Martina Reuter

ABSTRACT In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir cited the fairly unknown author Poulain de la Barre in an epigraph for The Second Sex (1949). When reading The Second Sex, one soon realizes that there are profound similarities between the two authors’ discussions of women’s situation. Both Poulain and Beauvoir view the subjection of women as a process that includes choice as well as force. Liberation necessarily requires overcoming opinions rooted in custom and prejudice. The article develops a comparison between the arguments of Poulain and Beauvoir in order to illuminate interesting features in the works of both authors. The focus is on similarities as well as differences. The first section examines how prejudice and the practices of men’s self-interest have contributed to the reification of women. Section 2 discusses the peculiar nature of prejudices about oneself and section 3 focuses on the metaphysical relation between freedom and materiality. Finally, section 4 examines how mutual recognition becomes possible in the context of freedom, the search for truth, and friendship.

In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir cited the fairly unknown author Poulain de la Barre in an epigraph for The Second Sex (1949). When reading The Second Sex, one soon realizes that there are profound similarities between the two authors’ discussions of women’s situation. Both Poulain and Beauvoir view the subjection of women as a process that includes choice as well as force. Liberation necessarily requires overcoming opinions rooted in custom and prejudice. The article develops a comparison between the arguments of Poulain and Beauvoir in order to illuminate interesting features in the works of both authors. The focus is on similarities as well as differences. The first section examines how prejudice and the practices of men’s self-interest have contributed to the reification of women. Section 2 discusses the peculiar nature of prejudices about oneself and section 3 focuses on the metaphysical relation between freedom and materiality. Finally, section 4 examines how mutual recognition becomes possible in the context of freedom, the search for truth, and friendship.

Elisabeth is widely known as a critic of René Descartes’ account of mind–body interaction and scholarly interpretations of her view on the will most often pose the question about the freedom of the will in relation to bodily impulses such as the passions. This chapter takes a different perspective and focuses on the problem of the compatibility of free will and providence, as it is discussed in a sequence of six letters that Elisabeth and Descartes wrote between September 1645 and January 1646. The chapter focuses on this specific metaphysical problem in order to ask what Elisabeth’s remarks on the topic can tell about her general philosophical method as well as about her particular philosophical worries. The chapter divides into three parts. The first part discusses Elisabeth’s initial philosophical interest in the question of free will and providence, and recounts the arguments presented by her and Descartes. The second part discusses the philosophical foundation for Descartes’ position and Elisabeth’s criticism of this position. The final part compares Elisabeth’s criticism of Descartes’ account of the compatibility of free will and providence with her criticism of his account of mind–body interaction, which she develops in her three first letters to him, written in 1643. It is argued that at the core of both criticisms we find Elisabeth’s search for answers based on reason and a dissatisfaction with Descartes’ reliance on the incomprehensible nature of God as a basis for some of his philosophical arguments.

ABSTRACT This article examines Olympe de Gouges’ demands for the rights of woman in her famous but still understudied work Les droits de la femme. A La Reine [1791]. Particular emphasis is put on analysing how she combines her demand for equality with her conception of sexual difference. The article consists of three parts. The first part gives a brief overview of the demands for the equality of the sexes as they were presented in seventeenth-century France and critically reacted upon in eighteenth-century France, not least by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his defence of sexual difference. The second and third parts focus on Gouges’ argumentation. First, by analysing how she argues for women’s active citizenship by criticising the exclusion of women from the public sphere, but without questioning sexual difference as such; and second, by discussing how she redefines the famous slogan of the French Revolution; liberty, equality, fraternity. The conclusion argues that rather than being caught in a paradox of equality and difference, as has been claimed by Joan W. Scott, Gouges did successfully combine the two concepts, even if her interpretation of their relation was excluded from the canon of political theory.

