Lisa Shapiro

In this paper, I offer a suggestion for incorporating a set of texts in philosophy of mind, written by or about women, that concern how we can improve or emend our understanding, or philosophy of education. These texts challenge a current assumption in philosophy of mind – that the human mind comes fully formed – while also demonstrating the social nature of human cognitive development, challenging more individualist accounts. These texts and the questions they raise highlight that our awareness of the world, our ability to represent and reason about it, subsists alongside habit formation, and that cultivating both reason and proper habits or virtues is important not only for each of us epistemically as individuals but also for the well-functioning of human society. The suggestion situates familiar canonical figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke alongside Marie le Jars de Gournay, François Poulain de la Barre, Madame de Maintenon, and Mary Astell.

Résumé. – Catherine Macaulay a recours à un toute une gamme de genres littéraires en vue de développer une philosophie systématique fondée sur la liberté humaine et de défendre une philosophie politique républicaine. Les différents points du système sont articulés selon des genres littéraires particuliers cohérents avec les points eux-mêmes. Son système tient en trois principes centraux : (a) le primat de la liberté humaine ; (b) la promotion de la liberté publique comme mesure de la vertu ; enfin (c) une éducation qui permet à la jeunesse de reconnaitre la liberté humaine et d’entrer dans la société civile avec l’engagement de s’assurer que le gouvernement la préserve.

This chapter examines French thinker Gabrielle Suchon’s concept of ‘the neutralist’, a person who commits herself entirely to a life of celibacy and shuns the institutional commitments of marriage and the convent. It is argued that through this concept Suchon (1632–1703) makes a decisive step towards the Kantian notion of autonomy. According to Suchon, the neutralist’s freedom is very different from that of the libertine who simply follows her inclinations at her will and pleasure. The neutralist is free in the sense that she is at liberty to follow her inner rational law of nature, rather than the dictates of external institutions. To follow this internal law requires not only self-mastery—control over the wayward passions, as Descartes had suggested—but also something like autonomy in Kant’s sense of determining for oneself the rules and principles by which one will act.

This chapter explores how some early modern philosophers conceive of learning, how that conception intertwines with models of education, and how it ties into what can only be characterised as a movement to educate women in particular. The discussion focuses on education that aims to teach us both that we are free and how to use that freedom well. Yet as institutions of education inculcate customs and habits in students, a central question arises about how custom and habit, which are in many ways not only apparently antithetical to our freedom but also interfere with our understanding that we are free, are integral to our learning how to live freely and well.

Both Descartes and Spinoza, though in importantly distinct ways, provide us with a different model of our sensory experience of the world than the familiar one. On the familiar account, sensations inform us of the properties of things in the world, while emotions are responsive to that information and motivate us. Descartes and Spinoza reject this model to acknowledge an essentially affective dimension of sensory experience, For Descartes, emotions and sensations are both intentional states that refer to, or represent, the ways in which things benefit and harm us; they are distinguished by what they afford the cognizer awareness of, Spinoza conceives of our experience differently, taking imagination, rather than sensation as central. I argue that for him, our imagining the objects we do, our perceiving, or awareness of the objects we perceive, is explained in part by our affective response.

Résumé. – Catherine Macaulay a recours à un toute une gamme de genres littéraires en vue de développer une philosophie systématique fondée sur la liberté humaine et de défendre une philosophie politique républicaine. Les différents points du système sont articulés selon des genres littéraires particuliers cohérents avec les points eux-mêmes. Son système tient en trois principes centraux : (a) le primat de la liberté humaine ; (b) la promotion de la liberté publique comme mesure de la vertu ; enfin (c) une éducation qui permet à la jeunesse de reconnaitre la liberté humaine et d’entrer dans la société civile avec l’engagement de s’assurer que le gouvernement la préserve.

This paper engages with the curriculum at Madame de Maintenon's school for girls at Saint‐Cyr to raise and address a set of questions: What is it to teach someone to reason? The curricular materials of Saint‐Cyr suggest that learning to reason is a matter of practice. How is one to distinguish autonomous reason giving from habituation or automatic trained responses? How can practices in reason giving informed by social mores have objective validity? Moreover, if we think of the role of a philosopher as the cultivation of rational faculties and recognize that how this role is played is bound up with social norms, by what standards ought we to evaluate whether a philosophical educator is good or bad? Intertwined with the discussion is also a question about the limits of philosophy for the question.

This paper explores Elisabeth’s remark that ruling and studying each demands an entire person, with the aim of understanding why she might think ruling and intellectual pursuits like philosophy are incompatible with one another. While Elisabeth identifies several barriers to philosophizing, she does not suggest that time constraints are an impediment to both philosophizing and ruling. Situating Elisabeth with respect to Plato, Machiavelli, and Aristotle suggests that she holds there are many similarities between governing and philosophizing. The methodology and skill set of a ruler and a philosopher are very similar; both need to organize their thoughts, consider an array of possible alternatives, gather background information, and be decisive; both take virtue, truth, and justice as their ends, and they are driven by a central concern for something other than themselves. Though both can be moved to high emotions by external forces, they can cultivate the self-awareness that can serve in modulating those emotions in a variety of ways. However, a difference lies in the ways in which the objects of their decisions are constrained in time. This difference in turn disposes each to different emotions. Insofar as their lives are tightly integrated, a ruler and a philosopher would have different affective profiles and organize their lives around different principles. In virtue of these differences, a ruler and a philosopher would indeed need to be two entire persons.

This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of forty-three philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Châtelet.

Motivating my discussion is a puzzle in Spinoza’s account of the primary affects – his shift away from adopting Descartes’s list of six primitive passions in the Short Treatise to the three primary affects in the Ethics. I lay out this puzzle in Section 1. In Section 2, I approach this puzzle by considering the taxonomy offered by Descartes of the basic or primitive passions. In considering Descartes, I will also briefly consider Aquinas’s view since Descartes positions himself as rejecting the Thomist account. Doing so brings out that the basic passions highlight structures of cognition for these thinkers. In Section 3, I return to Spinoza and consider what light his pared down account of the primary affects can shed on his account of the human mind.

In this paper, I examine Marie Thiroux D’Arconville’s moral psychology as presented in two of her works: Des Passions [On the Passions] and De L’Amitié [On Friendship]. This moral psychology is somewhat unique as it centers human action on three principal sentiments: l’amour, which is best understood as lust or a physical love; l’ambition, the principal human vice; and l’amitié, a characteristic friendship proper to the truly virtuous. I aim to show that these three passions tell a story of moral development. Through l’amour we come to form projects and engage in goal directed action, and thus become moral agents. While l'ambition is, for her, the cause of many of the horrors of human history, I suggest that Thiroux D’Arconville also sees it as the passion through which we come to form collective projects. Finally, in her account of l’amitié we can find her account of virtue. Interestingly, while Thiroux D’Arconville talks of virtue as a matter of choosing well, she does not offer a voluntarist account of choice. Rather, I argue, she models moral choices on a naturalist Stoic model. I will also discuss Thiroux D’Arconville’s very interesting remarks on relations between men and women, including those regarding sexual desires, marriage, and friendship.

I explore some early modern philosophical thought about the relation of beauty and wisdom, a theme first expressed in Plato's Symposium. The thinkers I consider most centrally are two women, Lucrezia Marinella and Mary Astell, though I also consider the writers Aphra Behn and Sarah Scott. While women in particular might have a special interest in appropriating the Platonic image of the ladder of desire, this ought not to be conceived as a 'women's issue'. Rather, I suggest, this strand of thought is connected with a central philosophical question of the early modern period, the nature of thought and consciousness. J'étudie ici quelques réflexions philosophiques de l'âge moderne portant sur la relation entre beauté et sagesse, thème d'abord développé dans Le Banquet de Platon. Les penseurs auxquels je m'intéresse principalement sont Lucrecia Marinella et Mary Astell, même si je m'appuie aussi sur les écrivaines Aphra Behn et Sarah Scott. Bien que les femmes en particulier puissent avoir un intérêt spécifique à s'approprier l'image platonicienne de l'échelle désir, cela n'autorise pas à concevoir cette question comme un « problème de femmes ». Je suggère, au contraire, que ce courant de pensée est relié à une question philosophique centrale à l'époque moderne, celle de la nature de la pensée et de la conscience

ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the central philosophical questions and allow for a greater range of figures to be philosophically central. However, the history of science is but one context in which to situate philosophical works. Looking at the historical context of seventeenth-century philosophy of mind, one that weaves together questions of consciousness, rationality, and education, does more than shift the central questions—it brings new ones to light. It also shows that a range of genres can be properly philosophical and seamlessly diversifies the central philosophers of the period.

Interpreters of Descartes have understood the mind-body union to consist just in the naturally instituted associations through which these two are joined. This reading cannot accommodate Descartes' claim that the soul is united to the whole body, and forms a unit with it. I provide an account of the union of mind and body which respects both aspects of Descartes' account of a human being by considering a part of his work which has long been neglected: The Passions of the Soul. I argue that soul and body form a union in virtue of sharing the human good. ;This account of the Cartesian human being arises by recognizing that the mental-physical associations which the standard account claims constitute the union are not fixed and beyond our control. Attention to Descartes' account of the regulation of the passions reveals that he conceives of the mind-body union as dynamic; he thinks that we can come to change those mental-physical associations. ;This picture requires we re-evaluate Descartes' claim that bodily and mental states are joined by a natural institution. I argue that Descartes takes his notion of love to provide a model for the soul-body union. In doing so, he suggests that the institution of mental-physical associations is achieved willingly through an appropriation by the soul of the body's good. Thus, he suggests that mental-physical associations involve an activity of the mind, and are not simply a matter of divine fiat. This 'love' model of the union also helps explain Descartes' claim that the pineal gland is the seat of the soul. ;To complete my interpretation of the soul-body union, I consider Descartes' account of the regulation of the passions. Central to the regulation of the passions is Cartesian generosity. I explicate this concept of generosity and show that it contains Descartes' account of the human good. This good constitutes the Cartesian human being. ;I conclude by arguing that my interpretation of the soul-body union is consistent with a form of dualism which might well be Descartes' if we understand Cartesian substance properly