Estamira e Rosa Egipciaca - Latin Women Philosophers

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 13
Christine Lopes
Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto
Pedro Pricladnitzky Editors
Latin American
Perspectives
on Women
Philosophers in
Modern History
Women in the History of Philosophy
and Sciences
Volume 13
Series Editors
Ruth Edith Hagengruber, Department of Humanities, Center for the History
of Women Philosophers, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
Mary Ellen Waithe, Professor Emerita, Department of Philosophy and Comparative
Religion, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Gianni Paganini, Department of Humanities, University of Piedmont, Vercelli, Italy
Editorial Board
Luka Borsic, Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Antonio Calcagno, Philosophy Dept, King’s University College, London, ON,
Canada
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen,
København S, Denmark
John Conley, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Karen Green, University of Melbourne, St Kilda, VIC, Australia
Sarah Hutton, University of York, London, UK
Katerina Karpenko, Philosophy, Kharkiv National Medical University, Kharkiv,
Ukraine
Klaus Mainzer, Technical University Munich, München, Germany
Ronny Miron, Bar-Ilan University, Ganey Tikva, Israel
Marie-Frederique Pellegrin, Université Jean Molin Lyon III, Lyon, France
sandra Plastina, Dpt Culture Education, Università della Calabria, Arcavacata di
Rende, Italy
Dorothy Rogers, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA
Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir, Department of Philosophy, University of Iceland,
Reykjavik, Iceland
George N. Vlahakis, Open Hellenic University, Athens, Greece
Elizabeth Minnich, Association of American Colleges & Universities, Charlotte,
NC, USA
Paola Rumore, Department Di Filosofia, Universita degli Studi di Torino, Torino,
Italy
Mariafranca Spallanzani, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Tamara Albertini, Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa,
Honolulu, HI, USA
Dorota Dutsch, Santa Barbara, USA
Romana Bassi, Padova, Italy
Massimo Mazzotti, Berkeley, CA, USA
As the historical records prove, women have long been creating original
contributions to philosophy. We have valuable writings from female philosophers
from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and a continuous tradition from the
Renaissance to today. The history of women philosophers thus stretches back as far
as the history of philosophy itself. The presence as well as the absence of women
philosophers throughout the course of history parallels the history of philosophy as
a whole.
Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir, the most famous
representatives of this tradition in the twentieth century, did not appear form
nowhere. They stand, so to speak, on the shoulders of the female titans who came
before them.
The series Women Philosophers and Scientists published by Springer is of interest
not only to the international philosophy community, but also for scholars in history
of science and mathematics, the history of ideas, and in women’s studies.
More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15896

Christine Lopes · Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto ·
Pedro Pricladnitzky
Editors
Latin American Perspectives

on Women Philosophers
in Modern History
Editors
Christine Lopes Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto
Jewish Academy (AJ) – São Paulo State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
Southampton, United Kingdom Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pedro Pricladnitzky
State University of Western Paraná
(UNIOESTE)
Paraná, Brazil
State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
ISSN 2523-8760 ISSN 2523-8779 (electronic)

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences
ISBN 978-3-031-00287-8 ISBN 978-3-031-00288-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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Foreword
Beyond the Centuries, Culture, and other Boundaries: Why

we study the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists
In 2018, for the occasion of the four hundredth birthday celebration of Elisabeth
of Bohemia, a young Brazilian researcher, Dr. Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto joined the
Celebratory Conference organized by the Center for the History of Women Philoso-
phers in Paderborn, Germany. Her visit was the first step to linking international
communities and their research into reconstructing the cultural heritage of women
philosophers. Three years later, an intensive cooperation is in process, new perspec-
tives have opened, and this important volume has been accomplished: Latin American
Perspectives on Women Philosophers in Modern History.
The mood for this new beginning was enthusiastic, though one important question
demanded our attention: Should the reading of women philosophers in the European
tradition—though long excluded—become an important topic in the rewriting of
the history of philosophy, or should scholars confine themselves to the discovery
and reawakening of the thoughts of women philosophers in their own particular
cultural context? Should the texts of these European women philosophers be read
and re-reflected, or had this to be seen as a re-colonialization act of Western thought,
yet only in disguise? How is it possible to advance mutual cooperation in order to
retrieve our common women philosophers’ tradition, including the European and
Latin American one, yet not confined to these?
Is reading and learning from women philosophers with their Western background
intertwined with the suppressive history of suprematism? Yes, and no. Of course,
women who participated in that policy were part of it, at least in the sense of being
part of the underlying structures. Women philosophers are as responsible as anyone
else, they have to be investigated, in their own right, as to which side they were on,
what philosophy they provided to describe their world, the kind of norms they drafted
and which ideas they discovered to establish philosophy and scientific thinking.
v
vi Foreword
Should these women who are not part of one’s own cultural tradition become
excluded? Is it an alternative to confine one’s own ideas and to root intellectual
power in a nationalist and/or group world?
If we did so, we would delimit our world of ideas that we are able otherwise to
share with people from all over the world (and which is the only means that allows
us to cross borders and go beyond boundaries) and sacrifice this idea in favour of the
place where we ourselves happen to be born. We are all citizens of the world, at least
united in spirit, and therein lies the opportunity to create unity across borders and
break chains. Great ideas do not belong to any country. We share spiritual insights that
never become less in sharing; on the contrary, spirits have the secret of multiplying
by division.
We all need to relearn and appreciate the fruitfulness of spiritual sharing. This
book is an example of doing so. In sharing and bringing together what is known and
unknown, it crosses borders, cultures, and centuries, it brings together the old and
known with the newly discovered. We find here a collection of particular percep-
tions that captivates us beyond the borders and boundaries because of its spiritual
significance. We find stories of oppression and standing firm, of great ideas that
transcend times and continents, celebrating the power of thinking that breaks down
boundaries and gives rise to a community educated by the thoughts and ideas from
women philosophers, worldwide and in un-restricted fashion.
October 2021 Ruth E. Hagengruber

Center for the History of Women
Philosophers
Paderborn, Germany
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Christine Lopes, Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto, and Pedro Pricladnitzky
Part I Women, Voices, History

2 A New Renaissance: The History of Women Philosophers
Across Boundaries and Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Sarah Hutton
3 Oliva Sabuco on Embodied Affects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Christine Lopes
4 Context and Self-Related Reflection: Elisabeth of Bohemia’s
Way to Address the Moral Objectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5 Some Notes on the Concept of Matter in Cavendish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Juliana Abuzaglo Elias Martins
6 Cavendish and the Ontological Status of Individual Bodies . . . . . . . . 61
Pedro Pricladnitzky
7 Spirit, Body, and Pain in Anne Conway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Natalia Strok
8 The Eclecticism of Anne Conway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Teresa Rodríguez
9 Notes on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Epistemology: Experience
as a Source of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Mitieli Seixas da Silva
vii
viii Contents
Part II Feminism, Silencing, and Colonization

10 Pour ce que Femme Sui: Female Perspective
and Argumentation in Christine de Pizan’s Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Ana Rieger Schmidt
11 Conway and Spinoza on Individuals: Frameworks
for a Feminist Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Nastassja Pugliese
12 Sophie Charlotte: The Modern Woman and the Reason
of the Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Tessa Moura Lacerda
13 Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira: Two Thinkers in a Colonial
Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Fabiano de Lemos Britto and Ulysses Pinheiro
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Christine Lopes has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Birkbeck, University of London.

She obtained her MA and BA in Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil). She has lectured in universities in England and Brazil. Her
interests are both historical and analytical, and concern topics in epistemology, meta-
physics, ethics, women in philosophy, gender theory, and Jewish philosophy. She
has lectured in universities in Brazil and England, where she lives. Lopes is an asso-
ciate researcher at international academic institutions and is the founder of the Later
German Philosophy project (https://latergermanphilosophy.com).
Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto is a researcher on early modern philosophy and post-

doctoral fellow at the Philosophy Department of State University of Rio de Janeiro
(UERJ), where she works on research on the problem of singular terms in The
Port-Royal Logic, supported by The Brazilian National Council for Research and
Development (CNPq). She is also the lead researcher of a project titled “Elisabeth
of Bohemia’s Thought: Intentionality and responsibility in Elisabeth of Bohemia’s
Thought 2019–2020”, also supported CNPq. Peixoto was one of the organizers of
the First International Conference of Women in The History of Philosophy, held at
UERJ in 17–20 June 2019. For further work by Peixoto, please see: https://philpe
ople.org/profiles/katarina-peixoto.
Pedro Pricladnitzky holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the State University of Rio

de Janeiro (UERJ-CAPES/PRINT) and is an associate researcher at the University of
Western Paraná (UNIOESTE). He obtained his Ph.D., MA, and BA in Philosophy at
the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). He previously taught philos-
ophy at the State University of Maringá (UEM). His research focuses on seventeenth-
century philosophy and is concerned primarily with topics on metaphysics and their
ix
x Editors and Contributors
intersection with natural philosophy, philosophy of science and philosophy of percep-

tion. He is particularly interested in theories of substance, individuation of bodies,
scientific reasoning in Descartes, and in authors of Cartesian influence.
Contributors
Mitieli Seixas da Silva Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria,
Brazil
Fabiano de Lemos Britto Department of Philosophy, State University of Rio de
Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sarah Hutton University of York, Heslington, UK
Tessa Moura Lacerda Philosophy Department - FFLCH, University of São Paulo
(USP), São Paulo, Brazil
Christine Lopes Jewish Academy (AJ) – São Paulo, Southampton, UK
Juliana Abuzaglo Elias Martins Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de
Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Ulysses Pinheiro Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
(UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pedro Pricladnitzky State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil;
State University of Western Paraná (UNIOESTE), Paraná, Brazil
Nastassja Pugliese Faculty of Education - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
(UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brasil
Teresa Rodríguez Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
Ana Rieger Schmidt Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS), Porto
Alegre, Brazil
Natalia Strok Universidad de Buenos Aires - CONICET, Buenos Aires, E.
Martínez, Argentina
Chapter 1
Introduction
Christine Lopes, Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto, and Pedro Pricladnitzky
Abstract The present volume comprises texts from the First International Confer-
ence of Women in Modern Philosophy that took place in Rio de Janeiro City,
Brazil, Latin America, in June of 2019. The conference was organized by Kata-
rina Ribeiro Peixoto and Pedro Pricladnitzky, and brought together over twenty
national, transnational, and international philosophers from seven countries, whose
work combines historical and analytical insight to recover the philosophical legacy
of women philosophers. If philosophical thinking is like a territory, then the works
in this collection and the conference in which they originated stand guard against
conquistadores or inquisidores of philosophical ideas and practices.
Keywords Canon · Voices · Women philosophers · Colonial · Latin America ·

European
The present volume comprises texts from the First International Conference of
Women in Modern Philosophy that took place in Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil, Latin
America, in June of 2019. The conference was organized by Katarina Peixoto and
Pedro Pricladnitzky, and brought together over twenty national, transnational, and
international philosophers from seven countries, whose work combines historical and
analytical insight to recover the philosophical legacy of women philosophers. If philo-
sophical thinking is like a territory, then the works in this collection and the confer-
ence in which they originated stand guard against conquistadores or inquisidores of
philosophical ideas and practices.
C. Lopes (B)
Jewish Academy (AJ) – São Paulo, Southampton, UK
e-mail: c.lopesphilo@gmail.com
URL: https://academiajudaica.org/
K. R. Peixoto · P. Pricladnitzky
State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
P. Pricladnitzky
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

C. Lopes et al. (eds.), Latin American Perspectives on Women Philosophers in Modern
History, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 13,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_1
2 C. Lopes et al.
The volume has two parts. Part I concerns the thoughts of women who participated
in the philosophical debate of their time, namely the the early modern period. Their
voices remain largely unacknowledged, or only marginally noted—a sad fact that is
inseparable from the still dominant androcentric philosophy canon. Part II considers
how these women introduced a gender perspective in philosophical reflection and
addresses the process of silencing feminine voices.
The contributions that comprise Part I show various and unique ways in which
women have communicated ideas, and how these ways may require novel, non-
European canonical tools of reading and critical appraisal. Sarah Hutton addresses
this crucial point and intimates a new Renaissance in the history of philosophy as
part of a full recovery of women’s thoughts and practices. A key characteristic of
the Renaissance was the criticism of authority in favour of practices of recovery and
examination of the past and discovery of the unknown. Hutton shows how contempo-
rary studies of women’s intellectual lives and thought may well be a new instalment of
this most potent expression of humanism. How to do this in ways that are also restora-
tive and constructive, rather than driven by a compulsive and destructive curiosity
about the unknown, as in the first instalment of humanism delivered by Europe to
the rest of the world, remains a challenge to which this volume contributes.
Christine Lopes discusses the medical-philosophical thought of Oliva Sabuco
(1562–1629). Lopes considers a theory of embodied affects in Oliva Sabuco’s book
entitled New Philosophy, according to which emotions have a physiological-moral
function. Lopes makes a case for examining Sabuco’s associated theory of health
from a critical ethical perspective and recommends that the long disputation over the
authorship of New Philosophy receives the same treatment.
Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto discusses the moral view of Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–
1680), also known in the literature as the Princess Philosopher. Peixoto focuses on the
practical and intentional traits of Bohemia’s thought. To this end, Peixoto explores
a first-order conscience-oriented dimension of the epistolary exchange between
Bohemia and Descartes. Peixoto suggests that, rather than a teacher-disciple rela-
tionship, this exchange conveys a meeting of minds that both enabled the flourishing
of Elisabeth’s own intellectual force and is at the origin of Descartes’s Passions of
the Soul (1649).
Juliana Martins writes about the contribution of the metaphysical thought of
Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) to the history of mechanical philosophy. Cavendish
was an ingenious metaphysician whose materialism was so uncompromising as to
challenge the prevalent Cartesian physics on the treatment of force and causality.
She also made an important contribution to conceptions of individuation and to
discussions on the nature of bodies. Martins explores the main tenets of Cavendish’s
metaphysics and discusses the prominence of the concept of matter in Cavendish’s
thought.
Pedro Pricladnitzky considers an ontology of bodies that can further support
Cavendish’s polemical notion of motion and its use to describe the nature of bodies.
Pricladnitzky suggests that, for Cavendish, physical objects—what she calls bodies,
parts of matter or creatures—are mind-dependent entities. Their identities as indi-
viduals can only be established by observation of the motions of matter by others.
1 Introduction 3
They are real insofar as they are parts of the material substance. As individuals, they
are an abstraction of an ontological whole that grounds every aspect of nature.
Natalia Strok draws a line of interpretation by exploring the more personal dimen-
sion of the philosophy of Anne Conway (1631–1679). Strok considers a possible
epistemic role for Conway’s migraines in her philosophical practice and the experi-
ence of pain in her conception of the mind-body relation. To this end, Strok proposes
a dialogue in Conway’s thought between an epistemic role of pain and the so-called
Cambridge Platonism, mostly in the philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena.
Teresa Rodríguez proposes a different methodological perspective when she
considers the peculiarities of modern Platonism in Conway’s philosophy. The
methodological eclecticism of Conway’s sources has been considered a problem
for the consistency of her thought. But Rodriguez shows that to engage with philo-
sophical eclecticism and syncretism is part of the activity of recovering women’s
contribution in the history of philosophy.
Mitieli Seixas da Silva develops a study of Émilie Du Châtelet (1706–1749), a key
woman philosopher of the Modern period in its Enlightenment dawn. Da Silva uses
contemporary literature on coherentism to make the case for a variety of truth-by-
coherence in Du Châtelet’s thought and so for a theory of truth at its core. To this end,
Da Silva explores the relationship between science and philosophy in the eighteenth
century, and the understanding of the status of experiments in Du Châtelet’s works.
She suggests that a panoramic study of Du Châtelet’s work shows that her philosophy
is unique among the experimental philosophers of her time in the defence of the use
of experimentation for scientific progress that is guided by rational principles.
Historical and analytical work on women’s philosophical thought constitute
efforts to re-conceptualize what counts as philosophical knowledge and re-appraise
the epistemic relevance of written material that women thinkers produced for most of
history, namely letters, poems, and fragments of texts. To the extent that these efforts
also aim to replace canonical historical bias about philosophical writing practices,
and insofar as these efforts must speak with and are still within this canon, what
should be the parameters of their meta-philosophical enterprise?
The contributions that comprise Part II present the reader with inspiring ways to
approach this question, as the authors re-examine the philosophical contribution and
legacy of women, letting their voices resonate, freeing them in text from centuries
of silence, humiliation, destruction. In her approach to the writings of Christine
de Pizan (1364- c.1430), Ana Rieger Schmidt suggests that contemporary histor-
ical dialogues with the androcentric philosophical canon combine conceptual reflec-
tion with archaeological insight. Schmidt recommends that historians of philosophy
examine the account that medieval authors offered of their own intellectual roles
as a way of appreciating different forms of philosophical activity and varieties of
knowing.
Nastassja Pugliese examines Conway’s metaphysics, whose ideas have
contributed to contemporary discussions on conceptions of individuation, mereo-
logical relation, infinity, and questions of method. Pugliese identifies in Conway the
possibility of a relational metaphysics of individuals. Pugliese finds the inspiration
4 C. Lopes et al.
for such a metaphysics in Spinoza’s philosophy and outlines a feminist metaphysics

in Conway’s thought.
Tessa Moura Lacerda advances an imaginative and critical reconstruction of the
thought of Queen Sophie-Charlotte (1668–1705) and challenges the androcentric
ways of received philosophical historiography. To this end, Lacerda examines letters
of Leibniz, with whom Sophie-Charlotte corresponded but whose own letters were
burned. Lacerda shows that Sophie-Charlotte’s legacy need not be seen as lost but
rather as demanding access to itself, if only in an indirect (imaginative) way.
The volume closes with a contribution that turns up the volume (pun intended)
and broadcasts the plight of women in Brazil, a plea that resonates to these days
throughout Latin America. Ulysses Pinheiro and Fabiano de Lemos Britto reveal the
marks of patriarchal brutality in women’s mutilated legacies within the canonical
history of philosophy. The authors identify the theological and political singular-
ities of thought in Rosa Egipcíaca (1719–1778) and Estamira (1941–2011), two
Brazilian women whose intellectual legacy seems to convey metaphorical and literal
continuities with the wounds of slavery, misogyny, and colonial exploitation in
the expressions of social control. Pinheiro and Britto show how the narratives of
Egipcíaca and Estamira can be interpreted as heretical and delusional within colo-
nialized discourses, but also, potentially, in a hermeneutic turnaround, as a political
and theological way to overcome open wounds of racism and patriarchal brutality.
As with any published work, many questions will be asked about general and
specific aspects of the texts that comprise this collection. As always, editors must
leave to the readers the task of engaging with and evaluating the material in their
hands. But there is one complex question concerning this collection that the editors
wish to acknowledge and briefly respond to. It concerns wider political and soci-
ological conditions that underpin this volume and are also reflected by its content.
This is the question about the choice made by the Latin American contributors in
this volume to discuss mostly European texts. To the extent that this volume and
its editors and authors are concerned with challenging the European philosophical
canon, should they not have chosen mostly texts about non-European women thinkers
of the modern European era?
Indeed, the so-called modern era comprises approximately two to three hundred
years of European colonization of societies and cultures outside Europe. But it is also
true that slavery and extermination of whole forms of human thought and agency
made oral transmission of knowledge and tradition the touchstone of survival for
peoples living in the lands outside the borders of Europe. The terrifying and abhor-
rent actions of invaders, conquistadores, and inquisidores, translated into little moti-
vation or no interest in preserving the voices of those peoples. At the same time,
contemporary archive-digging concerning the intellectual contribution of European
women to the history of philosophy also encounters significant difficulties.
One way to answer the question about the editors’ choice of authors and texts
is to not underestimate the power of historical dissonance: Latin American women
philosophers, who are heirs of European utter destructiveness and cruelty, can re-
shape the voices of Europeans who also existed in great invisibility, oppression, and
persecution in Europe at the time. The volume itself embodies, anew, the urgent need
1 Introduction 5
to discover, historicize and analyse the philosophical thought of women on both sides
of the Atlantic.
For this, we need freedom. It may be argued that to philosophize is to think
well with freedom, if not freely. The argument may recommend courage to resist
hurried attempts to replace one philosophical canon with another, or even several
canons. If multiplicity or variety was a trusted mark of value, all dozens of brands
of cereal in the supermarkets would be equally priced, taste equally good, or bought
in equal amounts. Yet, the effort to challenge received androcentric philosophical
canons across the world, of which this volume is an example, ought to be under-
taken differently in connection with different women’s traditions. And, in places like
Latin America, which combine in their very anthropological fabric several different
ethnicities, cultural practices, and schools of thought, we cannot, and must not wish
to, do away with cognitive and affective dissonances. The editors trust that readers
with a good listening ear will not fail to hear some rumbling of dissonance in this
volume.
The ongoing task of building a standardized body of thought that is neither andro-
centric nor Eurocentric is immense for all women thinkers worldwide. In Latin
America, to give an example that relates directly to this volume and the confer-
ence that gave rise to it, the difficulties range from the painful scarcity of resources
to undertake research, which creates unfortunate competition for support among
different forward-thinking schools of women’s philosophical thought, to the current
wave of epistemic obscurantism. The impact on the freedom of thought and speech
is palpable and often frightening.
The present volume and its associated conference are testimony to the enduring
power of multinational and multicultural philosophical friendship in the face of open
threat to candour of thought and behaviour, which is a pre-requisite of communicable
truth and viable communication. In Latin America, analytical and historical schools
of thought were finally able to emerge during the re-democratization period. There
are currently a few promising groups of women in philosophy that are fast flourishing
in Brazil and Latin America at large. Some of them encourage women to produce
philosophical works by offering a platform for readership of their work and feedback
on their research. Examples of this type of initiative in Brazil are the National Asso-
ciation of Postgraduate Studies in Philosophy (ANPOF), which comprises Research
Networks such as ‘Mulheres na História da Filosofia’ (Women in the History of
Philosophy) coordinated by Professor Nastassja Pugliese (Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro, UFRJ), and ‘Rede de Mulheres em Filosofia’ (Network of Women in
Philosophy) coordinated by Professor Carolina Araújo (Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro, UFRJ). Examples of equally important initiatives in Latin America are
‘Red de Mujeres Filósofas de América Latina’ (Network of Women Philosophers in
Latin America), and ‘Red Latinoamericana de Estudios sobre Filósofas en la Historia’
(Latin American Network of Studies in Philosophy) coordinated by Viridiana Benítez,
Silvia Manzo, Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto, and Teresa Rodríguez.
These still recent and fragile achievements remain under considerable threat from
divisive politics inside and outside academia. The editors are therefore grateful to
all stakeholders who made this volume and its associated conference possible. The
6 C. Lopes et al.
editors would like to thank especially the following individuals and institutions:
Professor Ruth Hagengruber, Professor Mary Ellen Waithe and Professor Gianen-
rico Paganini, the Editors-in-Chief of the Women in the History of Philosophy and
Sciences Springer series, for welcoming this collection of texts into their transnational
work; the reviewers for their constructive comments; the State University of Rio de
Janeiro (UERJ) for enabling funds, human resources, and housing the conference
that gave rise to the present volume; Professor Edgar da Rocha Marques from the
Department of Philosophy of UERJ, whose professionalism and humanity provided
a safe environment for the exercise of open dialogue amidst threats of disruption
of the event; Professor Dirce Sollis, the Director of the Institute of Philosophy and
Human Sciences at UERJ; the various staff at UERJ who took care during the confer-
ence of the audio-visual system, cleaning, catering, the operation of the building’s
lifts, and the safety of participants; the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher
Education Personnel (CAPES) for providing travel funding for some of the confer-
ence speakers. Last but not least, the editors are grateful to Gisele Secco, Marília
Espírito Santo, Lia Levy, Ethel Menezes da Rocha, and many other colleagues, for
their support and academic collaboration.
Finally, after months of disruption caused by a pandemic that continues to shake
the world, we present this volume to readers as a tribute to intellectual friendship
that knows no borders and that force never conquers.
The Editors
Southampton, UK Christine Lopes

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Katarina Peixoto
Paraná, Brazil Pedro Pricladnitzky
May 2022
Part I
Women, Voices, History
Chapter 2
A New Renaissance: The History
of Women Philosophers Across
Boundaries and Cultures
Sarah Hutton
Abstract In this paper I review the progress that has been made in recovering the
lost voices of philosophical women. After considering some of the challenges that
this work of recovery has faced and still faces, I consider the promise which the
future holds for extending this work of recovery across both time and space, to all
philosophical traditions across the world. Focusing particularly on the challenges of
alterity and erasure, I argue that the contextual approaches developed to face these
are especially relevant to the challenges to be faced when for extending this work
beyond Anglo-America. I suggest that this work of recovery is comparable to the
recovery of ancient philosophy in the European Renaissance. With the extension of
this work of recovery to women philosophers of all times, and all cultures, we can
look forward to a new Renaissance—a Renaissance not of the Greek philosophers
of antiquity, but of the philosophy of women.
Keywords History · Women philosophers · Recovery · Canon · Alterity ·

Traditions · New renaissance
2.1 Introduction: This is not a Time for Complacency
The papers in this volume testify to the successful enterprise of recovering female
philosophers that has been undertaken in recent years. This birth of interest in women
philosophers is relatively recent and the task of restoring women philosophers to
view is by no means complete (Hutton, 2015, 2019). For a long time, it seemed
that women’s contributions to philosophy went nowhere and the fate of women
I am most grateful to the Brazilian Council for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel
(CAPES: Programa de Apoio a Eventos no País (PAEP) proposal number: 647 218), for the funding
which enabled me to attend the First International Conference Women in The History of Philosophy
in Rio de Janeiro, for which I wrote this paper.
S. Hutton (B)
University of York, Heslington, UK
e-mail: sarah.hutton@york.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_2
10 S. Hutton
philosophers was obliteration (O’Neill, 1998; Hagengruber and Hutton, 2019). But
the work of recovery that has been undertaken in the last two decades has changed this.
As a result, there is now a small but growing number of women whose philosophy has
been restored.1 We also know of many more women whose philosophical activities
are less well documented. And work is on-going to discover more, to study their
philosophy, to understand their philosophical interests and priorities, and to trace
their legacies. This is truly something to celebrate. It is not just remarkable that this
has happened, but it is equally remarkable that there is now a strong demand for
knowledge about these women and their philosophy among philosophers today. This
not only vindicates the work of the pioneers, but it holds out great hope for the future.
However, this is not a time for complacency. It is easy to think that the battle
has been won, and that we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of all this work. After
all, the works of women philosophers are being published. Books and articles are
being written about them. And women are represented on the philosophy curricula
of many universities.2 But in the eye of history, the philosophers so far recovered
are just a precious few. The history of women philosophers is, still, a fragmented
history. We have made a start, but there are still many gaps to fill. Most (though by no
means all) of those philosophers who have been recovered so far are European, and
most of them lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: most prominently
Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, Damaris Masham and Emilie du
Châtelet. Much of the work which has been done on them has been by philosophers
in the English-speaking world (e.g. Broad, 2002; Broad & Green, 2009; Hutton,
2004, O’Neill & Lascano 2019). But there are plenty more to be discovered. So we
shouldn’t stop here, and we shouldn’t stop in Europe. There is now potential to extend
this work beyond the history of European philosophy, to women philosophers across
the world. In fact, as this volume testifies, the process of extending the recovery of
women philosophers to all periods and across countries has already begun. This is
hugely exciting for many reasons. We have the potential to establish a critical mass
of female philosophers, bringing the prospect of real change, not just in the canon of
Western European philosophy but in philosophy worldwide. But there are still many
challenges. Nevertheless, they are challenges which can be turned to advantage.
2.2 Where We Are Now
As I have argued elsewhere (Hutton, 2015, 2019), two things have been crucial to
the success of recovering women’s philosophy. First, recovering female philoso-
phers would never have happened without women taking control of their own
1 A leader in the work of recovery was Mary Ellen Waithe (Waithe, 1986–1991). Also (Meyer and
Bennent-Vahle, 1995). Since then others have been added to the pantheon of women philosophers:
see also Broad and Green (2009), O’Neill and Lascano (2019).
2 For examples of university philosophy courses which incorporate philosophy by women, see the
Project Vox website http://projectvox.library.duke.edu/.

2 A New Renaissance: The History of Women … 11
history. Without the upsurge of interest in women of the past spearheaded by the
women’s movement of the late twentieth century, women philosophers would remain
concealed in the dust of history. But it is worth recalling that interest in women’s
history was not enough by itself to generate interest in the history of women philoso-
phers, as opposed to the history of feminism. In fact, when women began to be
interested in women’s philosophy, the success of the enterprise of recovery came
not from feminist history or feminist philosophy, but from women historians of
philosophy.3
This brings me to the second point which I want to highlight: success in recovering
women philosophers is in large part owing to the historical approach to philosophy
adopted by these historians of philosophy. Where feminist philosophers have, for
the most part, focused on analysing the exclusion of women, this group focused on
women’s achievements. Historians of philosophy like Karen Green, Ruth Hagen-
gruber, Jacqueline Broad and others (myself included) asked different questions.
We asked what philosophy women produced, and how they achieved what they
did. Furthermore, this involved not merely focusing on their arguments, or what
were taken to be their arguments, or assimilating their work to the present. Rather,
the approach taken paid attention to the context in which women philosophised and
investigated the philosophical and social circumstances in which they philosophised.
This approach is premised on the view that to discover women’s philosophy and
to understand their arguments, it is essential to know about the context in which
they worked. This requires historical distancing, dispensing with our contemporary
notions of which philosophers matter, and setting aside contemporary conceptions
of philosophy itself. It has meant finding out about neglected philosophers of the
past (men as well as women) who have been overshadowed by the canonical greats
of today. And it has required us to re-discover what philosophy was taken to be in
the past.
Of course, focusing on women’s achievement in philosophy cannot ignore the
educational disadvantage, social prejudice, and other impediments to philosophising
which has been the case of lot of women. One only has to recall the case of the Italian
philosopher, Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684), who was the first woman to be
awarded a degree in philosophy. Piscopia graduated at the University of Padova in
Italy, but she was also the last woman to graduate in philosophy for many centuries.
But even philosophizing in private was not easy: after all, to be able to philoso-
phize, to have the possibility of philosophizing at all, one must be free to do so. In
earlier times, women were not free to philosophize in the same conditions as their
male counterparts. Opportunities to philosophize were more difficult for a woman
to find because of social circumstances and restrictive expectations about women’s
capacities. The limitations on women’s opportunities to philosophize is captured by
Damaris Masham, when she told John Locke in 1688 that “the pursuit of philosophy
is only possible for those that have a freedom from the Affairs of the World” (Broad,
2020, 182). For a woman like Damaris ‘Affairs of the World’ meant the social and
3On the difference, even tensions, between feminist approaches and the history of women’s
philosophy, see McAlister (1989), O’Neill (1999), Hagengruber (2015).
12 S. Hutton
domestic duties which prevented her from even reading (Broad, 2020, 161–2). The
circumstances in which a woman philosophized are only apparent when we pay
attention to the context in which she and other female philosophers practiced philos-
ophy. For the vast majority of women, to be able to philosophize meant overcoming
deep-seated customs and prejudices about women’s capabilities and social destiny.
The fact women have not had the same educational advantages as men and have been
constrained socially by their gender roles (e.g. domestic duties, or the expectation
that they should confine mental activity to spiritual matters) is still true today.
2.3 Alterity and Context
The task of recovering women philosophers has not been easy. There have been
many challenges. But understanding those challenges and how they were met has
been instrumental in advancing the recovery project of European philosophy. It also
holds out the prospect of extending the project across time and space. Among these
one of the main ones has been the problem of strangeness and difference in the
thought of women from other periods by comparison with philosophy today. It is not
always obvious or easy to make sense of what we find. The challenge of alterity, of
the ‘otherness’ of past philosophers, most often arises with non-canonical philoso-
phers, because they are by definition less familiar to us. With women philosophers,
the problem is made more challenging because for most of history they have been
forgotten. In consequence, there is no history of interpreting them, and we have
lost touch with the philosophical traditions within which they practised philosophy.
Merely assimilating past philosophers to our own modern practices is distorting. An
essential pre-requisite to understanding their philosophy and its relevance to us now
is to deal with philosophy of the past in its own terms. And this is precisely what an
historical approach can offer.
An attendant problem in all these cases is alterity of genre. Women philoso-
phers have not always used standard forms of philosophising, and in many cases the
evidence for their philosophising comes indirectly from other writings. For example,
it is known that the Italian Aurelia d’Este, Duchess of Limatola (1683–1719) was
expert in Cartesian physics and metaphysics. But her only extant writings are sonnets.
The only philosophical writing of the Italian Cartesian, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapi-
cola (1702–c.1740), is her Italian translation of Descartes, I principi della filosofia
di Renato Descartes (1722). Other women adopted genres untypical of mainstream
philosophy. Several of the French salonières adopted a dialogue format for instance
(Conley, 2002, 2019), Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), whose Conversations
morales (1686) and Entretiens de morales (1692), are based on conversations at her
salon. Others wrote collections of moral maxims, for example, Marguerite Hessein,
Madame de la Sablière (1640–1693), whose Maximes Chrétiennes were published
with La Rochfoucauld’s Reflections, in 1705 (Conley, 2019). Queen Christina of
Sweden (1626–1689), too, wrote maxims which were published posthumously as
Ouvrages de loisir, ou maximes et sentences in 1751 (Ackerman, 1991). This kind
of writing does not, of course, constitute systematic philosophy, but that does not
mean that women did not or could not think in a philosophically systematic way. The
lesson of coming to grips with alterity is that philosophy is where you find it, and it
comes in many forms.
2.4 Absence and Loss
Another huge problem is the loss or absence of evidence for women’s philosophical
activities. A major difficulty for giving recovering women’s philosophy is that in most
cases we lack writings from which to make a full assessment of their philosophical
views. One reason for this is the social and cultural circumstances within which
women had to operate. Many women did not publish, or were not able to publish. In
other cases, conventions of anonymity required them to do so anonymously, so even
when their writings survive, it is difficult to discover what they thought, or whether
was any take-up of their ideas or engagement with their arguments. It is, therefore,
difficult to gain a wider picture of women’s contribution to the general philosophical
conversation.
In many cases their writings simply were lost. There are many more women whose
philosophical legacy is beyond retrieval for absence of sources. In other cases the
evidence is fragmentary, or indirect. For some our only sources for their philosophical
activities are letters. One of the most famous is the correspondence of Princess
Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680), Princess Palatine, whose letters to Descartes
are the only record of her activity as a philosopher (Descartes, 1989; Elisabeth of
Bohemia, 2007). Some correspondences were published, for example the Lettere di
philosophia naturale of Camilla Gregetta Erculiani, published in 1584 (Erculanei,
2016) and the Lettere a Galileo of Margherita Sarrocchi (1560–1617), published
in1611 (Sarrocchi, 2016). The correspondence of Mary Astell (1666–1731) with
John Norris was printed as Letters concerning the Love of God in 1695 (Astell,
2005).
In many cases the only evidence that some women philosophers once existed
are their names, recorded in earlier histories of philosophy, for example Diogenes
Laertius’ Vitae philosophorum (third century AC), and Thomas Stanley’s History
of Philosophy (1656). A particularly rich collection of names is to be found in
Gilles Menage’s Mulierum philosopharum historia (1690). Some female philoso-
phers are also mentioned in histories of women—for example Marguerite Buffet’s,
Les Eloges des Illutres Sçavantes, tant Anciennes que Modernes which is appended
to her Nouvelle observations sur la langue Françoise (1668) (Buffet, 1668), Mary
Hays, Female Biography (Hays, 1803), and George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several
Ladies of Great Britain (Ballard, 1752). Even if the women who figure in these
works are just names, with little or no detail of what they thought, these histories at
least do them the credit of acknowledging that they were philosophers.
Then there are many women thinkers whose philosophical credentials have been
occluded by distortion and theft. A notorious case of a woman whose ideas were
14 S. Hutton
passed off as other people’s is Emilie du Châtelet whose authorship of the French
translation of Newton’s Principia mathematica and her commentary on it was ques-
tioned. Recently it has been revealed that Susan Sontag was obliged to cede her
authorship of Freud: The Mind of the Moralist to her husband Philip Rieff, under
whose name it was published (Conrad, 2019). And there are the truly scandalous
cases where women have been disqualified of their entitlement to be considered
philosophers, by being identified in terms which have nothing to do with philos-
ophy: Conway was deemed as hysteric, Cavendish dismissed as an eccentric if not
madwoman, and Madame Du Châtelet remembered only as Voltaire’s lover, rather
than as a great mind in her own right.
Aside from these diminishing misrepresentations, there are many other ways in
which a woman’s philosophical star might be dimmed. A common one is the use of
any label except philosopher, a practice which serves to obliterate women’s philo-
sophical capacities. ‘Mystic’ is just such a term used liberally to obfuscate woman’s
intellectual achievements. The ‘learned lady’ is less derogatory than ‘mystic’, but
no less disabling philosophically: examples are Marie Jars de Gournay and Princess
Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anna Maria van Schuurman. The ‘literary lady’ is another
such label. Madame de Scudéry is remembered as a novelist, not a philosopher.
She certainly was a hugely successful novelist, with an international readership,
as attested by translations of her work into English, Spanish, Italian, German, and
even Arabic. From early on, she was treated as a pedantic précieuse, attacked by
Boileau; it is only recently that she has been claimed as a philosopher (Conley,
2011).4 The English novelist, Mary Anne Evans, better known as George Eliot, is
another example. Her interest in philosophy, testified by the fact that she translated
Spinoza has only received attention relatively recently (Spinoza, 2019). Feminist
imperatives too, have served to obscure the philosophical contribution of women.
For example Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Margaret Cavendish were all
hailed as feminist heroines long before they were acknowledged as philosophers. The
lesson of this is that we should be prepared to question the ways in which individual
women have been categorised and to look beyond the label to see what it conceals.
Related to this is the ‘gate-keeper’ problem: i.e. the erasure of women by histo-
rians’ failure to mention them—a tendency which is observable just as much among
histories of philosophy of the old school, as in historiography more generally. Stan-
dard histories of philosophy fail to mention women.5 never mind that women were at
the forefront of the new developments in the philosophy which laid the foundations
of philosophy as well know it today. So, for example, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia
was one of the first to recognize the originality of Descartes’ philosophy. The first
defence of Locke was made by a woman, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, whose A
Defence of the ‘Essay of Human was published in 1702 (Cockburn, 1702). Mary
4Madame de Scudéry was partly rehabilitated by Victor Cousin mid-nineteenth-century.

5The 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edwards, 1967) contained not a single
woman. Neither did The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy ed. Schmitt, Skinner and
Kessler (CUP, 1987).
Astell’s correspondence with John Norris engages with Malebranche in his life-
time. Emilie du Châtelet challenged the French commitment to Cartesianism when
she promoted Newtonian natural philosophy in France. She is credited with intro-
ducing the philosophy of Leibniz to the French. Anne Conway engaged with Spinoza
without the vituperative nastiness of most of the early reception. This doesn’t mean
that women were merely the passive recipients of “canonical” philosophers such as
Descartes, Locke, Malebranche and Leibniz. On the contrary, women’s readiness to
take up the new philosophy of their day testifies to their intellectual boldness. But if
you look at the received histories of philosophy, they don’t figure.
2.5 Ways Forward
There is, however, an upside to challenges presented by recovering the forgotten

women of the past, in the respect that these challenges have shaped modes of enquiry.
To the extent that historical and contextual approaches to the history of philosophy
recognise alterity in the history of philosophy, they have proved beneficial for the
recovery and study of women philosophers of the past. Such approaches show that
the best way to confront the challenge of alterity is to acknowledge it. In fact we
could go further to claim that there is a virtue to be made of the awkward problem of
the unfamiliarity of women’s philosophy. A contextual approach is especially valu-
able for dealing with thinkers whose context and concerns are remote from ours.
Furthermore, strangeness and difference are, arguably, features not just of women
philosophers of the remote past, but also of those from the recent past. Furthermore,
strangeness and difference are especially challenging in the case of women who
philosophised in entirely different traditions, in different cultures and different soci-
eties across the globe. We cannot study such philosophers simply by interpreting
them as if they were part of the dominant philosophical traditions of the present. We
need to find a way to understand them in their own terms. And this in turn points
to the importance of context and the usefulness of the lessons of history. In this
respect thinking of the past, even the recent past, as a foreign country, is helpful for
examining the diverse intellectual circumstances in which women philosophised, by
making a virtue of strangeness and difference.
The same analogy applies especially to philosophies from different traditions and
different cultures. By being cognisant of the challenges of alterity in highly diverse
intellectual contexts, we will be better placed to address them. This holds out the
prospect for further work in hitherto uncharted territory of women philosophers
beyond Europe. Women philosophers of the past did not leap fully formed like
Minerva from the head of Zeus. They have had to be excavated from obscurity and
misperception. So also with women from other traditions. We won’t necessarily
find fully-formed statues of Minerva, but fragments, even traces. But being alert for
the woman’s philosophy passed off as a man’s, for the philosopher concealed in
the learned lady, or reduced to the status of “helpmeet”. Who knows, may be new
philosophical writings will come to light.
16 S. Hutton
2.6 A New Renaissance?
At the present time, as we wrestle with the problem of integrating women’s voices
into philosophy today and into the teaching canon (Waithe, 2015) we are faced
with the fact that forgetting has been the lot of most philosophical women and that
the panorama of other philosophical women is fragmented and distorted. But here
too, there is further encouragement which we can take from history. The history of
philosophy is in fact full of ‘lost philosophy’. There are many philosophers with
whom we are familiar today who were forgotten for centuries, but whose work was
recovered at a later point. There are also philosophers who were only known through
a small part of their output, but became better known after the recovery of lost texts.
Examples are the philosophy of Plotinus and Pyrrhonian skepticism, recovered by
the humanists of fifteenth-century Italy, as were the dialogues of Plato, most of which
were unknown in the Middle Ages. The recovery of these philosophies occurred in
the most famous period of cultural recovery and rediscovery in Western Europe, the
Renaissance. Sometimes referred to as ‘the revival of letters’ this period is commonly
thought of as the revival of the culture classical antiquity.
The philosophical component of that revival is usually overlooked. Most histo-
ries of philosophy routinely skip over the Renaissance philosophy as if it was un-
interesting philosophically. But it was precisely in this period that key elements of
European philosophical history were restored to visibility, the most famous being
those just mentioned, Plotinus, and Pyrrho, and the dialogues of Plato. These were
philosophies which, as it were, had lain ‘dormant’ since antiquity until they were
recovered in the fifteenth century by the scholars of the Renaissance who go under
the name of Humanists. The Renaissance was a “rebirth” in the sense that it revived
long forgotten philosophies, but also in the sense that philosophy itself was born
again. The Renaissance was in fact a period of huge importance in the develop-
ment of European philosophy. In the fifteenth century, ancient philosophy re-entered
the philosophical conversation. Ancient philosophers were read and adapted for the
times. By bringing some of the most famous philosophers of antiquity back into
the philosophical conversation, the Renaissance in fact contributed hugely to the
enrichment and re-invigoration of philosophy, laying the ground for the canonical
figures of the seventeenth century (Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes and Locke). Creative
engagement with the forgotten philosophies of antiquity resulted in the enrichment of
philosophy, and the new philosophies of thinkers who dared to think in new ways—
thinkers such as Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, and Girolamo Cardano
(none of whom is considered canonical today).
This is a very reductive account of the Renaissance and its impact. Nevertheless,
the parallels between the history of the Renaissance recovery of ancient philosophy
and the new history of women philosophers are to me striking. The philosophical
work of women is a body of philosophy which has lain forgotten for centuries, and
is being brought back by means of a process which may be fitly described as a
“re-birth,” or re-naissance.
The Renaissance of women’s philosophy has only just begun. We must go on

digging to find more—not just for the ones of whose names we know, but the unknown
philosophers. Not just the philosophers of England, France, Germany and Italy, but
the philosophers of all countries and all times. It will take major work to discover the
women of South America, India, China, Japan and Africa. There is more evidence
than one might think that women philosophers existed. And armed with that knowl-
edge, and the means to excavate, who knows what may be found? Who knows, may be
new philosophical writings will come to light. Of course, this exciting prospect must
be tempered by the discouraging fact that the work of many –maybe most— philo-
sophical women will never be recovered, since what they thought was not recorded, or
lost. But just knowing their names, will make a difference to perceptions of women’s
capacities, and this, indirectly, will make a difference to perceptions and practice in
philosophy. Even if many women philosophers of the past are just names, even if
the best we can do is to compile a list their names, knowing the names of women
who philosophised testifies to their existence. It overturns the assumption that women
didn’t do philosophy, that women didn’t have brains enough to do philosophy; or that
those who did were exceptional for their sex. Just as the stars in the night sky whose
light died before it reached the viewers on earth are key evidence for constructing
the history of the universe, so also the names of women philosophers are testimony
to the history of female intellectual culture, even if their philosophy is no more. It is
commonly said that when restoring women to visibility, ‘you can’t just add women
and stir’—you can’t just add them in like ingredients in a recipe, because this does
not substantially change anything. But I want to suggest that you can in fact “add
women and stir.” But you have to add enough of them to change the recipe—few
won’t make any difference.
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Waithe, M. E. (General editor) (1986–1991). A History of Women Philosophers (Vol. 4). Dordrecht:
Springer.
Chapter 3
Oliva Sabuco on Embodied Affects
Christine Lopes
Abstract Doña Oliva Sabuco is the published name of the author of New Philos-
ophy, a book on medicine and philosophy first published in Madrid, Spain, in 1587.
I approach with caution the long history of disputation over its authorship, over
whether it was written by Oliva or by her father Miguel Sabuco. I follow in the
footsteps of two Oliva scholars and consider the possibility that the book speaks
from a woman’s perspective. In a dialogic, and, at times, combative story-telling
style, New Philosophy challenges established Galenic and Aristotelian androcentric
conceptions of the relation between body and soul. It also defends a senequist stoic
and anthropocentric view of affects or emotions. The book claims that affects have a
physiological-moral function, to the effect that good equates with health and illness
with bad or evil. I suggest these claims constitute a theory of embodied affects. I
conclude that the medical or philosophical relevance of New Philosophy must be
examined from an ethical perspective, and that the disputation over its authorship
must be considered from this perspective also.
Keywords Affect · Soul · Body · Brain · Health · Disease · Emotion · Rational ·

Moral · Stoicism
3.1 Introduction
The name of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera (1562–1629) is famously associ-

ated with the book published in 1587 in Madrid, Spain, entitled Nueva Filosofia
de la Naturaleza del Hombre, No Conocida Ni Alcançada de los Grandes Filosofos
Antiguos: La Qual Mejora la Vida y la Salud Humana [New Philosophy of Human
Nature Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which
Will Improve Human Life and Health]. From the outset, let me refer to its published
author by the name of Oliva only, as a clear commitment to the woman’s voice that
C. Lopes (B)
Jewish Academy – São Paulo, Southampton, UK
e-mail: c.lopesphilo@gmail.com
URL: https://academiajudaica.org/

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_3
20 C. Lopes
speaks in the book. Women of Iberian heritage like me will know the androcentric
weight of their multiple surnames, all of which ultimately relate to males in their
cultural ancestry line. New Philosophy comprises five vernacular texts in Castilian
that concern philosophical and medical topics, and which are followed by two texts in
Latin. For the sake of brevity, the English titles of the vernacular texts are: Dialogue
on Self-Knowledge; On the Composition of the World as It is; On the Things that
Will Improve the State of the World, and Its Commonwealths; On the Aids and Reme-
dies of the True Medicine; and Dialogue on the True Medicine. The titles of the
Latin texts are: Dicta brevia circa naturam hominis, medicinae fundamentum [Brief
sayings on the nature of man, the foundation of medicine] and Vera philosophia de
natura mistorum, hominis et mundi, antiquis oculta [True philosophy, unknown to
the ancients, of the nature of mixed bodies, of man, and of the world].
A second, revised edition of New Philosophy followed in 1588 in Madrid. The text
in Castilian often used by Oliva’s scholars is Ricardo Fe’s 1888 edition, which mostly
reproduces the 1587 edition and has a prologue by Octavio Cuartero. In 2007, Mary
Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita, published their English
translation of the 1587 edition.
In 2010, Gianna Pomata published a new English translation of the last vernacular
text of New Philosophy, the Dialogue on the True Medicine. As a disclaimer, let
me clarify that I use the translations by Waithe et al. and Pomata without scholarly
judgement on their translation or interpretive choices. At most, I offer within brackets
the words in Castilian as they appear in New Philosophy, and I do this solely to provide
the reader with some semantic insight.
Waithe’s name is inseparable from international initiatives of open collaboration
and access to New Philosophy as a woman’s work. The online Encyclopedia of
Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers is a case in point, and there one also finds
a reference to New Philosophy (Barbone 2019). Another example is the participation
of Waithe in the Society for the Study of Women Philosophers (Lindemann 2014).
Ruth Hagengruber, who is the director of the History of Women Philosophers and
Scientists project at the University of Paderborn in Germany, has advanced and
expanded on Waithe’s commitment to women’s thought and legacy. With Waithe
as her project advisor, Hagengruber and her team lead several initiatives on women
philosophers and scientists and the critique of androcentric canons of knowledge.
I wish to make another disclaimer: I am not an expert in Oliva’s New Philos-
ophy. This is my first encounter with her work, and I continue to make sense of the
enduring impact that it has had on me. My main task is to consider in an introductory
manner, and solely from a philosophical viewpoint, some of Oliva’s claims about a
physiological-philosophical function of affects in humans. To this end, I have chosen
Dialogue on Self-Knowledge and Dialogue on the True Medicine, which are the first
and the last vernacular texts of New Philosophy. They seem to me to summarise the
book in spirit if not in letter. But the present article is not without critical ambition,
as it indicates a couple of serious ethical implications for Oliva’s claims.
Dialogue on Self-Knowledge is a conversation between three male shepherd-
philosophers, Antonio, Rodonio, and Veronio, on the importance of affects for a
healthy or good life. At the core of this dialogic text, we find considerations on
3 Oliva Sabuco on Embodied Affects 21
the nature of the human being as an embodied mind or soul. Dialogue on the True
Medicine is meant to bring home the key points made across the four previous texts of
New Philosophy. But here, out of the three shepherds, only Antonio remains. Antonio
clearly represents Oliva. To indicate this stylistic choice by Oliva, I refer to Oliva-
Antonio when I directly discuss the texts from New Philosophy. So, while in Dialogue
on Self-Knowledge Oliva-Antonio challenges the medical and philosophical doctors
indirectly and/or in the third person, in Dialogue on the True Medicine Oliva-Antonio
confronts a “Doctor” on some of the received ancient theories about the causes and
treatment of illnesses of the soul and diseases of the body.
I take the central philosophical claim of New Philosophy to be threefold: that the
activity of the part of the soul that is the rational mind1 is modulated by affective
states and vice-versa, that this reason-affect modulation is inseparable from human
physiology, and that this modulation is consequently constitutive of human morality.
So, Oliva makes a complex claim: The human body, whose physiological functions
are modulated by affects, and the human rational mind or soul, which is organically
inseparable from embodied affective states, are constitutive of all humans as moral
beings.2
In what follows I present Oliva’s complex claim in three stages. I owe much in this
endeavour to the scholarly works of Gianna Pomata (2010) and Rosalía Romero Pérez
(2008; all citations are my translation from Spanish). First, I briefly address the debate
concerning the authorship of New Philosophy. Second, I consider Pomata’s and
Pérez’s non-androcentric approaches to New Philosophy. Third and last, I touch on
the philosophical basis of Oliva’s belief in a body-based inseparability of rationality
and affective states.
3.2 The Sabuco Question or El Caso Sabuco
Since New Philosophy’s first publication in 1587 Oliva had been a muse for Euro-
pean thinkers and poets, until 1903, when José Marco Hidalgo cast doubt over the
authorship of New Philosophy. Hidalgo was a Spanish scholar and wrote a short biog-
raphy of Oliva. Hidalgo claimed that the author of New Philosophy was not Oliva
but her father Miguel Sabuco, a well-known local apothecary with likely university
education and a network of acquaintances among medical doctors and naturalists.
Hidalgo discovered Miguel Sabuco’s will in an archive, written in 1588 and whose
last paragraph read:
I declare that I composed a book entitled New Philosophy … in … which I gave and give as
author … my daughter, only to give her the name and the honor, and I reserve for myself the
1 For a fine discussion of ancient theories of the human soul in Oliva’s time, see Marlen Bidwell-
Steiner, “Metabolisms of the Soul”, 2012.
2 I leave for another occasion the question of whether Oliva’s claim of organic inseparability carries
any justified formal beliefs about metaphysical indistinctiveness, and whether this is a relevant
question to ask of New Philosophy.
22 C. Lopes
fruit and profit that may result from the said book[s], and I bid the said daughter of mine …
not to meddle with the said privilege, under penalty of my curse, in consideration of what
has been said, beyond which I have made an attestation to the effect that I am the author and
she is not. (Pomata, 2010, 13)
The debate on the authorship of New Philosophy has generated some impor-
tant discussion on intellectual canon and women’s societal roles.3 For centuries the
European philosophical canon has determined what is thought proper in open or
tacit connection with a thinker’s sex, gender, religious, ethnic, or national identity. In
the case of New Philosophy, this behaviour was nuanced by personal family circum-
stances and changes for women in Spain. In the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries
in Europe, women started to write in large number, and men also started to actively
write in defence and praise of their intellectual abilities and contribution. The desire
of European women to emancipate from male tutelage had become firmly public in
the fifteenth century through the work of Christine de Pizan, an Italian philosopher
based in France.
The expression Querelle des Femmes refers to the public discussions and struggles
that ensued. Rosalía Romero Pérez notes how the male tactics of gender-alienation
changed: from publicly attacking women who ventured outside the intra-domestic
space, to publicly praising their virtues as wives, widows, ladies, and nuns (Pérez,
2008, 44–45). Only a few women achieved a meaningful degree of intellectual visi-
bility. In sixteenth-century Spain, in particular, social and economic conditions were
not conducive to a Querelle des Femmes mentality. Intense male emigration to the
“new world” enabled women to have more movement outside the home. Mainly, they
now had to take care of themselves and their children on their own and among them-
selves. In Spain, Pérez notes, women’s fight to break with a life of home enclosure
did not translate into a fight for more education for themselves as a separate social
group. Around the time that Oliva was writing New Philosophy, two influential men
were busy making their misogynistic beliefs public:
[T]he works of Fray Luis de Léon and Juan Huarte came to light; the former, a professor
of the University of Salamanca, as well as the latter, a medical doctor from Baeza, wrote
against the instruction of women, making use of arguments that affirmed women’s “natural”
intellectual inferiority. (Pérez, 2008, 45)
It is plausible to suppose that Oliva’s personal life circumstances may have enabled
her to flourish intellectually against the odds of her time. According to Pomata (2010,
23–25), there is some evidence that Oliva and her father may have been known
to a certain physician called Cristóbal de Acosta, a man who displayed a typical
3 Pomata (2010) discusses el caso Sabuco at length, and the authorship dispute is likely to continue
among scholars and historians. I find the archive or documental side of the dispute wanting if it aims
to provide proof of authorship. The documental evidence is arguably a product of the androcentric
and Inquisitorial mores of the time. All concerned with such documents, not least the male Inquisition
officers, notaries, fathers, husbands, brothers, and uncles, would routinely measure truth in relation
to the lie that could preserve life or secure wealth. In my view, the quest for a proof of who wrote
New Philosophy distracts us from furthering research on what medical and philosophical claims
make New Philosophy a gynocentric work. In my view, Bidwell-Steiner (2012) makes an exemplary
attempt in this direction.
Renaissance open-mindedness and passion for practical, experience-based knowl-

edge. Acosta apparently anticipated Oliva’s fame. A well-travelled and published
African surgeon, Acosta served in India as physician to a Portuguese Viceroy before
returning to Lisbon and Spain. He praises Oliva in his Tratado en loor de las mugeres
[Treatise in praise of women].4 Although Acosta’s book was published in 1592, it
seems that he wrote it in 1585, two years before the publication of Oliva’s New
Philosophy. Pomata quotes Acosta:
If the world, with so much reason, had not started to praise (…) the great learning of a living
Spanish lady, Oliva Sabuco, a native of these kingdoms, I would not have mentioned her
now, until the time when I hope to make her name for ever immortal, [that is] when I will
send you [the reader]—which will be soon—the book that this learned woman is writing
on the new philosophy and nature of man, and on the true medicine. In which you will
find—those of you who will read it with attention and without prejudice—all the philosophy
and medicine, of the ancients and the moderns, renewed with great cleverness, wisdom and
many demonstrations. (Pomata, 2010, 23–24)
According to Pomata, it is not possible to decide if Acosta is referring to Oliva

as the author of New Philosophy, or to Oliva as the pen name of her father (Pomata,
2010, 29–30). Following Hidalgo’s 1903 claim against Oliva’s authorship, many
scholars have come to accept that Miguel Sabuco may have written the work but for
unclear reasons registered the book in the name of his daughter (Pomata, 2010, 8–
30). For Hidalgo, Miguel Sabuco acted out of paternal love. Pomata suggests a more
reasonable motivation: if Miguel Sabuco is the author, he may have attributed the
authorship to his daughter in order to profit from the practice by a few men of writing
in defence of women. Other scholars encourage a defence of Oliva’s authorship from
a woman perspective, which Pomata does not accept to say the least:
Though Waithe and Vintró are quite right in pointing out that Oliva’s authorship has been
too easily discounted, and their research in the local archives has provided new and valuable
documentation, their eagerness to attribute the work to Oliva seems, in the face of the
evidence, a bit too much like wishful thinking. (Pomata, 2010, 22)
3.3 Oliva as a Woman Philosopher
Pérez and Pomata have separately argued that the way forward to address the Sabuco
Question is to focus on what may give New Philosophy a woman voice. They consider
passages in the book that challenge or replace androcentric explanations of health and
illness with anthropocentric ones, and they also indicate how this shift in gendered
attitudes to the human body is underpinned by a challenge to received philosophical
4Acosta (1595) also mentions Oliva, or “Donna Oliua Sabuio”, at the end of his book in a list of
Mugeres Sabias, Prudentes, Profetissas, Eloquentes, Secretas, Confiantes, Piadosas, Caritatiuas,
Amorosas, Leales, Castas, Onestas, Virtuosas, Valerosas, Magnaminas, and Excellentis: De Que
En Este Libro Se Haze Memoria [Women Who Are Wise, Prudent, Prophetic, Eloquent, Discreet,
Trustworthy, Pious, Charitable, Loving, Loyal, Chaste, Honest, Virtuous, Corageous, Magnamic,
and Excellent: Which This Book Remembers].
24 C. Lopes
theories about the rational soul. Without going into any analytical detail, I note that
in such passages at least four general beliefs are articulated: a naturalist belief that
human beings are rational instantiations of organic matter, a metaphysical belief that
organized human organic matter in the form of the body is an instantiation of an
intellectual soul, an ethical belief that interactions with others cause either health
or illness and disease, and a psychological belief that behaviour can be prescribed
which ensures health, that is, affective stability. The very title of the book is indicative
of its combined anthropocentric, philosophical, medical-psychological prescriptive
purposes: New Philosophy of Human Nature…Which Will Improve Human Life and
Health.
Pérez proposes that New Philosophy speaks of new possibilities of being human
that are open to all. She contrasts this particular aspect of Oliva’s anthropocentric
concerns with those of the Querelle des Femmes publishing phenomenon in France
and its Spanish counterpart, the Memorial of Agravios. Those were texts whose
primary goal was to redress intellectual and social androcentric beliefs. Pérez does
not identify this specific gendered goal in New Philosophy, instead calling Oliva’s
thought
a philosophy of possibility, for…it…introduce[s] new possibilities of existence or life options
with the ultimate goal of widening the circle of human autonomy and providing a theoretical
approach to the autonomous activities of women; for example, the education of children.
(Pérez, 2008, 47)
Furthermore, the responsibility for turning these new existential or vital possibil-
ities into actual ways of living is open to all humans. Such responsibility is rational
and ethical, and it must be practised in a deliberated way, namely, by controlling
our affective or emotional responses to life’s natural and social demands. Finally,
humans are responsible for this responsibility, that is, they must monitor and protect
the viability of its practice.
In Oliva Sabuco, the necessary virtue to have a good life is within the reach of all human
beings. … [T]he canon of the paradigm of autonomy lies in the exercise of temperance. Its
exercise is inseparable from the rational capacity. … The human being is its own greatest
enemy, for it does not know how to use that virtue, which means that it has in its hands
the capacity to avoid all kinds of ills in its body as well as in its soul. This capacity for
self-sufficiency that Oliva states…is within everyone’s reach, men and women (de todos y
todas), for temperance, which is the mistress, owner and governess of the health of the body,
and of the health of the soul, ‘placed itself low so that all could reach her’. (Pérez, 2008, 49)
If Pérez is right, the sense of autonomy that Oliva advocates may be described as
a forerunner of later meanings of autonomy found in the Enlightenment period, in
the generic sense that humans are free to choose a good life by responding to life’s
demands through the filter of ethical judgement.
Unlike Pérez, who appears to concern herself mostly with the historical context
of New Philosophy, Pomata focuses on its unique, gendered medical contribution.
None of the historians who have written on Nueva Filosofia…not even those who have
recently examined the text from a feminist perspective, have stopped to consider whether
something in the content of the book made it particularly appropriate, from a sixteenth-
century viewpoint, for a woman author … [W]e first have to locate Sabuco’s work in the
context of the medical debate of its time… (Pomata, 2010, 30)
In particular, Oliva challenged Galen’s medical view on the causes of disease,

according to which human passions or emotional affects are not attributes of the soul
and only indirectly influence health.
In line with present day interest in psychosomatic medicine, most recent studies of Sabuco’s
work have identified its main novelty in the idea that the emotions are the primary cause
of disease. The common view in Galenic medicine, in contrast, was that disease derived
essentially from the imbalance of the humours. In Galenism, the passions of the soul were
supposed to affect health only indirectly, as an external cause, like the other “non naturals”
(air, food and drink, sleep and waking, exercise and rest, excretion and retention). If anything,
it was the body that could affect the soul…rather than the soul the body. For Sabuco, by
contrast, it is primarily the soul that influences the body, and the soul indeed is the chief
cause of disease. (Pomata, 2010, 40)
More importantly from a medical point of view, Oliva argues in Dialogue on the
True Medicine that the brain is the root of all physiological functions, especially in
its nutrition activities, and so must be the physiological root of all health and illness
or disease. This view goes against both Aristotelian claims that this function belongs
to the heart and the Galenic belief that, in this regard, the liver has primacy over the
heart.
For Sabuco, the chief organ in the body and the source of nutrition is not the heart, as in
Aristotle, nor the liver, as in Galen, but the brain, because the main nutritive humor is not
blood (as in both Galen and Aristotle) but the brain’s “white juice [chyle, chilo].” The brain,
not the heart nor the liver, is the true organ of sensation, nutrition, and growth. From the brain
derives diseases and death: “The brain is the cause and workshop of all diseases’ humors.
There, in the brain, reside the feelings, passions, and motions of the soul; there is the seat
of sense perception; there is the root.” Man is a tree upside-down, whose roots (the brain) is
up, while its branches (the limbs) are down. The first role of the brain is to nourish and feed,
like a root, the whole body. (Pomata, 2010, 41–42)
Oliva makes a further, novel claim: the brain’s chyle expresses itself as semen in
men and milk in mothers (Sabuco, 1857, 281–282). This is one of many instances
in Dialogue on the True Medicine in which Oliva-Antonio, a shepherd-philosopher,
takes on the interlocutor, Mr Doctor, on ancient theories of the properties of blood
and function of circulation. The medical challenge put forward by the shepherd-
philosopher Oliva-Antonio is also an attack on the epistemic and social power
granted to learned men about health matters and its detrimental impact on empirical
reasoning. Oliva chooses irony and a combative style of writing at this point:
Doctor: To think that a mere simpleton of a rustic, who did not study medicine, has the nerve
to ridicule such eminent authors and to reform all of medicine, without having studied it and
with no books…
Antonio: … Yesterday I saw a big snake asleep under yonder tree, and a small spider come
down the tree hanging from its yarn, and with cunning and wile, after looking where it could
hurt the snake the most, enter snake’s ear and sting next to the brain. I saw the snake, after
the poison had reached the brain and knocked down its juices, turn over and go into fits and
26 C. Lopes
whirl around, until it fell dead; and the spider, without as much as breaking its yarn, went
back up its tree. … Indeed, you spoke the truth when you said that I did not study medicine
… I have had enough of reading Hippocrates and Galen, and reviewing the foundations of
their medicine while staying in the city…
Doctor: And so, Mr Antonio, only with nature without art you want to know more than the
ancients, who had both nature and art on their side?
Antonio: I don’t know anything, I will only tell you the truths I perceive, without refuting
anybody. If you don’t want to believe them, put them to the test of experience, and believe
experience, not me. … (Oliva, 1888, 255–257; Pomata, 2010, 118–120)
According to Oliva, as the brain’s chyle flows throughout the body, the regulation
of this system must be inseparable from the generation and interplay of affects.
Pomata observes that, while the question of how the soul affects the body was not
new, “Nueva Filosofia was unusual…in the emphasis it put on the emotions as the
primary cause of disease, and also for the detailed physiological mechanism that it
suggested to explain the actual process whereby the emotions bring about illness”
(Pomata, 2010, 41).
There is a particularly attractive reason to read the New Philosophy as a woman’s
work. While the reason may sound unsound by our standards of medical knowl-
edge, it represents a major challenge to the male dominated scientific environment in
which Oliva wrote. Namely, Oliva claims that moisture and not heat is the principal
medium of the affective regulatory system for body and rational mind or soul. At a
macrocosmic level, it is the moon and not the sun that regulates external processes in
nature: “Sabuco’s reversal of the traditional hierarchy of heat over moisture, and sun
over moon, appears even more startling if we consider the deeply entrenched gender
connotation of sun/moon symbolism in the Renaissance—the sun being consistently
represented as male and the moon just as consistently characterized as female”
(Pomata, 2010, 55).
3.4 Oliva’s Philosophical Thought
Pérez observes that New Philosophy is important in at least three ways: in its defence
of vernacular language as a valid vehicle for the communication of knowledge, in its
defence of empiricism as the touchstone of scientific knowledge, and in its defence
of the brain as the human organ that has the highest epistemic and moral value (Pérez,
2008, 35–37). Indeed, out of the seven texts that compose New Philosophy, the first
five texts are written in Castilian rather than Latin, and the book explicitly advocates
the value of empirical evidence rather than received medical authority to decide on
the truth of knowledge claims about human nature. New Philosophy shares these
two characteristics with other works of the period. But where the work comes of age
when compared to other contemporaneous works is in its claims that the brain has a
rational-affective function.
Some scholars have defended that Sabuco anticipated Descartes in holding the view that
the rational soul resides in the brain. This is an inaccurate remark. The woman author of
(la autora de la) New Philosophy insists that in the brain are also found anger or irritability
(la irascible) and lust (y la concupiscible), in order to show that that which Plato located in
other parts of the human body passed in reality first through the head.
(Pérez, 2008, 37)
By locating the source of affectivity and not only rationality in the brain Oliva
is also going against some of the ancient views on the hierarchy of the parts of
the soul. The radical natural attitude of Pliny The Elder is, in this respect, a major
influence on Oliva. Pliny lived between 23 and 79 CE in the region later known as
Italy, and his Stoic-Epicurean account of the human being as part of nature greatly
influenced Renaissance thinkers. From Pliny, Oliva borrows the Stoic cosmological
idea of nature as a creative power (natura artifex) that has the needs of humanity
as its guiding organizing rule and governs all life in an autonomous and purposeful
way. From the outset of Dialogue on Self-Knowledge, Oliva-Antonio offers the other
shepherd-characters examples of how affects govern the life of all animals and so of
humans too.
Antonio: … I would like to tell you about other animals so you may see how the sensitive
emotions [afectos] determine life and death. Pliny himself tells us that the dolphin is quite
fond of communication with humans and that one of them befriended and communicated
with a boy who lived close by the seaside. … This friendship and communication continued
until the boy developed a disease from which he died. The dolphin…went on moaning in
such extreme sorrow that it was found dead. …
Veronio: I believe that the same thing happens every day to many animals, although it goes
unnoticed. I would really like to know if this happens to humans.
Antonio: Jesus! It happens much more often and unparallel … [I]ntellectual emotions are the
most important ones, along with the sensitive [shared with other animals] and the biological
[shared with plants]. I will first give you examples of men who died of angry grief, which is
the most harmful emotion… (Oliva 1888, 5–14; Waithe et al., 2007, 47–48).
Oliva follows Aristotle’s conception of the soul as a substance that is found in all
forms of life, in plants, animals, and human beings. But Oliva’s anthropocentrism
is more directly rooted in a Stoic interpretation of the Platonic precept to know
oneself. Like many at her time, Oliva holds that the part of the soul that is responsible
for knowledge is rationality. Rationality concerns mostly cause-finding and reason-
giving behaviour. Pliny’s Stoic influence is felt in Oliva’s view that, unchecked by
morality, that is, if ignorant of ethical implications, rationality generates affects that
are conducive of illness and disease.
The knowledge of oneself consists not only in knowing from where bad things might come,
but also in knowing where the good things are. Among the [New Philosophy] affects that
sustain health, we shall indicate the affect of pleasure, contentment and happiness, hope for
the best, temperance, friendship, eutrapelia or good conversation, gratitude, etc, and, lastly,
there is another source of happiness which is the exercise of virtue: magnitude, prudence,
and wisdom, stand out among the safest ways to come close to the Divinity, and their use is
not as frequent as one would wish. (Pérez, 2008, 65)
While non-human animals have no choice but to feel and behave in complete
agreement with their affects, human beings have the choice to reflect on their beliefs
28 C. Lopes
and decide how they manifest emotionally or morally. Oliva’s advocacy of the practice
of this choice further reflects the influence of Stoicism in her work. Pérez notes
that there is something uniquely Spanish to the Stoicism of New Philosophy. This is
further considered by Oliver Baldwin (2020), who offers a compelling account of the
appropriation of Seneca’s life and ideas by Spanish intellectuals. So, following Maria
Zambrano (1984), Pérez indicates that Oliva’s Stoicism is a variety of Senequism,
which is illustrated in New Philosophy by the proposition that the affect of servitude
or loss of freedom is more humiliating than death itself.
The philosophy of Seneca is above all a medical art: it defends the care of the soul, so that
the soul may support life and prevent yet the inevitable: death. Oliva Sabuco is a Senequist
Stoic philosopher… The origin of the errors of written medicine is found by Oliva Sabuco in
philosophy, which concerned itself with physics and metaphysics and forgot nature itself. The
ancient philosophers wanted to know what there existed behind the furthest of all heavens,
and ignored what they had in their body, head and soul. In her work one finds the model
for a perfect technique to reach resignation understood as serenity, not conformism. (Pérez,
2008, 66)
I believe, however, that Senequism is not required for the formulation of New
Philosophy’s main claim. This is the claim that to achieve a rational or moral balance
among affects we must understand how they influence our soul, in particular, how
the parts of our soul co-generate healthy or good affects in the body, or ill or bad
/ evil affects in the body. Where Senequism comes into view is in Oliva’s second-
order claim concerning the ethical value of monitoring and deciding our affective or
emotional responses to internal, organic demands made by our bodies, and external,
social or natural demands made by others. New Philosophy attempts to reconcile
medical science and philosophy in practice, by calling for ethical action that identifies
the manifestation of affects in the body, that takes notice of how they influence the
soul and its rational part or mind, and vice-versa, and decides on the healthiest way
to control this mutual influence.
I regard this complex proposition of a co-dependence between rational soul or
mind and body as indicative that there is a theory of embodied affects in New
Philosophy. This theory is historically novel insofar as it upsets received andro-
centric Aristotelian and Galenic theories on the soul/mind–body relation. However,
it also encases, like a Trojan Horse, a theory of health. To be specific, it is unclear
to me what is the ethical justification of New Philosophy’s guiding idea that affects
are constitutively ill or healthy. The justification must not be, I presume, the book’s
promise of cure, which is the peddling of doctors and some philosophers for thousands
of years. Sandra Plastina puts well this guiding idea without questioning it.
Oliva Sabuco argues [that] the initial step towards finding a cure is to recognize the unhealthy
emotion and its harmful effects on us. Conversely, there are two emotions that produce health,
namely optimism and contented happiness. The third pillar or element of health is biological
or physiological: what Oliva Sabuco calls ‘digestive harmony’. Optimism and contented
happiness sustain biological life and the development of the human brain by creating harmony
and concord among the three parts of the soul: the biological or vegetative, the sensitive or
affective, and the rational or intellectual. In turn, this harmony produces the physical growth
and development of the brain’s core and its fluid (New Philosophy, 65). (Plastina, 2019,
742–743)
To give the reader an insight into New Philosophy’s moral equation of illness and
health with affects or emotions, it suffices to transcribe here the names of the affects
that Oliva enlists and discusses with studied stylistic simplicity in Dialogue on Self-
Knowledge. First, Oliva-Antonio expounds and makes recommendations about the
ill-affects or ‘emotions that cause disease’. These are as follows (Sabuco, 1587, 8–44;
Waithe et al., 2007, 47–64): Angry Grief [Del enojo y pesar], Anger at Imaginary
Things [Del enojo falso…ò imaginado, tambien mata como el verdadero], Rage [De
la ira], Sadness [De la tristeza], Dreadful Anticipation [Afecto del miedo, y temor],
Love and Desire [Del affecto de amor, y desseo…este afecto mata], Sudden Joy
[Afecto del placer, y alegria], Hopelessness [Afecto de desconfianza, ò desperanza
de bien], Hatred and Animosity [Afecto de odio, y de enemistad], Embarrassment
[Afecto de verguenza], Stress and Anxiety [Afecto de congoxa, y cuidado], Excessive
Compassion [Afecto de misericordia], Loss of Freedom [Afecto de servidumbre, ò
pèrdida de liberdad]. The ill-affects further comprise Seven Vices that are Mortal Sins
[Siete afectos, que son pecado mortal en el hombre]: Lust [De la luxuria], Laziness
and Idleness [De la pereza, y ocio], Jealousy [Afecto de los zelos], Vengeance [Afecto
de venganza]. Oliva then expounds and makes recommendations on health-affects
or ‘healthy emotions’ [afectos que dàn salud, y sustentan la vida humana]. These
are as follows (Sabuco 1587, 44–58; Waithe et al., 2007, 64–71): Joyful, Contented
Happiness [Afecto del placer, contento, y alegria], How the Rational Soul Destroys
Negative Emotions, Optimism a Pillar of Health [Afecto de esperanza del bien],
Temperance [Afecto de la templanza, y sufrimiento], Love of Others That Given to
Children Gives Health [Afecto de amor à su semejante…este afecto empleado en
los hijos dà salud al hombre], Friendship and Good Conversation [De la Amistad y
buena conversacione], Loneliness [De la soledad (solitude)].
Plastina writes that Oliva’s philosophical and medical considerations configure
a systematic empiricism that “leads her to regard as unsatisfactory any theory of
human nature that doesn’t take scientific evidence into account (New Philosophy,
38)” (Plastina, 2019, 750). But more important, in my view, is her positive assessment
of the theory of health found in New Philosophy, which, to be fair to Plastina, seems
to be echoed across the literature on New Philosophy: “Health is seen as a state of
physical, moral and spiritual wellbeing, which can only put down roots where there is
true social and political wellbeing. ‘Medicine will be the most fruitful and necessary
art of the nation’” (New Philosophy, 167). Accordingly, medicine is a healing art,
it “heals not a specific part of our body, but rather a unified entity, inhabited by
a vis, a life force, and a dynamic. Illness is merely a symptom which alerts us to
an imbalance, fracture, or interruption of vital energy flows, which may be either
physical or mental in their origins” (Plastina, 2019, 750).
3.5 Conclusion
The interest in New Philosophy remains active. I have presented some of its key
aspects, and in an introductory manner only. To do this, I chose the scholarship of
30 C. Lopes
Pérez (2008) and Pomata (2010) because of the way they address the doubt cast over
the authorship of New Philosophy. They separately argue that the way forward to
address the Sabuco’s Question is to focus on what makes New Philosophy a distinc-
tively woman’s work. As Pérez notes, Oliva’s claims about the brain challenged
received androcentric perspectives on what constitutes a human being and on the
ethical function of affects or emotions. Pomata emphasizes New Philosophy’s attack
on medical androcentrism by replacing the received belief that the sun and heat are
the sources of health or illness with the claim that the moon and moisture are the
principal medium of an affective regulatory system that integrates the activities of
the body and of the soul or rational mind.
Oliva’s resulting theory of embodied affects, as I have called it, grounded as
it is on a certain philosophical and scientific call for humans to be responsible
for their affects and agency, may be seen as a historical anticipation of debates
on freedom, autonomy, and humanity, in European societies and their brutalized
dominions. There are, however, some thorny problems for Oliva’s scholarship, one
concerning the scientific status of the medical empiricism that Oliva proposes, and
the other concerning Oliva’s uncritical association of health and moral good, and
illness or disease and moral bad or evil. Here is not the place to discuss to what
extent, if any, Oliva’s theory of embodied affects is problematic. I leave for another
occasion my analysis of Oliva’s theory of embodied affects and its Trojan Horse
theory of health.
References
Acosta, C. de. (1595). Tratado en loor de las mugeres, y de la Castidad, Onestidad, Constancia,
Silencio, y Iusticia: con otras muchas particularidades, y varias Historias (Treatise in praise of
women, and of Chastity, Honesty, Constancy, Silence, and Justice: with many other particularities
and Histories). Venice: Giacomo Cornetti.
Bidwell-Steiner, M. (2012). Metabolisms of the Soul. The Physiology of Bernardino Telesio in
Oliva Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofía de la Naturaleza del Hombre (1587). Blood, Sweat and Tears
- the Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe,, 661–683.
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004229204_028.
Baldwin, O. (2020). A Spaniard in Essence: Seneca and the Spanish Volksgeist. International
Journal of the Classical Tradition. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-020-00571-2.
Plastina, S. (2019). Oliva Sabuco de Nantes and her NuevaFilosofia: A new philosophy of human
nature and the interaction between mind and body. British Journal for the History of Philosophy,
27(4), 738–752. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2018.1549018.
Pomata, Gianna (ed. & trans.). (2010). Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera. The True Medicine. Toronto:
Iter Inc.
Romero Pérez, R. 2008. Oliva Sabuco [1562 – 1620] Filósofa del Renascimiento Español. España:
Almud Ediciones de Castilla-La Mancha.
Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, O. (1587). Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del Hombre, No Conocida
Ni Alcançada de los Grandes Filosofos Antiguos: La Qual Mejora la vida y la Salud Humana.
Obras de Dona Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, Prólogo [Foreword] de [by] Octavio Cuartero. Madrid:
Estabelecimiento Tipográfico de Ricardo de Fé, 1888.
Waithe, M. E., Vintró, M. C. & Zorita, C. A. (eds. & trans.). (2007). New Philosophy of Human
Nature: Neither Known to nor Attained by the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve
Human Life and Health. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Zambrano, M. (1984). ‘La cuestión del estoicismo español’. in María Zambrano and José Ortega y
Gasset, Andalucía Sueño y Realidad. ed. Emilio Rosales and Diego Romero de Solís. Andaluzas
Unidas.
Chapter 4
Context and Self-Related Reflection:
Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Way to Address
the Moral Objectiveness
Abstract In this work I intend to explore the textual and conceptual roots of the
moral view in the Early Modern Rationalism of Cartesian spectrum as detected by
Elisabeth of Bohemia. To this intent, I will drive my analysis, first, to the remark
Descartes adds to his own provisional morality of the Discourse in the Letter of
August 4th, 1645 to Elisabeth. Second, I will approach the two aspects of her reply
to Descartes, both in her Letter of September 13th 1645, which I call (a) the contextual
aspect—with which she excludes the hypotheses of an infinite science at the service
of assessing the good and (b) the self-related aspect, with which the philosopher of
Bohemia address the moral objectiveness as an intrinsic practical value, obtained
by the passions that may lead to reasonable actions. The upshot is a practical and
affective moral view, in which the normative trait of some passions of the soul can
be taken as the explanation of an intentional infrastructure of the mind, without,
however, a theory of ideas as such playing an explicit role. Instead of a represen-
tational endeavor, Elisabeth of Bohemia claims a kind of self-awareness from the
discovery of a passionate function as an expression of the adequate measure between
happiness and morality of actions. That kind of awareness, I shall demonstrate, is
what objectiveness consists in.
Keywords Elisabeth of Bohemia · René Descartes · Intentionality · Passions of

the Soul · Conscientia
4.1 Introduction
If there is any practical philosophy as such in Cartesian philosophy, it is due to Elis-

abeth of Bohemia (Shapiro, 2013) finding in Metaphysical Meditations. By practical
philosophy as such in Cartesianism I mean this: a theory of action in a practical
(moral, political, social) somewhat mind-related domain. The bond between a mind-
related domain and voluntary actions does not seem to be explainable by an evident
K. R. Peixoto (B)
e-mail: katarinapeixoto@hotmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_4
34 K. R. Peixoto
causal mechanism and that seems to be one of the reasons why Descartes took some
time (two years) to recognize the problem as Elisabeth presents it. Elisabeth’s first
question, as I understand it, supposes the non-applicability of a causal (mechanistic)
explanation, such as the one that explains the movement between bodies. What Elis-
abeth demands from Descartes is an explanation of how the mind, being a single
substance, can give rise to voluntary actions. There is no agreement in the literature
as to what exactly Elisabeth wanted to know, although there is some agreement as to
the fact that Descartes did not answer her satisfactorily (Garber 2001; Shapiro, 1999,
2013, 2019; Alanen, 2005; Ebbersmeyer 2020); be that as it may, clarity about the
nature of the issue seem to rely on an interpretation of the Correspondence as a set.
In fact, over the six years of epistolary exchange, one can observe a dialogical
dynamic characteristic of the Eighth Objections and Replies.1 So, if it is true that
Descartes did not answer Elisabeth’s first question satisfactorily, it is also true that,
especially from August 1645 onwards, there is a change in the philosopher’s treatment
of questions and in the status of the dialogue as such. This change, for Descartes,
occurs from the moment he becomes aware that Elisabeth is ill. If we follow her
replies to Descartes, in the first two years, we can identify that, for her, the change
in the Correspondence originates in the formulation of the problem that drives her
philosophical interest at least from the Letter of September 13, 1645.
If the choice for a path that recognizes a dialogical dynamic is consistent, it is due
to a regard on the nature of this epistolary exchange. For Elisabeth of Bohemia does
not address Descartes as an interlocutor among others, say, a doctor or theologian
or philosopher of nature interested in questions about the status of ideas, the nature
of the ontological argument, or the argument of cogito. The landmark of the corre-
spondence of Elisabeth and Descartes, from her perspective, seems to be rather that
of someone who is not speaking as a philosopher, or doctor, or theologian, but of a
reader or student searching for an explanation of an experience. That expectation is
in turn referred into Elisabeth’s reading of Metaphysical Meditations. The perspec-
tive adopted here is therefore practical in a strong sense: both in the broad sense of
a theory of actions, somewhat anchored in some intentional, say, representational
vehicle (inspired by her reading of the Meditations), as in the strictly practical sense,
of the will, passions, and actions. Accordingly, Elisabeth asks Descartes not only for
discretion (because she was shy), but for an Hippocratic oath.
In the present work, I intend to explore the practical and epistemic character in
Elisabeth’s thought within the dialogical dynamics between Elisabeth and Descartes.
This dynamic seems to be what drives the Princess of Bohemia: the search for an
adequate direction of voluntary actions, between internal well-being and prudence
guided by the context in which she finds herself. As I will try to make clear, this
sense of the adequate direction of voluntary actions will be treated as objectiveness
and not as objectivity. That is to say, as something self-related. During the epistolary
exchange, Elisabeth develops a position that seems to have two aspects of a moral
1 Antonia Lolordo (“Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind and its Early Critics” (2019) In: Philosophy
of Mind in the Early Modern Ages. Rebecca Copenhaver (Ed.) vol. 4, Routledge, pp. 69–90) called
the Correspondence with Elisabeth as such and I think she is right, so I’m following it.
4 Context and Self-Related Reflection: Elisabeth … 35
view of her own, though not requiring the substantial monist metaphysical framework
(as we may find in Spinoza’s Ethics, for example), but in a practical context of actions
and passions of the soul.
None of these statements are assented in the literature; there is some exploratory
work to be done in order to enlighten the issue of the moral objectiveness in Elisabeth
of Bohemia’s Rationalism. As I read it, the Princess finds what come to be presented
as a twofold moral view from her finding in the Metaphysical Meditations, that is to
say, from the discovery of an eventual explanation for voluntary actions that do not
rely on the characteristic mechanism of Cartesian ontology, nor on a foundationalist
path anchored in the cogito and in a theory of ideas. This approach, as a take it,
is practical and contextual and I suggest it has two tenets. The first is a contextual
one and the second (underlying it) that of the conscientia. The contextual aspect
“a)” plays a key role in the determination of aspect “b)”, although without a bold
metaphysical reflection. It is true that women philosophers recovered in history have
among their paramount expressions practical concerns (Shapiro, 2005), however,
the practical trait of Elisabeth’s thinking is not in full given at first sight, not even
to Descartes, whom she addresses, starting a long-lasting epistolary exchange. In
fact, aspect “b)” seems to be somewhat immanent and only starts to be addressed as
such after Descartes’s addition of a crucial remark to his provisional moral code, first
presented in the Third Part of Discourse. From then on, both aspects of Elisabeth’s
moral view came to light. Thus, it is worth stepping into what is not given so as to
have a bit of context from the addition Descartes makes to his own quotation of the
provisional moral in his Letter of August 1645 to the Princess of Bohemia onwards.
This text contains 2 parts. The first I dedicate to the analysis of the remark made
by Descartes in his Letter to Elisabeth of August 4th, 1645. In this part the objective
will be to demonstrate how the French philosopher is lead to find in his method a
way of dealing with the problem posed by his friend, the Princess, after he became
aware of her debilitated health condition. To do so I will depart from the turning
point in the epistolary exchange, which happens, as I read it (that is to say, if we
take her perspective in the exchange in its full sense), from his Letter of August
4th 1645. The second part begins with her reply to the additional remark Descartes
makes in his return to the provisional moral code, in the Letter she addresses on
13th September 1645, in which we may observe both aforementioned aspects “a)”
and “b)” as if claimed by her. In the third and final part, I intend to assess the
extension of Elisabeth’s finding in the Cartesian practical thought, because of her
query. We may eventually discover that Elisabeth tried to face the challenge of the
moral objectiveness by means of the self-related reflection among others and her
own affective environment.
4.2 Towards the Practical Turn
What I take as a practical turn in this epistolary exchange relies on the fixation of
a common ground among peaes, from the awareness, by Descartes, of her health
36 K. R. Peixoto
condition. So, it may seem adequate to say that the real dialogue between philoso-
phers begins when Descartes, after two years of epistolary exchange, recognizes
the practical perspective that guides the discussion from her point of view. Then,
Descartes starts to address Elisabeth’s health condition (Letter of May or June 1645,
AT IV, 218) as if seeking to repair his previous fault. In that exchange of recommen-
dations and counseling still of things apparently external to Cartesian method, one
can recognize the two strands of context and self-related reflection coming into play.
4.2.1 Self-Related Contentment: Myself Alone X Sinning

Against Duty
Descartes tries to make some ordinary suggestions to his friend, soon after becoming
aware of her health condition. In the Letter of May/June 1645, he insists in saying that
the health measures against unhappy thoughts should be found within oneself (inter-
nally): “I have always had the inclination to regard things which present themselves
to me from the most favorable perspective and to make my principal contentment
depend on myself alone” (AT, IV, 221—my emphasis). The intent here seems to
be to encourage Elisabeth, though she thinks otherwise. In her Reply of June 22nd,
1645, we read:
If I could make my mind conform to your last precepts, there is no doubt that I would cure
myself promptly of maladies of the body and weakness of the mind. But I confess that I find
it difficult to separate from the senses and the imagination those things that are continuously
represented to them in conversation and in letters, so that I do not know how to avoid them
without sinning against my duty (AT, IV, 234 – my emphasis).
A hasty reading can take this statement as a practical and epistemic side-taking
of the body and sensitivity, instead of inner data (that is, mind modifications as ideas
or passions of the soul). But if we go a bit further we may find that things are less
obvious than they might seem, in Elisabeth’s thought. We may eventually verify that
there are two different ways of approaching unhappy thoughts that can make one
ill: the one from inside and the other, as I will explore farther, “in between”. These
two ways don’t fall in fact under a two-ways dynamic, pointing to two different
directions (as will become clear), due mostly to Elisabeth’s claim that she was not
able to separate herself in order to be able to become indifferent to the circumstances
she was in. She claims a perspective of being among others and, with more emphasis,
the philosopher of Bohemia seems to not remove herself off the circumstances of
actions or even to accept the possibility of take a stand differently from that, under
the risk of committing “sin” against her “duty”. She is there referring to her social
condition and the power and responsibilities linked to it. There are, then, two strands
in dialogue here: an internalist one, from Descartes, and a social one, from Elisabeth.
Eventually, more than merely strands, there is also some normative aspect at play,
not only because the conversation turns into a health discussion, but because she
inserts her social position as a kind of coercive command.
4.2.2 The Additional Remark: “No One Has Ever Explained

It in This Way”
Between June and August of 1645, Descartes sends three different Letters to Elis-
abeth.2 The French philosopher thus resorts to an expedient that still denotes the
strangeness of moral concern as an issue of his own philosophical program: the
proposal of reading together Seneca’s De vita beata (AT, IV, 224); although he
adds his reservations against the neo-stoic view: according to him, it would be just
derivative from external circumstances (destiny). Aligned with his internalist view,
Descartes is still unaware of the practical implications of his own method, though he
adds to the previous bibliographical suggestions his view in contrast to Seneca’s. The
proposal is made only “on the basis of the reputation of the author and the dignity of
the subject matter, without thinking of the manner in which he treats it” (AT, IV, 263).
There are at least two aspects in the neo-stoicism that serve the purpose of helping
his friend: (1) the naturalist and faithless approach and (2) the use of natural reason
as “a guide” to happiness. Then, the French philosopher presents, for the first time,
the conceptual puzzle that will occupy both of them, namely, Seneca’s thesis about
beatitude:
“Vivere omnes beat volunt, sed ad pervidendum quid sit quod beaam vitam efficiat,
caligant” (“All men want to live happily, but as to seeing clearly what brings about
a happy life, they are in a fog3 ”), that is the first sentence of Seneca’s dialogue. The
first problem is to face the external aspect of moral criteria in the neo-stoic moral
view: “It is necessary to know what vivere beate means, I would say, in French, to
live happily [vivere hereusement], if there wasn’t a difference between good fortune
[l’heur] and true happiness [beatitude]”. It may not yet be clear how it happens, but
this is the first step following an underlying shift. For it seems unequivocal that there
is a sort of mismatch between words and meanings, as noted by Shapiro, in her note
to this passage:
L’heur here adverts to good fortune, and so heureux is best rendered in this letter as ‘fortunate’
in keeping with this. La béatitude is the sovereign felicity Descartes adverts to in his previous
letter, or ‘sovereign contentment’ below. I translate it here as ‘true happiness’. In keeping
with this I will translate its adverbial form en béatitude as ‘happily’. In latter letters, however,
Descartes uses heureux to mean ‘happy’ in concert with achieving the sovereign good. Other
uses of the term are ambiguous, and many certainly include both happy and fortunate. (AT
IV, 264, note 60, p. 97).
As it will become clear, all of these remarks on the best way to translate an expres-
sion is not a trait of a vernacular, but of a conceptual fuzzy zone of an underlying
shifting. For while Descartes was concerned with happiness as a health issue, Elis-
abeth seems to view it as something entangled with other things. It is correct that,
in this same letter of 04 August 1643, the French philosopher presents the tenets at
2 It is true that some Letters of this Correspondence are lost. The interpretation now suggested,
however, seems consistent with de dialogical dynamic at play.
3 Lisa Shapiro’s translation. I’m using the Translated and Edited Correspondence Between Elisabeth
and Descartes made by professor Shapiro.

38 K. R. Peixoto
stake in Seneca’s expression of “good fortune”, to establish his contrasted view with
the one expressed there.
This good fortune depends only on those things that are external to us, so those to whom
some good comes without their having done anything to try to attain it are deemed more
fortunate [plus heureux] than sages. On the other hand, true happiness consists, it seems to
me, in a perfect contentment of the mind and an internal satisfaction that those who are not
favored by fortune ordinarily do not have and that the sages acquire without fortune’s favor.
Thus, to live beate, to live happily, is nothing but to have a mind that is perfectly content and
satisfied (AT, IV, 264).
We may identify three traits in the approach above: (1) there is a problem in
Seneca’s conception of good fortune due to its indifference with respect to the subject
of knowledge, so there could be, in his neo-stoic program, happiness without knowl-
edge, which Descartes considers unduly giving place to unfairness, insofar happiness
could be independent of the action domain; (2) true happiness should depend upon
one’s mind being in perfect internal satisfaction with itself, without destiny’s favor
(or any sort of external determination) and (3) being happy is something the mind
can and should do by itself. Descartes goes further and suggests to Elisabeth his
provisional morality, as presented in the Third Part of Discourse, then reaffirming
that there are two kinds of sovereign contentment: one dependent on us and another
independent of us and thus out of reach. This provisional moral code is explained by
Descartes according to three rules. Rule number one: it is more useful to be guided
by moderate opinion so as to not “sinning against the good sense” (ATVI, 23); rule
number two: acting decisively as a “traveler” when find himself as if lost in a forest,
without wandering about other possible ways, but keeping one and only direction
(ATVI, 25), and rule number three: “master myself rather than fortunes, and changing
desires rather than the order of the world” (ATVI, 25–6). A way to summarize these
rules could goes like this: be moderate in judgments, among others; act in one direc-
tion when lost, no matter what and, finally, master your own self, rather than desiring
to change the world.
For Elisabeth, there are some difficulties in this code (even taking into account
the internalist emphasis added by the French philosopher to it). She disdains this
neo-stoic approach represented by Seneca, while aligning her thought to what she
finds in Cartesian philosophy and goes even further than the remarks the French
philosopher had made to the neo-stoic suggestions of how to be happy. Then, in the
same Letter, when resuming the provisional moral code once explained in the Third
Part of Discourse, Descartes shows the novelty after presenting the second rule of
this moral code as follows: to have a “constant resolution to execute all that reason
advises him to do, without having the passions or appetites turning him away from it.
It is the firmness of this resolution that I believe ought to be taken to be virtue, even
though I know of no one who has ever explained it in this way” (AT, IV, 265—my
emphasis). That last sentence is not present in the Discourse, and it is not an innocent
statement.
4.2.3 Seneca’s De Vita Beata: A Proposal “Without Method”
Until then, the French philosopher seems to be concerned with defending happiness
and health as a result of firm observance of reason and reflection on one’s own
mind and mental states, without giving in to passions. Elisabeth responds with two
objections, on August 16th, 1645.
In examining the book that you recommended to me, I found quite a few nice parts and
sentences well-conceived to give me a subject for an agreeable meditation, but not for
instructing me in what it treats. For they are written without method, and the author does
something other than he set out to do. ... I demand nothing other than that you continue to
correct Seneca. I do so, not because your manner of reasoning is most extraordinary, but
because it is the most natural that I have encountered and seems to teach me nothing
new, but instead allows me to draw from my mind pieces of knowledge I have not yet
apprehended, (AT, IV, 269 – emphasis mine).
From this reply, Elisabeth takes a stand for her moral quest. First, she thinks that
the Cartesian method is more fundamental and must precede edifying considerations
from outside. Also, it should be noted here how plausible it is that Elisabeth may have
searched the Cartesian method not to challenge it, but because she considered it the
most natural. Second, there is a moral problem in the way Seneca deals with privilege.
Here, on her own path, Elisabeth takes a stand in the so-called debate on luxury, or
on the morality of privilege, which would mark the moral and political discussion
throughout the 17th and the eighteenth century; in a sentence, Elisabeth does not just
refuse that good is determined out of the mind (aligned with Descartes); she also
refuses that injustices should be accepted as an expression of fortune (as something
that occurs in spite of human action). In doing so, once again, the philosopher of
Bohemia claims her social position, as a leader and as socially privileged despite all
the misfortunes of her family, revealing as it seems, her own thinking (Shapiro, 2013,
2019; Ebbersmeyer 2020). While Descartes critiques the external and thus arbitrary
character of Seneca’s conception of good fortune, due to its inevitable epistemic
opacity, Elisabeth takes it so also in its practical (say, normative) trait. There is a
problem of epistemic criterion not only in choosing whether to reward a good action
or not; the unfairness may be verified in the luxury as well. The lack of method
would entail the acceptance of unfairness, as she emphasizes in the second part of
this Letter, when mentioning Epicurus and the differences between what she takes
as a traditional (philosophically speaking) point of view and a social one (such as
hers).
When Epicurus was struggling to convince his friends that he felt no pain from this kidney
stones, instead of crying like the vulgar, he was leading the life of the philosopher, and
not that of a prince or a captain or a courtier (…) [he] knew that nothing could come to
him from outside that would make him forget his role and cause him to fail to rise above his
circumstances according to his philosophy. On these occasions regret seems to me inevitable.
(AT, IV, 270)
In the letter of September 13th, 1645, we may observe a normative trait being
advanced at the service of a more developed philosophical view. She ponders about
40 K. R. Peixoto
the link between rational knowledge that would have to be sufficient for virtuous
action and the perfectibility of that action. If what is required is knowledge, would
it be necessary to have an “infinite science” or an infinite understanding, to act
virtuously? There is also a quest for a criterion of distinction between passions,
insofar she does not take it as being only at odds with the reasonable actions. This
distinction seems to be at the root of the search for a definition of passion, which
Elisabeth makes at the end of this letter. The claim of a constructive trait in passions
of the mind leads Elisabeth and Descartes to level their philosophical dialogue upon
to the furniture of the mind. The fact that the philosopher of Bohemia at any time gets
rid of a politically coercive condition illuminates the intelligibility of a conception
of action as something that occurs in an inter-subjective landscape. It is as if she
had stated that it is not practical or even epistemically feasible to dissociate from
the senses and the imagination. The discussion on the will also demand a deeper
reflection on the nature and horizon of action, among others; Elisabeth offers a
realistic horizon for thought about freedom in inter-subjective voluntary actions, a
philosophical position of her own.
4.3 Context and Self-Related Reflection: Elisabeth’s Moral

View
Elisabeth’s moral thought is presented in an explicit and developed way in her Letters
from 13th September 1645 on. There we find her straightforward considerations, in
a dialogue among peers, on moral issues entangled in the Cartesian framework of
mind and will. At this point, it is worth noting that her way of approaching the roots
and the structure of the moral objectiveness may be taken as having two aspects: (a) a
contextual framing (which is not determined by a metaphysical landscape) and (b) a
self-related trait (which is not indifferent or withdrawn from the environment). With
those the philosopher of Bohemia addresses the ambivalence that she had detected
in the passions of the soul in her self-related objectiveness quest.
4.3.1 Context as Epistemic Boundary
The first strand is contextual and seems to operate as both horizon for actions and
as their epistemic boundary. In Elisabeth’s Letters from September 1645 to the end
of 1649 we may observe the issue of moral objectiveness as a sort of social issue
backing her exchange with Descartes. I will take Elisabeth’s conception of context as
an epistemic boundary which falls under aspect “a)”. We will then be able to explore
how complex and challenging the way Elisabeth addresses the normative scope of
moral actions is. In order to proceed, we have, first, to heed the role of the exclusion
of the hypotheses of an infinite science (and after also that of an infinite knowledge)
at the service of her quest for objectiveness in moral life.
Soon after her critique of Seneca’s complacence to luxury as corollary of a gift
from fortune, Elisabeth takes a stand with respect to rewards and fairness. Again,
her social condition is stated in order to demarcate the problem involved in the
complexity of the right path to follow as, in case of lack of a measure, due to the
opacity of pleasures and habit. The exile of her family seems to play a key role in
Elisabeth’s thought. The fact that she was almost her whole life dealing with the
difficulties of exile and Europe’s religious and territorial conflagration in the Early
Modern Period is present in many Letters of this Correspondence. Her family was
directly affected by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and she stood out not only
as an intellectual, but as a social and political leader of her family. She assumed
leadership roles and responsibilities tied to the family legacy and also took sides in
disputes of a religious nature with a political impact: Elisabeth refused to convert
to Catholicism to marry the King of Poland Wladislav IV Wasa (1595–1648). She
leaves The Hague for taking the side of one of the brothers (Philip) in an armed
conflict and then breaks up with another brother, Edward, who divorced to marry a
Catholic, Anne of Gonzaga, converting to Catholicism. After the establishment of
the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years’ War, Elisabeth and her family saw
the restoration of the Palatinate, but the differences with her brother’s decision to
convert made her decision to leaves Heidelberg. She will only finally be welcomed
in Herford, where she becomes a local leadership and an Abbess. There, Elisabeth
performs social and political functions and uses her power and influence to protect
dissenting religious minorities, such as Dutch Labadists and English Quakers. The
tasks of an aristocrat in exile and the responsibilities linked to this condition were
mentioned several times by her in the letters to Descartes. She would have neither
the time nor the freedom to practice philosophy, and she was always busy with
the affairs of the social relations of the court life. Taking the social context as an
epistemic frontier, instead of a pre-established or immanent metaphysical landscape,
is appropriate to the horizon of voluntary actions, for Elisabeth. And although she
regretted the condition and lived through the misfortunes of her family, she continued
to exercise power functions and thinking about power relations. That is what stand
for the root of her quest for the right measure of prudence for the actions within the
Cartesian project as it is in the Metaphysical Meditations (Ebbersmeyer 2020).
It is according to that practical and somewhat coercive context that we may
approach her concerns about the right measure for actions. And, along the same lines,
on the problem of deliberation between the risk of repentance—due to imprudence,
say, when following only pleasure of contentment as criterion—and the Cartesian
requirement of knowledge in order to achieve the good. To the risk of a reckless
action Elisabeth opposes the impossibility of achieving or being informed by an
“infinite science” (AT, IV, 289): “In order to esteem these goods in this way, one
must know them perfectly. And in order to know all those goods among which one
must choose in an active life, one would need to possess an infinite science”. So, the
context seems to lie somewhere between contentment and perfect knowledge. And
42 K. R. Peixoto
it will become clear for the Philosopher of Bohemia that neither alternative is what
drives her search for a target for the right action, that is to say, for objectiveness.
We could formulate the issue she seems to have in mind in this way: (1) on what
basis my contentment can be taken as a measure for my moral actions and (2) how far
(what is the adequate measure, to what extent) can I know what I should so as to act
morally? Although it may be taken as a classical formulation of a deliberative puzzle
familiar sounding to an Aristotelian eye, that is not the case, due to the role that “2)”
plays in this assessment of good, that is to say, due to her epistemic, say rationalist,
commitment. To summarize Elisabeth herself, in the Letter of August 1644 (AT,
IV, 132), one should follow the good that is known by one’s understanding. So, the
point is not only that I can chose between, say, “1)” or “not-1)”, but also that we
have to know better, that is, we have to know how to choose the adequate “1)”.
This complexity pushes Elisabeth to reveal the strength of her partial viewpoint,
limited by others and entangled with passions, in an exchange of mental and humor
states at least in the relatively neutral (in practical matters) level. In other words,
there is no object or objectiveness whatsoever, insofar as all that she has available
to her reflection, here, is her inner life as such, perhaps as a fruition, more of an
epistemic sort. “One always changes one’s mind about the things that remained to
be considered. In order to measure contentment in accordance with the perfection
causing it, it would be necessary to see clearly the value of each thing, so as to
determine whether those that are useful only to us or those that render us still more
useful to others are preferable”. (AT, IV, 289). However (or because of it), the mere
fact that some passions seem to do good rather than any harm, leads Elisabeth to
wonders if it would not be the case to search for a more comprehensive definition of
passions:
I would also like to see you define the passions, in order to know them better. For those call
them perturbations of the mind would persuade me that the force of the passions consists
only in overwhelming and subjecting reason to them, if experience did not show me that
there are passions that do carry us to reasonable actions. But I assure myself that you will
shed more light on this subject, when you explicate how the force of the passions renders
them even more useful when they are subject to reason (AT, IV, 290 – emphasis mine)
Lisa Shapiro considers this demand as “leading Descartes to write the Passions
of the Soul” (Note 79, AT, IV, 290. P. 110). As the root of a textual and conceptual
work, this passage deserves attention to Elisabeth’s steps. After the exclusion of the
hypotheses of an infinite science which would supposedly be necessary in order to
know the adequate extension of a moral action; after the realization of the opacity in
a context of passions, Elisabeth turns her attention to her own passions while pushing
Descartes to deliver an improved definition of the passions. The explanatory aspect
underlying her quest seems clearer: it is her experience with her own passions that
presents the need for a Cartesian (and not neo-stoic) approach of passions. It is from
that on that the normative aspect of passions, inside her mind, comes into play.
In this quest for a more comprehensive definition of passions, Elisabeth has to
exclude not only the hypotheses of an infinite science, but also the input of a meta-
physical framing. In this path the statute and scope of the immortality of the soul, the
dualistic imposition of its superiority with respect to the body, and of the nature of
God and the rules of nature as presented in the Third Part of Principles (AT, IV, 303)
are replaced by a practical context. Then she questions Descartes about the measure
of the evil which one can bring upon oneself or against the public life. “For the sake
of public against the good which will accrue to the public, without the evils seeming
greater to us inasmuch as our idea of them is more distinct? And which measure will
we have for comparing those things that are not known to us equally well, such as
our own merit and that of those with whom we live?” (AT, IV, 303). An expectation
for a more precise definition of passion reveals itself as a result of moral concern: not
only are contentment or unhappiness at stake, but also the possible harm to others.
The epistemic inquiry is at the service of practical problems, however, so far, of
moral nature only (the political nature will have its place some years from then). To
that Letter in which Elisabeth had questioned the nature of evil actions against oneself
or against other persons, Descartes responds with a peculiar notion of “agitation of the
spirits” (AT, IV, 311), with which “evil” would be somewhat presented, as something
to be avoided as such. Elisabeth’s search, though, depends upon, first, the exchange
of passions; second, the experience she has with her passions, when she discovers
an asymmetry between passions that make us carry out reasonable actions and those
that do not. Then, she goes on to explore the issue of criterion for moral agency.
Following these steps, we may grasp why she proceeds to exclude the hypotheses of
an infinite science as well as the metaphysical framework as it is in the Principles.
Furthermore, Elisabeth keeps supporting her inquiry in her experience, so that
the last criterion that is admissible is closely related to her experiences in her social
environment. She seems to be clear, however, that neither her experience nor the
context afford, in fact, “the last word” on the issue of objectiveness: her inquiry is
based and (as I shall explore direct to) a self-related reflection, as an epistemic and
practical device. Accordingly, the way she views the finding of an ambivalence in
the passions seems to open an epistemic path backing up her experience. And as I
read it, this underlying structure is what occupies Descartes’s last work: Passions
of the Soul (1649). Within the epistemic boundary of a practical context in which
she is in, with her social and political condition, her mind came into the scene, as
an object of a self-related experience, that is to say, as conscience: an infra-structure
that explains the self-related objectiveness. This self-related objectiveness unravels
a new path to the rationalist mind according to Elisabeth.
4.3.2 The Self-Related Objectiveness Required to Assess

the Adequate Good
Let me begin this sub-section with a clarification. What do I take as objectiveness and
in what would that expression have another sense than that of, say, “objectivity”?
I consider that objectiveness has an aspect of what the object is for the subject
who perceives or wants, and objectivity has a representational aspect external to the
subject and shared with others, since the beginning of the experience. Then, due
44 K. R. Peixoto
to the displacements promoted by Descartes as a result of Elisabeth’s provocation,

it will become clear how this distinction conveys an underlying shift of a practical
nature.
We have seen that Elisabeth’s quest is, from the beginning, for an explanation
of the voluntary actions, by means of the determination of what she calls “bodily
spirits”. So one would have the determined bodily spirit and, as the outcome of that
determination, there would be discovered the explanation of the nature of voluntary
actions. The grammatical junction between a corporeal adverb (a manner of the body)
with an immaterial mind should mean a red flag, signaling something not allowed
by the metaphysics of Cartesian substantial dualism. The Princess was not unaware
of the argument of the real distinction (AT, VII, 78) and did not express any criticism
against it, nor against dualism, for that matter. To the fact that Descartes had taken
some time (two years) to seriously consider what she was questioning, Elisabeth
replied with new formulations of the same question and, as far as an exchange
between peers was developing (after august 1645), she went on refining her position
and did not withdraw from there in any way whatsoever.
What is this position, after all? As I read it and have already mentioned above, that
is a practical stance: moral and social, which expresses a self-related objectiveness,
that is, a reflection upon the social and moral traits of a conscience. This exploratory
path is not easy, considering that the sign of such stance, that is to say, a theory of
ideas or, perhaps, a theory of sensations, is not available. That is so because in the
Eight Set of Objections and Replies we are not exposed to a theory of ideas or to
a direct dialogue on the nature of ideas. Based on what, then, should we assume
Elisabeth is considering a self-related objectiveness? If we do not have at hand a
theory of ideas, what allow us claiming that stance?
In her letter of 28th October 1645, Elisabeth seems to point out to an asymmetry
between mind and body in a way until then absent from the conversation: “If we
measured the scope of the human mind by the example of the common people, it
would be of very small extension, because most people use their capacity for thought
only in matters regarding the senses. Even among those who apply themselves to
study, there are few who use anything but their memory or who have the truth as the
goal of their labor” (AT, IV, 321). It is important to pay attention here to the context
in which Elisabeth introduces this item, the representation of the mind itself, in the
dialogue: the Princess is replying to the Cartesian approach to passions not only as
neutral, but as an expression of subjugation of rationality and the mind itself (see,
AT, IV, 312–3).
Elisabeth recognizes passions as non-neutral—in normative matters—and not
exactly irrational: passions are ambivalent and furthermore passions have a sort of
moral role to play, in the theater of the mind (I’m borrowing Steven Nadler’s use
of Hume’s expression, 2013, p. 135).4 Taking it as moral, though, is not the easiest
way to proceed in case we left behind what underlies their roles played in this
4I’m choosing to mention a “use” because Nadler, as I read this work of him, establishes a dialogue
with the Humean approach of personal identity by Cartesian philosophers in the Treatise (I, 4,
Sect. 6): “The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appear-
ance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There
peculiar theater. Of course it could be easier if we were supposedly to take passions

as phenomenal consciousness data (at least not yet, I mean, considering this analysis
is precedent to Passions of the Soul, where we will find more easily the objects of
passions), but we do not seem to be allowed to enter it—again, we do not have
a discussion on the nature and scope of ideas at hand, nor a theory of sensations.
Elisabeth is not thinking of passions as sensations and also because of it we should
not regiment Cartesianism to the framework of the comprehensive discussion, as
Christian Barth takes it, that evolved into the “Phenomenal Intentionality Research
Program” (or simply PIRP).5 Still, following the lines of analysis opened by Barth
and Nadler, we may recognize that.
Descartes describes conscientia in transitive terms. He says that subjects are conscious of
or have conscientia of their thoughts. (...) Descartes’s way of talking about conscientia is
shaped by the following implicit claim about the nature of phenomenal consciousness: the
intransitive phenomenal consciousness of mental episodes is explained by a form of transitive
consciousness the subject has of these episodes (Barth, 2016, p. 19).
The distinctive element of Cartesianism with respect to the PIRP exploratory way
is that “the material aspect presents the inner object to the mind” (Barth, 2016, p. 25)
however, this is not what explains, exhaustively, the problem of having inner objects;
that is to say: to have an active aspect as an operation of the mind which is not itself
representational.6 Descartes does not seem to consider that conscientia is identifiable
with phenomenal consciousness, because there is also, in a sort of recursive stance,
is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we
may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead
us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant
notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed.
/What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions,
and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence through the whole
course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish betwixt personal identity,
as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in
ourselves. The first is our present subject; and to explain it perfectly we must take the matter pretty
deep, and account for that identity, which we attribute to plants and animals; there being a great
analogy betwixt it, and the identity of a self or person”. So, as for Hume there could be two entities
to what minds referees to, to Descartes and other Cartesians (such as those analysed in Nadler’s
paper), the reference would be one, with two orders within it. I thank to Plinio Junqueira Smith for
the reminder of Hume’s reference, implicit in the use of the expression “theater of the mind” by
Nadler, as I read it, in a somewhat indirect and perhaps ironic way of replying to the Humean attack
as a Cartesian—or Spinozist—could do.
5 I’m following the lines of Christian Barth, in his study “Descartes on Intentionality, Conscientia
and Phenomenal Consciousness”. Studia philosophica, 75/2016, pp. 18–19.

6 This aspect is clearly expressed, as I read it, in The Third Meditation, from ATVII, 37, specially,
and also in the discussion on the material falsity of ideas between Descartes and Arnauld, on the
Fourth Set of Objections and Replies. Albeit in a different perspective (perhaps a more realistic
Cartesianism), with respect to the nature of the representational trait of the Rationalism, Kurt Smith
recognizes this operational and not necessarily representational (or actually so) in the Fourth Replies,
as we may read in this passage: “In taking the idea formally, the sense that requires us to look for
the cause of the idea’s objective reality, Arnauld is led to the conclusion that there can be no idea
that represents cold as a positive and real quality. This is so because in lacking formal reality, cold
cannot be the cause of the idea’s objective reality. As Descartes appears to be contending, had
46 K. R. Peixoto
that is, in Nadler’s “theater of the mind” a kind of self-related knowledge even when
not propositional (Barth, 2016, p. 28). To this sort of self-related knowledge Barth
names “a kind of knowledge by acquaintance”. I intend to show that this is the same
stance that, in Elisabeth’s thought, responds to her use of the expression “conscience”.
How and why should we cross the path Elisabeth follows with this visit to the PIRP
discussion, and in what basis should we go that far (apparently) when a theory of
ideas is not available?
Before we get back to the Letter of 28th October 1645, we should profit of a
short visit to the Princess’s use of the expression “conscience” along the epistolary
exchange (with my emphasis in the term “conscience” in all the quotations below).
For, in August 1644 (AT, IV, 131) she says: “My conscience tells me that I will not
be able to do so adequately”, in a strict practical, even daily, meaning. And, in May
1645 (AT, IV, 209), we read her saying that “I think the fact that a sensitive mind,
such as my own, has conserved itself so long amidst so many difficulties, in a body
so weak, with no counsel but that of her own reason and with no consolation but
that of her own conscience, would seem more strange to you than the causes of
this present malady”. When the dialogue between peers is installed, in September
1645, (AT, IV, 288), Elisabeth states: “If my conscience were to rest satisfied with
the pretexts you offer for my ignorance, as if they were remedies for it, and would be
exempt from repenting having been so poorly employed”. In the same Letter, after
excluding the use of the hypotheses of an infinite science as required to assess the
sovereign good, Elisabeth seems to count on conscience as a recursive stance: “You
say that one cannot fail to be satisfied when one’s conscience testifies that one has
availed oneself all the possible precautions” (AT, IV, 289). Years later, recording how
upset she was facing the conversion and marriage of one of her brothers, she ends the
comments by saying to Descartes: “If you take the trouble to read the newspaper, you
could not fail to know that he has fallen into the hands of a certain group of people
who have more hatred for our house than affection for their religion, and he has let
himself be taken in by their traps to such a degree as to change his religion and make
himself a Roman Catholic, without having made the least grimace which might have
persuaded the very credulous that he did so for the sake of his conscience” (AT, IV,
336).
In all the uses of the expression “conscience” mentioned herein, we may observe
that there is a self-related dynamic operating on her comments. As a personal stance,
not only of hers, but of her brother and of her social condition. It is true that, in not
using a theory of ideas or resorting to the eventual ambivalent status of sense data,
the concept of an “inner object” simply seems absent. However, in two different
moments and Letters, Elisabeth uses the word “conscience” as a third part or person
Arnauld taken the idea materially, he would have taken the representational feature of the idea (the
quality cold) in light of the idea’s being a medium or operation of representation, namely, as
that mental operation by way of which some mode of the ice cube was being represented.
Taken materially, he would not have taken it to be something that exists outside of thought,
that is, as a thing requiring some level of formal reality. This seems to be the point of Descartes’
defense in the Fourth Replies” (2005, p. 219), Rationalism and Representation, in: A Companion
to Rationalism, Alan Nelson (ed.), Blackwell, pp. 206–223 – emphasis mine.
in a way that raises expectation of a complement, an outcome or a counterpart to it,

say, if not a clear object of an idea, an objectiveness of the will. So, in October 1646,
assessing Machiavelli’s theory of government in The Prince, Elisabeth affirms:
It seems to me as well that to teach how to govern a state, he starts from the state which
is the most difficult to govern, where the prince is a new usurper, at least in the opinion of
the people. In this case, his own opinion of the justice of his cause could serve to ease his
conscience, but it will not ease his affairs where the laws oppose his authority, the great
undermine him, and the people curse him (AT, IV, 521 my emphasis).
In this passage, the conscience of the Prince, qua usurper, is in such a way at odds
with moral authority that he would have to obtain a unique conception of justice to
bear himself before his stance in relation to his people and God. Of course, Elisabeth
does not explain which conception would that be. However, while this stance is taken
as what stays for the expression “conscience”, its counterpart remains obscure. What
is its objectiveness? To be clear, the bond in point here is that which a conscience as
a practical stance establishes with its expression: a voluntary action. To be clearer:
this action should be an external expression of an inner object. But an inner object
of what? It is important to resume the step Elisabeth takes. For, in her Letter of
28th October 1645, after saying what should not count in the nature of the mind,
she recognizes an unequivocal normative trait at the service of the well-being or
the happiness of the “conscience”, while refusing the Cartesian indifference of the
external world as some sort of remedy against sadness.
In running from the repentance for the mistakes we have made as if it were an enemy of our
felicity, we run the risk of losing the desire to correct ourselves. The risk is particularly
great when some passion has produced the mistakes, because we naturally love to be moved
by our passions and to follow their movements, and only the inconveniences proceeding
from this course teach us that such mistakes can be harmful. This is, in my judgment, what
makes tragedies more pleasing the more they excite sadness, because we know the sadness
will not be violent enough to carry us to extravagances or lasting enough to corrupt our
health. (…) it seems the passions can never be both excessive and subject to reason (AT, IV,
322—my emphasis).
Elisabeth is concerned with the limits and functions of the passions, not only
because of her disagreement with the Cartesian approach to passions as something
that should be avoided or that in some sense would be pathological. In the same
Letter, the philosopher of Bohemia resumes her quest on the epistemic boundary of
the knowledge of passions, as it seems, in order to present a theory of prudence. This
time, aligned explicitly with her commitment to context, Elisabeth does not use an
infinite science to contrast with the kind of knowledge available in a realm of moral
actions. As she says to Descartes:
You do not think that we need an exact knowledge of how much we should reasonably
interest ourselves for the public, because insofar as each person relates everything to herself,
she will also work for others, if she is served by prudence. Of the whole of this prudence
I only ask of you a part. For in possessing it, one could not fail to do justice to others
and to oneself. A lack of prudence can cause a person at liberty sometimes to lose the
means, to serve her country because she abandons herself along with her country, for
failing to risk her good and her fortune for her conservation. (AT, IV, 324 – emphasis
and gender turn in the use of pronouns in the first part of the quotation are mines).
48 K. R. Peixoto
In her subsequent letter, of April 1646, she points out, aiming a right criteria for
morality, that an infinite knowledge (and no more science) would be required to grasp
the measure of the value of goods and evils (AT, IV, 406). While repositioning in a
social scenario the problem of criteria for action, Elisabeth also makes a last use of
“conscience” which deserves attention. What is at stake in this use is the transition,
from the problem of the determination towards the underlying determinant structure
whose related objectiveness is presented. And as I have been trying to present, what
underlies the conversation from her perspective is this moral stance as self-related.
How this bond is established, however, is still not clear. It is true, one might say, that
the real issue here, namely, the objectiveness of morality, rests as a major difficulty
in the Early Modern Rationalist program (at least in Descartes, Spinoza7 and, now
we may know it, Elisabeth), insofar it seems to invite the inner world to the moral
sphere, that is to say how should we determine our underlying self-related mind in
the prudent direction? The reference of the prudent direction is the objectiveness,
this exact measure of practical and partial (prudent) knowledge, not subsumed to
metaphysics nor to the neo-stoicism of Seneca then regimented by Descartes.
What is it? What would this measure be? My suggestion is that it is a target of
a therapeutic journey: her self-conscience. In the two last letters partially quoted,
Elisabeth mentions “conservation”, which seems aligned with being healthy and
passionate, under a rational measure (say, of joyful or constructive passions). She
never gives us the full picture of the stance and its determined voluntary actions.
However, in one of her last Letters, in July 1648, Elisabeth takes herself in the third
person and makes the most judicious approach to this picture. After some common
complaints about her circumstances and the tumultuous and bleak horizon for her
family, Elisabeth ponders on the issue of what seems to be that objective measure:
From one side, she will be unwilling to break her word, and from the other her friends will
think that she did not have the will or the courage to sacrifice her health and her repose for the
interest of a house for which she would still give up her life if it were required. This upsets
her a bit, but it does not succeed in surprising her since she is well accustomed to suffering
blame for the faults of others (even on those occasions where she would not want to rid
herself of it) and of seeking her satisfaction only in the expression that her conscience
gives her of her having done what she must. (AT,V, 210-211 – emphasis mine)
7 The problem of objectivity or objectiveness, depending upon the explanatory view in play, may
be found in the Preface of the Fourth Part of Ethics, when Spinoza’s states: “As far as good and evil
are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves, nor are they
anything [10] other than modes of thinking, or notions we form because we compare things to one
another. For one and the same thing can, at the same time, be good, and bad, and also indifferent.
For example, Music is good for one who is Melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither
good nor bad to one who is deaf. [15] But though this is so, still we must retain these words. For
because we desire to form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to, it
will be useful to us to retain these same words with the meaning I have indicated. In what follows,
therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we [20] may
approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves. By evil, what
we certainly know prevents us from becoming like that model. Next, we shall say that men are more
perfect or imperfect, insofar as they approach more or[…]”, in: The collected works of Spinoza.
Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Philosophy—Collected works. I. Curley, E. M. (Edwin M.),
1937.
At least two points should be explored in that text. The first is the way Elisabeth
approaches her conscience as a position, not only in a grammatical expression of
a third person and, more importantly, the role of experience in the moral judgment
with respect to one’s own actions and ability to assess the objectiveness of these
actions. In this picture, happiness seems to be expressed as satisfaction before her
self-related objectiveness, obtained by a reflection upon one’s own acting in the past.
There seems to be at play a sort of diachronic dynamic which unravels at once her
commitment to both aspects of the self-related objectiveness: the conscience obtained
by a nuanced acceptance of passions of the soul that establish and grant the right
thing to do, through—underlying it—a sort of virtual presence in the determination
of what should count as the last criteria for determining objectiveness. The key role
is therefore played by the notion of “expression”, in such a way that we might figure
a propositional attitude. We may have a first and a second-order levels of awareness
that, at least for Elisabeth, follow from a self-related journey within our (attention to
her use of conscience) own passions.
To make the point clearer, perhaps we should borrow the framework suggested
by Nadler, referring to Descartes and to some “major Cartesians” of the time: La
Forge, Malebranche, Régis. “Be that as it may, even if virtual reflection does account
for some low-level kind of self-consciousness, it is intended primarily to explain
phenomenal consciousness” (Nadler, 2011, p. 139). Apart from the differences in
nomenclatures and time, we may, in Elisabeth’s theater of mind as I suggest here, take
the first “low-level” of self-consciousness as what she (and, for that matter, Descartes
as well) calls “conscience”, while we may observe a moral dimension to the mind
in her thought; and, in the more contemporary vocabulary, take the “phenomenal
consciousness” as her approach of passions of the Soul.8 Then, we may figure out
the rich and dynamic infra-structure of Elisabeth’s conception of mind. That would
be a bit at odds with a Cartesian metaphysical landscape:
This notion – broached by Descartes (although also found, perhaps, in Augustine and others)
and explicitly elaborated by Arnauld – that consciousness qua conscious awareness (…) is
accounted for by the virtual reflection of a first-order act of thought rather than an explicit
second-order act of thinking directed at a first-order act – in fact became the standard
view among seventeenth-century Cartesians. (Nadler, 2011, p. 139 – my emphasis).
This explicit second-order act would count as a propositional attitude, such as “I
want that x (say, some expression of my will)”, or “I think that doing that determined
action is good for me and for others”, or even “I want this action as it is, due to its
precise measure of correctness” that is to say, pointing out to something outside of
the mind though internal to conscience. These attitudes are also what we can call
intentionality. It is somewhat disconcerting to approach a theory of mind in Descartes
8I shall thanks to Professor Lisa Shapiro for her recomendations to be cautious while using this
vocabulary in a somewhat fast way. I don’t intend to examine the concept of conscience itself,
nor the Cartesian approach of it, along the lines of Barth’s paper refereed above. I don’t aim to
put Elisabeth’s thought under a phenomenological lens. Being aware of the conceptual distinction
between conscientia and consciousness do not preclude, nevertheless, the use of this inner order in
play, in which the conscientia, as a moral dimension of the mind, seems to, for Elisabeth, support
and give the criteria for action in the economy of passions and actions.
50 K. R. Peixoto
without the help of its most traditional door of entry, namely, the Cartesian theory
of ideas. However, it seems that the perspective from which Elisabeth addresses
Descartes shows a new path of explanation for moral actions, not merely as an
expression of the struggles of the will against, say (or as a chapter on the long battle
on) akrasia, but as a mind dealing with its moral furniture (of passions, actions and
inner experience of self-learning), knowing what makes its pieces be pieces of her
conscientia. The economy of passions seems to play a major “furniture function” in
the dynamic of the moral actions, for Elisabeth. And she goes through her journey
by means of the experience afforded by her social condition within the boundaries of
a context and by her search of the more adequate way to know how her conscience
determines her moral actions. In other words, that she does that with her conception
of mind as she found in Cartesian presentation of it, in the Meditations.
My proposed reading of the dialogue between Elizabeth and Descartes may be
taken as an approach to this question: how is my own happiness rightly related to
others and to the social environment I am in? How did the know-how9 to act morally
become reliant on this internal infra-structure, without losing its measure? How is
that possible?
4.4 Final Remarks: Elisabeth’s conceptual legacy

to Rationalism.
The notion of conscience for Elisabeth seems to be the path opened by her reading
of the Metaphysical Meditations. As the epistolary exchange develops, her practical
and affective moral inspired by the Cartesian method as she reads it becomes more
developed as entangled in moral, health and happiness stances. It would be reckless
to say that the due Cartesian answer to Elisabeth’s quest should be just: “do whatever
you want, knowing it – by acquaintance, of who you are – at least in some unreflected
way”. On the other hand, it would be idle to say that happiness consists in being
healthy and sadness consists in being ill, so morality has nothing to do with it. In one
paper on the legacy of Cartesianism, Thomas Lennon states that the foundationalist
view entailed by the “epistemological turn” in Cartesian literature led philosophy
in the direction of subjectivity, in such a way that it has become less concerned
9 Eros Carvalho called my attention to how the kind of knowledge and perspective I recognize in
Elisabeth may be approached by the distinction between know-how and know-that, made for the first
time, as such, by Gilbert Ryle, in 1949 (especially in The Concept of Mind and also Jason Stanley
in his Know-How—2011), which gave rise to a vast literature on the theory of action, especially in
the tradition of analytical philosophy. It is possible that this more epistemic aspect, if I may say so,
of the approach of the nature of practical knowledge that I recognize in Elisabeth, deserves specific
attention under this analytical tool. On the one hand, it is not clear that a return to Aristotle gives
“the last word” on the subject in a satisfactory way, given the unavoidably epistemic trait of Early
Modern Rationalism (to not mention the subjectivity perspective of any philosophical inquiry in
the Cartesian tradition). On the other hand, it is possible that, in the PIRP, a distinction between
know-how and know-that affords us more promising extensional elements for analysis. In any case,
this is a possible path of investigation, still open, I mean: not yet covered, as such, here.
with what we know than with how we know it. (Lennon, 2008, p. 469). When we
look at this aspect of the Cartesian project, overall through the long-lasting epistolary
exchange with Elisabeth, we find the same repositioning of the philosophical inquest,
at the level of a sort of practical knowledge—perhaps as something somewhat like
the know-how knowledge, as Ryle and others along with the lines of this literature-,
however derivative of the same field opened by the Cartesian conscientia.
The problem with which Elisabeth struggles is explored by Descartes in his last
work: Passions of The Soul (1649). When taking the Correspondence with Elisabeth
as a set, one can have a vision of the complex landscape of the problems posed by
the Princess as a pushing forward, for the first time, of some problems opened by
the method of the French philosopher so as to give a practical and moral expression
for it. The upshot is more open and problematic due to its necessary ambivalence.
That is to say, situating the moral issue in the subjectivity domain comes at the price
of a psychological approach, which may be just an evasive expedient, under a moral
point of view. However, Elisabeth’s concern with moral objectiveness is there to
remind us that being healthy is not only a matter of a mind, alone with itself, but of
a mind in its “theater”, so, in Elisabeth’s view of it (which includes conservationist
or constructive passions), in a social context.
Acknowledgements This work is part of a wider research project, which is also the first project
on a woman philosopher at post-doctoral level to be officially supported by a Brazilian funding
agency. The project examines Elisabeth of Bohemia’s views on intentionality and responsibility in
the context of Cartesianism and was awarded funds by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific
and Technological Development (CNPq – 2018 Universal Call for Applications). One of the stages of
the above project was the First International Conference on Women in Modern Philosophy that took
place at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). The work on Elizabeth of Bohemia presented
in this Volume was developed under the supervision of Professor Edgar da Rocha Marques at UERJ.
An initial version was presented during the conference in Rio and discussed with colleagues who
made many helpful suggestions. I would like to thank especially Pedro Pricladnitzky, Eros Moreira
de Carvalho, Plinio Junqueira Smith, and Lisa Shapiro, for their judicious and critical reading,
contributions, corrections, and supportive dialogue. None of them is responsible for the views
expressed in the above work or any remaining errors.
References
Hume, D. (2012). A Treatise of Human Nature. Project Gutenberg License at www.gutenberg.org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm#link2H_4_0043
Ebbersmeyer, S. (2020). Bohemia Elisabeth of. D. Jalobeanu, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), Encyclopedia of
Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_409-1
Ouvres of Descartes, (1974–76). ed. Charles Aman & Paul Tannery, (AT) 12 vols. (Paris:
CNRS/Vrin)
The Correspondance between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. (2007). Edited
and Translated by Lisa Shapiro. The University of Chicago Press.
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol I & II (1985). Translated by John Cottingham, Robert
Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (CSM), Cambridge University Press
52 K. R. Peixoto
Spinoza, B. (1985). The collected works of Spinoza. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Philos-
ophy—Collected works. I. Curley, E. M. (Edwin M.), 1937- . II. Title. B3958 1984 199 .492
84–11716 ISBN 0–691–07222–1
Secondary Sources
Alanen, L. (2005). Descartes and Elisabeth: a Philosophical Dialogue? In: Feminist Reflections on
the History of Philosophy, Kluwer Academic Publishers. L.Alanen & C. Witt (eds), pp. 193–218
Barth, C. (2016). Descartes on Intentionality, Conscientia, and Phenomenal Consciousness. STudia
Philosophica, 75, 17–32.
Lennon, T. (2008). Descartes’s Legacy in the Seventeenth Century: Problems and Polemic. In:
Janet Broughton & John Carriero (Eds), Descartes - A Companion,Wiley-Blackwell; 1st edition,
pp. 467–481
Lolordo, A. (2019). Descarte’s philosophy of mind and its early critics. In: Rebecca Copenhaver
(Ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern Ages, vol 4, Routledge, pp. 69–90
Nadler, S. (2011). Consciousness Among the Cartesians. Studia Leibnitiana, Bd. 43, H. 2, pp. 132–
144
Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. The University of Chicago Press.
Shapiro, L. (1999). Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The union of soul and body and the practice
of philosophy. In: British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7:3, 503–520
Shapiro, L. (2005). Some thoughts on the place of Woman in Early Modern Philosophy. Alanen,
L. &Witt, Charlotte, (Eds). Feminist Reflections on the history of philosophy. The New Synthese
Historical Library 55, Springer, pp. 219–242
Shapiro, L. (2013). “Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Edward N. Zalta (ed), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/elisabeth-bohemia
Smith, K. (2005). Rationalism and Representation, Alan Nelson (Ed.), In: A Companion to
Rationalism, Blackwell, pp. pp. 206–223
Stanley, J. (2011). Know How. Oxford University Press.
Chapter 5
Some Notes on the Concept of Matter
in Cavendish
Juliana Abuzaglo Elias Martins
Abstract Our goal in this work is to show how relevant is the notion of matter for
Cavendish’s natural philosophy. More than that, we intend to show it is a unique
and singular concept as she demonstrates it has some special aspects that compose
it. We intend to understand these aspects of her notion of matter and in what way
can we say that this concept of matter sets Cavendish apart from others seventeenth
century philosophers like Descartes and Hobbes. Cavendish’s materialism is consid-
ered a form of vitalism, for it is based and depends on notions such strength and
power. From the notion of matter comes another important concept for her: motion
or movement. Self-movement of the natural bodies for Cavendish is the key to illus-
trate how matter and motion are taken as almost equal terms that together are blended
and give life to everything in nature.
Keywords Matter · Motion · Cavendish · Materialism and bodies
5.1 Introduction—The Role of Cavendish on Mechanicism
We intend to present here some observations about the notion of matter in Cavendish,
showing how this concept occupies an important place in her natural philosophy and
showing how her idea of motion follows this notion. In the context of the seventeenth
century, natural philosophy is a view that looks for the principles and causes at
the physical world. Cavendish defends a materialist version of natural philosophy,
according to which matter is a basic element of reality, the basis of everything that
exists in the world. From this perspective, Cavendish’s materialist ideas dialogue with
those of her contemporaries like Descartes and Hobbes. Cavendish agrees with them
because she also rejects the Aristotelian explanations for the movement in nature and
changes in the material world. Aligned with those two Descartes and Hobbes, she
does not accept that the transformations in material nature can be of a psychological,
J. A. E. Martins (B)
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
e-mail: jaeliasm@hotmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_5
54 J. A. E. Martins
spiritual or immaterial order.1 Still, one may ask if Cavendish’s view that every part of
matter is sensitive and rational is a version of the view that material transformations
can be “psychological”.
Descartes and Hobbes are influenced by the mechanistic view, and take matter
to be just extended substance. In general, Hobbes reduces all reality to matter and
identifies it to extension, so perceptions, thoughts and imagination have origin in and
are reducible to states of the extended substance. He would, therefore, be a materialist
reductionist because he reduces everything to matter. All spaces are reduced and
equivalent to extension. There is no other substance in reality to be considered as the
cause of phenomena, besides the material one.
Descartes is a dualist because he admits not only the extended substance, but the
existence of another substance: the immaterial thinking substance. However, as far
as physical reality is concerned, Descartes agrees with Hobbes and identifies it with
the notion of an extended substance, admitting no substance other than extension to
compose it. Like Hobbes, he considers that there are no empty spaces, for everything
in the physical material world equals extension. Empty spaces, like bodies, would
be properties of matter and in this sense they need an underlying substance.
Since the mechanistic perspectives of Descartes and Hobbes are based on the
concept of extended substance, and this concept covers any and all physical space,
any conception of empty space would be inconsistent in the mechanistic view. The
physical matter of the world which is embraced by the notion of extension would be
something with no life of its own, no motion of its own and without sensible qualities.
Both Hobbes and Descartes argue that changes and movements of the material world,
that is, of extension, are governed by laws that are mechanistic and that explain the
movements of bodies.2
On that point Cavendish differs radically from both of them. Her understanding
of matter is quite different from both thinkers. She accepts that there is an extension
in the world, and she accepts the association and identification of this substance
with physical matter. Cavendish thus shares the criticism that mechanists make of
atomism. But, for Cavendish, matter is not mere extension. Cavendish conceives
matter as something dynamic and alive, with self-motion. Her natural philosophy
can therefore be defined as materialism, but maybe a radical one. In addition, many
commentators associate this materialism with vitalism, that is, with the belief in an
active and physical vital impulse in nature itself. For Cavendish, matter is a blending
of three distinct elements. First there is inanimate matter, which is a type of matter that
has no movement of its own. Then there are two kinds of animate matter: sensitive
animate matter, which involves sensation; and rational animate matter, which involves
1 For an explanatory view of this scenario see Marshall, E (Ed.) (2016) Introduction in “Cavendish,
M: Observations upon Experimental Philosophy” p. xiii. or Duncan, S. (2012) Debating Mate-
rialism: Cavendish, Hobbes, and More in History of Philosophy Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 4,
391–409.
2 Descartes in paragraph 36 from Book 2 of Principles of Philosophy (DESCARTES, 2012) presents
two causes for the movement, one universal and other particular: God and Nature laws. God when
creates the world, creates it also with some move, and particular moves are caused nature laws, that
is, how the movement goes from one body to the other.
5 Some Notes on the Concept of Matter in Cavendish 55
knowledge. These two notions, sensible and rational matter are both animated, that
is, these matters would move themselves. As Cavendish puts it: “But nature is an
infinite composition of rational, sensitive and inanimate matter” (Cavendish, 2016,
p. 29). And also on that, she says: “There is a double degree of corporeal self-motion,
rational and sensitive” (Cavendish, 2016, p. 34).
5.2 Cavendish’s Materialism
Cavendish holds that these three dimensions of matter are blended in all sorts of
particles that make up the things in reality. Every portion or amount of matter in
the world, whatever form it has, will be composed of a mix of those three aspects.
On this blending, she writes that “every part or particle of nature, consisting of the
same commixture [the blending], cannot be single or divisible” (ibid., p. 29). So
animate matter is the cause of the movement in all nature. As Marshall (2016)3
explains, Cavendish cannot accept that spirits are the cause of the movement of
bodies, only the bodies themselves, and, between animate and inanimate matter which
constitute bodies, only animate matter. To accept inanimate matter as responsible for
the movement of bodies would be to accept the mechanicist view, and Cavendish
argues that mechanic laws cannot account for an infinity of variety and action in
nature.
A question that rises here is whether those three dimensions of matter are charac-
teristics or aspects of one and the same matter, or whether they are different types of
matter. Would there be considerable difference in these two positions? According to
Cavendish: “ There is one lonely matter, and one kind of matter, though of several
degrees” (Cavendish, 1644, p. 111)4 and “ My opinion is that the sensible and rational
parts of Matter are the living and knowing parts of Nature.” (ibid, 1644, p. 59).5 In
the first passage, we are told that matter is only one, and she also admits that there
are different degrees of this single matter. In the second passage, she states that the
rational and sensory dimensions would be parts of matter, parts of nature. Although
there are difficulties here, we can perhaps infer that for Cavendish understands that
there is only one matter, and that reason and sensitivity are aspects and ways of this
one matter.
At this point, it seems difficult to decide what would be the ontological condition
of these two material dimensions, the rational and the a sensitive one. On the one
hand, to say that they are degrees of matter can be interpreted as ways or even modes
of a thing, but to affirm, as in the second quotation, that they are parts of matter,
is to confer to them some objectivity, which could suggest that thinking matter and
sensitive matter may be independent parts, which is something that Cavendish would
3 Editor’s Introduction.
4 Philosophical Letters. Letter 35, from Sect. 2. (Writings she wrote to a fictional woman, in which
she explains her worldview).
5 Letter 18, from Sect. 1.
56 J. A. E. Martins
not agree with it. We must therefore acknowledge a tension between her saying that
the kinds of matter are modes and her saying that they are parts, for “parts” seems
to suggest independent things.
The passage quoted above (Cavendish, 2016, p. 29)6 may shed some light on
this topic. There Cavendish states that the blending of the three dimensions of
matter would be a close, inseparable mixture. Furthermore, keeping with her criti-
cism of the atomist perspective, she states that there are no isolated parts in nature:
“It is impossible to have single parts in nature, that is, parts which are indivisible
in themselves, atoms, and may subsist single, or by themselves, precise or separate
from all others parts.” (Cavendish, 2016, p. 28). Although Cavendish seems to use
the term “parts” as if she were referring to objects and bodies and not to aspects of
matter, we may conclude that for her vitalist materialism makes it difficult for her
to conceive of “parts” in this sense. Overall, the problem seems to be that parts must
be themselves substance-like rather than mode-like.
5.3 Movement of Bodies
As we look at this notion of matter as that of a blending of three dimensions, the ques-
tion also arises of how is movement possible. In relation to the movement of matter
itself, since every particle of matter has an animated dimension, it also has the capacity
to self-move. And this seems to have some consequences, regardless of the question
posed above of whether in practice the dimensions would be different types of matters
or a ways of the same matter. One consequence seems to be that, even considering
differences of portions or quantities of each dimension in the material objects of the
world, matter and movement would be, in general, only one thing: “There can be no
abstraction of motion or figure, from matter or body, but they are inseparably one
thing” (Cavendish, 2016, p. 33). And as reality is understood in materialistic terms,
we may also say that on Cavendish’s view there would be movements everywhere.
Furthermore, self-motion of each part of nature causes and is responsible for the
changes of bodies, for the variation of forms found in nature: “The parts of nature
are nothing else but the particular changes of particular figures, made by self-motion”
(Cavendish, 2016, p. 33). And further still: “Without motion, parts could not alter
their figures; neither would there be any variety in infinity nature” (Cavendish, 2016,
p. 32). In her Philosophical Letters (1644), Cavendish states that there is one only
matter:
As there is but one only Matter, so there is but one only Motion; yet I do not mean, there
is but one particular sort of motions, as either circular, or straight, or the like, but that the
nature of motion is one and the same, simple and entire in itself, that is, it is mere motion, or
nothing else but corporeal motion; and that as there are infinite divisions or parts of matter,
6 “But nature is an infinite composition of rational, sensitive and inanimate matter, which although
they constitute one body, because of their close and inseparable conjunction and commixture,
nevertheless, they are several parts (for one part is not the other part), and therefore every part or
particle of nature, consisting of the same comixture [the blending], cannot be single or divisible”.
so there are infinite changes and varieties of motions, which is the reason that I call motion as
well infinite as matter; first that matter and motion are but one thing, and if matter be infinite,
motion must be so too; and secondly, that motion is infinite in its changes and variations, as
matter is in its parts. (Cavendish, 1644, p. 100)7
Here, besides elucidating that Matter is only one, Cavendish proposes that nature’s
variety is based on matter’s and motion’s infinity: matter’s diversity derives from
variation of parts and motion’s diversity derives from changes and variation. Even if
Cavendish does not explain what a “part” of matter is, we may take that sensitive and
rational matters are not types of matter, insofar as there is only one matter. Cavendish’s
materialism is a vitalist one, for while admitting the existence of an inanimate matter,
inanimate matter is conceived but as an aspect of matter. For movement does not come
from outside matter.
5.4 Final Remarks: Cavendish’s Nuance, the “blended”

Entity
When there is movement between two or more bodies, how does that come about?
On this point, Cavendish’s position differs from the mechanicist thinkers. For these,
the movement that occurs between two bodies occurs because, in the contact between
them, one transfers to the other the movement, the action. In Philosophical Letters
(1644), more specifically in Letter 30, Cavendish responds to Descartes’ mechanistic
position on movement, more specifically on the collision of two bodies. According
to Descartes, in this kind of collision there would be transfer of movement from one
body to the other. However, Cavendish does not agree with this:
I have chosen in the first place his [Descartes’s] discourse of motion, and do not assent to
his opinion, when he defines motion to be only a mode of a thing, and not the thing or body
itself; for in my opinion, there can be no abstraction made of motion from body ... As for
example, in two hard bodies thrown against one another, where one, that is thrown with
greater force, takes the other along with it, and loses as much motion as it gives it. ... One
body may either occasion, or imitate another’s motion, but it can neither give nor take away
what belongs to its own or another bodies substance. (Cavendish, 1644, p. 98)8
There are at least two arguments here: (1) If motion is a mode, as Descartes holds, it
cannot be transferred; and (2) Descartes is wrong to hold that motion is a mode, since
motion cannot be abstracted from matter. On the occasion of a collision between two
bodies, a body that strikes another body causes in the other the movement inducing
the other to move. When one strikes another, the one that is affected happens to
imitate the other body thus producing its own movement. The transfer of motion
is not accepted because, being equal motion and matter, matter would have to be
7 Letter 30 from Sect. 1.

8 Letter 30 from Sect. 1.
58 J. A. E. Martins
transferred or passed to the other body as well. In this way, the bodies would change
in size and shape in the occasion of contact with another.9
In her vitalist materialism, therefore, an explanation of the movement of bodies
which would not be from nature itself, i.e., in material terms, is not accepted. Imma-
terial causes, as coming from God or immaterial spirits are not accepted, although
Cavendish admits some role for God as the creator of nature.10 However, nature
itself, insofar as it is free or at least is not under any artificial (non-natural) order,
may be taken to be responsible for movement itself (Cavendish, 2016, p. 34). Any
portion of matter has the capacity to self-move once it has sensible and rational parts.
Concerning this conception of matter and movement, an issue arises: how can the
inanimate dimension of matter, admitted by Cavendish to be, in all bodies, in all
parts of nature, move? On this we can read some clarifications in Letter 30:
But to return to Motion, my opinion is, that all matter is partly animate, and partly inanimate,
and all matter is moving and moved, and that there is no part of Nature that hath not life
and knowledge, for there is no Part that has not a commixture of animate and inanimate
matter; and though the inanimate matter has no motion, nor life and knowledge of itself, as
the animate has, nevertheless being both so closely joined and commixed as in one body,
the inanimate moves as well as the animate, although not in the same manner; for the
animate moves of itself, and the inanimate moves by the help of the animate, and thus the
animate is moving and the inanimate moved; not that the animate matter transfers, infuses,
or communicates its own motion to the inanimate (Cavendish, 1644, p. 99).11
In this quote we may infer that the movement of inanimate matter happens because
it is moved by the animate matter. The animate matter can move the inanimate one
because it is thoroughly blended with it. Through this commixture, which represents
the blending of matter that is everywhere and in everything in nature, the animate
matter forces the inanimate matter to move. Being all together, as one part moves,
the other moves along with it. Still arguing on how the animate moves the inanimate,
Cavendish says:
The animate forces or causes the inanimate matter to work with her; and thus one is moving,
the other moved, and consequently there is life and knowledge in all parts of nature, by
reason in all parts of nature there is a commixture of animate and inanimate matter: and
this Life and Knowledge is sense and reason, or sensitive and rational corporeal motions
(Cavendish, 1644, p. 99)
In Philosophical Letters, Cavendish will refer to the sensitive and the rational
dimensions of matter as sense and reason, life and knowledge. It is plausible to say
that her notion of motion, as blending, to is used to explain life and knowledge in all
bodies, as well in all nature as a whole. Cavendish’s Letters seem to argue that the
three aspects of matter cannot be conceived separately, that they are different but are
together in all bodies and in nature, which is to be conceived as one.
Finally, Cavendish’s notion of motion depends on her vitalist conception of matter.
9 Cavendish also criticizes Descartes’s position on movement in Chapter 17 of her Observations

Upon an Experimental Philosophy, (2016, p. 13).
10 This is similar to fellow seventeenth century thinker Robert Boyle.
11 Letter 30 From Sect. 1.
References
Cavendish, M. (1644). Philosophical Letters, or, Modest reflections upon some opinions in Natural
Philosophy. Retrieved June 2019, from, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53058.0001.001/1:
6.5?rgn=div2;view=toc.
Cavendish, M. (2016). Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy: abridged, with Related texts
(Ed.), E. Marshall. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing.
Descartes, R. (2012). Principles of Philosophy. In Descartes Philosophical Works translated, vol.
R. Stoothoff & D. Mordolf. Cambridge University Press.
Duncan, S. (2012). Debating Materialism: Cavendish, Hobbes, and More. In “History of Philosophy
Quarterly” (Vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 391–409).
Chapter 6
Cavendish and the Ontological Status
of Individual Bodies
Pedro Pricladnitzky
Abstract In this work, I offer an interpretation of the principle of individuation and

the ontological status of individual bodies in the work of Margaret Cavendish. By
proposing an alternative to the mechanical model of natural philosophy, Cavendish
must approach the metaphysics of matter from a different angle. Such a perspective
can offer fruitful elements to understand the complex and diverse landscape of natural
philosophy in Early Modern Philosophy. I contextualize Cavendish’s natural philos-
ophy and its relation to the developments of other early modern approaches. Section 1
is dedicated to an overview of Cavendish’s natural philosophy. In Sect. 2, I present
the difficulty concerning the individuation of bodies in modern philosophy in order
to reveal the background in which Cavendish develops her position. Before turning
to the analysis of the central passages in which Cavendish explores the problem of
individuation, in Sect. 4, I introduce the basic tenets of her metaphysics in Sect. 3.
Finally, in Sect. 5, I turn to motion and its causes, given its fundamental role in
individuation.
Keywords Nature · Individuals · Ontological status · Properties · Materialism ·

Individuation · Complete blending · Motion
1 In many works Cavendish express the intention in the development of a system of nature. This is
clear from Philosophical Letters (Cavendish, 1664, pp. 436–9); Observations Upon Experimental
Philosophy (Cavendish 2001, p. 8; pp. 126–7); and Grounds of Natural Philosophy (Cavendish
1668, pp. 1–5). Cf. Deborah Boyle, The Well-Ordered Universe; Eileen O’Neill, Introduction. pp.
XXI–XXXV to the complete and modern edition to Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy;
Karen Detlefsen ‘Cavendish and Conway on Individual Human Mind’; David Cunning, Cavendish,
pp. 26–32; Sarah Hutton ‘In Dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish’s Natural Philos-
ophy’; Susan James ‘The Philosophical Innovations of Margaret Cavendish’; Eugene Marshall
‘Margaret Cavendish’ at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sect. 2. http://www.iep.utm.edu/; and
his introduction to Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy; Susan James ‘The Philosophical
Innovations of Margaret Cavendish’.
P. Pricladnitzky (B)
e-mail: pricladnitzky@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_6
62 P. Pricladnitzky
6.1 Introduction
Cavendish’s materialism has peculiarities that distinguish it from the materialism

customarily associated with 17th-century philosophers of nature. In the search for the
establishment of the causes of all natural phenomena she asserts that corporeal nature
has intrinsic motion, is alive and has cognitive abilities1 (Marshall, 2016, p. XI). She
rejects the mechanistic model of motion which assumes the transfer of a quantity of
motion between one part of matter and another through contact (Cavendish, 1664,
p. 77; p. 447). If a part of matter has a certain amount or a certain degree of motion,
that characteristic cannot be lost or communicated without changing the unity of that
part.
There is a great effort in Cavendish’s philosophy of nature to move away from
the mechanistic materialism that became popular in the seventeenth century, mainly
through the works of Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle (O’Neill, 2001, pp. X–XVII).
Mechanism is a heterogeneous philosophical perspective, with several variations in
modern philosophy, and there is no single way of understanding it (Hattab, 2013,
pp. 71–2). Nevertheless, we can outline a general definition of the kind of mechanism
that would be rejected by Cavendish, namely, a view in which the natural world
consists of uniform material entities and elements that interact according to laws
of motion. The descriptions and explanations of such a world are performed by the
concepts of motion, rest and the various configurations that matter can acquire in the
structuring of bodies or parts. The essence of matter and bodies is extension (Gabbey,
1990, p. 19; Hutton, 1997, p. 423).
Cavendish argued that such worldview is inadequate. It is not able to explain the
world we observe. The homogeneity implied by mechanistic principles, as Marshall
points out, about the intrinsic nature of matter would not be able to explain the
variability of bodily individuals and their diversity of behaviors in the natural world
(Marshall, 2016, p. XVII). For Cavendish, a raw fact of the natural world is found in
its variety and order (Cavendish, 2001, pp. 14–15; pp. 38–39; p. 55; pp. 71–73). If
the world were made up of uniform matter that due to its intrinsic inertia passively
transferred motion, following the laws of motion and collision, there would be no
diversity in the world (Marshall, 2016, pp. XVII–XIX). There would be order and
regularity, but not variety. The observed natural phenomena should not be interpreted
through a model that assumes that parts of matter exchange amounts of motion
through contact and rearrange their configuration based on this mechanics of forces.
Cavendish agrees, however, with the seventeenth century project of replacing the
Aristotelian model for explaining natural phenomena by hylomorphic principles.
She assumes an anti-Aristotelian stance, as O’neill states clearly in her introduction
to the Observations, accusing substantial forms of obscurantism without, however,
adhering to the model of nature as a machine (O’neill, 2001, pp. X–XI).2 Her vitalism,
2 Cavendish states: “Having viewed four of the most eminent of the ancient philosophers, I.
will proceed now to Aristotle; who may justly be called the “Idol of the Schools”; for his doctrine
is generally embraced with such reverence, as if truth itself had declared it. But I find he is no less
exempt from errors, than all the rest, though more happy in fame.”(Cavendish 2001, p. 267).
6 Cavendish and the Ontological Status of Individual Bodies 63
by conceiving of corporeal nature as alive and conscious, brings her closer to thinkers
like Van Helmont and More (O’Neill, 2001, pp. XIV–XVI; James, 1999, pp. 222–
3). Abandoning the principle that matter and form are capable of explaining the
natural world requires a new conception of corporeal nature and the contents of the
physical world (Garber & Ayers, 2003, p. 553). Mechanists and vitalists disagreed
on this regard and on how such notions should be replaced. The disagreement affects
themes about the passivity or activity of bodies, the nature of space, the causal powers
that act in the natural world and especially the nature and definition of body.
In the Principles, for example, Descartes affirms that each substance has a prin-
cipal attribute or property that constitutes its nature and essence, and to which all its
other properties are related (Descartes, 1985, 208; I.53). Descartes identifies exten-
sion as the principal attribute of material substance and describes size, shape, posi-
tion, and local motion as modes or modifications of that principal attribute. These
modes must be understood through the principal attribute. That means that we must
conceive the modes as determinations or limitations of that attribute. The attribute
is already a determination, but this does not preclude the fact that it can be further
determined. This further determination is a limitation or a circumscription of the
characteristic that the attribute already has. This means that is possible to conceive
an attribute without conceiving a peculiar mode, but we cannot conceive a mode
without conceiving the attribute that it determines. Thus, while we might be able to
think of extension without motion, we cannot think of motion without there being
extension or space for it to dislocate. Similarly, we can conceive size, shape and
position as modifications of extension that delimit the extension.
Everything that we call an individual physical object—from planets to the particles
that compose our bodies—in the context of mechanism is nothing but a part of
extension, the one thing that exists (at least in the physical realm of reality). The
whole physical universe is conceived as a single object that might be considered in
parts, but those parts have their being in a derivative way. Such universe is uniform
and homogeneous and full of motion. Do individual bodies count as genuine material
things in this worldview or only as extension itself? This conception of bodily nature,
as the mechanist natural philosophers will tell us, have the consequence of the refusal
of atomism and of vacuum; so the material world is composed of infinitely divisible
matter that exists in a plenum. The ontological unity of these parts constitutes a long
debate among scholars of early modern philosophy.3 But when we examine their work
on physics, for example, we will notice that the causal interaction of particular bodies
is taken to be responsible for the generation of motion and of natural phenomena
as well. Because particular bodies play a central role in the explanations of natural
philosophy (despite their problematic ontological status), their individuation is a
major point of contention.
3This discussion can be found, for example, in Daniel Garber, Descartes Metaphysical Physics
(Garber, 1992) and Don Garrett, ‘Spinoza’s in Theory of Metaphysical Individuation’ in: Nature
and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy (Garrett, 2018).
64 P. Pricladnitzky
6.2 The Ontological Status of Bodies in Early Modern

Natural Philosophy
What is the ontological status of bodies? In his discussion of individuation in

early modern philosophy, Kenneth Barber introduces the characteristics that must
be considered when we are addressing the metaphysics of individuals (Barber and
Gracia, 1994, pp. 2–5). The objects that we observe in the world are complex, they
have several properties and characteristics. We can approach them from a variety of
aspects. We generally assume that those objects we observe are individuals; and that,
despite their complexity, they form a unit. That is, each object is one thing, since
its properties are attributed to the same entity. For example, ‘Pedro is short and has
blue eyes’. Besides that, an individual must be distinct from all other individuals that
appear in the observable context. A notebook in a room is distinct from a desk that is
close to it and from the dust that has just been wiped from it. These individuals also
appear to endure through time. Their existence has some duration. They continue
to exist as the same individuals even when they change in many respects (Barber &
Garcia, 1994, p. 3).
The goal of any metaphysics, in Barber’s exposition that we follow here, is to
present a way of describing objects and how they insert themselves into the big
picture of reality. An ontological approach to individuals must address the topics of
complexity, unity, difference and continuity through time. An associated task that
must be addressed concerns how we come to know individual objects with their
particular characteristics. One approach intends to determine what is it in objects
that makes them individuals, that is, what individuates objects. Another examines
our cognition of objects and searches for features that allow us to discern them
as individuals, distinguishing them from other things (Barber and Garcia, 1994,
pp. 4–5).
Without Aristotelian hylomorphism, the notions of matter and form are no longer
available to play this role in the same ontological framing. The substance that would
bring together the characteristics of matter and form no longer accounts for the
complexity and unity of individuals in these terms. Nor can prime matter account for
the numerical difference or for the way in which identity is preserved (Barber and
Gracia, 1994, pp. 6–8). In the early modern period, we find a modified concept of
substance and the rejection of its Aristotelian background has consequences in the
way philosophers conceive of the individuation of physical objects. The mechanical
approach has its difficulties as we have seen. By rejecting the metaphysical framework
that supports the mechanical model, Cavendish must present a different way of
conceiving the nature of extension and its relation to its parts. For us to see this, we
must introduce some of her metaphysical stances.
6.3 Cavendish’s Metaphysics
Cavendish is a monist, according to Karen Detlefsen, at least in respect to the kinds

of things that exists (Detlefsen, 2006, pp. 227–8).4 She asserts that there is only
one type of substance in the world: infinite matter, existing as a whole in an eternal
plenum, that is self-moving and self-knowing (Cavendish, 2001, pp. 36–8; p. 73;
p. 130). Thus, all individual creatures depend on the nature of this substance and are
composed of it. By rejecting the mechanistic model of motion and change, Cavendish
assumes that motion is a non-transferable mode, necessarily inherent in the material
substance as an intrinsic capacity (Cavendish, 1655, 31; Cavendish, 1668, p. 2). As
a consequence of this monism, she rejects the possibility of a vacuum, since, as the
world is constituted by a single material substance, to assume the existence of empti-
ness would be incomprehensible (Cavendish, 1664, p. 7; p. 452; Detlefsen, 2018,
pp. 134–5). This plenism (or horror vacui) is associated, as Karen Detlefsen observes,
with an explicit anti-atomism in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy and
in Grounds for Natural Philosophy, where the material substance is understood as
infinitely divisible (Cavendish, 2001, pp. 125–6, 263, Detlefsen, 2018, p. 135).
The material substance that represents the most fundamental entity of Cavendish’s
metaphysics has two aspects or characteristics: inanimate matter and animated matter.
The animated character being represented by sensitivity, rationality and motion
(Cavendish, 2001, pp. 23–6). These aspects, in turn, are mixed in such a way that
there is no possible part of the matter that lacks sensitivity or rationality (Cavendish,
2001, p. 127; p. 158). This doctrine, which has been called complete blending,5 states
that the bond between the animated and inanimate aspects of matter is not simply an
arbitrary combination of the characteristics of matter. Complete blending demands
that every portion of matter will have both aspects as joint principles for its deter-
mination (Cavendish, 2001, p. 127). Animated and inanimate matter are aspects that
have specific characteristics, which are completely mixed in nature (O’Neill, pp.
XXIV–XXV). We may say that inanimate matter denotes the quantity aspect by
means of which the sensible and rational aspects of matter operate. The sensitive and
rational degree of matter provide the variety of configurations of matter that exist in
the world (Cavendish, 2001, p. 47; Detlefsen, 2018, p. 135).
Thus, reality, for Cavendish, is made up of matter and its central property is
motion. What would bodies be for Cavendish? How do we introduce variability into
this world from a single substance that is whole and infinite? Cavendish indicates
in several passages that individual bodies are parts of matter and their variability is
introduced by the different motions that these parts have (Cavendish, 2001, 125–127,
137–138). To be a body is to be a part of the material substance. The principle used
for the division of the parts is the motion that the material substance has. In this sense,
4 This introductory presentation of Cavendish’s metaphysics employs for the most part the expo-
sitions made by Karen Detlefsen in her papers ‘Atomism, Monism and Causation in the Natural
Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish’ and ‘Cavendish and Conway on Individual Human Mind’.
5 This phrase was coined by Eileen O’Neill in her introduction to the Observations Upon
Experimental Philosophy. Cf. O’Neill 2001, pp. XXIII–XXIV.

66 P. Pricladnitzky
such a substance would have motions that allow the identification of individual units
in its parts (Cavendish, 2001, p. 197; Detlefsen, 2006, pp. 213–4; Shaheen, 2019,
p. 3561)6 . For bodies, motion is an essential feature (Cavendish 1664, pp. 98–100).
The identity of a body or part of matter is determined by its motion, so transferring it
would change its identity. A body cannot provide motion without ceasing to be what
it is. (Cavendish, 1655, p. 2; James, 1999, p. 225).
6.4 The Individuation of Bodies in Cavendish
There are two ways of interpreting the thesis that motion is the principle of indi-
viduation of bodies, namely, a realistic one and an idealist one. Cavendish indicates
that finite individuals are portions of matter that have a specific configuration that
is maintained through the affinity of the smaller parts that compose it (Cavendish,
1664, p. 292; Cavendish, 2001, p. 197; Detlefsen, 2006, p. 214). This would make
that portion of matter a natural individual inserted in the whole which is the mate-
rial substance: an individual whose parts conspire with the aim of remaining unified
in the world. In this sense, Cavendish would appear to assume that an individual’s
unity, as Karen Detlefsen states, depends on the deliberate action of its constituent
elements, a desire to remain united. (Detlefsen, 2006, p. 213). And that would derive
from the rational characteristics of the animated matter that constitute it, and from its
principle of self-motion. What sustains the unity of parts of extension as parts, that is,
as particular bodies, is their own motion. Hence, the parts of nature would be causally
individualized by the motion and identified with the effects, according to Jonathan
Shaheen, of the self-moving substance’s motion (Shaheen, 2019, p. 3560). Cavendish
would claim, in this vision of causation defended by Detlefsen and Shaheen, that parts
of the natural world having intrinsic motion entails that they are able to determine
their own actions rather than being determined by something external (Detlefsen,
2006, p. 212; Shaheen, 2019, p. 3561). In claiming that the parts of matter also have
intrinsic motion, Cavendish is implying that nature as a whole does not causally
determine its parts, which is problematic.
This interpretation presupposes an effective and independent causal power of the
parts of matter in relation to the whole, thus identifying a basic ontological unit
of bodies. They would be existing parts and, in some sense, independent from the
substance. Despite being properties and determinations of the substance, they would
have a degree of independence that would reveal them as individuals per se, at least
in the causal aspect.
But there is another way to interpret this process. Each finite individual has its
own ability to move because it has its own portion of the animated matter (Cavendish,
2001, p. 207). There is, however, only a single infinite matter in nature—and what
6Although Detlefsen and Shaheen have diferent approaches on the relation of matter and motion in
Cavendish, both assert that motion have a fundamental role in the individuation of parts of nature.
we think of as finite wholes in nature are just stable figures in relation to a perspec-
tive. Finite individuals are temporary nuclei of motion, sensation and rationality as
Detlefsen defends, but their temporary unity is not the result of an intrinsic process
belonging to such individuals (Detlefsen, 2006, p. 214). There is no ontological
mark that makes a human different from a rock or that ontologically distinguishes
one individual from another (Cavendish, 2001, 125–6).
Now, to argue that both nature as a whole and its parts have their own motion
in the sense of having causal power and self-determination seems to presuppose
a difference in meaning between the type of motion of the parts in relation to the
whole, or an inconsistency in such theory. However, the parts may be seen as arbitrary
divisions, and, in that sense, it would be necessary to abandon the causal conception
of motion that determines the unity of the parts. The distinction between such things
is not a “real” distinction. That is, a distinction between two different things but
with two different conceptions of one and the same thing. The division of the parts
of matter seems arbitrary.7 Distinguishing things through relative motion depends
on choosing a point of reference. Can individual bodies be independent causes of
their own motion if we assume that they were caused by the motion of the totality
of nature? To answer this, it is necessary to examine how Cavendish understood the
nature of motion and causality. In the Observations upon Experimental Philosophy,
Cavendish states:
To which I answer, that there is no such thing as one finite single part in nature: for when I
speak of the parts of nature, I do not understand, that those parts are like grains of corn or sand
in one heap, all of one figure or magnitude, and separable from each other: but, I conceive
nature to be an infinite body, bulk or magnitude, which by its own self-motion, is divided into
infinite parts; not single or indivisible parts, but parts of one continued body, only discernible
from each other by their proper figures, caused by the changes of particular motions: for, it
is well to be observed, first, that nature is corporeal, and therefore divisible...so that all the
motions that are in nature, are within herself; and being various and infinite in their changes,
they divide the substance or body of nature into infinite parts; for the parts of nature, and
changes of motion, are but one thing...(Cavendish, 2001, 125–6)
The above passage has many elements that need to be carefully analyzed. Its
aim is to present the nature of the parts of the material substance and how they
are formed. Parts are not indivisible like atoms and there are infinite parts within
a continuous body. The division is caused by the intrinsic motion of the material
substance: “…so that all the motions that are in nature, are within herself; and being
various and infinite in their changes, they divide the substance or body of nature into
infinite parts; for the parts of nature, and changes of motion, are but one thing…”
(Cavendish, 2001, p. 126). The only criteria for differentiating parts from each other
and from the whole are the particular configurations that they exhibit. That is, when
moving, this substance favors the formation of individuals who have some unity.
Such parts have figures and through these figures we can discern one individual part
from another. So far, we seem to have a causal principle for the production of parts,
7Jonathan Shaheen’s paper ‘Part of Nature and Division in Margaret Cavendish’s Materialism’
presents a careful and insightful interpretation of the principles of division and on the nature of the
parts.
68 P. Pricladnitzky
namely, the motion of the material substance, as well as an epistemic principle: the
differentiation of one part from another by the figures they have.
But are these figures in the parts of nature formed by their delimitation as parts or
are they caused by the motion of the parts? In other words, is the motion responsible
for forming the parts also the generator of the figure of the parts or is it the motion of
the parts that produces the figures? In this regard, the passage is ambiguous. At first,
we have the explicit statement that the figures, by which we differentiate one from
the others, are caused by the particular motions of each part. In this case, it is not clear
what exactly the motion of the material substance does to divide the parts. Delimiting
the parts and providing them with some unity seems to presuppose, in a material
context, the provision of some stable configuration. However, this configuration
would be different from the figures that allow one part to be discerned from the
other, since these are generated by the particular motions of each part.
Note that Cavendish goes on to state that every motion is a motion that belongs
to the material substance (Cavendish, 2001, p. 126). Since everything is some aspect
of the material substance, it seems obvious that all motions in the physical world
belong to it. Nevertheless, to state that figures are caused by particular motions seems
to presuppose an independence between the motion of the substance in general in
relation to the motion of the parts. If the motion of the parts is nothing more than
the motion of the material substance partially analyzed, it does not seem possible
to conclude that the figures that allow the discernment of the parts are caused by
the parts. In the end of the passage, Cavendish identifies the motion of the material
substance with the parts. This, in turn, can be interpreted as confirming the hypothesis
that the delimitation of configurations by the material substance is the result of its
motion, that is, the very activity of moving is what it takes to be a part of the material
substance.
A little further in the Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish
resumes the discussion of the parts of matter: “There is no other difference between
self-knowledge, and particular knowledges, than betwixt self-motion, and particular
self-actions; or betwixt a whole, and its parts; a cause, and its effects: for, self-
knowledge is the ground and principle of all particular knowledges, as self-motion
is the ground and principle of all particular actions, changes and varieties of natural
figures”. (Cavendish, 2001, p. 138). Cavendish, here, is again affirming the causal
relationship between the totality and its parts. The self-moving matter, the totality of
matter, is the cause of the parts of nature. That is, the effects of the rearrangement that
matter makes of itself. Parts of nature are effects of matter in its entirety8 . Insofar as
they are effects, and that matter is composed of both animated and inanimate matter, it
is not far-fetched, as Shaheen notices, that effects are also thus composed (Cavendish,
2001, p. 158, Shaheen, 2019, p. 3562). Furthermore, she states that the whole-part
relationship in nature presents an asymmetric characterization regarding the reality
of particular things (Cavendish, 2001, p. 138). What is real, in fact, is the whole.
Particular things, like particular knowledge or particular motions are abstractions
from the whole since there is no ontological principle for distinction between the
8 Jonathan Shaheen defends the same view. Cf. Shaheen 2019, pp. 3560–3562.
whole and its parts. At the end of the passage quoted above, when addressing the
cause of the changes and variations of the material figures, Cavendish states that its
foundation is the motion of the material substance and not the particular motions of
the parts (Cavendish, 2001, p. 126). We may be able to discern, through the figures,
a part from another part. However, such discernment says much more about the way
in which we perceive the parts than about their nature.
Commenting on the nature of the causal relationship between matter and its parts,
Cavendish says:
...for as there is infinite nature, which may be called general nature, or nature in general,
which includes and comprehends all the effects and creatures that lie within her, and belong
to her, as being parts of her own self-moving body; so there are also particular natures in
every creature, which are the innate, proper and inherent interior and substantial forms and
figures of every creature, according to their own kind or species, by which each creature or
part of nature is discerned or distinguished from the other; (Cavendish, 2001, p. 197)
In this passage, Cavendish reaffirms that the parts of matter belong to their totality,
making it clear that the whole is prior to the parts. It introduces, however, the idea of
particular natures as belonging to the parts. These, in turn, are classified as innate,
proper, inherent, interior, substantial forms and figures of each creature or part of
matter. She gives examples: “as for example, although an animal and a vegetable
be fellow creatures, and both natural, because material; yet their interior particular
natures are not the same, because they are not of the same kind, but each has its own
particular nature quite different from the other;” (Cavendish, 2001, p. 197).
It does not seem to be the case that substantial forms here have an Aristotelian
sense. Rather, Cavendish is claiming that parts, particular bodies, are determinations
of matter; which foundation is the motion of the material substance. In claiming,
however, that these figures acquired by the parts are according to a type or species,
Cavendish seems to be presupposing an ontological foundation for parts as a parts.
Yet, it is not immediately clear what foundation this would be beyond the motion of
the material substance: “…and these particular natures are nothing else but a change
of corporeal figurative motions, which make this diversity of figures”. (Cavendish,
2001, p. 197). There seems to be a deliberation of the material substance in the forma-
tion of its parts. These finite individuals are centers of motion and reason, and they
seem to be able to decide what behavior or configuration to adopt. Detlefsen asserts
that they have genuine causal power to move themselves, and to follow deliberately
what is determined by the material substance (Detlefsen, 2006, p. 214). However, this
seems to require a more robust ontological nature for parts than the one that it seems
possible for Cavendish in those passages of the Observations that were analyzed.
6.5 Motion and Its Causes
In order to comprehend the relation between material substance and its parts,
it is necessary to investigate the nature of motion in Cavendish. In the Philo-
sophical and Physical Opinions, she states: “…for all these infinite varieties of
70 P. Pricladnitzky
motions, as I said before, I cannot perceive but six ground-motions, or funda-

mental motions, from whence all changes come, which are these attractive motions,
contracting motions, retentive motions, dilative motions digestive motions, and
expulsive motions” (Cavendish, 1655, p. 33).We can see that motion for Cavendish
is not just local motion or change of characteristics: the motions attributed to matter
are patterns of behavior. Motions of matter can be described as the dispositions to act
that we find in different things in the world—such as the disposition to attract, retain,
digest or expel, for example. These are trends that determine the arrangements of the
parts of matter. Not only that, as Garber says, they provide identity for the parts of
matter (Garber, 2018, pp. 7–8).
The world is formed by parts of matter that have motions which bring them
together and others that pull them apart: a complex network of positive and negative
trends. Attraction competes with repulsion; digestion with expulsion; contraction
with dilation. This dynamic is explained and ordered by the cognitive characteristics
found in matter and its parts.
Cavendish also explicitates the inseparability between the notions of matter and
motion: “Some have Opinion, that Motion is Nothing, but to my reason it is a Thing,
for if Matter is a Substance, a Substance is a Thing, and the Motion and Matter
being inseparably United, makes it but one Thing. For as there could be no Motions
without such a Degree or Extract of Matter, so there could be no such Degree or
Extract of Matter without Motion, thus Motion is a Thing.” (Cavendish, 1655, p. 31).
Cavendish thus affirms the ontological reality of motion. To the extent that motion and
matter are inseparable and constitute aspects of the same thing—namely, the material
substance—motion is something (Garber 2018, pp. 8–9). This inseparable relation-
ship is transmitted on to the parts of matter. Every part of matter has a corresponding
motion. However, unlike the substance that indicates the metaphysical unity of the
object being described, Cavendish seems to define motion through the notion of part
and part through the notion of motion. Motions delimit the parts and the conception
of the parts delimit their motion. The definition is circular.
Although motion for Cavendish is something vastly different than for Descartes,
since for him motion is explicitly local motion, there is a similarity on the dependence
of particular bodies on motion and of motion on particular bodies. Descartes says in
the Principles II.25: “we may say that motion is the transfer of one piece of matter, or
one body, from the vicinity of the other bodies which are in immediate contact with it,
and which are regarded as being at rest, to the vicinity of other bodies. By ‘one body’
or ‘one piece of matter’ I mean whatever is transferred at a given time, even though
this may in fact consist of many parts which have different motions relative to each
other.” (Descartes, 1985, p. 233). A similar circularity is found here. Such circularity
is one of the aspects that makes the individuation of bodies an important issue for the
mechanical project in natural philosophy. While Cavendish rejects the metaphysical
principles of mechanical philosophy, she maintains the idea of a plenum absent of
vacuum and atoms. These characteristics pose a serious difficulty for affirming the
ontological reality of bodies. One way to deal with it is to reconceive the causal
power that they have.
Cavendish defends occasional causation and her approach to it arises from the
criticism of the mechanical approach that bodies interact by transferring motion
(Detlefsen, 2006, pp. 231–6; O’Neill, 2001, pp. XXIX–XXXV)9 . For her, the trans-
ference of motion is only possible if the part of matter corresponding to the amount
of motion is also transferred:
Therefore when a man moves a string, or tosses a ball, the string or ball is no more sensible
of the motion of the hand, than the hand is of the motion of the string or ball; but the hand
is only an occasion that the string or ball moves thus or thus. I will not say, but that it may
have some perception of the hand, according to the nature of its own figure; but it does not
move by the hand’s motion, but by its own: for, there can be no motion imparted, without
matter or substance. (Cavendish, 2001, p. 140).
Thus, there is no transference of motion. The example of a hand that throws a ball is
clear. The ball moves by its motion and is not caused to move by the motion that exists
in the hand. The hand is only an occasion for the motion of the ball which, through its
perception, moves accordingly. For Cavendish there is an occasional cause from one
body to another body—from one part of matter signaling its motions to another part
of matter. This signaling, according to O’neill, motivates the self-motion of the part
that acts, and that is the main cause of every instantiation of motion (O’Neill, 2001,
pp. XXXII–XXXV). To exemplify this model of causality, Cavendish introduces the
metaphor of a dance:
And when they dance the same figure without the help of the outward object, this is Remem-
brance, when they dance the figures of their own invention, (as I may say) then that is
imagination or Fancie. Understanding is, when they dance perfectly (as I may say) not to
misse the least part of those figures that are brought through the senses. Will is to choose a
dance, that is to move as they please, and not as they are perswaded by the sensitive spirits. But
when their motion and measures be not regular, or their quantity or numbers sufficient to
make the figures perfect, then is the minde weak and infirme, (as I may say) they dance out
of time and measure. (Cavendish, 1655, p. 13).
What we observe in natural phenomena is something like a dance between parts of

matter in which each body moves according to its own principle of motion providing
a pattern that resembles what happens on a dance floor, as Marshall describes,
when people are dancing (Marshall, 2018, Sect. 2.b). The dance floor here is the
natural world. The motions of a body would copy and mirror the motions of adja-
cent bodies (Marshall, 2016, pp. XVII–XVIII). This copying process depends on a
keen perception of the context and a natural sympathy for maintaining its fluidity. In
this description of a well-paced dance, there is no transfer of motion. The parts of
matter would move according to their own nature (Marshall, 2018, Sect. 2.b). The
occasional causes, in this sense, are independent of the actions they would motivate.
The signaling emitted by a body needs to be perceived and accepted by the main
cause. This causality scheme necessarily involves the sensitive and rational aspects
of matter. The order of nature depends on the rationality present in each part of matter
in acting according to it and motivating the contiguous parts to act the same way.
9Eileen O’neill and Karen Detlefsen offer a detailed account of causation in Cavendish and its
origins in the critical examination of transference of motion in a mechanistic context.
72 P. Pricladnitzky
Cavendish’s model, unlike some mechanistic ones, does not introduce God as the
main cause of the motion (Cunning, 2016; pp. 141–7; Detlefsen, 2009, pp. 427–34).
The passages from the Observations and from the Philosophical and Physical
Opinions suggests, however, that parts of matter, insofar as they are parts, have
causal efficacy. This is problematic, as we saw above. The capacity for motion of
the parts is derived from the causal power of the material substance. Inasmuch as
we consider their material nature, all individuals are the same. The parts of matter
are generated by the motion of matter and their motion (the motion of the parts)
is abstracted from the whole. Every variation of nature is dependent on the motion
of the material substance that is intrinsic to it: “…the self-moving part of matter
is the working part of nature, which is wise, and knows how to move and form
every creature without instruction; and this self-motion is as much her own as the
other parts of her body, matter and figure, and is one and the same with herself, as a
corporeal, living, knowing, and inseparable being, and a part of herself” (Cavendish,
1655, p. 108).
From a physical perspective, as Detlefsen points out, an individual is a figurative
part of matter in the whole of nature. Note that figure here has a double meaning: first,
such an object has a certain configuration and material delimitation; second, such a
definition depends on a rational activity of material substance and its recognition as
an individual by the adjacent parts (Detlefsen, 2018, pp. 136–7; Garber, 2018, p. 10).
From an ontological point of view, the delimitation of a part is determined by the
substance. From the epistemological point of view, the recognition of the part as a
part is dependent on the cognition of the parts that are bordering on it. There is an
interdependence of the parts to maintain their stability and integrity as an individual
(Cavendish, 2001, pp. 130–1). As all individuals are made of the same stuff, there is
a variety of configurations of the parts that follow the motion of the whole forming
relative centers of stability. The identity of the parts is always relative to a certain
motion and never absolute (Detlefsen, 2018, pp. 136–7).
Furthermore, we must say that individuation necessarily involves a psychological
aspect. Self-awareness plays an important role in the individuation of the parts of
matter.10 As the animated aspects of matter are mixed with inanimate aspects, there
is no way to distinguish between rationality and corporeality. The parts of matter,
therefore, have awareness (Cavendish, 1655, p. 16; Cavendish 1664, pp. 113–4;
Cavendish, 1668, p. 81). That is, some sort of subjective representation of oneself
and the world. A natural individual, therefore, is a physically stable figure with a
specific kind of sensitivity and reason which gives rise to one’s consciousness as an
individual different from other possible individuals in its surroundings (Detlefsen,
2018, p. 137).
10 In her recent paper about Cavendish’s and Conway’s conception of human mind, Detlefsen brings
forward the importance of self-awareness and psychological representations to the individuation
of minds. Here, this idea is generalized to every part of matter. Cf. ‘Cavendish and Conway on
Individual Human Mind’, pp. 134–7.
6.6 Concluding Remarks
For Cavendish, commonsense physical objects—what she calls bodies or parts of

matter—are mind-dependent entities. Their identities as individuals depends on the
recognition by some observer of the motions of matter. They are real insofar as
they are parts of the material substance, as its determinations. But as individuals,
they are an abstraction of a whole that grounds every aspect of nature. The motions
that they exhibit are motions of the material substance. And their foundations as
motions of the parts proper is only phenomenal. This conclusion is supported by
the occasional approach to causality developed by Cavendish. Also, the problematic
concerning the reality of different levels of independent motion is avoided in her
idealistic approach. Individual bodies are not parts of matter that have substance-
like behavior or properties. They are determinations of matter that can present some
relative and temporary stability and unity.
Acknowledgements I would like especially to thank José Eduardo Porcher and Katarina Peixoto
for the revision and comments on this work.
References
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Philosophy. SUNY Press.
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J. Allestrye.
Cavendish, M. (1655). Philosophical and Physical Opinions. London: Printed for William Wilson.
Cavendish, M. (1666). Philosophical Letters. London.
Cavendish, M. (1668). Grounds of Natural Philosophy. (ed.) Colette V. Michael, West Cornwall,
CT: Locust Hill Press.
Cavendish, M. (2001). Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. (ed.), E. O’Neill. Cambridge:
Clucas, S. (1994). The Atomism of the Cavendish Circle: A Reappraisal. The Seventeenth Century,
9, 247–273.
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(Eds.) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Detlefsen, K. (2006). Atomism, Monism, and Causation in the Natural Philosophy of Margaret
Cavendish. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, 3, 199–240.
Detlefsen, K. (2009). Margaret Cavendish on the Relation between God and World. Philosophy
Compass, 4(3), 421–438.
Detlefsen, K. (2018). Cavendish and Conway on Individual Human Mind. In R. Copenhaver (Ed.),
Philosophy of Mind in Early Modern and Modern Ages (pp. 134–156). Routledge.
Gabbey, A. (1990). Henry More and the Limits of Mechanism. In S. Hutton (Ed.), Henry More
(1614–1687) Tercentenary Studies (pp. 19–35). Archives Internationales d’Histoires des Idées.
Springer.
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Garber, D. (2018). Spiritualizing Matter: Perception and Appetite in a Material World (Unpublished
Lecture).
Garrett, D. (2018). Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
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Women’s Writing, 4(3), 421–432.
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196(9), 3551–3575.
Chapter 7
Spirit, Body, and Pain in Anne Conway
Natalia Strok
Abstract Carol Wayne White explains in her book that Lady Anne Conway was
better known for her lifelong headaches than for her profound philosophical thinking
(White in The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1979): Reservations from a Mystical
Naturalism, State University of New York Press, 2008, p. 4). By reading not only
White’s, but also Sarah Hutton’s book, it is possible to say that Anne’s strong
headaches gave her a path to texts and practices that found place in her own philos-
ophy. There are phrases repeated by her friends and family like this one: “though
her Pains encreas’d, yet her Understanding diminish’d not” (Van Helmont in Hutton
Anne Conway: A Women Philosopher, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 203).
But Anne does not think the relationship between mind and body in that way. She
writes about the union between spirit and body in human beings and animals, how
body and spirit are essentially the same, the strong bond they have. In this paper I
intend to analyse this relationship between spirit and body, and the concept of pain
related to them, in Anne Conway’s The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern
Philosophy, in order to accept or dismiss the kind of phrases that her friends and
family said concerning her condition. I will relate her philosophy to John Scottus
Eriugena’s (ca. 810–ca. 870) thought through a comparison of their understanding
of the concept of pain in their metaphysics.
Keywords Anne Conway · Body · Pain · John Scottus Eriugenea · Mind and body
7.1 Introduction
Some years ago, I started to study the philosophy of the group called the Cambridge
Platonists of the Seventeenth Century. I began with Henry More but soon moved to
Ralph Cudworth till today. To my surprise, these authors opened a new dimension for
my studies, because the first thing that I have read in Henry More’s Antidote against
Atheism (1652) was his dedication to Anne, his student, and when I started studying
N. Strok (B)
Universidad de Buenos Aires - CONICET, Buenos Aires, E. Martínez 485, Argentina
e-mail: nsstrok@uba.ar
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_7
76 N. Strok
Cudworth and wanted to know what happened with his thought in the following
period, I discovered the name of Damaris, his daughter and also a philosopher.
Nevertheless, if I am going to start to delve into the feminine dimension, I would
need some time and even more the encouragement from my colleagues and mentors.
My advisor Prof. Dr. Silvia Manzo was key in this aspect, and Prof. Dr. Daniel Garber
from Princeton definitely has led me to Conway’s thought.1
I have included Anne Conway in several lists of names I have made throughout
these years, which is remarkable considering she is the only woman who was admitted
in the Cambridge Platonists group, even though she never attended any class at
Cambridge University. The explanation for this was Henry More, his friend and
teacher, as well as the manifestation of her own thought. But her philosophy has some
important differences with the thoughts of More and Cudworth, the main figures of
that group. I am not afraid to say that she is a real modern Neo-Platonist, although
the influences in her thought are of a greater scope, for they include the Christian
kabbala and Quakerism. As my research was on the Platonic tradition even before
knowing the Cambridge Platonists group, I feel really comfortable approaching her
philosophy. And when I read her, I find some traces of Christian Neoplatonism,
which I relate with one author of the Middle Ages, as I will show.
As many scholars before me, I was intrigued by Anne Conway’s headaches.
Carol Wayne White explains in her book that Lady Conway was better known for
her lifelong headaches than for her profound philosophical thinking (White, 2008,
4). By reading not only White’s book, but also Sarah Hutton’s, it is possible to say
that Anne’s strong headaches led her to texts and practices that found a place in her
own philosophy. She reached a great number of physicians and intellectuals of that
period (White, 2008: 6; 11), with whom she discussed about natural philosophy, in
order to find a cure for her illness.2
In spite of that, I was puzzled most of all by some comments that her friends made
regarding her illness. One example is that of Francis Mercury Van Helmont, a close
friend of hers in the last period of her life and a person of strong influence in her own
thought. He writes: “though her Pains encreas’d, yet her Understanding diminish’d
not” (Van Helmont in Hutton, 2004, 203). But this intrigued me only after reading
her Principia Philosophiae. Because I found in her text what I understand as the
impossibility of thinking spirit and body as two different things and a path to a new
connexion between them. Why would her understanding diminish as a consequence
of the pain of her body? Now I will show what I found as an answer to this in her
concept of pain, which will be compared with John Scottus Eriugena’s (ca. 800–ca.
870) thinking on that topic.
1 The Cambridge Platonists are hardly known in Argentina, and the interest in women philosophers
is growing slowly. I deeply thanks Dr. Silvia Manzo and Dr. Daniel Garber for their encouragement,
and Dr. Sarah Hutton for her remarkable comments on the first presentation of this paper in 2019
First Conference on Women Philosophers organized by Katarina Peixoto and Pedro Pricladnitzky
in Rio de Janeiro.
2 Mercer (2019, 53) affirms that there are also philosophical reasons, alongside with the biographical
ones, that explain her interest in suffering and pain.

7 Spirit, Body, and Pain in Anne Conway 77
But before reading Conway’s text, I want to reflect on the way in which that text
reached us. It is said that Lady Conway kept her philosophy as a private activity
(Hutton, 2004: 113); it was a personal search and, even though she exchanged ideas
with a number of thinkers, she did not publish a single book in her lifetime. I think
this is a huge problem for those that study her thought, a wonderful challenge to deal
with, because there is an interpretation in the first publication in Latin in 1690, and
another in the English translation in1692 as well (Mercer, 2019, 50 n. 2). The effort
is nonetheless worthy, and I am looking at both publications.3
7.2 Anne Finch Conway
In Principia philosophiae Anne maintains that there are three substances and nothing
more in the order of things: the first one is God, first cause and creator of everything;
the second one is Christ, mediator between God and creation; and the third one is the
creation itself. This means that all creation, which contains all the creatures, “is one
entity or substance in respect to its nature or essence” (Conway, 1996 VII, §1). This
was familiar to me, because I can find something similar, for example, in Eriugena’s
description of the only one essence that runs through everything:
So when we hear that God makes all things we ought to understand nothing else that God is
in all things, that is, that He is the Essence of all things. For only He truly exists by Himself,
and He alone is everything which in the things that are is truly said to be. For none of the
things that are truly exists by itself, but whatever is understood truly (to be) in it receives (its
true being) by participation of Him, the One, Who alone by Himself truly is (Eriugena, PE
I 518 A).4
Eriugena presents God as the only essence in everything, which means that all
creature has the same essence, something similar to the unity of Anne’s creature,
although Conway differentiates God and the creature as two different substances.
Eriugena would never have said that Christ or the Lógos is any substance other than
God and the medium between Creator and creature, because he stated that human
nature is medietas in creation (Ibid. PE II 530 C–D), hidden after Adam’s original
sin, but restituted in the incarnated Christ, who chooses human nature to walk among
creatures because of that. And whereas Eriugena was accused of confusing creature
and creator, and related to pantheism in the eighteenth century (Brucker, 1975: III
622; Tennemann, 1798–1819: VIII-1 81; Strok, 2016), Conway is aware of that
problem and affirms a huge difference between God and the creature, in spite of her
emanationist vocabulary and her maintaining the presence of that God in everything
(Parageau, 2018, 250; Mercer, 2019, 57).5 Trinity is redefined in Conway’s thought,
3 I did not incorporate her philosophical letters, which is something to study and add in further
researches.
4 The English translation is by Sheldon-Williams and O’Meara in Eriugenae (1968, 1972, 1981,
1995) for books first, second, third and fourth, and Eriugena (1987) for book five. I also use the
critical edition by Jeauneau in Eriugenae (1996–2003). From now on Periphyseon will be PE.
5 On the difference between Anne Conway’s and Spinoza’s thoughts see Pugliese (2019).
78 N. Strok
where it is seen as an attempt to bring Christianity closer to other religions (Conway,

1690 1, 6–7), what can also be related to Quakerism (Parageau, 2018, 255–6).
In her thought, God is “spirit, light, and life, infinitely wise, good, just, strong,
all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, the creator and maker of all things visible and
invisible” (Conway, 1996 I, §1), but:
He is also in a true and real sense an essence or substance distinct from his creatures, although
not divided or separated from them but present in everything most closely and intimately in
the highest degree. Nevertheless, they are not parts of him or changeable into him, just as
he is not changeable into them. He himself is also in a true and real sense the creator of all
things, who not only gives to them form and figure but also essence, life, body, and whatever
good they have (Ibid. I, §3).
God is present in creation but creatures have a different essence or nature, not
the divine one. They receive whatever good from Him, and this includes body as
something good. Indeed, the mediation is given by Christ or Adam Kadmon, as
divine and human, who is present in all creation, yet without being those creatures,
for he is a different substance, which unites and separates creator and creatures.
Inside this creation there are only variations of modes of existence. In this sense,
body and spirit are modes of the same essence or substance. Every creature has
spirit and body, she explains: “for every created spirit has some body, whether it is
terrestrial, aerial, or ethereal” (Ibid. V, §6). Only God is pure spirit, and because of
that it is impossible to conceive pure body, as God has not opposition. She says of
the creation: “And thus the truly invisible attributes of God are clearly seen if they
are understood either through or in those things which have been made” (Ibid. II,
§6). Creation is good, which means that the creature can become more and more
spirit to infinity but not more and more body. The spiritual substance of the creation
has some affinity with God, although it is not God, and the same substance yet in its
bodily mode has some kind of opposition to the creator, what is understood as the
communication of characteristics from God to creature:
But because there is no being which is in every way contrary to God (surely nothing exists
which is infinitely and immutably bad, as God is infinitely and immutably good, and there
is nothing which is infinitely dark as God is infinitely light, nor is anything infinitely a body
having no spirit, as God is infinitely spirit having no body), it is therefore clear that no
creature can become more and more a body to infinity, although it can become more and
more a spirit to infinity (Ibid. VII, §1).
She also explains it in terms of “dark and light” as related to morality, which
means that every creature can become better and better to infinity, but not worse and
worse, and in spite of that both of them are necessary, as every created spirit has
some body. She says:
Moreover, spirit is light or the eye looking at its own proper image, and the body is the
darkness which receives this image. And when the spirit beholds it, it is as if someone sees
himself in a mirror. But he cannot see himself reflected in the same way in clear air or in any
diaphanous body, since the reflection of an image requires a certain opacity, which we call
body (Ibid. VI, §11).
In this sense, the bodily mode does not seem only bad but necessary in a way
(Lascano, 2013, 328), although in the scale of being spirit is closer to God than body,
and because of that spirit is more excellent.6 We can see in the text that the body
has its function in knowledge. According to the characteristics of this third nature,
which has limits as regards evil but not as regards good, she maintains that “it is
not an essential property of anything to be a body, just as it is not a property of
anything to be dark. For nothing is so dark that it cannot become bright” (Conway,
1996: VI, §11). This created nature can change into spirit or body, it is a continuum
with multiple mediations (Ibid. VIII, §3), but cannot be only body, or darkness, for
it would be in opposition to God, who has no opposition.
Afterwards, Anne gives important functions to bodies, which Lascano explains in
these terms: “First, body reflects the image of the principal spirit and the individual’s
moral and ontological status. Second, body holds the images received from outside
of the individual that result from interaction with the rest of creation. Finally, body
serves as the repository of thoughts, memories, and knowledge” (2013, 330). Body
has multiple uses and is so important that even our thoughts have spirit and body,
which reaffirms that their difference is only modal. Conway explains: “the distinction
between spirit and body is only modal and incremental, not essential and substantial”
(Conway, 1996: VI, §11).
Concerning pain, it is important to note the relationship to the topics of Original
Sin and The Fall in the Christian thought. The first time that Conway introduces the
concept of dolor (translated there as “grief”, but most of the time as “pain”) is in the
summary of Chap. VII of The Principles, where it is introduced as one of the possible
affections of the body, and it is also there where she mentions sin and the return: “I
claim that every body in its own nature, as it was originally created and will be once
again, will return to its primordial state and be freed from that confusion and vanity
to which it is subjected on account of sin” (Ibid. VII, summary). The body will be
freed from a confusion occasioned by sin, and it will attain a primordial state that
seems better that the fallen one. The body will remain but in a better state, because
that is the substance of creature: to have body and spirit or soul. Pain is a way to
become better or a sign of a process of spiritualization. If someone thought that pain
is a mark of evil, Anne would answer the following:
As we see from constant experience and as reason teaches us, this must necessarily happen
because through pain (dolor) and suffering (toleratio) whatever grossness or crassness is
contracted by the spirit or body is diminished; and so the spirit imprisoned in such grossness
or crassness is set free and becomes more spiritual and, consequently, more active and
effective through pain (Ibid. VII, §1).
This means that the more a creature suffers, the sooner it returns to good. And pain
as punishment is a way of attaining the correct path and the possibility to become
as good and active as possible. It is important to note that what it is gained through
6 Conway 1996 VII, 1: Moreover, because spirit is the more excellent of the two in the true and
natural order of things, the more spiritual a certain creature becomes (that is, if it does not degenerate
in other ways), the closer it comes to God, who, as we all know, is the highest spirit.
80 N. Strok
pain is spirituality, that which is set free is the spirit, so pain is effective in spirits.
She explains:
At this time every sin will have its own punishment (poena) and every creature will feel
pain (dolor) and chastisement (castigo), which will return that creature to the pristine state
of goodness in which it was created and from which it can never fall again because, through
its great punishment, it has acquired a greater perfection and strength. Consequently, from
that indifference of will which it once had for good or evil, it rises until it only wishes to be
good and is incapable of wishing any evil (Ibid. VII, §1).
Pain is remedy for the indifference of will, which is consequence of sin, and when
it appears, we have a clear sign of arriving to the true being, the original being that only
wishes the good. And, as the text says, through pain it is possible to reach the greater
perfection and strength. She explains that this is not eternal hell, eternal torments,
because every pain is working and operating in spiritualization and liberation, this
means that it is always in motion from the moment of sin. Conway does not present
heaven and hell in an explicit way.
Concerning Anne’s pain, I think that in the light of this text, it is possible to
understand that her suffering was a mark of her extreme spiritualization and freedom,
and her path to a better state. Every creature has a body, but her body was not the best
one; her body allowed her to make a constant search for a solution and encouraged
her avidity for knowledge. Anne Conway has not an indifferent will because she is
searching for the truth that only knowledge can bring. As Alexander affirms, in The
Principles there is a re-signification of pain, which is not a result of The Fall, but the
possibility of attaining the original state. It is body, only in a confusion state, the real
consequence of The Fall.7
When a person is said to be good or wicked, that is something which is not patent
in the own body, because it is related to the crassness or softness of their hearts or
spirit. In the text that I have just read, grossness or crassness could apply to both
spirit or body, not only to body. And then she explains:
From these examples one may easily understand how the heart or spirit of a wicked man is
called hard and stony because his spirit has indeed real hardness in it like that found in those
small, stony particles of water. On the other hand, the spirit of a good person is soft and
tender. We can really sense the internal hardness and softness of spirit, and any good person
perceives this as tangibly as he can feel the external hardness of crass, external bodies with
his external touch (Conway, 1996: VII, §1).
In this sense, the real hardness or softness of a person is not something that is
external but internal, which can as well be felt; it is not the body the one that bears
that hardness, but the spirit. That is another reason for not being surprised at Anne’s
case, since she would not be less intelligent because of the fact that she was suffering
pain. And in her thought it is not possible to find a rejection of body, as spirit and
body are the same substance, as has already been said.
7 Alexander (2018, 4) affirms: “This is a radical alternative to the more common late seventeenth-
century idea that pain is a consequence of the fall, not an important part of the soul’s transformations
as it reaches the divine.” In this sense, fall is the occasion for body, but not for pain, as Lascano
(2013, 328–9) explains.
Moreover, Conway affirms that there is no vaccum in creation, as it is one substance

or entity, and that “There exists a general unity of all creatures one with another such
that no one can be separated from his fellow creatures” (Ibid. VII, §4). She offers
some examples and the second one is interesting for the topic here studied. It is the
example of a man whose leg is amputated. She says: “When a surgeon amputates the
leg and moves it a considerable distance away from the body, the man is overcome
by pain and feels it in that part of the leg which was severed” (Ibid. VII, §4). The
leg is no more there but the pain overcomes the man as if it were there, because it is
the unity of body and spirit that feels the pain or, as I will show in a moment, is the
spirit that feels the pain through the body.
When the distinction between spirit and body is only modal and incremental, and
there are infinite spirits and bodies in every entity, it is almost impossible to separate
one from another. Whatever we feel, is felt by both spirit and body in a communion,
and if the spirit rules over body, then it is the spirit that truly feels. She explains:
But if one admits that the soul is of one nature and substance with the body, although it
surpasses the body by many degrees of life and spirituality, just as it does in swiftness and
penetrability and various other perfections, then all the above mentioned difficulties vanish;
and one may easily understand how the soul and body are united together and how the soul
moves (moveo) the body and suffers (pator) with it and through it (Ibid. VIII, §2).
Suffering is of the whole substance, and if spirit is superior to body, then spirit
suffers with or through body. This means that pain is not bodily alone, but spiritual
as well. Returning to Van Helmont phrase, I can now affirm that it is totally wrong
to think of a painful body and a perfect spirit that is not painful as well. That which
suffers is the soul. The problem is to think pain as something bad and not as the mark
of spiritualization and redemption. In Chap. VIII Anne affirms:
This captivity of spirits in certain hard bodies, and their liberation when the bodies become
soft, offers a clear argument that spirit and body are of one original nature and substance,
and that body is nothing but fixed and condensed spirit, and spirit nothing but volatile body
or body made subtle (Ibid. VIII, §4).
In this respect, Anne’s body and spirit are only one in nature, differentiated
from the rest because of her determined modes. And since she understands spirit
as captured in the body, but in communion,8 once again we can say that all the pain
she suffers is a clear sign of her spirituality and freedom. This freedom can be recog-
nised when knowing that she converted to Quakerism, although her husband and her
friend Henry More were opposed to such thing (Parageau, 2018: 248). She was free
to choose that, and what led her to that path was, in part, her search for comforting
her suffering.
Her freedom can also be recognised when she criticizes Henry More in her Prin-
ciples. Although she does not mention More, even when making explicit references
to Descartes, Spinoza, and Hobbes in other parts, it can be discovered that she targets
8 Lascano (2013, 332): “the body plays an important role in our interaction with the rest of creation
by influencing our inner natures through the assimilation of outside spirits and by reflecting our
inner natures in the transformation process”.
82 N. Strok
against her teacher by using his dualistic vocabulary in Chap. VII. She rejects dualism
in those terms because she holds the affinity between spirit and body, as they are the
same substance, for otherwise, they would not be united as they are. She explains that
in terms of love: the spirit loves its body because they are not completely different. She
is discussing with that notion of matter as dead and without any life. She explains the
terms of that dualistic conception, in a way that reminds us of Henry More (Hutton,
2004: 87–90).
According to the sense of those who maintain that body and spirit are so infinitely distant
in nature that one cannot become the other, the attributes are the following: that the body
is impenetrable by all other bodies, so that their parts cannot penetrate each other. Another
attribute of the body is that it is discerpible, or divisible. The attributes of spirit, however,
as these people define them, are penetrability and indiscerpibility, so that one spirit can
penetrate another or a thousand spirits can exist within each other, taking up no more space
than one spirit. Moreover, spirit is so simple and unified that it cannot be separated or really
divided into parts separated from each other (Conway, 1996: VII, §3).
If we accept these definitions, it is impossible to think of the union of body and

spirit, as they are completely opposite, explains Conway. This is a clear example of
our woman philosopher free thinking because she can present a doctrine that starts
from his most important teacher and affirms a union that seems impossible in her
teacher’s thought.
Acknowledging the affinity between spirit and body; according to Anne, I want
to think of her own case after all it has been said here. She explains the interaction
among individuals in terms of emanation and that in all creatures there is universal
love for each other, which follows from the fact that all creatures are one in essence.9
In her vital universe, perception is an exchange of spirits from body to body, retaining
those spirits. Lascano explains that “When we perceive things as good, or love them,
we take part of them into ourselves” (Lascano, 2013, 331). In Conway’s words:
“Therefore, the reason why we call, or think, something good is that it does us good
and we share its goodness” (Conway, 1996: VII, §3).
Anne interchanges words concerning natural philosophy with some of the promi-
nent scientist of that time, which means that she retained in her body all the knowledge
she could obtain from those people. She could not cure her illness, nobody could help
her with her suffering; nevertheless, her body was full of those spirits of knowledge
and, in this way, she was spiritualized to a great extent as well. The mark of her
constant spiritualization is that pain, which grows more and more all her life. Her
body did not have the shape of a healthy body, it was useless in that sense, but that
same body retained all her knowledge, which we can also read in part in her text, and
demonstrates the importance of that body, which she can only love. If sin is ataxia,
which means lo lose order, Anne Conway only wants the good and any sin she has
committed has been cured by her pains, which is order.
9 On individuation and the binding of love see Detlefsen (2018).

7.3 John Scottus Eriugena
Most of this paper was thought on the vocabulary of both authors, and it is not only
dolor but also some other words that generated interest in me. So first, I want to
make a remark on Conway’s vocabulary or on what we have as her vocabulary and
what I have found similar to Eriugena’s.
Anne uses the concept of officina (Conway, 1690 VIII, §5), translated as work
place, to explain how in the body the gross spirit produces those subtler spirits that
emanate from that body and are the form of communication in sensitive perception.
The concept of officina is also important in Eriugena’s anthropological thought, but
it has another meaning for the Irish philosopher because human nature is officina
omnium, that is, the place where extremes in nature are united, which replaces the
understanding of the human being as a microcosm:
For they (invisible and sensible creatures) are opposed to one another as the two extreme
terms of the created natures; but human nature supplies a middle term between them, for in
it they are joined to one another, and from being many become one. For there is no creature,
from the highest to the lowest, which is not found in man, and that is why is highly called
“agent (of contuinity)” (officina omnium) of all things. For into it flow together all things
which have been created by God, producing a single harmony from diverse natures as from
different sounds (Eriugena PE II 530 C—D).
In Eriugena’s Periphyseon microcosm is related to the juxtaposition of different

parts that create a monster, but the human being contains everything in harmony
and not as a juxtaposition, reflecting the imago dei that he is. In this sense, there is
harmony and unification of creation in human nature, as in Conway’s thought there is
harmony in all created nature. Anne uses the concept of microcosm, which belongs
to the tradition that Eriugena is correcting, but does not differ much from the concept
of officina omnium, because there are no different parts or any juxtaposition, as we
have seen, because all creation has the same substance, and the body functions as
the place where spirit produces more spirits. Eriugena explains:
And this is why man is not inappropriately called the workshop (officina) of all creatures
since in him the universal creature is contained. For he has intellect like an angel, reason like
a man, sense like an irrational animal, life like a plant, and subsists in body and soul: there
is no creature that he is without. For outside this you will find no creature (Eriugena PE III
733 B).
Eriugena affirms that the created nature would have only been the primordial
causes, that is human nature, if Adam would have not sinned (Duclow, 2014). This
is the reason that explains why human nature contains all creation and can be called
workshop of all creatures.
The notion of crassness is also present in Eriugena’s thought. Indeed, there is a
paper by Dermot Moran, whose title is “Spiritualis Incrassatio” (2006), an expression
owned by Eriugena, where Moran relates the Irish philosopher to absolute idealism.
Eriugena maintains that matter is immaterial in its primordial components (Eriugena:
PE I 479 A) and that its appearance as non-spiritual is the consequence of Adam’s sin,
but this fallen stated can and will be restored to its original state, wholly immaterial.
84 N. Strok
An important text from Periphyseon uses these terms as example of the process of
incrassation:
For everything that is understood and sensed is nothing else (nihil aliud est) but the apparition
of what is not apparent, the manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation of the negated, the
comprehension of the incomprehensible, the utterance of the unutterable, the access to the
inaccessible, the understanding of the unintelligible, the body of the bodiless, the essence of
the superessential, the form of the formless, the measure of the measureless, the number of
the unnumbered, the weight of the weightless, the materialization of the spiritual (spiritualis
incrassatio), the visibility of the invisible, the place of the placeless, the time of the timeless,
the definition of the infinite, the circumscription of the uncircumscribed (Eriugena PE III
633 A-B).
According to Eriugena, everything in creation is the apparition of the inapparent

substance of the creator. It appears as effect in creation, and those effects shows
characteristics that do not belong to God, but are produced as consequence of the
ontological descent, which follows original sin. Eriugena starts his Periphyseon with
a division of the term physis or natura in four specie, which reflects the dialectic of
creation. In this way, everything proceeds from the only creator uncreated, flows to
the nature that creates and is created, the primordial causes, then to the nature that
not creates and is created, creatures in places and times, and then returns to the nature
uncreated that not creates, this means God as end of times (Gersh, 2006; Kijewska,
2000).
Concerning matter, Eriugena affirms that it is indeed the apparition of immaterial
components. He follows Gregory of Nyssa in his De hominis opificio, which he
mentioned as De imagine, and affirms:
Let it do not so. For, as I have said, the great Gregory of Nyssa in his homily “On the Imagine”
proves it to be so by reasons beyond doubt, saying that matter is nothing else but a certain
composition of accidents which proceeds from invisible causes to visible matter (Eriugena,
PE I 479 b).
Eriugena explains that the ten categories are immaterial, but their combination
produces matter by an admirable union. It can be said that Eriugena is also a monist.
And as a Christian author the concept of the fall has an important meaning for
the ontological development. Adam’s sin occasioned some consequences for the
whole creation as for the human nature. Adam represents the human nature in its
original state, which has soul and body but a celestial body, which is immaterial. The
consequences of the original sin are:
Now all these things, the animal, earthly and corruptible body; the sex that is divided in
male and female; propagation by a mode similar to that of the beasts; the need of food and
drink and clothing; the increase and decrease of the body; the alternation of sleeping and
waking, and the inevitable necessity of both; and all similar limitations from which human
nature would have been entirely free if it had not sinned—as it is destined one day to be
free again—are the consequences of sin and were added to man, in man and with man, as
something external (extra ac superaddita) to his nature on account of sin before sin was
committed, by Him whose foreknowledge is not deceived (Eriugena PE IV 807 C—808 A).
That corruptible and material body is superadditum to the original human nature.
But in the future, it will be restored to its original stated, hidden under those material
ropes (Duclow, 2014). The discovery of the true nature hidden under the material
body is something that will happen during the return (reditus).
The concept of pain burst into that context. Eriugena has been condemned when
appeared his first book, De praedestinatione. He was supposed to fight against the
double predestination of Gottschalk of Fulda (806–68), but his solution went further
from the desire of those who invited him: he affirms that there is no predestination at
all, or everything is predestinated to good. Nevertheless, Eriugena kept his place at
the court of Charles the Bald and wrote his magnum opera, Periphyseon, where he
explains in detail what he understands as heaven and hell in his non predestinarian
metaphysics.
The process of reditus has several steps, and in general it is the return to the
spiritual first state of creation (Gersh, 1990; McEvoy & Dunne, 2002; Otten, 1991).
The key component in the return is the incarnation of the Lógos, Christ, that shows
the creature the path to the creator. In this process it is not a surprise to discover
that for Eriugena heaven and hell are states of mind (status mentis) and that hell
is a painful process, regarding Christ’s torment. Nevertheless, as in creation, soul
and body are present in the return, although not a terrestrial body but a spiritual or
celestial one.10
In the course of reditus, the material characteristics return to its original state
of immaterialism. This is one step in the return to the creator. Without matter, but
with spiritual bodies, the souls should receive punishment or reward, as it is said by
Christian thought. And as Eriugena expresses that sin is nothing, this means that is
not a thing ontologically speaking, torment should not work on nature but on what
is not nature itself, the perverse will, which is cause of sin. In Eriugena the perverse
will is that which does not follows the natural order of things, which can be related
to Conway’s ataxia.
What better works for punishment is imagination and phantasies, as there is not a
physical world and the possibility of physical punishment in that state. In Erigena’s
thought, phantasies mediate between human mind and all sensible and intelligible
realities: they are images or apparitions kept in the memory (Eriugena, PE V962 C).
Punishment, which brings pain, is the presentation of those phantasies that cannot
be attained. An example of this is the greedy man that seeks for gold, which cannot
be reached, and the images or phantasies of that gold that appear in order to torment
him. As Duclow and Dietrich put it: “Consequently, phantasies of sensible objects
become sheer hallucinations, and desire for them become pointless frustration. (…)
In other words, the damned are caught up in a virtual reality of their own making that
10 Ralph Cudworth also affirms the existence of a spiritual body always joined to the soul, even after
death. In his The True Intellectual System he affirms: “But on the contrary, if it be natural to souls,
to enliven and to enform some body or other (though not always a terrestrial one), as our inward
sense inclines us to think, then can it not seem probable, that they should by a kind of violence, be
kept so long in an un-natural state of nakedness and separation from all body; some of them even
from Adam to the day of judgment” (Cudworth 1678, 800). In Conway’s Principles we can find as
well: “for every created spirit has some body, whether it is terrestrial, aerial, or etherial” (Conway,
1996: V, §6).
86 N. Strok
they cannot escape” (Duclow & Dietrich, 2002: 358). This is the state of mind proper
of hell, the impossibility of accomplishing the goal, and it is only imagination.
In this mad state, Eriugena explain what sadness and pain makes:
For even the grief (tristitia) and suffering (dolor) of evil desires whether in this life or the
other are not evil, for they punish the evil desire. For the grief (tristitia) that comes from the
longing for temporal things, like an inextinguishable flame burns the unsatisfied appetite,
and the pain (dolor), which comes from the rotting of the lustful desire when its object is
taken away, devours like the worm that does not die (Eriugena, PE V 955 C).
Pain and sadness are the emotions involved in the process of punishment. Through
pain, the perverse will finds a cure, and that evil, which was not natural, disappear. The
spiritual realm loses the last anchor to ascend, even when there is nothing material
anymore. The other state, the heavenly one, is joyful. Phantasies, that is theophanies,
are also in play, but the sensation is of happiness and joy, in contrast to the sadness
and pain of the damned state. Emotions have and important role in the process of
return.
The term dolor (pain) does not appear till Periphyseon book III. In that book it
is the expression “quod sine mentis meae dolore fieri non poterit” (Ibid. PE III 651
A), which let us think that pain belongs to minds. In book IV pain is something that
can be only after the original sin and the metaphysical fall that it causes (Ibid. PE
IV 806 B). In Book V the main theme is the return and in this context dolor is a
fundamental concept, and there is no more doubt concerning the function of that
pain. Here Eriugena asks about the infidel Jew:
How great will be his affliction, how great will be his suffering, and with what a flame of
unsatisfied wanting he will be tormented when he finds none of these earthly and transitory
pleasures for which he had vainly hoped, and nothing will be left for him but the vague
intangible desire shadow of the thing he had hoped to gain? Even desiring to size it, and
never being able to do so, for it is nothing: that will be his eternal punishment (Ibid. PE V
949 D).
Pain appears when it is impossible to fulfill a desire and is necessary to clean

human soul from whatever perversion it has. Pain is associated to sadness, and both
of them are not bad but the necessary punishment for the perverted will. He explains:
And this is all that is meant by the punishment and torment of evil imaginations and irrational
desires, namely, the grief (dolor) and sorrow (tristitia) with which the conscience of the
wicked is afflicted within itself: and this grief and sorrow cannot be called evil, because they
happen to those they torment in accordance with the most righteous disposition of Divine
Providence, and because since in the sum of nature evil does not exist it cannot be said to be
(PE V 955 B).
These two passions are everywhere and in everyone that deserves punishment. And
they are not physical torments but phantasies and irrational passions, which generate
that mental states (status menti). They are not evil but the righteous disposition
of Divine Providence, which can only be good. These are the torments after time
disappeared, in a totally spiritual state.
7.4 Conclusion
Historically speaking, this is only an exercise because Anne Conway died in 1679,
two years before the publication of Eriugena’s Periphyseon editio princeps by
Thomas Gale, a Cambridge fellow. It is almost impossible that she could have
had access to that manuscript, although the Cambridge Platonists group knew Gale
(Jeauneau, 1977; Strok, 2014). But I think that there was something Eriugenian in
the air of her circle at that time, and that maybe not she herself but her editors and
translators might have added some of that vocabulary. Of course, this is something
that requires further studies, along with the study of Anne’s Neoplatonic heritage,
which includes for sure the relation to Origen of Alexandria’s thought and also to
Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophy (Hutton, 2004: 60–95, Hutton, 2012: 225–232).
Nevertheless, it is possible to make this comparison. Both authors put spirit over
body. This body is consequence of the fall, but is not bad in itself, as it is also nature
and necessary in some ways. Both metaphysics can be understood as monism, as body
is immediately related to immaterial substance. As Christian authors, it is needed a
redemption in their philosophies, which means a spiritualization. In this context, both
authors present pain as necessary in this process, this pain is related to the mental
or spiritual realm, and not simply to the body, although body is always present. In
Eriugena’s thought, there is a spiritual body, the original one, and in the case of
Conway, body is always part of that created nature. In both cases pain is not bad, but
the possibility of arriving to a better state of spiritualization.
The difference is that in Eriugena’s metaphysics, God is the essence that runs
through everything, which is incognoscible, and in Anne’s philosophy there are three
different essences or substances. The other difference is that Eriugena presents pain
and sadness as characteristics of hell, this means postmortem, while Conway shows
that process starts even in lifetime, and death has a re-signification in her philosophy.
In spite of the different contexts, of course ninth century cannot be identified with
seventeenth, both authors think as a continuum what surrounded they, which presents
unity. Pain, which is a tool of unification, has an important role in releasing from
some confusions, in achieving freedom, in order to achieve the perfect unification.
The other difference is that he was a man in a world of men, and she was a woman
in a world of men, of course. But Erigena needed protection as a not totally orthodox
thinker, to become one of the most important philosophers of the Medieval ages,
although not without some trouble in his own time. Anne Conway is a remarkable
philosopher of the seventeenth century. She was known in an intellectual circle of
that moment, but she did not gain fame in posterity. She kept her philosophy private
during her lifetime, and that might have been as well her wish for her writings. But
Anne was not considering the gender bias in the history of philosophy, she was not
concerned about the cannon like we are today.
She was focused on metaphysics and natural philosophy, and what we can surely
affirm is that she was free. She could study philosophy, she could read a great deal of
books, she could exchange ideas with intellectuals, she could choose her religion. In
a sense, she was limited by her pain, but in another sense, she was freed by that same
88 N. Strok
pain. In Principia we read: “nature always works toward the greater perfection of
subtlety and spirituality since this is the most natural property of every operation and
motion” (Conway, 1996: VIII, §5). The communion of spirit and body enables the
possibility of understanding pain in a good sense. That is why she was not diminished
in intelligence due to her pain.
Anne’s freedom was not only from gender limitations but also from social class
and religion, what becomes evident when considering that she chose Quakerism
and read esoteric theology, all of which can be found in her philosophy (Mercer,
2019, 72). Nonetheless, we can think that she was lucky at her time, considering her
freedom was silenced in the history of philosophy, and it is our duty to keep fighting
to study all these silenced voices. This cannot be a matter of chance.
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Chapter 8
The Eclecticism of Anne Conway
Teresa Rodríguez
Abstract Commonly, Platonic thinkers from Late Antiquity to the Modern era are
called eclectic or syncretic. The eclectic/syncretic philosopher (I will take the two
terms as synonyms) is generally considered to be a thinker who amalgamates various
elements of several philosophical schools with greater or lesser coherence. The term
seems to facilitate the “classification” of these philosophers and usually ignores
the many problems presented by their works, sources, and influences. The concept
‘eclecticism’ generally goes unexamined with regard to the specificities present and
instead works as a nonproblematic historiographical category. The case of Anne
Conway seems to fall into this category. Her philosophical work has been considered
syncretic, for example, by Hutton (Anne Conway. A Woman Philosopher, Cambridge
University Press, 2004) and Orio de Miguel (La filosofía de Lady Anne Conway:
un proto-Leibiniz, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, 2005), and it involves the
combination of philosophical elements from various traditions. This combination is a
rather strange one for contemporary philosophical historiography. In this paper, I will
present a reading of Anne Conway’s philosophical thought based on the dynamics
between these historiographic labels: Platonism and eclecticism. First, I will briefly
introduce Anne Conway. Then I will present the relationship between Platonism and
eclecticism. Finally, I will address Conway’s work in this context. I will propose that
her eclecticism should be revalued within philosophical historiography as a form of
concord that may have some positive contributions.
Keywords Eeclecticism · Historiography · Platonism · Prisca theologia · Pia

philosophia · Christosyncretism · Concordism
T. Rodríguez (B)
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
City, Mexico
e-mail: materogo@filosoficas.unam.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_8
92 T. Rodríguez
8.1 I
Anne Conway was born in London in 1631, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth
Cradock and Sir Heneage Finch. Although she did not receive a formal education,
she became interested in philosophy and theology in part due to the influence of
her brother John Finch. John introduced her to his tutor Henry More, who became,
in turn, her mentor and one of Anne’s closest friends (More dedicated his Antidote
against Atheism to Conway). She married Edward Conway, who also supported her
intellectual interests. More introduced Conway to Cartesian philosophy and encour-
aged her to adopt a critical attitude towards Descartes and his own philosophy. This
attitude led her to reject some of the central theses of More’s metaphysics. Francis
Mercury van Helmont is also a central figure in her intellectual and private life.
He was a permanent guest at Conway’s home in Ragley Hall, as well as being her
physician in the last years of her life. However, van Helmont could not provide a
cure for the terrible headaches she had suffered from the age of twelve. Both van
Helmont and Henry More influenced Conway’s only published work: The principles
of the most ancient and modern philosophy. The work was published in Amsterdam
in 1690, eleven years after Conway’s death. We also have a collection of her letters
edited by Marjorie Hope Nicolson and recently revised by Sarah Hutton.
The principles, written in English and translated into Latin, is divided into nine
chapters. In the first one, Conway begins by referring to God and his attributes in the
Plotinian way. It also presents her version of the Trinity in a manner that seeks to be
compatible with other religions (she mentions Jews and Turks) by omitting the words
“three distinct persons.” In the Chap. 2, she addresses the problem of creation in time
and proposes the temporal infinity of creatures. The third is devoted to the study of
God’s will, the infinity of the creatures and worlds. The Chap. 4 examines the figure
of Christ. The fifth proposes a syncretic reading of Christ as the Son of God or the first
creature; his nature is considered as intermediate, only changeable towards the good.
Chapter 6 examines the nature of creatures and proposes that their changing nature
resides in their modes and not in their essence. Every creature is composed of body
and spirit. The following chapter establishes that these do not differ substantially:
each body has a type of life or spirit by nature and has the principle of perception,
feeling and thought, love, joy and grief. Each body has activity and movement by its
own nature. Finally, Chaps. 8 and 9 add some arguments about her monism1 and the
nature of spirits and bodies versus Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza.
As it can be inferred from this brief outline, the number of topics and approaches
is problematic for various reasons (note briefly, the posthumous publication of a
fragmentary text reinterpreted by van Helmont, and the variety of interlocutors and
sources). In addition, the “syncretic” approach, as we mentioned, makes the job of the
historian of philosophy somewhat more complicated, since such an approach escapes
the structures under which we write the history of philosophy nowadays.2 Sara
1Regarding Conway’s monism, cf. Pugliese (2019); for her Platonism, cf. Mercer (2012).
2To broaden the discussion regarding Conway’s historiography, cf. Hutton (2015, 2019). For a
Spanish presentation of this section, see Rodríguez (2016).
8 The Eclecticism of Anne Conway 93
Hutton underlines that Conway’s “very choice of title, ‘Most Ancient and Modern’,
confounds the modern understanding of historical categories and our sense of the
distinctness of one philosophical school from another. Her incorporation of reli-
gious and theological material in her treatise, in particular her use of kabbalistic and
Origenist doctrines, runs counter to our sense of the modernity of seventeenth-century
philosophy, and even our idea of philosophy” (2004, 7).
In addition, in Hutton’s view, Conway’s case exemplifies the misfortunes of
Platonism: it belongs to a philosophical tradition that is seen as suspicious and of
little importance. The hostility toward Platonism as a true philosophy was already
present in Brucker’s aversion to syncretism, in the eighteenth century. According to
Hutton, syncretism is precisely Conway’s approach to philosophical activity:
In her syncretic approach Anne Conway also shares with the Cambridge Platonists a view of
philosophy which is no longer given credence, but one which was, nevertheless, widespread
in their day and was enormously important in shaping her ideas. This was the view that
all philosophies were part of a perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis), a view which
was widely accepted in the Renaissance and the seventeenth century and involved conflating
ancient and modern philosophy into one timeless system of thought. The title of her treatise
adopts this picture of philosophy by placing ancient and modern on an equal footing. (Hutton,
2004, 11)
Conway’s peculiar philosophical (non-formal) education and her tireless intellec-

tual pursuits mark out her philosophical practice and compel us to an interpretation
that goes beyond the traditional historiographical fields. To this end, let us focus on
the characterization of eclecticism, tracing the genesis of this concept in the history
of philosophical historiography.
8.2 II
The problem of classifying a thinker as eclectic or syncretic begins when eclecticism

is deemed a negative trait. In this sense, eclectics are “indiscriminate assemblers of
other thinkers’ doctrines” (Dillon & Long, 1988, vii). As an example of this, Dillon
and Long refer to the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica which stated the
following:
Eclecticism always tends to spring up after a period of vigorous constructive speculation,
especially in the later stages of a controversy between thinkers of pre-eminent ability. Their
respective followers, and more especially cultured laymen, lacking the capacity for original
work, seeking for a solution in some kind of compromise, take refuge in a combination
of those elements in the opposing systems which seem to afford a sound practical theory.
(Quoted in Dillon & Long, 1988, 3)
Although Dillon and Long examine the question of eclecticism in late Antiquity
and try to revise and reconsider this notion, a similar revision has not been undertaken
carefully for Renaissance and Modern Philosophy, and such a task is vital if we are
to approach the authors in a less prejudiced way.
94 T. Rodríguez
If we start from the pejorative consideration [which I will call the standard concep-
tion], we will find that eclecticism “represents” the decline of the intellectual vigor
of an epoch and its lack of creativity. In order to question the standard conception
that has marked the evaluation of Platonists from Late Antiquity, the Renaissance,
and Modernity, we need to address the history of this concept which refers, in turn, to
the history of philosophical historiography. I will briefly present Pierluigi Donini’s
position on this topic.
Donini (1988) claims that eclecticism in Late Antiquity was characterized as
a philosophy whose key attribute consists in the deliberate selection of doctrines
from various philosophical schools in order to fit them together. The term, however,
is seldom used as a self-reference by ancient authors. Only Potamo of Alexan-
dria (according to Diogenes Laertius), Clement of Alexandria and Galen call their
methods eclectic. Donini seeks the origins of the pejorative interpretation of the
concept in the history of philosophical historiography, starting with Jakob Brucker’s
Historia Critica Philosophiae. The term was previously used by other thinkers and
historians of philosophy (cf. Schneider, 2016, 118–120, 123). I will limit myself to
discussing Brucker here. His work was published in Leipzig between 1742 and 1744
and had notable success.
Brucker created several of the methodological tools with which we write the
history of philosophy today. According to Brucker, for a philosophy to be worthy of
being historicized, it must constitute a system whose main characteristics, according
to Catana (2005), are the following:
(B.1) It is autonomous concerning other non-philosophical disciplines. In order
to achieve autonomy, the philosopher who builds a system must emancipate herself
from the traditions of religion and authorities; return to her personal, individual
reason to find in it the principle of her system; and from this principle, articulate her
concept of wisdom.
(B.2) All the doctrines established in the different branches of her philosophy will
be deduced from that principle.
(B.3) As a self-contained system, it must comprise all branches of philosophy.
(B.4) The doctrines established within these different branches must have internal
coherence.
These four points were applied by Brucker to the entirety of the history of philos-
ophy and, according to Catana, they determine his other two major methodological
concepts: eclecticism and syncretism, which represented two more or less successful
forms of systematic philosophy. Catana affirms that the criteria with which Brucker
characterizes philosophy as syncretic or eclectic are intimately linked to his concept
of a “system of Philosophy.”
Although we have considered, roughly, syncretism and eclecticism as synonyms,
Brucker makes a clear distinction between the two. Remarkably, Brucker sees eclec-
ticism as a positive characteristic. By this concept he understands the activity of the
philosophers who build systems that might be based on other doctrines, but wherein
the final result is ordered coherently by the light of their own reason. These philoso-
phers are not limited to the rebirth of old philosophical schools or sects, but rather
ground the foundations of original philosophical systems. The new philosophies
are not syncretic, but eclectic: Bruno, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz. Unlike
eclecticism, for Brucker syncretism is a flaw; it can be considered as “unsuccessful
eclecticism” (Catana, 2005, 85), because it cannot produce a system of philosophy.
“Syncretism can hardly be called philosophy at all” (quoted in Catana, 2005, 85).
Brucker affirms: “[Syncretists] should only be allowed [into the history of philos-
ophy] with considerable caution, because they normally betray the authentic thought
of the philosophers, as the history of philosophy shows to us, both Ancient, Medieval,
and our own recent past” (quoted in Catana, 2005, 85–86).
The syncretism is a plague that, referring to the Platonic tradition, spreads the
“elegant prejudice […] that Platonism exhibits a true and divine philosophy (and
it mixes) everything up without showing a sense of what is fitting, and Cabalistic,
Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, Jewish, and Christian [philosophy] mixed with
each other in a wretched manner” (in Catana, 2005, 86) (much like Pico, Ficino, the
Cambridge Platonists, and indeed Conway herself).
A negative meaning of the term “eclectic” will be established by Zeller who
describes eclecticism in the manner that Brucker described syncretism. At this
point in time, the category “Neoplatonism” had become widespread and served
to distinguish Plotinus and post-Plotinian thinkers from the previous Middle
Platonism. Donini (1988) notes with surprise that Zeller does not define philosophical
eclecticism, but uses it as an enormous generalization.
For Donini, the concept of eclecticism is excessively general if applied without
distinction to several centuries of the history of thought, and until the moment in
which he wrote, it had not received sufficient scholarly attention. Donini systematizes
the meanings of the term eclecticism after Zeller in six items as follows:
D.1 Negative eclecticism: a combination of heterogeneous elements, fundamen-
tally a-critical and more or less deliberate.
D.2 Neutral eclecticism: as a fact without negative or positive associations.
D.3 Compatibilist eclecticism: as the more or less arbitrary attitude of the authors
who accept strange elements into the doctrine of their own school because they are
honestly convinced that these are compatible with it, and useful in explaining or
defending their doctrine.
D.4 Deliberate eclecticism: as the eclectic attitude of Potamo and Clement, which
is deliberate.
D.5 Anti-dogmatic eclecticism: as the attitude of those who choose between
doctrines with the same deliberate program, but whose spirit is strongly anti-dogmatic
and anti-sectarian.
D.6 Antiochus’s eclecticism: as the attitude of Antiochus who tried to prove
the basic agreement between Platonism, Aristotelianism and stoicism. According to
Donini, “it seems that Antiochus’s position is indeed very personal, and it is better
to consider it sui generis” (1988, 32).
Of these six uses, we will have to discard D.1 since we maintain that this meaning
impedes the correct study of the authors of the Platonic tradition obviating the diffi-
culties that they present, and also D.6 since it is extremely limited. D.2 presents the
problem that, as a mere neutral term, it avoids thinking in the mechanisms or theo-
retical assumptions that lead these authors to use eclectic methodologies that allow
96 T. Rodríguez
them to embrace different or seemingly disparate elements. As such, we cannot use

it. Thus, we are left with three possibilities for the term in our study:
T.1 Eclecticism with previous commitments, whether philosophical or theological
(D.3).
T.2 Eclecticism as a deliberate method of philosophical (and purely philosophical)
selection (D.4).
T.3 Eclecticism as a moral attitude whose character will be anti-dogmatic or
anti-sectarian (D.5).
As the above seems to suggest, to approach the “eclectic” thinkers of the Platonic
tradition, we must work in a historiographical conceptual framework that does not
depend on the Bruckerian notion of “syncretism” and its subsequent identification
by Zeller with “eclecticism” and that would allow these authors to be read in their
complexity and their own mechanisms. To this end, I propose that we reassign to the
term a non-pejorative meaning, which seeks to give an account of the philosophical
mechanisms and attitudes of Platonism in Modernity. Yet, is it possible to think of
eclecticism as a philosophical method, as a “principle” or “postulate” or a moral
attitude? Will this be the case with Conway, who, according to the preface to the
Principia:
understood perfectly, not only the true System of the World, call it Copernican or Pythgorick
as you will, with all the Demonstrative Arguments thereof; but all Descartes his Philosophy,
as also all the Writings of him, who (though a Friend of Descartes, yet) out of Love to the
Truth, hath so openly for this good while opposed his Errors: To say nothing of her persuing
(by the Benefit of the Latin Tongue, which she acquired the Skill of notwithstanding these
great Impediments) of both Plato and Plotinus, and of her searching into, and judiciously
sifting the abstusest Writers of Theosophy. (Conway, 1996, 4)
Given that Zeller “identified” the meaning of syncretism with eclecticism, we can
suppose that we shall not incur any serious inaccuracies if we take the two to be
synonymous for the remainder of our proposal.
In the next step of this investigation, we will try to weigh up part of Conway’s
thought under these three possibilities in order to propose a new reading of her
“eclecticism”.
8.3 III
According to Hutton, More’s and Conway’s eclecticism is based on an ancient

conception of wisdom: the prisca theologia. The philosophical subscription to this
ancient model implies conceiving of the following:
a. An original religious wisdom revealed to ancient historical figures such as
Hermes Trismegistus and Orpheus. Cabala and Platonism are direct heirs of
this “unitary” wisdom. This model proposes that the various elements that the
standard conception of eclecticism finds chaotic are expressions of an ancient
truth and therefore, under the apparent chaos, they represent a principle of unity.
b. Such a principle of unity implies that theology and philosophy are intertwined.
Thus, philosophy and theology merge in Conway’s treatise as shown in the
title “The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy concerning
God, Christ and Creation, that is, concerning the Nature of Spirit and Matter”.
This position (which, as can be noted from the above, contrasts with Brucker’s
principle regarding the “independence” of philosophy with respect to religious
authorities), is inherited from her teacher. In Henry More’s correspondence with
Conway, he notes “That Piety is the only Key of true Knowledge”. However,
“Anne Conway did not accept the possibility that philosophy and religion may
be reconciled merely on the authority of her teacher. She worked out her own
compatibilist solution, a philosophia pia or religious philosophy predicated upon
the existence and nature of God” (Hutton, 2004, 54).
Prisca theologia, or a pia philosophia directly contradicts the Bruckerian princi-
ples which postulate that all philosophy, in order to be worthy of being historicized,
must be an autonomous system with respect to other disciplines. In contrast to this,
Conway’s Principia starts with the notion of God and His divine attributes (vs B1).
Her work explicitly begins with the following considerations: “God is spirit, light,
and life, infinitely wise, good, just, strong, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, the
creator and maker of all things visible and invisible” (Conway, 1996, 9).
God is total and absolutely one, in the Plotinian way: There is “no time, change,
arrangement, or division of parts. For he is wholly and universally one in himself and
within himself without any variation or admixture. In himself he has no darkness or
corporeality at all, nor any form, image, or figure whatsoever” (Conway, 1996, 9).
By presenting a philosophy beyond the Bruckerian categories, Conway’s work
would seem destined to the margins. However, if we reject the standard conception
and postulate that her eclecticism (which can be related to the first term established
above, as T1. eclecticism with previous commitments whether philosophical or theo-
logical) is founded on the prisca theologia model, then we will have to broaden
its valuation by confronting her main orientation: a Christology. From these two
elements we can see how a particularly luminous part of eclecticism/syncretism
emerges—a part that has been obviated by its critics but that can have much to say
in the struggles that continue to this day, especially those of a religious character:
concordism. Indeed, the conception of the Trinity in Conway’s work (which, in many
other ways, is quite heterodox) is shot through with “Concord” colors:
For the same reason there is spirit or will in God, which comes from him and which is in terms
of substance or essence nevertheless one with him, through which creatures receive their
essence and activity; for creatures have their essence and existence purely from him because
God, whose will agrees with his most infinite knowledge, wishes them to exist. And thus
wisdom and will in God are not entities or substances distinct from him but, in fact, distinct
modes or properties of one and the same substance. And this is that very thing which those
who are the most knowledgeable and judicious among Christians understand by the Trinity.
If the phrase concerning the three distinct persons were omitted—for it is a stumbling block
and offense to Jews, Turks, and other people, has truly no reasonable sense in itself, and is
found nowhere in Scripture—then all could easily agree on this article. (Conway, 1996, 10)
98 T. Rodríguez
For Conway, Christ is the mediator between God and creatures. In her onto-
theology there are three kinds of entities: God (absolutely immutable); the inter-
mediate nature (mutable but only towards the good); and the creatures (mutable
towards both good and evil). The intermediate nature is very important not only
because it is the nexus between two extremes and guarantees the harmonic conti-
nuity of the Conwayian Cosmos, but also because in her eclecticism it makes the
Christian tradition compatible with the Cabalist:
Although some things have already been said in the previous chapter about the son of God,
who is the first born of all creatures, nevertheless many things remain to be said about this
matter which are necessary for the correct understanding of what follows; hence for that
reason we write this chapter. By the son of God (the first born of all creatures, whom we
Christians call Jesus Christ, according to Scripture, as shown above) is understood not only
his divinity but his humanity in eternal union with the Divinity; that is, his celestial humanity
was united with the Divinity before the creation of the world and before his incarnation. The
ancient Kabbalists have written many things about this, namely, how the son of God was
created; how his existence in the order of nature preceded all creatures; how everything is
blessed and receives holiness in him and through him, whom they call in their writings the
celestial Adam, or the first man Adam Kadmon, the great priest, the husband or betrothed
of the church, or as Philo Judaeus called him, the first-born son of God. (Conway, 1996, 23)
Conway’s eclecticism or religious syncretism could also be called Christosyn-

cretism (a term introduced by Sudduth, 2008, 77 ff.) since, unlike some contempo-
rary religious syncretism in which the elements of different religions are considered
on an equal basis, Conway’s syncretism is centered in Christ as intermediate nature:
“If these matters are correctly considered, they will contribute greatly to the propaga-
tion of the true faith and Christian religion among Jews and Turks and; other infidel
nations; if, namely, it is agreed that there are equally strong reasons by which we
can prove that there is a mediator between God and human beings, indeed, between
God and all creatures, as there are for proving that there is a God and a creation.
Therefore, those who acknowledge such a mediator and believe in him can be said
truly to believe in Jesus Christ, even though they do not yet know it and are not
convinced that he has already come in the flesh. But if they first grant that there is a
mediator, they will indubitably come to acknowledge also, even if they are unwilling,
that Christ is that mediator” (1996, 31–32).
8.4 Conclusion
As the preceding analysis seems to suggest, in order to approach the eclectic thinkers
of the Platonic tradition, as in the case of Anne Conway, we must work on a histo-
riographic conceptual framework that does not depend on the Bruckerian notion of
syncretism and Zeller’s later reassignation of it as eclecticism. This “new” notion
should allow these authors’ works to be read in all their complexity, reassigning to
the term a non-pejorative meaning that seeks at the same time to account for the
mechanisms and philosophical attitudes of Modern Platonism.
By presenting a philosophy that exceeds the boundaries of the usual categories,

Conway’s work would appear rather marginal. Yet, if we reject the standard concep-
tion of eclecticism and postulate that Conway’s (which may be related to the first
term established above, i.e. an eclecticism with previous commitments, whether
philosophical or theological) is based on the postulate of the prisca theologia, we
will need to broaden its valuation along with its predominant orientation: Chris-
tosyncretism. From these two elements, we can see how a luminous aspect of
eclecticism/syncretism emerges: namely, concordism.
To this end, I have tried to resignify the term and underline a principle of concord
in Conway’s thought, although subject to previous commitments. A principle of
tolerance might be founded that not only allows these “suspicious” philosophies
to become part of the history of philosophy, but also, amid serious conflicts and
disagreements between different religious postulates, can be built into a theoretical
paradigm. As Sudduth affirms:
One of the apparent virtues of syncretism is that it would seem to address one of the basic
problems encountered in philosophy of religion, namely, the so-called “problem of religious
diversity.” Simply stated, if there is one God, why are there so many different religious
traditions, many of which teach prima facie incompatible doctrines about the divine and
human salvation? The syncretist has a straightforward answer: religious diversity is not the
fundamental fact. The fundamental fact is a single truth (or system of truths) expressed
through multiple human ideas and language forms (Sudduth, 2008, 75).3
Therefore, the conception of philosophy and religion as ultimately pertaining to

a single source of wisdom could go from being a “discredited prejudice” to a model
that can still offer some potential solutions. Anne Conway is an example of this kind
of model. Her eclecticism should not be seen as an impediment to the study of her
philosophy and her inclusion in the history of philosophy.
References
Bori, P. C. (2000). Pluralità delle vie. Feltrinelli.

Catana, L. (2005). The concept “system of philosophy”: The case of Jacob Brucker’s historiography
of philosophy. History and Theory, 44.
Conway, A. (1996). The principles of the most ancient and modern philosophy. Cambridge
University Press.
Dillon, J., & Long, A. A. (1988). The question of eclecticism. University of California Press.
Donini, P. L. (1988) The history of the concept of eclecticism. The question of eclecticism. University
of California Press.
Hutton, S. (2004). Anne conway. A woman philosopher. Cambridge University Press.
Hutton, S. (2015) Blue-eyed philosophers born on wednesdays’: An essay on women and history of
philosophy. The Monist, 98(1), 7–20. Retrieved February 13, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/
44012709.
Hutton, S. (2019). Women, philosophy and the history of philosophy. British Journal for the History
of Philosophy, 27(4), 684–701. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2018.1563766
3 Another example of a pluralistic model for concord can be found in Bori (2000).
100 T. Rodríguez
Mercer, C. (2012). Platonism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy: THe Case of Leibniz and
Conway. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693719.003.0006
Orio de Miguel, B. (2005). La filosofía de Lady Anne Conway: Un proto-Leibiniz. Universitat
Politecnica de Valencia.
Pugliese, N. (2019). Monism and individuation in Anne Conway as a critique of Spinoza. British
Journal for the History of Philosophy, 27(4), 771–785. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2018.
1563764
Rodríguez, T. (2016) “Eclecticismo y platonismo en el Renacimiento” en Episodios filosóficos del
platonismo: ecos y tensiones. México: FES-Acatlán UNAM.
Schneider, U. J. (2016). The problem of eclecticism in the history of philosophy. Intellectual History
Review, 26, 1.
Sudduth, M. (2008). Pico della Mirandola’s philosophy of religion. Pico della Mirandola New
Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 9
Notes on Émilie Du
Châtelet’s Epistemology: Experience
as a Source of Knowledge
Mitieli Seixas da Silva
Abstract In the first half of the Eighteenth century, in the path of the ongoing
scientific revolution, it has in continental philosophy, a strong discussion about the
better method for achieve knowledge. One way to reconstruct Émilie Du Châtelet’s
philosophy is to look at her work as a search for the founding of a new method for
natural philosophy. In this paper, I will draw a note about her epistemology, specially,
I will present a view about her comprehension of the experience as a source of
knowledge. The paper has four main sections: (i) a brief introduction and overview
on the relation between Science and Philosophy in the 18th century; (ii) a discussion
about the use of experiments as a source of knowledge in Émilie Du Châtelet’s works,
specially, in the Dissertation; (iii) a defense on an epistemological oriented reading of
the principles of knowledge as the contribution of reason in her Foundations; (iv) an
attempt to restore experience as a source of knowledge by considering the role of the
principle of sufficient reason in experience, using examples from her Commentary.
Keywords Principle of sufficient reason · Experience · Experiments · Properties ·

Phenomena · Justification · Confirmation
9.1 Introduction: An Overview on the Relation Between

Science and Philosophy
We know the meaning of words is not immune to the strength of time, and it is
no different about the meaning of philosophy. The philosophy of the early 18th
century is organically united to science, so the revolutions within the latter reverberate
immediately on that. Noted, what we now call natural science was called natural
M. S. da Silva (B)
Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria, Brazil
e-mail: mitieli.seixas@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_9
102 M. S. da Silva
philosophy at least until the first half of the 18th century (Friedman, 2006, p. 305).1
Besides, for modern European thinkers, the rigid distinctions familiar to us within
the scope of philosophy (between metaphysics and epistemology, for example) are
incipient or being forged. The classical example of this early modern understanding
of the relationship between philosophy and science may be found in Descartes’s
attempt to fundament the laws of movement in metaphysical principles, ultimately,
in the attributes of God.2
As a thinker of the 18th century, Émilie Du Châtelet inherits this understanding
of philosophy. This double aspect of philosophy, namely, this intrinsic connection
with science and the comprehensive understanding of the matters to be faced does not
exclude, however, typically epistemological issues from their concerns, but demands
that the addressing of those be not completely apart from other surrounding issues,
be they of scientific, ontological or theological order. Thus, any attempt at a text that
aims to delineate any specifically epistemological aspect of her work needs to depart
from a constructivist perspective that seeks to recognize the thematically similar
elements and weave the textual fabric from that reconstructive work. That is the
approach intended herein.
In the first half of the 18th century, the consequences of the scientific revolution
initiated by Copernicus nearly a century before are still not completely settled. Carte-
sian philosophy, at least in France and territories of French intellectual dominion,
manages to advance the paradigm shift towards the heliocentric system. At Du
Châtelet’s time, however, much is still under dispute, in view of the explanation
for the movement of planets based on the theory of the vortices, widely accepted and
taught in the continent but questioned by Newtonians. We know little about Émilie
Du Châtelet’s early intellectual education, but she is known to have dedicated herself
to the study of Philosophy and Cartesian math (Zinsser, 2007). She is also known to
have disagreed with Descartes’s scientific solution to explain celestial movements3
and with the method he used to get to his results.4
When Madame Du Châtelet turns her attention to natural philosophy, especially
in the years prior to the publication of her Foundations, her thinking is deeply
affected by Isaac Newton’s work (Hutton, 2004). Agreeing with Newton means
disagreeing with Descartes in two main senses. Firstly, accepting principles of Newto-
nian physics, such as his universal gravitation theory, means rejecting aspects of
1 Steven Shapin maintains that not only did what we call science means “natural philosophy” on
that time, but even the word “scientist” was invented only in 19th century (Shapin 1996, p. 5, n. 3).
2 According to Friedman: “Descartes, in particular, was centrally involved with both revolutionary
enterprises, which were by no means clearly distinguished at the time” (Friedman 2006, p. 305).
3 An example of Du Châtelet’s critique to Descartes’ system of world, which is also an illustration
of her agreement to Newton’s natural philosophy, is the Lettre sur les élements de la philosophie de
Newton published in Journal des Sçavants, 1738 edition (Hutton, 2004). This letter can be found
on Gallica through the link: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k56587q/f526.image Access in
08/05/2020.
4 In her Foundations, Du Châtelet criticizes Descartes’s use of the clarity and evidence principles
as good guides for our reasonings, that is, to obtain truth in science (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 125–6).
9 Notes on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Epistemology: Experience as a Source of Knowledge 103
cartesian physics, or at least the theory of vortices. Secondly, subscribing to Newto-

nian physics implies acknowledging the experimental method as a possible proof
method. Therefore, agreeing with Newtonian physics requires, to some extent, the
revision of the cartesian method.
That is why, along with trying to solve scientific matters typical of her time,5 she
also needs to incorporate into her philosophy, reflections on the domain of knowledge:
its method, its sources, its structure. For the new science under construction, a new
scientific method and a new philosophy. Seeing as the discussion about the sources
of knowledge arises in Émilie Du Châtelet’s work as being organically linked to
her scientific discussions, we cannot expect to find a systematic inventory of human
cognitive capacities such as is found in John Locke’s Essay. We can find however
considerations on the role of experience and reason as sources of knowledge, and its
capacity to guarantee knowledge that is reliable to the new science, i.e., its capacity
to explain and validate the methods of discovery and proof of the modern science.6
For that reason the discussion about experience as a legitimate source of knowl-
edge appears in terms of the understanding of the epistemic statute of new experi-
ments, while the consideration on the reliability of reason appears in the terms of
the claim of rational principles, whose statute is still under dispute in the specialized
literature. Thus, to understand how experience and reason converge on establishing
what counts as knowledge for Émilie Du Châtelet, it is important briefly remind the
novelty brought by experimental science.
9.2 Experience as a Source of Knowledge
Peter Dear sustains that up to the 17th century, experience is not considered a source
of knowledge because, as the domain of that which is particular and contingent,
does not fulfill the requirements of necessity and universality, marks of such concept
(1995). To be the source of knowledge does not mean being the way to get to beliefs,
even if those beliefs are true. Beyond that, it requires getting to those true beliefs
through sources one considers reliable (Steup & Neta, 2020). Therefore, to consider
experience as a source of knowledge means to consider that through it, we may
justify the acquired knowledge. Peter Dear holds that the ideal of knowledge up to
5 The scientific source of Du Châtelet’s thinking become clear if we consider the motivations of both
her Commentary to Newton’s Principia and her Dissertation (more about this in the following).
6 On this approach, an interesting way to read the Foundations of Physics would be situated it
as a text which has two kinds of objectives. On one hand, the scientific ones, on the other, the
philosophical ones. In this case, even the title of the book should be discussed. There is a lot of
controversy about the best translation for the title of Du Châtelet’s book. Firstly, because institutions
can mean “foundation” as well “creation of something” or “lessons”. Secondly, because the word
“physique” in the eighteenth-century French means the branch of Philosophy occupied with the
study of the natural world. In that sense, this word would be the French equivalent for the English
expression “Natural Philosophy” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 66, translator’s note). So, it is even possible
the following translation for her book: Lessons on natural philosophy.
104 M. S. da Silva
the eighteenth century was largely influenced by Aristotle, which is why, since the
facts observed by experience are, in their own nature, particular, and knowledge
is universal, it does not make any sense to aim to justify a universal statement by
appealing to those facts.
One may object by saying that Aristotle finds a place for experience when
addressing, in the Posterior Analytics, the inductive knowledge (epagoge). In that
kind of knowledge, which would not come into being by the rational way of syllo-
gism, there would be room for experience. According to the canon interpretation
of Aristotle, there can be three different uses for the concept of induction: perfect,
dialectical, and intuitive induction (Ross, 1957, p. 47).7 In the first sense, induction
is no different from a syllogistic argument in whose premises are exposed all the
specific cases of general proposition to be deduced in the conclusion (Ross, 1957,
p. 49). Therefore, in the perfect induction there is justification, however, what justifies
the argument is not experience proper but the rational process which allows moving
from the exhaustive presentation of all the particular cases to their reunion in the
general conclusion. In the second use, according to Ross, dialectic (or rhetorical)
induction consists simply in the suggestion that knowledge in particular instances
tends to enable general belief, but that does not mean that Aristotle sees that process
as having justification character, given it is exempt of certainty (Ross, 1957, p. 48).
Finally, intuitive induction would consist in “the psychological preparation upon
which the knowledge of the principle supervenes” (Ross, 1957, p. 49). That means
that “[t]he knowledge of the principle is not produced by reasoning but achieved by
direct insight” (Ross, 1957, p. 49). In that case, experience has an accessory role, for it
serves only to “guide our attention to the general principle”, but, I insist, not to justify
it. In that case, more specifically, induction would be the process of understanding
(grasping) the universal in the particular: “thus, for example, one might soon realize,
after having encountered a few triangles, that not only do the internal angles of each
add up to two right angles, but that this must be true of all triangles whatever, by the
very nature of a triangle” (Dear, 1995, p. 26).
If we follow David Ross’s interpretation, then, regardless of which sense of induc-
tion is being assessed, we see a quite different way of treating inductive knowledge
from the one found in modern authors.8 This landscape starts changing at the end
of the sixteenth century, through a course of events starting from the experiments
of Galileo and his contemporary peers to mid-eighteenth century. Broadly speaking,
it was the gradual introduction of experiments as scientific practice that led to the
consideration of experience as a legitime source of knowledge. That happens progres-
sively when reports of specific experiments gained legitimacy in the scientific milieu
and started being considered as capable of warranting a passage from the particular
to the universal, typical of modern experimental science (Dear, 1995, p. 21).
7For a different view, consider the book of Harari (2004).

8That is the reason why the author defends that the problem of induction as exposed by David
Hume is a typical modern problem, being just a minor remark in Aristotelian tradition (Dear, 1995,
p. 21).
Émilie Du Châtelet is known to have conducted experiments in the company

of Voltaire9 at her Château de Cirey. Those aimed at understanding the nature of
fire, the relationship between gravitation and movement and a few other phenomena
(Detlefsen, 2018). The Marquise is also known to have disagreed with Voltaire, who
subscribed to Newton’s view, about the results of some of those experiments.10 That
divergence resulted in the writing and secret submission of her Dissertation on the
nature and propagation of fire to the Académie Royale des Sciences Award in 1738.11
How might Du Châtelet understand the role of experience in her philosophical and
scientific writings? What use does she make of the experiments as a method of
justification?
9.3 Experience and Experiment in the Dissertation
In the Dissertation, we find two uses for the experiments: either as premises of
an induction, or as premises to questioning hypotheses in arguments for reduction
ad absurdum. In the first case, Du Châtelet departs from experiments to arguments
which end up in a general statement about nature.12 One example of that is the
discussion regarding the attribution of general matter properties to fire, specially
weight and impenetrability (Sects. 4, 5 and 6). In the context of the attribution of
impenetrability in particular, in the first part of the argument, Du Châtelet lists reasons
to doubt whether fire is impenetrable, among which are the experiments and particular
experience reports: observation of the sky through telescopes, the path taken by light
from a candle, and the experiments conducted by Newton in his Optics (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 71–3). The general inductive conclusion from the experiments is “[the fire]
penetrates the bodies independently of the nature of their pores” (Du Châtelet, 2009,
p. 73). From that, one may conclude: “So, then it is very probable that fire is not
impenetrable” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 73). In the second part of the argument, Du
Châtelet lists two reasons in favor of the hypothesis of impenetrability, offers two
objections according to Newton’s demonstrations and concludes: “So, one is obliged
9 Voltaire come back from his exile in Leiden, in the year of 1737, very enthusiastic about
experimental philosophy. In Leiden, he was acquainted with the Newtonian disciples Petrus von
Musschenbroek and Willem Jacob Gravessande (Zinsser, 2007).
10 Thus, it is not accurate to say that Du Châtelet shares Voltaire’s view of Descartes and Newton
(Locqueneux, 1995, p. 865), since Du Châtelet disagrees with Voltaire in many episodes, for
example, in the case of the attributions of the properties of matter to fire. In this case, to disagree
with Voltaire is to deny Newton’s view.
11 Both texts, although they were not the winners, were published in a special and limited edition
(which was relatively common) from 1739 with an errata to the original text (which was not common
and was a privilege granted to the Marquise). From this fact, we can infer how important his influence
was in the scientific and philosophical milieu of his time.
12 In this case, because Du Châtelet’s employment of induction is not based on an exhaustive list of
experiments (which is impossible), her use of induction is not a case of a perfect induction. Likewise,
it is not an instance of intuitive induction, since she is not dealing with some kind of direct insight.
The only kind of induction that can be approximated with Du Châtelet’s use is dialectical induction.
106 M. S. da Silva
to acknowledge that there is some ground for regarding the impenetrability of fire as
doubtful” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 74).
One question that arises is how can Du Châtelet employ induction if, a few lines
before, in the context of the discussion of the attribution of heat and luminosity to fire,
she writes: “One must never conclude from the particular to the general, so, though
heat and light are often united, it does not follow that they always are” (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 63). Du Châtelet was not a naïve thinker. Firstly because, when experiments
are used as reasons for conclusions that are intended as general, her conclusions
have epistemic nuances, since they are accompanied of expressions such as “it is
very probable”, “it would seem that” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 64) or “one is obliged to
acknowledge that there is some ground for”. That alone shows that her understanding
of induction as a method of proof and justification is sufficiently tinted (more about
it below). Secondly, particularly in the discussion about weight and impenetrability,
the marquise only considers possible to conclude from the experiments because “all
these properties that we perceive in matter being only phenomena” and as such,
“so it is for experiment to teach us whether fire is heavy and impenetrable” (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 71). This suggests that: if disputed properties are phenomena,
then experiments may be used as reasons to decide their attribution to fire or not.
The caveat is in keeping in mind that those general conclusions are of the order of
probability.13
If, on the one hand, apparently, one cannot reach positive universal conclusions, on
the other hand experiments may be reasons to “decide in the negative” (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 63). Thus, the second use that Du Châtelet makes of the experiments consists
in using them to counter hypotheses in an argument for reduction ad absurdum. In that
case, experiments serve to demonstrate that a seeming general law does not sustain
itself.14 Her method consists in raising a hypothesis, exposing an experiment that
contradicts that hypothesis and reaching a conclusion that consists in the negation of
the hypothesis raised. That method appears, for instance, in the discussion about the
joint attribution of the properties of heat and luminosity to fire. To prove that those
two characteristics are not always together in beings, the marquise first raises the
following hypothesis: “[…] is fire always hot and luminous?” (Du Châtelet, 2009,
p. 63). Secondly, to mark the difference between heat and luminosity, she describes
the experiments by René de Réaumur with luminous dails who inhabit cold waters,
and her own experience with glowworms which do not lose their light when immersed
in water. In the end she concludes: “From these experiments it would seem that water
only acts on the property of fire that we call heat, since it destroys the heat, and does
13 This is an argument to consider Du Châtelet’s use of experiments as premises of inductions in the

sense of an Aristotelian dialectical induction, namely, experiments can lead to probable knowledge,
but not to certain knowledge. In the last Section of this paper, I will offer a reason to reject this
interpretation.
14 Katherine Brading notes the asymmetry between acceptance and rejection of a hypothesis by
experience (2019, p. 44), which appears in the following excerpt from the famous chapter Of
Hypotheses of his Foundations of Physics, where Du Châtelet demanded: “One experiment is not
enough for a hypothesis to be accepted, but a single one suffices to reject it when it is contrary to
it” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 152).
not alter the light when the property of lighting is separated from that of heating”
(Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 64). That way, if experiments show it to be possible to have
light without heat, then it is proved that those properties are not always together in
beings.
From all that, one can state that at her time, experiments had been incorporated
as scientific praxis,15 so it was through experimental philosophy that experience is
inscribed as a possible source of knowledge in Émilie Du Châtelet’s philosophy. One
can therefore conclude that the importance of experience in the argumentation of her
Dissertation is undeniable. What remains unknown is whether one can acquire secure
knowledge through experience, that is, whether experience is a legitimate source of
knowledge. Regarding the Dissertation, at least in two occasions Madame du Châtelet
expresses her skepticism about experience being capable of generating knowledge.
The first one appears in her criticism of the conclusion around the presumed weight of
fire, which are withdrawn upon the replication of experiments conducted by chemists
of her time; the second one, when the Marquise seeks Descartes’s authority to justify
her own opinion.16 Those reasons, it is worth remarking, are independent, for, while
the first shows the limitation of the experiments in reaching their typical conclusions,
the second one appeals to the need to find something universal as an assurance to
finding certainty.
9.4 Skepticism About Experiments
Within the discussion surrounding the attribution of weight to fire (Sect. 6), the
marquise doubts conclusions reached through experiments conducted by eminent
scientists of her time. Her criticism, in that case, will befall the reliability of experi-
ence in giving us knowledge of the world, since the conclusions drawn from those
experiments might be erroneous. The philosopher announces she will discuss two
experiments: (i) the one conducted by Homberg, a chemist, about the weight of anti-
mony; (ii) Boerhaave’s experiment with heated and cooled iron. In the first case,
Homberg declares having increased the weight of antimony by around 10% at the
end of a calcination process (process of making a certain substance into powder by
heating it). In the second one, Boerhaave states he had not found any difference
between flaming iron and iron which was completely cooled.
Regarding the first experiment, Du Châtelet notes that, during the process of
calcination of antimony, an iron spatula was used. That alone could explain the
increase of weight of the material by the end of the process, seeing as the spatula
might have lost material to the means, rather than the fire having been responsible for
15 In the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, the monu-
mental work edited by Denis Diderot et Jean Le Ron D’Alembert in the 18th Century (1751–1772),
D’Alembert tells the story of the slow introduction of experimental philosophy in France, which
ends up in the creation of a chair of Experimental Philosophy at the University of Paris by the King
of France (D’Alembert, 1756, p. 298a–301b).
16 In the original text, they appear in the inverse order.
108 M. S. da Silva
the weight increment during the calcination. Additionally, the philosopher remarks
that every metal loses weight when it is reheated and molted after being calcinated.
How could it be therefore that, exactly in the process in which metals are exposed
to the most potent fire, that is, to a fire capable of melting them, their weight would
diminish? By way of external variables (the spatula) or by errors in considering what
is cause and what is effect, for Du Châtelet, in this experiment, “Thus, one is very
far from being sure that it was the fire that increased its weight” (2009, p. 75).
Regarding the second experiment, the philosopher points out that if fire has weight,
there seems to be no reason the weight of the bodies it penetrates should not increase
when it is present. History has it that Voltaire and the marquise replicated many such
experiments in a forgery next to Cirey, and, more importantly, that there was funda-
mental disagreement between them about the results obtained. As a loyal supporter
of Newton’s theory, Voltaire sustained that they proved fire to consist of particles of
matter, and that it therefore had weight.17 Unconvinced by the inconstant results of
the experiments, Du Châtelet defended that they were inconclusive: “From all these
experiments it must, then, be concluded that fire has no weight, or that if it does, it
is impossible for its weight ever to be perceptible to us” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 78).
The second instance of questioning the reliability of experience can be seen in
the context of the attribution of the properties of light and heat to fire. According to
Du Châtelet, to Descartes, light and heat are modes of fire. A mode, as opposed to
an attribute, is a non-essential property that one may or may not find [in a being]
(Châtelet, 1740, p. 60). But why can light and heat not be considered essential
properties of fire? The reason presented is that light and heat are objects of our
senses, that is, sensations. And what is a sensation? Sensations are “modifications
of our soul, that seem to depend on our existence and of the manner in which
we exist” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 66, my emphasis). That means, and that is the
marquise’s argument, that someone deprived of the sense of sight, or of touch, would
not attribute such properties to fire. That element, however, would not cease to exist
exactly as it does. Nevertheless, if that is so, then light and heat are modes rather
than essential attributes, for they may or may not be “found” in fire. Ergo, we cannot
judge the nature of fire with certainty by appealing to characteristics which depend
on our manner of existence (our sensitive constitution) rather than on the manner of
existence of the fire itself (its constitution, whatever it may be). The conclusion of
the argument is “it seems that some more universal effect must be sought in fire, and
one whose existence does not depend on our senses” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 66).
To sum up, the conclusion of the second criticism seems to be that experience is
not reliable in judging with certainty because what we get from our senses has more
to do with the way we are than with the way the world is. To reinforce that point, Du
Châtelet states that not only might the absence of one of the senses make us judge the
properties of fire differently, but also the irregular functioning of one of the senses,
for instance, should we have a fever, might make us misjudge an object. Nevertheless,
if we extend the case made for heat and luminosity to all we get through the senses,
17 According to Judith Zinsser, it was because this disagreement that the Dissertation was born in
the first place (2007).
we will have that, while the features of things accessed by sensation depend more on
our way of existence than on the way of existence of the things of the world, it seems
that knowledge obtained through experience cannot lead us to judge with certainty.
9.5 Knowledge Through Reason and the Principles of Our

Knowledge
Albeit it is possible to say that experience does have a role in the construction of
knowledge for Émilie Du Châtelet, for the reasons indicated, it seems not possible
to state that she considers it a source of knowledge in and of itself from her
Dissertation.18 In Foundations’ Preface, we find:
[...] experiment is the cane that nature gave to us blind ones, to guide us in our research;
with its help we will make good progress, but, if we cease to use it, we cannot help falling.
It is experiment that teaches us about the physical characteristics of things and it is for our
reason to use it and to deduce from it new knowledge and new enlightenment (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 121–2).
The quotation above establishes a relationship between experience (or experi-

ments19 ) and the work of reason. But what exactly is it to use reason to “deduce new
knowledge from it”? It is known that in her translation of Mandelville’s Fable of the
Bees, Émilie Du Châtelet criticizes the refusal to innate ideas on the part of John Locke
(Hagengruber, 2012, p. 8). It is also known that Du Châtelet considers the principles
(of contradiction and of sufficient reason) as innate truths (Hagengruber, 2012). Thus,
it seems reasonable to presume that the marquise does not completely adhere to the
experimental philosophy defended by Newtonians (and even by the philosophers in
her inner intellectual circle). Hence, it would seem natural to consider an adherence
to reason as the source of innate ideas, which would counter the lack of necessity
and universality, typical of the knowledge originated in experience. Does her critical
vision of experience as source of knowledge combined with her understanding of
the innate nature of certain principles which are essential to knowledge mean the
philosopher is committed to a view which defends that knowledge is innate? Which
elements can we find in her texts that support this interpretation?
First of all, considering as it seems to be the case, given the quotation above, the
use of reason as a need to progress in knowledge is not the same as to state that such
use consists in nothing more than the task of unveiling a group of innate truths that
18 After the consideration of reason as a source of knowledge, I will return to that question aiming
to provide a better understanding of the relation between experience and reason as sources of
knowledge for Du Châtelet.
19 It is worth noting that for the main objectives of this paper, I am not making a difference between
experience, experiment, observation and demonstration. The rationale for this is that all of them are
tokens of knowledge acquired by experience, so all of them can be generally considered under the
umbrella of experience. I believe, however, that a more detailed research should be conducted to
consider fine distinctions herein.
110 M. S. da Silva
already lie in our minds. There are two distinctive statements herein, the first being
that the use of reason is necessary in getting to knowledge, and the second being that
we only truly know what is revealed to us through reason. Once that distinction is
made, reason can be the source of knowledge as it provides us with certain rational
principles, whether to warrant correction in our judgements or to guide our knowledge
of nature. In this case, instead of a defense of an absolute innatism, Du Châtelet would
defend a minimal innatism, that is, only for the principles of a specific category (as
shall be considered ahead).
The way I read Émilie Du Châtelet’s work, it is undeniable that there is, in the
path towards knowledge in science, an essential role for reason. In the same way, it
is undeniable that there is a role for innate principles. However, exactly because her
philosophy is encrusted in experimental science as previously described, examples
abound, the marquise does not seem to defend an absolute innatism, that is, an
understanding that knowledge happens when we recognize in nature what we already
have in our minds.20 On the contrary, if it is true that there is a minimal innatism in
her understanding of knowledge, to know through reason must mean to use rational
principles in the search for knowledge.21
In that direction, we would like to suggest that the principles might work as guide-
lines for our search for knowledge, rather than as truths revealed. If the principles, as
per the first chapters of Foundations, serve as guides to knowledge, they allow “new
knowledge to be deduced” and “new enlightening to be found” on the material of
experience. The principles of contradiction and that of sufficient reason would fulfill
that exact role.22 Adopting that perspective,23 the very way the principle of contra-
diction is presented seems to make more sense: “the first axiom, on which all truths
are founded […] the foundation of all certainty in human knowledge” (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 126–7). The principle of contradiction is considered the foundation of all
truths and of all certainty, for, to Du Châtelet, through it we can distinguish what is
possible, that which is in accordance with this principle, from what is impossible,
that which contradicts this principle. As the fundament of the distinction between
possible and impossible, this principle also serves to distinguish necessary truths
from contingent ones. That is because a necessary truth is one “which can only be
determined in a single way” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 128), such as the truths of geom-
etry, and the contingent ones “when a thing can exist in various ways” (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 128). The necessary truths (those which can only exist in a single way) are
truths whose denial is impossible, so, by distinguishing possible from impossible via
20 This would be the case if she subscribes the third sense of induction for Aristotle, for intuitive
induction is the kind of induction which is based in a grasp of the universal which resides on the
particular.
21 Detlefsen (2018) defends an interpretation according to which Du Châtelet’s use of principles
do not compromise her with an absolute innatism in the sense just mentioned. My interpretation
pursues that path.
22 To be just, the marquise considers also two another principle, the principle of indiscernible and
the law of continuity, both follow from the principle of sufficient reason.
23 That perspective is not original, once it is defended, for example, by Katherine Brading (Brading,
2019).
the principle of contradiction, I may come to know that “which can only exist in a
single way”.
In the same spirit, the principle of sufficient reason is presented as “what makes
it possible for an intelligent being to understand why this thing exists” (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 131). It is, therefore, “the principle on which all contingent truths depend”
(Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 128).24 Necessary truths can only be made real one way, but
that does not happen with contingent truths, for by their own definition, they are
contingent exactly because they can be determined in many ways. Well, what, then,
can explain that a contingent truth be made actual? For Du Châtelet, if we have a
principle that allows us to distinguish possible from actual, that is, to explain for
what reason a contingent truth is such as it is (and not otherwise), we have in fact
a principle to guide our search for contingent truths.25 Therefore, the principle of
sufficient reason is presented as fulfilling that exact role: “Thus, in all that exists
there must be something making it possible to understand why something that exists
could exist; this is what is called sufficient reason” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 131). What
we have here is a principle that makes it possible to understand why something that
exists in a way that is unnecessary may exist the way that it does. For that reason,
even if it is not possible to completely separate certain metaphysical commitments
from Leibnizian principles used by the marquise, it is interesting for our approach to
emphasize the fact that principles are introduced to guarantee the knowledge of the
world by the human being,26 that is, to guarantee the intelligibility of the world.
Furthermore, the reasons Émilie Du Châtelet presents to support the statement
that the principle of sufficient reason is fundamental to contingent truths are, for the
most part, epistemological27 :
24 More about the Wolffian heritage in Du Châtelet’s thought, see Detflesen (2018).
25 For a different view, Robert Locqueneux presents the principles as an essentially metaphysical
(Locqueneux, 1995).
26 As the very title of the chapter indicates, the principles are principles of our knowledge.
27 Moreover, to explore the epistemological sense in which the principle of sufficient reason is a
foundation of contingent truths can lead us to the question about the structure of knowledge itself. At
first sight, stating that the principle of sufficient reason is a principle on which all contingent truths
depend could compromise Du Chatelet’s view with foundationalism, because it would be a reason to
assume that Du Châtelet’s project was to provide metaphysical foundations to Newtonian physics.
If Du Châtelet understands that physics needs a metaphysical foundation, then, she understands that
knowledge itself is structured like a building (or tree): the metaphysics being the foundation which
sustains the floors (the varied sciences). There are a lot of support for this reading in Du Châtelet’s
work. For that reason, it is not surprising that this reading is widely supported by specialized
literature. Katherine Brading name this approach as “the received view” (2019, p. 8). But, I think,
along with Brading (2019) and Detflesen (2018), that it is possible, in the understanding of this
principle, to ascribe an epistemic (or rational) role to the principles of our knowledge (namely,
the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason). Moreover, I think that, if we
emphasize this principle as a rational guide, we can maintain that all contingent truths depend on the
principle of sufficient reason because without this principle we do not have any reason to seeking
after truth in science, rather than because physics needs a metaphysical foundation in the sense
defended by the received view. A consequence of such an approach is that Du Châtelet’s view about
the structure of knowledge could be free from any compromise with foundationalism. However,
developing the question about the foundation of knowledge extrapolate the aim of this paper.
112 M. S. da Silva
If we tried to deny this great principle, we should fall into strange contradictions. For as soon
as one accepts that something may happen without sufficient reason, one cannot be sure of
anything […].
if the principle of sufficient reason does not apply, my certainty becomes a chimera […].
Yet something could happen without a sufficient reason, and I would be unable to state
that the weight of the balls is identical at the very instant when I find that it is identical […].
Without the principle of sufficient reason, one would no longer be able to say that this
universe, whose parts are so interconnected, could only be produced by a supreme wisdom
[…].
But when it is possible for a thing to be in several states, I cannot be sure that it is in
one state rather than another, unless I do give a reason for that which I affirm. (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 129–130, my emphasis)
What we see above is the same claim replicated in different ways: to deny the
principle of sufficient reason is to deny the possibility to pursue truth, either because
we can no longer reach certainty, or because we abandon the possibility of speaking
coherently about the universe.28 That is why, the metaphor used in the Preface to the
Foundations seems perfectly adequate:
M. Leibniz’s ideas on metaphysics are still little known in France, but they certainly deserve
to be. Despite the discoveries of this great man, there are no doubt still many obscure things
in metaphysics; but it seems to me that with the principle of sufficient reason, he has provide
a compass capable of leading us in the moving sands of this science (Du Châtelet, 2009,
p. 123).
It is not by chance that Madame Du Châtelet compares the principles of our
knowledge with a compass. First, a compass is an instrument and as such is something
created (in this case, artificially) to perform a specific task. Second, the task any
instrument is supposed to perform should have a specific aim. So, if the principle
of sufficient reason is analogous to a compass, then we can ask which task this
instrument should perform and for which purpose it was created. Well, just like a
compass, the principle of sufficient reason is an instrument whose task is to guide.
Specifically, its task is guiding the scientist or natural philosopher towards the search
for make nature intelligible. Nature is the realm of contingent truths and science is a
continuous project which deals with nature. Ergo, the principle of sufficient reason is
the instrument which aim is to guide our seeking after contingent truths in science.29
28 In her book, Katherine Brading appoint four different topics in commenting the same passages
(Brading, 2019, p. 36). For our objectives, which are limited, it suffices highlight the shared character
of Du Châtelet’s argumentation: all the arguments are involved in prove that the principle of sufficient
reason has a role to guarantee knowledge in science.
29 Again, Katherine Brading maintains that the “PSR is introduced in the Foundations as a principle
whose acceptance is required in order to underwrite the very possibility of scientific theorizing, and
whose implementation within theorizing is required as a component of Du Châtelet’s methodology”
(2019, p. 39). In the interpretation I am pursuing, the PSR is not only necessary to undertake the
possibility of scientific theorizing, and as such as a “component” of Du Châtelet’s method. My
reading is slightly different from Brading’s point of view. My approach does not read Du Châtelet’s
methodology as divided into two parts; it is not a two-pronged methodology, with experience on
one hand and principles on the other; rather, it is considered as an organic method in which the
principles of reason must be observed as guiding the experimentation itself.
9.6 Some Notes on Du Chatelet’s Epistemology: Recovering