The turn of the millennium has been marked by new developments in the study of early modern philosophy. In particular, the philosophy of René Descartes has been reinterpreted in a number of important and exciting ways, specifically concerning his work on the mind-body union, the connection between objective and formal reality, and his status as a moral philosopher. These fresh interpretations have coincided with a renewed interest in overlooked parts of the Cartesian corpus and a sustained focus on the similarities between Descartes' thought and the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Mind, Body, and Moralityconsists of fifteen chapters written by scholars who have contributed significantly to the new turn in Descartes and Spinoza scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts. The first group of chapters examines different metaphysical and epistemological problems raised by the Cartesian mind-body union. Part II investigates Descartes' and Spinoza's understanding of the relations between ideas, knowledge, and reality. Special emphasis is put on Spinoza's conception of the relation between activity and passivity. Finally, the last part explores different aspects of Descartes' moral philosophy, connecting his views to important predecessors, Augustine and Abelard, and comparing them to Spinoza. nd Spinoza's understanding of the relations between ideas, knowledge, and reality. Special emphasis is put on Spinoza's conception of the relation between activity and passivity. Finally, the last part explores different aspects of Descartes' moral philosophy, connecting his views to important predecessors, Augustine and Abelard, and comparing them to Spinoza.

It is well known that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a fierce critique of J-J Rousseau’s views on the nature and education of women, but the philosophical foundation of this critique has not yet been sufficiently explored. Wendy Gunther-Canada, for example, assumes that Wollstonecraft is attacking Rousseau’s biological determinism. I will argue that Gunther-Canada’s assumption is based on an anachronistic understanding of Wollstonecraft’s critical project and fails to capture its philosophical significance. Gunther-Canada’s distinction between social and biological differences belongs to a much later feminist terminology and does not capture either Rousseau’s or Wollstonecraft’s use of the term “natural”, which has strong metaphysical rather than biological connotations. Wollstonecraft’s critique of Rousseau’s views on women is best understood when it is seen in relation to her critique of his pessimistic view on the possibility of civilization. Wollstonecraft largely agrees with Rousseau’s critical diagnosis of present civilization, but she disagrees with his pessimism. Her own optimism is rooted in a belief in the human capacity of reason and in Providence based on reason. I argue that it is against this background that we must understand the different epistemological, moral and political aspects of Wollstonecraft’s critique of Rousseau’s conception of men’s and women’s complementary virtues.

ABSTRACTThe article compares Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination. It is argued that though Wollstonecraft was evidently influenced by Rousseau, there are significant differences between their views. These differences are grounded in their different views on the faculty of reason and its relation to the passions. Whereas Rousseau characterizes reason as a derivative faculty, grounded in the more primary faculty of perfectibility, Wollstonecraft perceives reason as the faculty defining human nature. It is argued that contrary to what is often assumed, Wollstonecraft’s conception of the imagination is not primarily characterized by its Romantic features, but rather by the close affinity she posits between reason and the imagination. This close affinity has several consequences. One consequence is that she is less worried than Rousseau about the imagination wandering without external constrains, because she believes in reason’s ability to guide the imagination by choosing its objects. Ultimately the difference between Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination helps us understand why she was a passionate philosopher of the Enlightenment while he was one of its first, perceptive and most articulate critics.

This article presents an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's notion of pre-reflective intentionality, explicating the similarities and differences between his and Husserl's understandings of intentionality. The main difference is located in Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl's noesis-noema structure. Merleau-Ponty seems to claim that there can be intentional acts which are not of or about anything specific. He defines intentionality by its ``directedness'', which is described as a bodily, concrete spatial motility. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of intentionality is part of his attempt to rewrite the relation between the universal and the particular. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and impossible to analyse by a distinction between form and matter. Still, Merleau-Ponty's notion of meaning and philosophy is strictly opposed to any naturalized philosophy. This becomes explicated at the end of the article, where his attempt to embody intentionality is compared to Daniel Dennett's corresponding approach.

Psychology and Philosophy provides a history of the relations between philosophy and the science of psychology from late scholasticism to contemporary discussions. The book covers the development from 16th-century interpretations of Aristotle’s De Anima, through Kantianism and the 19th-century revival of Aristotelianism, up to 20th-century phenomenological and analytic studies of consciousness and the mind. In this volume historically divergent conceptions of psychology as a science receive special emphasis. The volume illuminates the particular nature of studies of the psyche in the contexts of Aristotelian and Cartesian as well as 19th- and 20th-century science and philosophy. The relations between metaphysics, transcendental philosophy, and natural science are studied in the works of Kant, Brentano, Bergson, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Davidson. Accounts of less known philosophers, such as Trendelenburg and Maine de Biran, throw new light on the history of the field. Discussions concerning the connections between moral philosophy and philosophical psychology broaden the volume’s perspective and show new directions for development. All contributions are based on novel research in their respective fields. The collection provides materials for researchers and graduate students in the fields of philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and psychology.

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau