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572Impressions in the Brain: Malebranche on Women, and Women on MalebrancheIntellectual History Review 22 (3): 373-389. 2012.In his De la recherche de la vérité (The Search after Truth) of 1674-75, Nicolas Malebranche makes a number of apparently contradictory remarks about women and their capacity for pure intellectual thought. On the one hand, he seems to espouse a negative biological determinism about women’s minds, and on the other, he suggests that women have the free capacity to attain truth and happiness, regardless of their physiology. In the early eighteenth-century, four English women thinkers – Anne Docwra…Read more
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619"A great championess for her sex": Sarah Chapone on liberty as nondomination and self-masteryThe Monist 98 (1): 77-88. 2015.This paper examines the concept of liberty at the heart of Sarah Chapone’s 1735 work, The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives. In this work, Chapone (1699-1764) advocates an ideal of freedom from domination that closely resembles the republican ideal in seventeenth and eighteenth- century England. This is the idea that an agent is free provided that no-one else has the power to dispose of that agent’s property—her “life, liberty, and limb” and her material possessions—according to…Read more
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75Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth CenturyCambridge University Press. 2002.In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also…Read more
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1227Margaret Cavendish and Joseph Glanvill: science, religion, and witchcraftStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 38 (3): 493-505. 2007.Many scholars point to the close association between early modern science and the rise of rational arguments in favour of the existence of witches. For some commentators, it is a poor reflection on science that its methods so easily lent themselves to the unjust persecution of innocent men and women. In this paper, I examine a debate about witches between a woman philosopher, Margaret Cavendish , and a fellow of the Royal Society, Joseph Glanvill . I argue that Cavendish is the voice of reason i…Read more
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524Cavendish, van Helmont, and the mad raging wombIn Judy A. Hayden (ed.), The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 47-63. 2011.
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780Mary Astell on Marriage and Lockean SlaveryHistory of Political Thought 35 (4). 2014.In the 1706 third edition of her Reflections upon Marriage, Mary Astell alludes to John Locke’s definition of slavery in her descriptions of marriage. She describes the state of married women as being ‘subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man’ (Locke, Two Treatises, II.22). Recent scholars maintain that Astell does not seriously regard marriage as a form of slavery in the Lockean sense. In this paper, I defend the contrary position: I argue that Astell does se…Read more
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446Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.There have been many different historical-intellectual accounts of the shaping and development of concepts of liberty in pre-Enlightenment Europe. This volume is unique for addressing the subject of liberty principally as it is discussed in the writings of women philosophers, and as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives, during this period. The volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, with some chapters discussing women's ideas about the m…Read more
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682Is Margaret Cavendish worthy of study today?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (3): 457-461. 2011.Before her death in 1673, Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, expressed a wish that her philosophical work would experience a ‘glorious resurrection’ in future ages. During her lifetime, and for almost three centuries afterwards, her writings were destined to ‘lye still in the soft and easie Bed of Oblivion’. But more recently, Cavendish has received a measure of the fame she so desired. She is celebrated by feminists, literary theorists, and historians. There are regular conferences o…Read more
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34A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700Cambridge University Press. 2009.This ground-breaking book surveys the history of women's political thought in Europe from the late medieval period to the early modern era. The authors examine women's ideas about topics such as the basis of political authority, the best form of political organisation, justifications of obedience and resistance, and concepts of liberty, toleration, sociability, equality, and self-preservation. Women's ideas concerning relations between the sexes are discussed in tandem with their broader politic…Read more
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446A Woman's Influence? John Locke and Damaris Masham on Moral AccountabilityJournal of the History of Ideas 67 (3): 489-510. 2006.Some scholars suggest that John Locke’s revisions to the chapter “Of Power” for the 1694 second edition of his Essay concerning Human Understanding may be indebted to the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth. Their claims rest on evidence that Locke may have had access to Cudworth’s unpublished manuscript treatises on free will. In this paper, I examine an alternative suggestion – the claim that Cudworth’s daughter, Damaris Cudworth Masham, and not Cudworth himself, may have exerted an influenc…Read more
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22Margaret FellStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.On the strength of her 1666 pamphlet, Womens Speaking Justified, the Quaker writer Margaret Fell has been hailed as a feminist pioneer. In this short tract, Fell puts forward several arguments in favour of women's preaching. She asserts the spiritual equality of the sexes, she appeals to female exempla in the Bible, and she reinterprets key scriptural passages that appear to endorse women's subordination to men. Some scholars, however, have questioned Fell's status as a feminist thinker. They po…Read more
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7Emasculating metaphor : whither the maleness of reason?In Lynda Burns (ed.), Feminist Alliances, Brill. pp. 91-108. 2006.
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1588Mary Astell on Virtuous FriendshipParergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26 (2): 65-86. 2009.According to some scholars, Mary Astell’s feminist programme is severely limited by its focus on self-improvement rather than wider social change. In response, I highlight the role of ‘virtuous friendship’ in Astell’s 1694 work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Building on classical ideals and traditional Christian principles, Astell promotes the morally transformative power of virtuous friendship among women. By examining the significance of such friendship to Astell’s feminism, we can see tha…Read more
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647Liberty and the Right of Resistance: Women's Political Writings of the English Civil War EraIn Jacqueline Broad & Karen Green (eds.), Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800, Springer. pp. 77-94. 2007.
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919Adversaries or allies? Occasional thoughts on the Masham-Astell exchangeEighteenth-Century Thought 1 123-49. 2003.Against the backdrop of the English reception of Locke’s Essay, stands a little-known philosophical dispute between two seventeenth-century women writers: Mary Astell (1666-1731) and Damaris Cudworth Masham (1659-1708). On the basis of their brief but heated exchange, Astell and Masham are typically regarded as philosophical adversaries: Astell a disciple of the occasionalist John Norris, and Masham a devout Lockean. In this paper, I argue that although there are many respects in which Astell an…Read more
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |