both women and men have inherently similar intellectual, corporeal, and spiritual capacities, which entitle them equally to essentially human prerogatives, and she displays her breadth of knowledge as she harnesses evidence from biblical, classical, patristic, and contemporary secular sources to bolster her claim. Forgotten over the centuries, these writings have been gaining increasing attention from feminist historians, students of philosophy, and scholars of seventeenth-century French literature and culture. This translation, from Domna C. Stanton and Rebecca M. Wilkin, marks the first time these works will appear in English.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Series Editors' Introduction
• Volume Editors' Introduction
• Volume Editors' Bibliography
• I. Treatise on Ethics and Politics, Divided into Three Parts: Freedom, Knowledge, and Authority
• II. On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen, or Life without Commitments
• Appendix: Complete Tables of Contents of the Entire Treatise on Ethics and On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen
• Glossary
• Series Editors' Bibliography
• Index