Equality and Difference in Olympe de Gouges’Les droits de la femme. A La Reine

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 ...

Mary Wollstonecraft och autonomins uppkomst:

Uppsatsen granskar marginaliseringen av kvinnor i filosofins historia genom att fästa uppmärksamhet vid hur filosofihistorieskrivningen bidragit till denna marginalisering. Utgångspunkten är J. B Schneewinds inflytelserika bok The Invention of Autonomy (1998) och det faktum att Schneewind, trots ett explicit intresse för en egalitär moralfilosofi och ett brett fokus på moralfilosofis utveckling, inte inkluderat en enda kvinnlig tänkare. Uppsatsen består av fem avsnitt. Först presenterar jag några generella synpunkter på filosofihistorieskrivningens marginaliseringsmekanismer. Det andra avsnittet presenterar Schneewinds huvudargument och i det tredje granskar jag hans val att inte inkludera …

Kirja-arviot akateemisen kirjoittamisen lajina

Equality and Difference in Olympe de Gouges’ Les droits de la femme. A La Reine

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 cit…

Elisabeth on Free Will, Preordination, and Philosophical Doubt

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 philos…

Olympe de Gouges och jämlikhetens problem

Vääristikö Hannah Arendt totuutta?

François Poulain de la Barre

François Poulain de la Barre (1648–1723) is known for his treatises De l’égalité des deux sexes [On the Equality of the Two Sexes] (1673), De l’éducation des dames [On the Education of Ladies] (1674) and De l’excellence des hommes [On the Excellence of Men] (1675). Despite its name the third treatise continues his defense of equality between the sexes by overturning rhetorically presented arguments on the behalf of the excellence of men. Together the three books constitute one of the most detailed analyses of the subjugation of women written in the seventeenth century. Poulain’s thought was deeply influenced by René Descartes’ philosophy. He used Descartes’ methods of doubt and right reason…

Oikeuksista : perusteellisesti, mutta sukupuoletta

Elisabethin perintö

Arendt, Hannah

Subjugation, freedom, and recognition in Poulain de la Barre and Simone de Beauvoir

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 preju…

Sukupuoli valistuksen filosofiassa

Sukupuolentutkimus-Genusforskning siirtyy Jyväskylään

Introduction

The introduction gives a brief overview of some important developments in recent scholarship on René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza. It is argued that there has been a shift of focus, away from Descartes-the-dualist towards an interest in Descartes’ ethics and his conception of the human being as a union of mind and body. This turn has also given rise to new perspectives on the relations between Descartes and Spinoza. After having presented the area of research covered by the volume, the introduction offers short presentations of the individual chapters. These are divided into three parts: the first part focusing on different features of Cartesian persons; the second discussing different aspe…

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft on the imagination

The 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 af…

Concepts and Concept Formation in Early Modern Philosophy

The Renaissance witnessed a revival of ancient and Arabic philosophical traditions, such as Platonism, Skepticism and Averroism. Renaissance syncretism was especially influential at the universities in Northern Italy, where several scholars reinterpreted Medieval Latin conceptions of intelligible species. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, university teaching in most European universities was dominated by second scholasticism. Francisco Suarez was the most philosophically inventive, as well as most influential, among these early modern scholastics (1).

Näkökulmia tiedetoimittamiseen

The Gender of the Cartesian Mind, Body, and Mind-Body Union

The chapter examines what we can know about gender from the perspective of the three primary notions introduced by Descartes in his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. The first section discusses how the primitive notion of the mind strengthens the idea that “the mind has no sex”, an idea that was further developed by the Cartesian and early feminist François Poulain de la Barre. The next section focuses on the notion of the body and analyses what Descartes has to say about gender in his anatomical writings. The little known posthumously published notes Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium receive particular attention. Here Descartes assumes a difference between t…

Filosofi och politik

Elisabeth av Böhmen och Descartes

I år firar prinsessan Elisabeth av Böhmen (1618-80) 400-årsjubileum. Hon var dotter till kung Fredrik V av Böhmen och Elizabeth Stuart, och växte upp i exil under 30-åriga kriget. Fadern regerade bara en vinter och hennes morbror Karl I av England avrättades 1649. Världspolitiken bildar med andra ord en relativt våldsam fond för den omfattande brevväxling Elisabeth förde med filosofen René Descartes och som idag är den främsta orsaken till hennes berömmelse. nonPeerReviewed

Psychology of Gender

Throughout the history of philosophy authors have used claims about women’s deficient psychological capacities in order to justify their inferior position in society. Likewise, male and female defenders of women have most often based their arguments on claims about psychological equality, if not similarity, between the sexes. This chapter traces the major developments and shifts in philosophical discussions about gendered aspects of the soul from Antiquity until the Enlightenment.

Rodullistaminen länsimaisen filosofian historiassa

Tieteessä on jo pitkään oltu yksimielisiä siitä, ettei ”rodun” käsite perustu mihinkään ihmisen biologiseen ominaisuuteen. Rodullistavat käsitykset jatkavat kuitenkin sitkeästi olemassaoloaan esimerkiksi arkisissa asenteissa, mediakuvastoissa ja yhteiskunnallisissa keskusteluissa, kirjoittavat Malin Grahn-Wilder ja Martina Reuter. nonPeerReviewed