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HoP 477 The Mind Has No Sex: Cartesianism and Gender

Summary

This episode examines the relationship between Cartesian philosophy and gender in the 17th century, focusing on why Descartes’ ideas appealed to women intellectuals and how they were used to argue for gender equality.

Peter Adamson begins by exploring the salon culture of Paris, where women like Madame de Bonnevaux, Madeleine de Souvray, and Madame de Sévigné embraced Cartesianism. He explains that Descartes’ direct, jargon-free writing style made philosophy accessible to women who were excluded from university education. Descartes himself engaged with royal women like Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden, and his biographer noted he found women “more void of prejudices and false doctrines” than many men.

The episode then examines how Cartesian dualism—the idea that the mind is a pure thinking subject—suggested that the soul has no sex, a point noted by Queen Christina. This philosophical foundation was used by feminists like François Poulain de la Barre, who wrote three works arguing for gender equality using Cartesian methods. Poulain applied Descartes’ method of doubt to social prejudices about women, arguing that customary attitudes about female inferiority should be questioned and rejected.

Adamson contrasts Poulain’s Cartesian approach with other feminist arguments of the period, such as Anna Maria von Schurman’s scholastic method and Gabrielle Souchong’s more traditional approach. He notes that even conservative Aristotelians like Louis Leclache argued for women’s education, though with different motivations. The episode concludes by suggesting that the 17th century marked a turning point for women’s involvement in philosophy, with Descartes’ ideas playing a significant role in inspiring this change.

Recommendations

Books

  • Discourse on the Method — Descartes’ work mentioned as being written for a broad audience including women, with direct, jargon-free style that made philosophy accessible.
  • Meditations — Descartes’ work where he puts his method on display, mentioned as a key text in the Cartesian philosophical approach.
  • On the Equality of the Two Sexes — François Poulain de la Barre’s 1673 treatise that uses Cartesian ideas to argue for gender equality.
  • On the Education of Ladies — Poulain de la Barre’s dialogue that continues his feminist arguments using Cartesian methods, featuring characters debating women’s capabilities.
  • Treatise on Morals and Philosophy — Gabrielle Souchong’s 1693 work that argues for women’s education using scholastic rather than Cartesian methods.

People

  • Elizabeth of Bohemia — Princess who corresponded extensively with Descartes about philosophy; mentioned as an example of Descartes engaging with women intellectuals.
  • Queen Christina of Sweden — Monarch who supported Descartes and remarked that ‘the soul is of no sex,’ noting the genderless nature of the mind in Cartesian dualism.
  • François Poulain de la Barre — Philosopher who wrote three works using Cartesian ideas to argue for gender equality, applying Descartes’ method of doubt to social prejudices.
  • Anna Maria von Schurman — Learned woman taught by Descartes’ opponent Voetius, who used scholastic methods to argue for women’s education through syllogistic reasoning.
  • Madeleine de Scudery — Important figure in salon culture who wrote under the pseudonym Sappho and argued that women should value education over beauty.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:54 — Introduction to salon culture and women’s engagement with Cartesianism — Peter Adamson introduces the salon culture of 17th-century Paris, where women hosted intellectual gatherings and embraced Cartesian philosophy. He mentions notable salonnières like Madame de Bonnevaux and Madeleine de Souvray, and notes that women intellectuals showed particular fondness for Descartes’ ideas. The segment sets up the central question of why Cartesianism appealed to women.
  • 00:02:00 — Descartes’ approach to women and accessibility of his philosophy — Adamson discusses Descartes’ engagement with women like Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden. He notes that Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method for a broad audience including women, and his direct, jargon-free style made philosophy accessible to those excluded from university education. Descartes’ biographer reported that he found women more open-minded and less prejudiced than many men.
  • 00:03:46 — Cartesian dualism and the genderless nature of the mind — The episode explores how Cartesian dualism—the separation of mind and body—suggests that the mind or soul has no sex. Queen Christina remarked that “the soul is of no sex,” though she conceded there were weaknesses of the female body. This philosophical position created an opening for arguing that women’s intellectual capacities were equal to men’s, since thinking occurs in the genderless mind.
  • 00:04:45 — Women Cartesians and social resistance to learned women — Adamson discusses Catherine Descartes (René Descartes’ niece) and her circle of friends who were considered “précieuses” or “precious women.” He mentions how Molière mocked learned women in his comedy Les Femmes Savantes. The segment includes Catherine’s poetic exchange with Anne de Levigne, where Levigne ironically declines to champion Descartes’ teachings, noting that for women, “it is almost a duty to speak rarely and to know nothing.”
  • 00:07:06 — Madeleine de Scudery’s feminist arguments — The episode examines Madeleine de Scudery, an important figure in salon culture who wrote under the pseudonym Sappho. In a speech on women’s education, Scudery argued that women should value learning over beauty, since beauty fades. She asserted that women are not inferior to men in imagination, memory, or reason, and declared “our sex is capable of anything we would attempt.”
  • 00:08:27 — François Poulain de la Barre’s Cartesian feminism — Adamson introduces François Poulain de la Barre, who wrote three works on gender equality in the 1670s. Poulain explicitly used Cartesian ideas to argue for feminism, applying Descartes’ method of doubt to social prejudices about women. His dialogue On the Education of Ladies features characters debating women’s capabilities, with moments that anticipate modern concerns about epistemic injustice.
  • 00:12:18 — Poulain’s application of Cartesian method to social norms — This segment details how Poulain extended Descartes’ method of doubt beyond metaphysics to question social customs and beliefs about gender inequality. Unlike Descartes, who was cautious about challenging social norms, Poulain vigorously rejected customary attitudes about women’s inferiority. He also argued that the mind has no sex and that everyone, regardless of gender, can use Descartes’ method to establish sound philosophical foundations.
  • 00:15:41 — Anna Maria von Schurman’s scholastic feminism — Adamson contrasts Poulain’s Cartesian approach with Anna Maria von Schurman’s scholastic method of arguing for women’s education. Von Schurman, taught by Descartes’ opponent Voetius, used Aristotelian syllogisms to prove that women should study liberal arts. She argued from premises like Aristotle’s claim that all humans naturally desire knowledge, applying this to women as well.
  • 00:18:12 — Alternative approaches to feminist argumentation — The episode examines Gabrielle Souchong’s 1693 treatise, which argued for women’s education using scholastic rather than Cartesian methods, and Louis Leclache’s 1667 argument that women should study Aristotle rather than Descartes. Leclache feared Cartesianism would lead people to abandon accepted beliefs, including religion. Adamson notes that even conservative thinkers arguing for women’s education indicates a significant shift was underway.
  • 00:19:47 — Conclusion: Descartes’ legacy and the 17th-century turning point — Adamson concludes that the 17th century marked a turning point for women’s involvement in philosophy, with Descartes playing a significant role in inspiring this change. He suggests Descartes would have been pleased by his impact on gender equality debates and teases the next episode on Cartesianism and medicine, another important aspect of Descartes’ legacy.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
  • Author: Peter Adamson
  • Category: Society & Culture Philosophy
  • Published: 2025-10-05T04:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:20:44

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Peter Adamson, and you’re listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought

[00:00:17] to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King’s College London and the

[00:00:21] LMU in Munich, online at historyofphilosophy.net.

[00:00:24] Today’s episode, The Mind Has No Sex, Cartesianism and Gender

[00:00:54] A meeting held at someone’s real home, especially in Paris,

[00:00:59] dedicated to witty and edifying conversation. Unlike the universities, salon culture welcomed

[00:01:05] women. In fact, women were often the hosts. Last time, I already mentioned Madame de Bonnevaux,

[00:01:11] an outstanding salonnière who was an exponent of Descartes’ philosophy.

[00:01:16] There was also Madeleine de Souvray, who corresponded with Descartes’ colleague Arnaud

[00:01:21] and hosted leading scholars, including Cartesians.

[00:01:24] The celebrated letter-writer and wit, Madame de Sévigné, claimed allegiance to what she called

[00:01:30] the Cartesian sect. Sévigné referred to her daughter as My Little Cartesian, which is not

[00:01:37] the most obvious endearment, but then French people sometimes express fondness by calling

[00:01:41] each other My Little Cabbage, so at least it fits a pattern. Another pattern, of more importance

[00:01:47] to us just now, is this fondness of women intellectuals for Cartesianism. What lay behind

[00:01:53] it?

[00:01:54] First of all, the attitude of Descartes himself. In addition to his extensive and philosophically

[00:02:00] deep exchange of letters with Elizabeth of Bohemia, he also sought and secured preferment

[00:02:04] from Queen Christina of Sweden. Now, these were both royal figures, so one might cynically wonder

[00:02:11] whether their high social status simply trumped their gender in his eyes. But he also said that

[00:02:16] his discourse on the method was aimed at a broad audience, including women. His direct,

[00:02:21] jargon-free mode of writing means he is still used today,

[00:02:24] to introduce people to philosophy, and it also helps to explain his wide appeal at the time.

[00:02:30] This was philosophy that could readily be understood by women who might be highly literate,

[00:02:35] but who were excluded from the gated community of the university’s scholars,

[00:02:40] and thus had not had a chance to master its refined distinctions of forbidding technical terminology.

[00:02:46] A similar point can be made about the method Descartes first described in the Discourse,

[00:02:50] and then put on display in the Meditations.

[00:02:54] Descartes was the first to use the method to teach women to read better.

[00:02:58] For women, who had received no specialized training in philosophy, it was actually easier

[00:03:03] to follow this procedure, they had fewer preconceptions to set aside. Indeed, that might well be

[00:03:09] one reason that Descartes appreciated engaging with Elizabeth. According to his biographer,

[00:03:14] Bayer, he found ladies to be more gentle, more patient, more docile, in a word more

[00:03:19] void of prejudices and false doctrines, than many men.

[00:03:23] Descartes found that, in the works of a renowned philosopher, he found men to be more gentle, more patient, more docile, in a word more void of prejudices and false doctrines, than many men.

[00:03:24] Then, too, exclusionary attitudes towards women were themselves a matter of unreflective prejudice,

[00:03:30] the sort of thing that one might well put into question when applying Descartes’ method.

[00:03:34] If you start from a blank piece of paper and try to come up with compelling arguments why women

[00:03:40] cannot do philosophy, you’re going to struggle. In fact, Descartes’ philosophy might well seem

[00:03:46] to point in the other direction. According to his dualism, the mind is a pure thinking subject,

[00:03:51] which doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that could even be male or female.

[00:03:56] Already Queen Christina noticed this point, remarking that the soul is of no sex, and

[00:04:01] conceding that there are weaknesses of the female sex, but denying that they have anything to do

[00:04:06] with the soul. Naturally, quite a few contemporaries were not so ready to set aside their sexist

[00:04:13] assumptions. The well-educated, witty, literary denizens of the savants were mocked as précieuses,

[00:04:19] or precious women.

[00:04:21] Molière made fun of them in his comedies, including one called Les Femmes Savantes,

[00:04:26] meaning The Learned Ladies. That was first performed in 1672, but already in the 1650s,

[00:04:33] we have works like the Abbé Michel Dupreux’s novel La Précieuse, a parody of Salon Culture.

[00:04:39] A trio of friends who were considered to be précieuses were Anne de Levigne, Marie Dupré,

[00:04:45] and Catherine Descartes. Yes, you heard that name right, Catherine was René Descartes’ niece.

[00:04:51] For her, the spread of Cartesianism was a family affair.

[00:04:55] In 1673, she addressed a poem to Levigne, asking her to use her own considerable talents

[00:05:01] to champion Descartes’ teachings. She enthused that great truths which seemed new will henceforth

[00:05:08] appear clear, solid, beautiful, and imagined her famous uncle saying to her friend,

[00:05:13] I see our two names joined together, bringing to posterity my glory with yours,

[00:05:19] and I can already hear it said in many climes,

[00:05:21] Descartes and Levigne have instructed the world.

[00:05:25] Levigne was presumably flattered, but wrote back, also in poetic form, to decline the mission.

[00:05:32] With heavy irony, she commented that for women it is almost a duty to speak rarely and to know

[00:05:37] nothing, and if a lady follows other maxims, she should hide them, as one hides crimes.

[00:05:43] She allowed that there were occasional extraordinary exceptions, like Elizabeth of Bohemia,

[00:05:49] but it was really for men to promote the new philosophy.

[00:05:51] Since they could do so without causing scandal.

[00:05:55] Were she to speak out in favor of Descartes, she said, she would be attacked for it.

[00:05:59] For me, not even the love of a dead man is permitted.

[00:06:02] Pure as it is, I could be blamed, as there is always some shame in loving.

[00:06:08] Undeterred, Catherine later wrote a literary account of Descartes’ death up in Sweden,

[00:06:13] blaming his demise not on the coldness, but on his boldness.

[00:06:16] It was nature herself who decided to punish him for prying into her secrets,

[00:06:21] with his scientific investigations. Catherine imagines nature as a fearsome goddess,

[00:06:27] saying to Descartes, rash mortal, audacious soul, learn that one doesn’t view the gods with impunity.

[00:06:35] The three friends belonging to the circle gathered around one of the most important

[00:06:39] figures of 17th century Salon culture, Madeleine de Scuderie. She published numerous novels as

[00:06:46] well as model speeches, though in another reflection of the social pressures invoked by

[00:06:51] Levin. She was also the first to write a novel, and she was the first to write a novel. She was the first to write a novel, and she was the first to write a novel.

[00:06:51] In one of her novels, she names her spokeswoman character Sappho, and she also takes up the

[00:07:06] guise of the Greek poet Sappho to write a speech on the education of women. Most people, she says

[00:07:12] here, believe that the great advantage of women is beauty, but one should not put one’s trust in

[00:07:17] this, since beauty fades, and some never have it to begin with.

[00:07:20] Instead, women should become learned, something of which they are well capable,

[00:07:25] since they are not inferior to men in imagination, memory, or reason. Indeed, Scuderie remarks,

[00:07:33] our sex is capable of anything we would attempt. She also engaged, by the way,

[00:07:38] in a passionate epistolary verse exchange with Catherine Descartes. Alongside her identification

[00:07:44] with Sappho, and other features of her literary output, this has won her a prominent place in the

[00:07:50] history of same-sex attraction in literature. But her romantic connection to the Descartes family

[00:07:56] notwithstanding, Scuderie was not really a Cartesian. She seems more like an heir to such

[00:08:01] humanist feminists like Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, or earlier literary stylists

[00:08:07] like Marguerite of Navarre, whose own intellectual circle helped to inspire early modern French

[00:08:12] Salon culture. In fact, the best example of an explicitly Cartesian defense of feminism from

[00:08:18] this period is not by a woman, but by a man. In fact, the best example of an explicitly Cartesian

[00:08:20] defense of feminism from this period is not by a man, but by a woman. It was the achievement of

[00:08:22] François Poulain de la Barre, who wrote no fewer than three works on the subject.

[00:08:27] In 1673, he published a treatise called On the Equality of the Two Sexes,

[00:08:33] followed by a dialogue called On the Education of Ladies. Again, a humanist legacy is evident

[00:08:38] here because On the Education of Ladies is highly reminiscent of any number of Renaissance dialogues,

[00:08:44] including several that have men and women flirtatiously discussing the subject of equality,

[00:08:49] as here,

[00:08:50] Finally, and surprisingly, Poulain wrote On the Excellence of Men, Against the Equality of the

[00:08:58] Sexes, this in 1675, so only two years after the first installment of the trilogy. This has led

[00:09:05] some to assume that the whole project was a mere rhetorical exercise or even a kind of

[00:09:10] sophistical display, arguing on both sides at a contentious issue. This was the later judgment

[00:09:15] of Pierre Bale, who suggested that Poulain was just looking for controversy,

[00:09:20] he expected to have been written against, but finding that no reply was likely to appear,

[00:09:25] he wrote against his own book himself. But this is a misconception. Actually,

[00:09:30] On the Excellence of Men is framed by an introduction and conclusion that make clear

[00:09:35] what was going on. Poulain wanted to gather together arguments against female equality

[00:09:39] for the sake of refuting these arguments and displaying their weakness.

[00:09:44] As for the points made in favor of female equality in his other two works,

[00:09:48] they are numerous and developed,

[00:09:50] the humanistic zeal for copious style. Though I don’t think you can accuse Poulain of insincerity,

[00:09:56] you can definitely accuse him of throwing everything he can find at the wall

[00:10:00] in hopes that some of it will stick. His arguments are at times inconsistent or

[00:10:04] tendentious. He officially denies that women’s bodies have any effect on their ability to think,

[00:10:10] but then concedes that their bodies are warmer than men’s, only to insist that this could be

[00:10:14] an advantage, since it makes their imaginations more lively. Again, he argues at length that women,

[00:10:20] and men, share the same virtues, but then dedicates his dialogue to the Duchess of Orléans,

[00:10:25] praising her as uniting in her person all that is noblest and most perfect in both sexes.

[00:10:31] But, as he shows in the dialogue, such inconsistencies are only to be expected

[00:10:36] when you have grown up in a sexist society. He has a kind of spokesman character there named

[00:10:41] Stasimachus, who, with the help of a learned lady named Sophia, is trying to encourage the

[00:10:47] education of a young woman named Eulalia.

[00:10:50] A fourth character, Timander, represents the common sense and scholastic view that women are

[00:10:56] inferior. Thus, Timander says that every learned woman he has met is just a précieuse. Stasimachus

[00:11:03] is far more enlightened, but even he slips up at one point and says that Sophia has the mind of a

[00:11:09] man and the body of a woman. Sophia points out to him that this conflicts with his own feminist

[00:11:13] theory, and he apologizes, saying in effect that old habits die hard.

[00:11:18] And that’s only one of several strikingly modern moments in the dialogue,

[00:11:23] with another nice instance being an exchange between Timander and Eulalia.

[00:11:28] When he claims that it is in fact a tactical advantage for women, that people have low

[00:11:32] expectations of them, she counters that it’s not so advantageous if no one takes you seriously,

[00:11:38] anticipating modern-day concerns about epistemic injustice.

[00:11:42] As I say, all this, including the choice of dialogue form and the way Poulain writes it,

[00:11:47] could be in fact a tactical advantage for women. But, as I say, all this, including the choice of

[00:11:48] dialogue form and the way Poulain writes it, could be in fact a tactical advantage for women.

[00:11:48] imagined as a further development from the Renaissance debate over women’s equality.

[00:11:53] What makes Poulain novel is his explicit use of Cartesian ideas in the feminist cause.

[00:11:59] When Stithemicus eventually gets around to recommending a reading list for Eulalia’s

[00:12:03] education, the authors he names include Descartes himself, Codemois, Rohol, La Forge,

[00:12:09] and The Port Royal Logic. See, I told you it’s famous.

[00:12:13] More importantly, Poulain repeatedly emphasizes the need to abandon one’s prior conception,

[00:12:18] one should not be like the scholastics, whose learning is based on the opinions they formed

[00:12:24] in the cradle, but instead use Descartes’ method of doubt, which Poulain describes as putting us in

[00:12:30] a state of impartiality or of objectivity, in which we lean neither to one side nor the other.

[00:12:37] One might say that Poulain goes even further than Descartes, or better,

[00:12:41] that he applies the method in a domain that Descartes did not. The meditations use doubt

[00:12:47] to set aside prejudices that are not of the same nature. But, as I say, all this is a

[00:12:48] metaphysics, the relation between soul and body, the sciences, and so on. Poulain does give

[00:12:54] faithfully Cartesian examples of beliefs that are widely accepted, but false. For instance,

[00:13:00] that animals have souls, or that the sun goes around the earth. But he’s most interested in

[00:13:05] questioning social norms and beliefs, the kind of thing that Descartes said he would accept

[00:13:10] under the first maxim of his provisional morality. Of course, the maxims of that morality are not

[00:13:16] intended to be the last word.

[00:13:18] But it indicates how cautious Descartes was when it came to challenging social custom.

[00:13:24] Poulain, by contrast, vigorously rejects customary attitudes about the inequality of women,

[00:13:28] and also about the inferiority of the lower classes. Who knows, he asked,

[00:13:33] how many peasants might have become renowned scholars if they had been given the chance to

[00:13:38] study. The other properly Cartesian aspect of Poulain’s view is the one already suggested by

[00:13:44] Queen Christina, that the mind or soul has no sex.

[00:13:48] It is equal and of the same nature in all humans, and capable of all kinds of thoughts.

[00:13:54] Doctors find no anatomical differences between male and female brains,

[00:13:59] not that this would be decisive to a Cartesian dualist anyway.

[00:14:03] Thus everyone of either sex can do what Descartes did, abandoning preconceptions

[00:14:07] and isolating certain clear and distinct ideas that serve as a sound basis for philosophy.

[00:14:13] With his usual rhetorical flair, Poulain declares that

[00:14:17] it is no more difficult to be a human being than to be a human being.

[00:14:18] It is no more difficult to be a human being than to be a human being than to be a human being.

[00:14:18] It is no more difficult to become a philosopher than a carpet maker,

[00:14:21] apparently forgetting how hard it is to make a decent carpet.

[00:14:24] He also seeks to pull the rug out from under-sexist beliefs by offering a historical

[00:14:29] narrative to explain how they emerged. This is a version of the stories about the state

[00:14:34] of nature we find in other early modern thinkers like Hobbes and Rousseau.

[00:14:39] Originally, says Poulain, both sexes were equal. Sadly, men then started to exploit

[00:14:44] their physical strength and the fact that women are weakened and made vulnerable by

[00:14:48] pregnancy and child-rearing. Over the generations, this led to the domination of men and, just

[00:14:54] as bad, the pervasive belief that their tyranny over women is natural and immutable.

[00:15:01] Reading Poulain, one gets the impression that he was not led to his feminism by Cartesianism

[00:15:05] but rather the other way around. He has his spokesman, Stasimachus, express a preference

[00:15:11] for the teachings of Descartes precisely because it is the philosophical approach that is

[00:15:15] most effective in banishing false prejudice.

[00:15:18] Especially when coupled with the feminist potential of Cartesian dualism, Descartes’

[00:15:23] skeptical method made his new philosophy a powerful resource for those who wanted to

[00:15:27] champion the cause of gender equality. Yet, we should acknowledge that you didn’t have

[00:15:32] to be a Cartesian to speak out in favor of that cause.

[00:15:36] You will hopefully remember the name of Anna Maria von Schurman, the one who was taught

[00:15:41] by Descartes’ enemy, Voetius, and allowed to attend lectures from behind a screen in

[00:15:45] Utrecht. She achieved great renown for

[00:15:48] her learning, including her mastery of numerous languages. One contemporary said that going

[00:15:52] to Utrecht without seeing von Schurman was like going to Paris without seeing the king.

[00:15:58] We have several surviving works by von Schurman, including a dissertation, which deals with

[00:16:02] more or less the same question raised by Poulain, whether the study of the liberal arts is appropriate

[00:16:07] for a Christian woman. Her answer is of course the same as his, that it is not just appropriate

[00:16:13] but imperative for women to be educated. But her way of arguing for that conclusion could

[00:16:18] not be more different. Von Schurman’s procedure is entirely, even ostentatiously, faithful

[00:16:23] to scholastic methods. She lays out a series of syllogisms in favor of her position and

[00:16:29] methodically, one might say pedantically, proves both premises for each syllogism.

[00:16:35] The premises from which von Schurman argues are often Aristotelian, though hers is an

[00:16:39] Aristotelianism updated for the feminist cause.

[00:16:42] For example, she cites Aristotle’s remark at the start of the metaphysics that all humans

[00:16:47] have a natural desire for knowledge, and adds that this applies to women too. Similarly,

[00:16:53] learning confers virtue, and surely we want women, and not only men, to be virtuous. A

[00:16:59] more unexpected and in a sense conservative argument is that women have plenty of leisure

[00:17:03] time and a need for recreation that doesn’t require them to leave their proper place,

[00:17:08] the home. What better activity for filling the hours than philosophical reflection?

