Women Philosophers from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

New Studies

Ruth Edith Hagengruber, Sarah Hutton, Ruth Edith Hagengruber, Sarah Hutton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000396355
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This collection of essays presents new work on women's contribution to philosophy between the Renaissance and the mid-eighteenth century. They bring a new perspective to the history of philosophy, by highlighting women's contributions to philosophy and testifying to the rich history of women's thought in this period.

By showing that women were active in many branches of philosophy (metaphysics, science, political philosophy cosmology, ontology, epistemology) the book testifies to the rich history of women's thought across Europe in this period. The scope of the collection is international, both in terms of the philosophers represented and the contributors themselves from Britain and North America, but also from continental Europe and from as far afield as Australia and Brazil. The philosophers discussed here include both figures who have recently come to be better known (Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Emilie du Châtelet), and less familiar figures (Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella Arcangela Tarabotti, Tullia d'Aragona, Madame Deshoulières, Madame de Sablé, Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d'Andilly, Oliva Sabuco, Susanna Newcome).

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Women, philosophy and the history of philosophy^*

Sarah Hutton

abstract

It is only in the last 30 years that any appreciable work has been done on women philosophers of the past. This paper reflects on the progress that has been made in recovering early-modern women philosophers in that time and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. I argue that as women are integrated into the broader picture of philosophy, there is a danger of overlooking the different conditions under which they originally philosophized and which shaped their philosophies. Having retrieved them from oblivion, we now face the challenge of avoiding a ‘new amnesia’ by developing historical narratives and modes of analysis which acknowledge the different conditions within which they worked, without diminishing their contribution to philosophy. I offer these remarks as a contribution to current debates about the forms that historical narrative should take, and the best way to promote women in philosophy today, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.

I see no Reason why it should not be thought that all Science lyes as open to a Lady as to a Man: And that there is none which she may not properly make her Study, according as she shall find her self best fitted to succeed therein; or as is most agreeable to her Inclination

(Masham, Occasional Thoughts, 227–8)

In May 1643 René Descartes received a letter from Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, in which she queried how, on Descartes’ account of soul and body as separate substances, the soul can direct the body to perform the voluntary actions. So began a philosophical correspondence which lasted until Descartes’ death in 1649. These letters are the only philosophical writings by Elisabeth to have survived. They were never published – Elisabeth refused Clerselier’s request for them to be included in his edition of Descartes’ letters (Descartes, Lettres de Mr Descartes), and the originals were lost. But some two centuries later, copies surfaced in the library of Rosendael Castle, Arnhem, and were published for the first time by Foucher de Careil in 1879. These copies form the basis of modern editions and translations.¹ In her own time, Elisabeth was famous for her learning and mathematical brilliance. Her philosophical acumen was celebrated by Descartes in prefaces to his writings. But before 1879 her philosophical views were only known through his replies. Elisabeth’s fortunes as a philosopher are emblematic of how women have fared in philosophical history: having endured social restrictions on their practice of philosophy, with few, if any writings to show for their philosophizing, they came to be regarded as ‘minor figures’, if at all, in the history of philosophy. As female philosophers go, Elisabeth was more fortunate than most – her high birth and breeding ensured she was educated, had access to books, and could even command the attention of philosophers and mathematicians. Of course, we should not assume that high birth necessarily meant an easy life both materially and intellectually (Elisabeth’s correspondence makes clear that it did not). And her high birth did not save her from being treated subsequently as a mere ‘learned lady’, only interesting because Descartes paid attention to her. Happily, all that has changed. Elisabeth is now celebrated for her philosophy – as evidenced in the recent conference held in Germany marking the quatercentenary of her birth.²

^*This paper was delivered as the Annual Lecture of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, 2018. I would like to express my thanks to the society for the honour of the invitation, and to the audience for the ensuing lively discussion. The paper develops an earlier version given at the conference, ‘New Narratives in Philosophy’ at Duke University, Durham NC, 14–17 April 2016. My thanks to the organisers for inviting me, and the participants for comments, in particular Gary Hatfield for his constructive comments on my paper.

Given the huge interest today in women philosophers, it is sobering to reflect on how recently the climate of receptivity towards female philosophers has developed – pretty much within the ‘life-time’ of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Twenty-five years on from the founding of the journal is a good moment to pause for reflection on those changes. In this paper I consider the progress that has been made in the recovery of women philosophers from oblivion and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. My comments will deal largely with early modern European philosophy, since that is the main area of my expertise, and it is the period on which most of the pioneering work on women philosophers has focused. But work is now increasingly being done on female philosophers from all periods, as well as women who worked in other philosophical traditions. What I have to say here is, I believe, also relevant beyond the confines of early modern philosophy and Anglo-America. I offer these remarks as a contribution to debates about what form a new historical narrative might take, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.

¹E.g. Descartes, Correspondance avec Elisabeth and Elisabeth of Bohemia, The Correspondence. For the 1643 letter see also Descartes, The Correspondence of René Descartes, 1643, 64–6.

²‘Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680) – Life and Legacy. Philosophy, Politics and Religion in Seventeenth Century Europe’, a conference held at Paderborn and Herford, under the auspices of the Centre for the History of Women Philosophers, Paderborn University.

Once upon a time, 30 years ago

The history of women’s contribution to philosophy has come a long way in the last three decades. Until the late twentieth century a great amnesia had set in regarding women’s contribution to philosophy: the fate of women philosophers in history was, as Eileen O’Neill pointed out, oblivion (O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink’). And oblivion is the mother of ignorance. Many feminists of the 1980s admitted to not knowing that there had been female philosophers and record their surprise on discovering that there had. But they quickly found that the fate of women philosophers had been to be treated as at best as minor philosophers in the shadow of canonical male philosophers (if they were lucky), or as learned ladies (e.g. Marie le Jars de Gournay) or they were simply denied intellectual credibility (Cavendish was dismissed as a mad eccentric; Conway as an hysteric).³ Although there was some recognition in the past that there had been women philosophers, it is only recently that they have begun to receive philosophical attention. Thirty years ago, almost nobody was working on women philosophers. But there were already stirrings of change in the wake of the women’s movement. Feminist philosophy had started to make waves. The founding of the feminist journal of philosophy, Hypatia, in 1986 signalled a new era. There were increasing numbers working in feminist philosophy. The first investigations into early modern women philosophers were under way. Carolyn Merchant had recently called attention to Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway in her Death of Nature, Mary Ellen Waithe had embarked on her History of Women Philosophers. Other histories followed: Ethel Kersey’s Women Philosophers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, and Linda Lopez McAlister’s Hypatia’s Daughters. Therese Boos Dykeman’s The Neglected Canon was one of the first anthologies of their writings to be published. A few people were beginning to work on individual women, for example, Jane Duran on Anne Conway and Martha Bolton on Catharine Trotter Cockburn (Duran, ‘Anne Viscountess Conway’; Bolton, ‘Some Aspects’).⁴

Then as now there was much discussion about the lot of woman in philosophy. As concerns the history of women philosophers, things began to come together with two landmark conferences in the 1990s. First, in 1992, the conference on ‘Women and the History of Philosophy’ was held at Girton College, Cambridge, organized by Susan James, Jonathan Rée and myself, under the auspices of what was then a fledgling British Society for the History of Philosophy. A few years later, in 1997, Eileen O’Neill mounted the first conference on Women philosophers in North America, at Amherst College, Massachusetts. It is not an exaggeration to say that these were ground-breaking conferences. They were the first in the field, and the first time that people with an interest in the history of women’s philosophy had come together. They marked a post-De Beauvoir era, in so far as their emphasis on the history of women philosophers represented a move in a different direction from the kind of existential reflections on women’s standing in philosophy prevalent in feminist debates at that time, which focused chiefly on the exclusion of women from philosophy and sought to theorize that exclusion (e.g. Lloyd, The Man of Reason; Spender, Women of Ideas; Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking; Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity; Le Doeuff, L'étude et le rouet).⁵ By focusing on women philosophers in history, these two conferences shifted the emphasis of debate from the negative story of disadvantage, to a more positive enquiry into what women had actually achieved in philosophy, highlighting the need for a programme of recovering the lost voices of philosophical women.

³Nicknamed in her own day as ‘Mad Madge’, Margaret Cavendish was infamously regarded by Virginia Woolf as out of her wits. For Conway the hysteric, see Concise Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Conway.

⁴They were not in fact the first: in 1977 Alan Gabbey and Caroline Iltis had published on Conway and Emilie du Châtelet (Gabbey, ‘Anne Conway et Henry More’; Iltis, ‘Madame du Châtelet’s Metaphysics’).

These conferences back in the 1990s were not pushing at an open door. At that time there was resistance to the idea that there had been any women philosophers, or that if there had been, that they were any good.⁶ The best hope that a dead female philosopher had for receiving attention was through what I have called ‘the coat-tail syndrome’ – hitching a ride on the coat-tails of a great philosopher (Hutton, ‘Damaris Cudworth’). Such, for example, was the case with Damaris Masham, riding on the coat-tails of John Locke, and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia on those of Descartes. A link to a more famous male philosopher had its uses, of course, as a way of flagging up a particular woman’s interest in philosophy. But it did not disguise the tenuousness of her claims to being considered a philosopher, since she was only considered interesting because of her connection with a ‘great thinker’. Riding on the coat tails of canonical ...