[00:17:13] That’s a point that was made by Madeleine de Scuderie too.

[00:17:17] Women have lots of free time on their hands, which education could profitably fill. It’s

[00:17:22] a reminder, if one were needed, that 17th century feminism was being championed by,

[00:17:27] and for, a rather elite class of women. Plenty of servants were needed to facilitate the

[00:17:32] philosophical activities of this elite, but then that goes for the men of the time too.

[00:17:38] Now von Schurman wrote a good twenty years before Poulain, so one might think that this

[00:17:42] explains the difference between them. Perhaps it just took a generation for Cartesianism

[00:17:47] to be replaced by scholasticism as the best way to argue for gender equality.

[00:17:52] But whatever his other achievements, we cannot credit Poulain for making feminism synonymous

[00:17:56] with Cartesianism. The latter remained a contentious approach, and when you’re arguing

[00:18:01] for something controversial, it can be good tactics to argue from generally accepted principles.

[00:18:06] So in 1693, there appeared a Treatise on Morals and Philosophy by Gabrielle Souchong, which

[00:18:12] again tries to make the case for educating women.

[00:18:15] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:16] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:16] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:16] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:16] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:17] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:17] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:17] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:17] Souchong knows and cites Poulain.

[00:18:17] But as the introduction to an English translation of her works comments, she does not share

[00:18:22] his enthusiasm for Descartes.

[00:18:25] Instead, her approach is broadly scholastic, if not as markedly so as Van Schurman’s.

[00:18:30] Which gives us another reminder not just of the longevity of Aristotelianism, but also

[00:18:35] its adaptability.

[00:18:37] Notoriously, Aristotle had discouraging things to say about women in his politics, and he

[00:18:42] suggested in his zoological works that female animals are effectively male animals, and

[00:18:47] that female animals are effectively male animals.

[00:18:48] That failed to develop to full perfection.

[00:18:50] Yet some early modern proponents of teaching philosophy to women thought the philosophy

[00:18:54] in question should be Aristotelianism.

[00:18:57] Louis Leclache was one of them.

[00:19:00] He argued in 1667 that women should do philosophy, but should steer well clear of Cartesianism.

[00:19:06] He saw it as dangerous for precisely the reason Poulain praised it, it tends to make people

[00:19:11] abandon all accepted beliefs.

[00:19:14] This said Leclache, could lead to abandoning religion, and abandonment of religion.

[00:19:16] This, said Leclache, could lead to abandoning religion, and abandonment of religion.

[00:19:17] And for that, good old Aristotle would be the best antidote.

[00:19:20] Now, Leclache was no Poulain.

[00:19:23] What he wanted was for women to become good wives and mothers, and a bit of philosophy

[00:19:27] should help them achieve that goal.

[00:19:30] But in a way, this far-from-revolutionary thinker brings home to us that a revolution

[00:19:34] was truly underway.

[00:19:36] With even the socially conservative Aristotelians arguing that women should be well-educated,

[00:19:41] it’s no wonder that the 17th century was a turning point for the involvement of women

[00:19:45] in philosophy.

[00:19:47] Given Descartes’ comments in Discourse on the Method about writing for women, and his

[00:19:51] eagerness to work with Princess Elizabeth and Queen Christina, we can guess that he

[00:19:55] would have been very pleased by his role in inspiring that sea change.

[00:19:59] And we can be absolutely sure that he would have been delighted by the impact his works

[00:20:03] made in another sphere, medicine.

[00:20:06] This was, after all, one of the fruits to be harvested from his tree of knowledge.

[00:20:10] So he surely wouldn’t want us to finish our look at Cartesianism without touching on

[00:20:14] this aspect of his legacy.

[00:20:16] And far be it from me to disappoint the ghost of Descartes.

[00:20:19] So join me, my little cabbages, for an episode on Cartesianism and the sciences, especially

[00:20:25] medicine, next time here on the History of Philosophy, without any gaps.

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