Experience as a Source of Knowledge
To finalize, a look in retrospect is needed to see what the interpretation of reason

as the provider of rational principles to guide knowledge in science can add to the
consideration of experience as a source of knowledge. In the second part of this
paper, we saw two specific points of criticism about experiments: (i) experiments
are not conclusive, therefore not reliable, because they may be badly performed;
(ii) experiments work on phenomena, and phenomena are not reliable because they
have more to do with our way of existence than with the way of existence of the
things. Besides, we noticed general criticism on induction: “One must never conclude
from the particular to the general” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 63). Is it possible, after
considering the role of the principle of sufficient reason in her method of seeking
truth in science, to reconsider experience as a source of knowledge for Madame Du
Châtelet? I will outline a brief answer based on Du Châtelet’s writings for each of
these difficulties.
The first point of criticism maintains that experiments are inconclusive based on
the way they are carried out. Therefore, that criticism is not about the epistemic status
of experiments itself, but about the method used by the ones who are managing it. In
her Commentary on Newton’s Principia, Du Châtelet draws attention to the danger
of “badly done experiment” in mentioning Tycho Brahe’s system. On that occasion,
she states:
Tycho, deceived by a badly done experiment, and perhaps even more by the desire to create
a system in between that of Ptolemy and that of Copernicus, supposed that the Earth was
at rest, and that the other planets that turn around the Sun turn with it around the Earth
in twenty-four hours […]. This proves how dangerous it is to misuse one’s insights (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 265).
So, with that observation in mind, another way to consider her previous criticism is
to claim that she is not being skeptical about experiments, but just careful about how
people manage the experiments. What the quote above makes clear is that the problem
in the handling of the experiments is on the part of the scientist (Tycho Brahe), who
has other purposes in mind (the desire to create a system) than the epistemic good
of aiming at truth. The problem, therefore, is with the epistemic agent’s choice of
purposes. The conclusion is that, once we have epistemic agents that are occupied
only with the search for truth, experiments can be considered a legitimate source of
knowledge. Does the principle of sufficient reason help the epistemic agent to be
concerned with the right epistemic purposes?
In the Foundations’ Preface, Du Châtelet asserts the importance of being guided
by reason and, consequently, by the principles of reason, to persevere in the search
for truth. In the Foundations’ First Chapter, the marquise insists that the rational
principles of our knowledge are necessary if “one does not want to go astray” (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 125). My suggestion is that we should read these passages as
examples of her normative commitment with the ideal of an epistemic agent oriented
only by the epistemic good of truth. The principles of reason would help the epistemic
114 M. S. da Silva
agent in his search for truth in the sense that to be guided for reason (or for the
principles of reason) is to be in an epistemic position whose only purpose is to reach
truth in science30 :
Guard yourself, my son, whichever side you take in this dispute among the philosophers,
against the inevitable obstinacy to which the spirit of partisans carries one: this frame of
mind is dangerous on all occasions of life; but it is ridiculous in physics. The search for truth
is the only thing in which the love of your country must not prevail, and it is surely very
unfortunate that the opinions of Newton and of Descartes have become a sort of national
affair. About a book of physics one must ask if it is good, not if the author is English, German,
or French (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 119–20).
In this work, I have not aimed at flaunting my intelligence, but at being right; and I have
nurtured your reason enough to believe that you are capable of seeking the truth independently
of all the alien adornments with which it is being overwhelmed in our day (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 123).
It must be acknowledged that one could not have rendered the sciences a greater service,
for the sources of the majority of false reasoning is forgetting sufficient reason; and you will
soon see that this principle is the only thread that could guide us in these labyrinths of error
the human mid has built for itself in order to have the pleasure to going astray (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 131).
Concerning the second point of criticism, one way to respond to it is to recall

the context in which Du Châtelet’s evaluation occurs. First of all, from her historical
point of view, which is modern philosophy, it is certain that if we are dealing with
phenomena, we are talking about the objects of our senses and, therefore, we cannot
intend, at least without further consideration, to ascribe those phenomena to the
essence of things. Secondly, her criticism about the use of experiments to find features
of things occurs exactly in the context in which she was trying to find not a mode
of fire, but a property,31 that is, an attribute which is essential to fire: “the most
universal effect to fire” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 66–7). As noted, phenomena are
modes, not properties of things. Therefore, experiments are not prima facie valuable
to find property of things. It remains valid however, to draw conclusion from the
experiments about features of things which are phenomena. In fact, besides this
case, she does not criticize the experiment as a reason to achieve knowledge about
phenomena. On the contrary, for example, in the context of the discussion about
the feature “tend to the center of the Earth”, she maintains: “It’s again experiment,
this great master of philosophy, that teaches us whether fire has this property” (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 74). Further on her Foundations, we can also encounter a positive
view of the use of experiments in science:
30 I believe more research is needed to completely understand the normative claims, especially, the
epistemic normative claims, underlying Du Châtelet’s work. Another text where the normative side
of her epistemology emerges is her Essay on Optics’ Introduction: “Truth is one—and once it is
discovered, there is nothing to do but follow it” (Du Châtelet, 2019, p. 7).
31 Judith Zinsser noted that: “By “properties” Du Châtelet means primary constituent aspects of
a being; “modes”, then, are secondary manifestations or characteristics. These distinctions come
from her reading of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and represent an addition to the 1774
version” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 63, n. 25).
So, it is absolutely necessary, in order to preserve oneself from error, to verify one’s ideas,
to demonstrate their reality and not to admit any as incontestable, unless confirmed by
experiment or by demonstration, which includes nothing false, or chimerical (Du Châtelet,
2009, p. 127).
Consequently, on what concerns the second point of criticism, we may draw

conclusion from experiments as we are dealing with phenomena. In this case, exper-
iment serves as a source of confirmation, side by side with demonstration,32 that is, a
source through which we can obtain justification for the knowledge we are looking
for. Also, on her chapter about Hypotheses, Du Châtelet states:
§56. When certain things are used to explain what has been observed, and though the truth
of what has been supposed is impossible to demonstrate, one is making a hypothesis. Thus,
philosophers frame hypotheses to explain the phenomena, the cause of which cannot be
discovered either by experiment or by demonstration (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 127).
The argument asserts that hypotheses are necessary to explain the phenomena
when experiment and demonstration cannot be used to reach truth, that is, to
discover “a thing that serves to explain”. It implies, therefore, that there are occasions
when experiment and demonstration can serve as a source of knowledge to explain
phenomena. On the Commentary to Newton’s Principia, we find some examples of
experiences that lead to knowledge, for instance when Du Châtelet is commenting
on “How the revolution of the Sun on its axis was discovered”:
XVI. From time to time spots appear on the Sun, which have taught us that this star also
turns on its axis. There had to be many observations after the discovery of these spots before
some were observed that lasted long enough to enable us to determine the time of the Sun’s
revolution on its axis. […] From which he concludes that the Sun turns on its axis in about
27 days from occident to orient, that is to say, turning in the same direction as planets (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 282).
Likewise, other illustrations can be found in Section XVIII—The observations that

demonstrate that the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun have atmospheres (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 282), and Section XXIII—Of the secondary Planets. In the latter,
Du Chatelet states: “Observations have shown us that the secondary planets observe
Kepler’s laws in turning around their principal planet” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 286, my
emphasis). In all these instances, Du Châtelet asserts that we can achieve knowledge
through experience. In addition, it is when observation alone is not able to prove
certain phenomena that other resources, in this case, the analogy, are brought to the
scene:
XVI. […] Observation alone cannot prove the rotation of Mercury, or that of Saturn, and
why.
Mercury is so flooded by the rays of the Sun that one cannot be assured, by observation
alone, if it turns on its axis; it is the same for Saturn because it is so far away […].
By analogy: these planets also turn on their axes.
32Again according to Zinsser, demonstration is “the replication of someone else’s experiment” (Du
Châtelet, 2009, p. 148, n. 71).
116 M. S. da Silva
Mercury and Saturn being subject to the same laws that direct the courses of the other
celestial bodies, and these planets, by all that we can know of them, appearing to us as bodies
of the same type, analogy suggests that these two planets turn on their centers as the others,
and that one day perhaps someone will succeed in perceiving this revolution, and how much
time it takes (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 281–2).
But the question remains: how can we reconcile this seemingly positive view of
the use of experiments to gain knowledge with her blatant criticism of induction?
Furthermore, how can we deal with the epistemic nuances of her conclusions from
experience? An answer may be given by drawing attention to how the principle of
sufficient reason can cooperate with experience to dissolve the problem of induction.
For this purpose, I want to consider Katherine Brading’s suggestion that the task of
principles of our knowledge is even more comprehensive. Before considering it, a
note about the historical context is necessary.
In a historical survey, Peter Dear shows how the reports on particular events made
headway in the scientific publications of the Royal Society in the 17th and 18th
centuries and, consequently, how natural philosophy was gradually transformed by
experimental philosophy (Dear, 1995, p. 227). This historical reading is valid not
only for England, since 18th Century continental philosophers also deem modern
science to be tangled with the experimental method. This can easily be evidenced
by looking into the “experimental” entry in the Encyclopédie, where experimental
philosophy is defined as “the new philosophy that takes the path of experimenting
to discover the laws of nature”33 (D’Alembert, 1756, v. VI, p. 298a). Moreover,
D’Alembert considers Descartes as someone involved with the experimental method
itself, even if he was involved “more in theory than in practice”. In that context, it is
beyond doubt that, at the time of Du Châtelet’s life, induction stood as a valid praxis
in the search for knowledge in natural philosophy: scientists work with individual
experiments, located, and reported individually, and through experiments they aim
to discover the truths of nature.
However, according to Brading, Du Châtelet might have considered the basis for
Newtonian inductive reasoning too weak and might have searched for a reasonable
principle to support inductive reasoning, essential to the new modern science (2019,
p. 35). As described above, when Du Châtelet makes use of experiments to conclude
universal claims in her Dissertation, she marks her conclusions with epistemic tones,
such as “it is very probable”, “there is some ground for”, etc. In an attempt to make
sense of her positive view of experience as a source of knowledge, that kind of epis-
temic nuance can be read as a signpost of her view about the necessity to subscribe
to an underlying principle in order to warrant the acquisition of knowledge of nature
from experience. That is why, in a reconstructive exercise, we see Du Châtelet ques-
tioning the new method for natural philosophy, which includes inductive reasoning
and the use of experiments and observations, in the following terms: what guarantees
that we can infer from an effect observed (a particular body falling here and now),
33On the Enciclopédie, both the word “experience” and “experimental” refer directly to natural
philosophy (D’Alembert, 1756).
an underlying reason34 to explain it (a universal law like the law of gravity)? In other
words, what guarantees that nature has the regularity and intelligibility we expect?
Skeptical philosophers will certainly respond that nothing can give that kind of
assurance. Du Châtelet, however, was not a skeptical philosopher.35 That is why,
to this challenge, she may have replied: if we assume the assurance of a guiding
principle such as the principle of sufficient reason, we can presume that the world
is, at one time, constant 36 and intelligible.37 If we can assume the constancy and
intelligibility of the world, we can dissolve the problem of induction.38 In that sense,
the principle of sufficient reason would guarantee what we consider to be essential to
science: the capacity for prediction and the capacity for explanation. For the first, we
might go from reasons (laws of nature) to the effects (predicting new phenomena).
For the second, we might go from effects to reasons, by using experiments to discover
34 Another way of looking at this problem is to replace the word “reason” with the word “cause”. In
this case, the problem would deal mainly with metaphysical issues. I do not deny that Du Châtelet
has that kind of concern. However, as I am here in a reconstructive approach, I believe that it is
possible to shed light only on the epistemological side of the problem, leaving (at least for the
purposes of this paper) the metaphysical aside.
35 According to Brading: “Where Hume, according to many interpretations, found nothing to tie
events together, Du Châtelet responded to Pemberton’s plea that we avoid outright skepticism by
accepting PSR as a prerequisite for the possibility of knowledge: It is the means by which we tie the
succession of events together, such that we can reason from a state of affairs at one time to states of
affairs at other times” (2019, p. 36). In this sense, the principle of sufficient reason is, before all else,
a guide for experimentation. And that is why, my reading of Du Châtelet’s method for scientific
knowledge is different from Katherine Brading’s one. If only with the PSR we can consider that
the events are tied together, and that consideration is essential to make sense of experience for
philosophical and scientific purposes, than it means that for Du Châtelet the PSR is essential to
experience. The corollary is that in her method the use of principles is not another side of her
method, but it is organically tied with experimentation itself.
36 To assume that the world is constant is important for epistemological reasons. That is because, for
Du Châtelet, without this presupposition, we cannot truly use experience as a source of knowledge,
seeing as we do have no reason to presuppose that the regularity we observed yesterday would remain
tomorrow: “If we tried to deny this great principle, we would fall into strange contradictions. For
as soon as one accepts that something may happen without sufficient reason, one cannot be sure of
anything, for example, that a thing is the same as it was a moment before, since this thing could
change at any moment into another of a different kind; thus truths, for us, would only exist for an
instant” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 129). This means that, beyond the question about the importance
of a metaphysical foundation for science (Hagengruber, 2012, p. 9), for Du Châtelet, there is an
epistemological reason why it is important to have them ruling the scientific method.
37 The intelligibility of the world is important for an epistemological reason too. If we cannot say
that our understanding of the system of the world is coherent, how can we expect to make science?
Science is an enterprise with an aim: to discover the truth, to be certain of something. If there is
no truth, no certainty, because the world cannot be known, there is no longer any room for science:
“[…] but if the principle of sufficient reason does not apply, my certainty becomes a chimera, since
everything could have been thrown into confusion in my room, without anyone having entered who
was able to turn it upside down” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 129).
38 The principle of sufficient reason is a supposition necessary to make experimental method valid.
Of course, no one is required to assume the principle of sufficient reason. But, if someone chooses
to deny it, it remains difficult to do science from experimentation, since it will remain problematic
to make universal claims based on particular facts.
118 M. S. da Silva
the laws of nature (exactly as we have seen in the cases described above from her
Commentary). Hence, with the rational principles guiding experimentation, experi-
ence might be brought to its place of legitimate source of knowledge for scientific
discourse.
Finally, I would like to mention two instances in which experience and the under-
lying assumption of the principle of sufficient reason can lead the scientist to knowl-
edge. For Du Châtelet, when experiments are used to “decide in the negative”, we
have a kind of knowledge that is produced through experiments because they show
that the supposed general law hurts the regularity of nature or its intelligibility. In
the first case, an experiment (or a series of experiences) shows that if the presumed
law holds, then the phenomena would be different. So, if the experiment shows that
the phenomena are not following what the general law predicted and we assume that
nature is constant (which is what the principle of sufficient reason teaches), then it
is proved that the supposed law does not hold.39 This is manifest, for example, in
her Commentary when she mentions how Newton had destroyed Descartes’s theory
of vortices (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 271). According to Du Châtelet, Newton coun-
tered Descartes’s theory only in the scholium of Proposition 53, theorem 41. In that
text, Newton uses geometry, analogy, and experiment to explain how the theory
of vortices cannot describe celestial movement. According to him, if the vortices
hypothesis were true, then the phenomena would be different from those witnessed
by experience (in the vortices hypothesis, the Earth’s velocity would be greater in
the beginning of Pisces than in the beginning of Virgo contradicting the experience).
Newton then concludes that “the hypothesis of vortices can in no way be reconciled
with astronomical phenomena” (Newton, 1999).
In the second case, we have a situation in which the presumed law cannot explain
the phenomena. This seems to be the case with Cartesian handling of comets. In
the Chap. 7 of her Commentary, Du Châtelet states: “[Descartes] regarded comets
as celestial bodies floating between the different vortices, which according to him,
composed the universe, and he did not imagine that they might follow any law in
their movements” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 338). The problem here is that Descartes
chooses to not rely on experience (and geometry) so as not to abandon his theory
of vortices. Since he was unable to explain the movement of comets with his theory
of vortices, he abandoned the attempt to seek an explanatory reason underlying the
phenomena: in abandoning experience, he also abandoned the principle of sufficient
reason. In summary, the problem with the Cartesian presumed general law of vortices
is that it antagonizes the principle of sufficient reason, either because it denies the
constancy of nature, or because it precludes its intelligibility.
39 It is worth noting that this approach to experiments and the consideration of the regularity of
nature is an innovation of modern natural philosophy. As Peter Dear shows, scholastic philosophy
employs the notion of a “monster” (or miracle) to illustrate that experience can deviate from its route.
A monster is an event which does not follow the regularity of nature and one classical example in
the history of physics is the issue about the ontological status of the comets. If nature is not constant,
an experiment or observation in which a deviation is shown cannot count as a proof that the theory
failed (Dear, 1995, p. 20–1).
9.7 Final Remarks
The way Du Châtelet sees and uses experience and experimental method in her writ-
ings seems to imply that experience, when guided by rational principles, may be
considered a legitimate source of knowledge. That being so, therefore, the episte-
mology underlying her writings suggests a reformulation in the understanding of
the epistemological foundation of experimental philosophy: for Du Châtelet, exper-
imental philosophy can use experience as a method in the search for truth as long
as it is supported by the principle of sufficient reason.40 Thus, without that presup-
position, according to Du Châtelet, experimental philosophy cannot make use of
induction and, consequently, cannot hold its purpose.
Acknowledgements The following text is the result of further work on Du Châtelet’s ideas about
epistemological questions, following the presentation of its initial version at the First International
Conference Women in Modern Philosophy that took place at the State University of Rio de Janeiro
(UERJ) in Brazil.
References
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Châtelet and the foundations of physical science. Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.
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D’Alembert, J. L. R. (1756) Expérimental. In Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences,
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article/v6-373-0/.
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1007-1776.2003.03.004.
Du Châtelet, É. (2009) In J. P. Zinsser (Ed.), Émilie Du Châtelet—Selected philosophical and
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1776.2003.03.004.
Du Châtelet, É. (2019) Essay on optics (B. (Translator) Gessell (ed.); Project Vo). Duke University
Libraries. http://projectvox.org.
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(pp. 303–341). Cambridge University Press.
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metaphysics. In R. Hagengruber (Ed.), Émilie du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton. Springer.
40 Therefore, the way I see it, for Du Châtelet, experience is not only “a means of demonstrating a
known truth” (Zinsser, 2009, p. 107). The experience, understood as experimentation, demonstra-
tion, and observation, is much more than just that. To summarize my approach, experience can be
regarded as a source of knowledge if we accept that it is guided by the principle of sufficient reason.
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Harari, O. (2004). Knowledge and demonstration: Aristotle’s Posterior analytics. Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
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Part II
Feminism, Silencing, and Colonization
Chapter 10
Pour ce que Femme Sui: Female
Perspective and Argumentation
in Christine de Pizan’s Writings
Ana Rieger Schmidt
Abstract In this paper I inquire the philosophical import of Christine de Pizan’s self-
representation as a female author. The paper divides into two parts. The first deals with
selected passages of Christine de Pizan’s autobiographical accounts of her intellectual
career and its implications for the validation of her status as a female author. In the
second part, I analyze Pizan’s claims that her experience can be used as a corrective
device to understand human nature and to respond to poor (misogynistic) reasoning. I
argue that Pizan is thereby reclaiming the epistemic value of her perspective as femme
naturelle. This approach enables a wider understanding of the different kinds of
intellectuals and discourses intellectuals present in medieval society. In consequence
it shows to be a valuable tool to the historian of medieval philosophy.
Keywords Self-representation · Female perspective · Epistemic authority ·

Woman writer · Intellectual
10.1 Introduction
It is imperative to integrate into the history of philosophy, alongside the theoretical

content of texts, the debates, and controversies, an investigation of how the authors
represented themselves, that is, what they have to say about the intellectual role they
played and what they hoped to achieve with their work (de Libera, 1991, 350–1).
This approach provides additional means to identify several kinds of intellectuals and
to identify diverse relations with knowledge. It also enables historians of medieval
philosophy to look for philosophical activities outside the clerical culture.. Within
this assessment, investigating the self-representations of female writers and philoso-
phers demands a reflection on the female intellectual identity and its methodological
suppositions. Given the major importance of Christine de Pizan’s work in the fifteenth
century context, her work proves to be a great source for this approach.
A. R. Schmidt (B)
Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
e-mail: ana.rieger@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_10
124 A. R. Schmidt
A. The woman writer: building up authority

Christine de Pizan wrote prolifically on several topics—morality, politics, warfare,
religion and philosophy—and in a wide range of genres—prose, poetry, allegorical
tales in verse, mirror of princes, etc. Inside the medieval biographical tradition, Pizan,
as the first female professional writer, plays a distinctive role, as she offers us explicit
autobiographical fragments, often inside an allegorical framework. In fact, she was
well aware of the novelty of her condition as a female writer: if imposed the concern
of earning respect, it also made sure she would receive a fair share of attention. In
Le Livre de l’advision Cristine (1405) she describes her development as a writer and
explicitly recognizes the importance of that peculiar status for the growth of her fame,
at the same time as she provides us some insight into what kind of intellectual she
was. Pizan belonged to an educated secular context, and she was seeking to establish
herself through a patronage system:
It is true that news of my studious way of life had already spread, contrary to my wishes, even
among princes; but since this was so, I sent those nobles a number of my meager writings as
gifts, thinking they might appeal by way of their novelty; and the gifts were accepted joyfully
and with a graciousness befitting the nobles’ rank. I attribute this reception not to the value
of my works but rather to the fact that they had been written by a woman, a phenomenon
not seen in quite some time. Thus, quite quickly, my writings became known and were read
in many different lands. (Pizan, 1994, 24)1
Pizan often uses narrative or even pictorial resources in her works (when she is
portrayed surrounded by books in her study2 ) in order to give legitimacy to the status
of femme savante, or clergesse, seeking the recognition of her readers.3 Although
Pizan does not explicitly describe herself with that terms, she certainly requested to
1 Pizan, Livre de l’advision Cristine, III, 11: Il est voir que, comme la voix courust ja, et meismes
entre les princes, de l’ordre et maniere de mon vivre, c’est assavoir a l’estude, quoy que celler
le voulsissem our ce que revelé leur estoit, leur fis presens comme des nouvelles choses, quelque
petis et foibles qu’ilz fussent, de mes volumes de plusieurs matieres, lesquelz de leur grace comme
princes benignes et três humains les virent volontiers et receurent a joie – et plus, comme je tiens,
pour la chose non usage que femme escripse, comme pieça n’avenist, que pour la digneté que y
ssoit. Et ainsi furent en pou d’eure ventillez et portez mes dis livres em plusiers pars et pays divers.
(ed. Dulac & Reno, 2001, 111; transl. Reno, 1994, 24).
2 Take, for instance, the well-known illumination that accompanies the Cent Ballades, in the Queen’s
Manuscript (British Library, Ms. Harley 4431, f° 4) and the scene of Pizan instructing four men in
Les Proverbes Moreaux (British Library, Ms. Harley 4431, f° 259.) We know that Pizan used to hire
artists to illustrate her manuscripts, and presented the bound volumes to the patrons she wanted to
praise. See Bell (2008).
3 In the City of Ladies (II, 36, 154) Pizan is reminded by Lady Rectitude of her natural inclination
to the books: “Your father, who was a great scientist and philosopher, did not believe that women
were worth less by knowing science; rather, as you know, he took great pleasure from seeing your
inclination to learning. […] just as the proverb already mentioned above says, ‘No one can take
away what Nature has given,’ your mother could not hinder in you the feeling for the sciences which
you, through natural inclination, had nevertheless gathered together in little droplets”. In the end of
the Chemin de longue étude (v. 6332–3) Lady Reason ascribes to Pizan the task of descriping the
properties of the ideal prince saying: “Cristine, chere/Amie, qui scïence as chiere,/Tu rapporteras
noz debas/Sicom les a oÿs, la bas/Au monde aux grans princes François (Tarnowski, 2000, 462).
10 Pour ce que Femme Sui: Female Perspective and Argumentation in Christine … 125
be defined as such.4 This shows that Pizan sought control of the representation she
makes of herself as a writer. For Pizan, the problem of the authority of the writer was
a central issue. To face the masculine intellectual universe, she had to build herself
a portrait as holder of accredited knowledge.
This recognition is to be juxtaposed with the autobiographical account we find
in Le livre de Mutacion de Fortune (1403), where Pizan delivers an intriguing alle-
gory much commented within literary scholarship. In order to assume the role of
a professional writer, a dramatic makeover is required: Pizan claims that Fortune
transformed her into a man:
But in order to better enable you to understand the goal of my project, I will tell you who I
am, I who am speaking, I who was transformed from a woman into a man by Fortune who
wanted it that way. Thus she transformed me, my body and my face, completely into those of
a natural man. And I who was formerly a woman, am now in fact a man (I am not lying, as my
story will amply demonstrate), and, if I was formerly a woman, my current self-description
is the truth. But I shall describe by means of fiction the fact of my transformation, how
from being a woman I became a man, and I want people to name this poem, once the story
becomes known, Fortune’s Transformation. (Pizan, 1959, 139–56)5
How are we to understand this transformation? The verses are introduced inside
a broader allegory for human life as a sea journey. Her husband had conducted the
ship until he fell overboard during a storm, so Pizan needed to find the strength to
conduct the ship herself. We discover soon enough that Pizan’s transformation into
a man, according to the narrative, allowed her to become a writer and support her
family.
We can see a clear reference to the virago topos, much present in classic and
medieval literature. A virago, from the Latin word vir (‘man’), is fundamentally
a woman able to perform extraordinary feats worthy of men. The word is often
used to describe heroines as the amazons. Giovanni Boccaccio, in his De mulieribus
claris (c. 1362)—a major source by Pizan when she wrote the Book of the City of
Ladies (1405)—praises women for being viragos, that is to say, for overcoming their
faulty female nature, measuring women against standards set by men. For instance,
Penthesilea and Zenobia overcame the weakness of their female bodies in battle;
4 See Le Ninan (2012). In fact, to write a mirroir des princes means to put oneself in a position
of preceptor and holder of wisdom. Pizan also provided prove of her recognition by explicity
acknowledging the Duc de Bourgogne as the commissioner of her biography od the formar king,
Charles V, in her Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V. the episode is reconted
in deteils at the very beginning of the work (ed. Solente, 1936; 6–9). Yet another strategy for
establishing authority employed by Pizan is the self-quotation: in the Livre de paix, for instance,
Pizan refers to her prior works, as Charles V, Le Livre du corps de policie and l’Advision du coq.
See also Dulac (1992).
5 Le livre de mutation Fortune, vv. 139–156: Mais, pour mieulx donner a entendre/La fin du procés
ou vueil tendre,/Vous diray qui je suis, qui parle,/Qui de femelle devins masle/Par Fortune, qu’ainsy
le voult;/Si me mua et corps et voult/En homme naturel parfaict; Et jadis fus femme, de fait/Homme
suis, je ne ment pas,/Assez le demonstrent mes pas,/Et, si fus je femme jadis, Verité est ce que je
dis; Mais, je diray, par ficcion, Le fait de la mutacion/Comment de femme devins homme,/Et ce
dictié vueil que l’en nomme, quant l’istoire sera commune: “La mutacion de Fortune”. (ed. Solente,
1959, 7; Trans. Brownlee, 2000, 91).
126 A. R. Schmidt
Cornificia, according to Boccacio, exceeded her sex in intelligence and wakefulness;

as for Artemisia, the author concludes it must be an error from Nature to combine
a virile noble spirit and the female sex in the same being.6 In other words, to be a
great woman means to be a man-like woman.7 Within this literary topos, establishing
oneself as a female writer means to overlap the gender restrictions imposed at the
time.
Note that Pizan insists she became a “natural man” (homme naturel). She also
reports Fortuna has made her more agile and her members stronger. Why is she rein-
forcing the physical aspects of her transformation? There is an apparent contradiction
of this transformation with the argumentation developed throughout the Book of the
City of Ladies, where Pizan seeks to dismantle the very idea that great deeds made
by women are exceptions to womankind, but are compatible with the female nature
and its perfectibility.8
Right before the narrative of her transformation, Pizan invokes Ovidian examples9
to explain the possibility of her sex change, such as the metamorphose of Iphis
(1094–1131), a girl that lived disguised as a boy and on the eve of her wedding
was transformed into an actual boy to survive her father’s despise of women. As
Barbara Newman observed (2005, 119), in ascribing Ovidian mythic transformations
to Lady Fortune (in opposition to Lady Nature), Christine is stating that one’s real
identity is not ultimately shaped in birth, but “just as much by random chance and
political circumstance”. At the same time as she explores the fictional nature of that
description, she informs her readers that often truths can be communicated through
6 Boccaccio (1963, 65–66; 226–230; 188; 123–127). For Pizan’s appropriation and rewriting of
Boccaccio’s exempla in her defense of women, see Johnston (2012).
7 Pizan uses the expression “to have a man’s heart” (avoir cuer d’omme) in her Livre des trois vertus
(III, Chap. 4; II, Chap. 9) in encouraging her female readers to take an interest in military affairs
and, if necessary, to engage bravely in battle. Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris,
praised Christine de Pizan in a letter as he took her side on the Querelle de la Rose, defining her as a
“distinguished woman and a manly female” (insignis femina, virilis femina). “Responsio as scripta
scuiusdam” see McWebb (2006, 164).
8 According to Pizan, human souls—both male and female—are equally created in the image of
God and possess the same essential features; most differences concerning gender are unnatural,
and therefore can be addressed and criticized: There are, however, some who are foolish enough to
maintain that when God made man in His image, this means His physical body. Yet this is not the
case, for at that time God had not yet adopted a human form, so it has to be understood to mean the
soul, which is immaterial intellect, and which will resemble God until the end of time. He endowed
both male and female with this soul, which He made equally noble and virtuous in the two sexes.
(Pizan, 1999, 21–23). Mais aucuns sont si folz que ilz cuident quant ilz oyent parler que Dieu fist
homme a son ymage que ce soit a dire du corps meteriel. Mais non est, car Dieu n’avoit pas lors
pris corps humain, ains est a entendre de l’ame qui est esperit intellectuel et qui durera sans fin a la
semblemce de la deité, laquelle ame Dieu crea et mist aussi bonne, aussi noble en toute pareille en
corps femenin comme ou masculin (ed. Richards, 1997, 78).
9 For Pizan’s take on the medieval adaptation for the Metamorphoses, the Ovide Moralisé, see
Griffin (2009).
metaphor.10 What is the truth she is seeking to communicate in here? More than
merely a literary construction, this transformation reflects an underlying reality: to
write (and to make a living out of it) was perceived as a masculine activity. Pizan
recognizes that she needed to be transformed in order to devote herself to “manly”
pursuits, as philosophy and politics, when she decided to no longer be a poet around
1399. When Pizan is transformed by Fortune, from a wife-mother-of-three into a
writer, she is clearly responding to this social view as she reclaims a male-like
authority.
Within the allegory of the sinking ship, the transformation must be understood
as a material condition necessary to survival, to take command and assume an
unprecedented role. Therefore, in view of this allegory, it seems hardly appropriate
to conclude that her new state must be limited to a bodily condition.
Pizan’s understanding of nature is a complex subject in the crossroads of medieval
vernacular literature and natural philosophy. There is an overlapping of Aristotelian
influence as well as its allegorized version of Nature personified, taken from major
literary works as the Roman de la Rose.11 Pizan represents her life as a dispute
between two goddesses: in one hand Lady Nature creates her as a woman, in another,
Lady Fortune has transformed her into a man. By means of this opposition, she
introduces a fresh feminized iconography for Dame Nature as a medium to discuss
the discontinuity between gender and culture. As Barbara Newman noted (2005,
116), thanks to the allegorical device in her story, and the dichotomy between the
personifications of Nature and Fortune, Pizan is able to oppose her female status
to the circumstances that made her transformations necessary. At the same time as
Pizan sees perfection in Nature’s works, she sees the unjust relations between men
and women as a result of customs (coustume). She tells about her father wanting to
have a son who could inherit wealth (meaning his erudition), to which Pizan responds
that her cultural setting did not allow for that to happen, despite her inclination for
knowledge, which she naturally inherited from her learned father. It is a costume that
repels her from being like her father and from following a complete formal education,
not Nature (who makes her a woman in her own image and likeness):
He failed in his intention, for my mother [Nature], who had much more power than he,
wanted to have for herself a female child resembling her, thus I was in fact born a girl; but
my mother did so much for him that I fully resembled my father in all things, only excepting
my gender […]. But because I was born a girl, it was not at all ordained that I should benefit
in any way from my father’s wealth, and I could not inherit, more because of custom than
justice, the possessions that are found in the very worthy fountain [of the Muses]. (Pizan,
1959, 388–96).12
10 Souventes fois soubz figure de metaphore, c’est maintes secretes sciences et pures veritez. Et
avoir mains entendemens, et lors est la poisie belle plusieurs ententes et que on la puet prendre a
divers (ed. Dulac & Reno, 2001, 3).
11 This theme is explored at length by Robertson (2017).
12 Pizan, Mutacion de Fortune, I, vv. 388–96, 413–19: Mais il failli a son entente, /Car rna mere, qui
ot pouoir /Trop plus que lui, si voult avoir /Femelle a elle ressemblable, /Si fus nee fille, sanz fable;
/Mais y tant fist pour lui rna mere /Que de toutes choses mon pere /Bien ressemblay et proprement,
/Fors du sexe tant seulement. […] Mais, pour ce que fille fu nee, /Ce n’estoit pas chose ordenee
128 A. R. Schmidt
Therefore, Pizan is stating that a dramatic transformation took place in her life,
but this transformation does not convert her into someone else. It should be noted,
as E. Jeffrey Richards pointed out, that posits the sex alteration as accidental since
her personal identity is maintained: (her name and memory are preserved) there is a
transformation in the body, but she is still Christine de Pizan and still speaks from her
female perspective (Richards, 2001). This transformation is not presented as contrary
to nature, nor as a corruption, but rather as an adaptation for survival. As a result
of this transformation, she is no longer speaking from the domestic perspective of
a wife, but enters the public debate, assuming a higher ground. Most importantly,
what we need to grasp from this interpretation of Pizan’s most important biographical
description of her intellectual endeavor is that, despite the allegorical dismiss of her
sex, she will still claim to speak as a woman, and consciously use this perspective to
challenge misogynistic claims on women.
B. Epistemic authority
In this next session, we are going to look at passages where Pizan is applying her
female perspective in the context of arguments. In The Book of the City of Ladies
(1405) our author builds a catalog of hundreds of female exempla seeking to prove that
female nature is fully compatible with the virtues. These accounts are combined with
refutations of misogynistic views—some of which rely on Pizan’s own experiences
as a woman.13 In the following passage, she is claiming that her experience as a
natural woman is proof that, contrary to what male intellectuals think, women are
not naturally inclined to vices.
[…] philosophers, poets and orators too numerous to mention, who all seem to speak with
one voice and are unanimous in their view that female nature is wholly given up to vice. I
mulled these ideas over in my mind again and again, I began to examine myself and my own
behavior as a [natural woman (femme naturelle)]. In order to judge in all fairness and without
prejudice whether what so many famous men have said about us is true, I also thought about
other women I know, the many princesses and countless ladies of all different social ranks
who have shared their private and personal thoughts with me. No matter which way I looked
at it and no matter how much I turned the question over my mind, I could find no evidence
from my own experience to bear out such a negative view of female nature and habits.14
(Pizan, 1999, 6)
/Que en riens deusse amander /Des biens mon pere, et succeder /Ne poz a l’avoir qui est pris /En la
fonteine de grant pris, /Plus par coustume que par droit. (ed. Solente, 1959, 20–21.).
13 I develop these arguments elsewhere. See Schmidt, Christine de Pizan on defining womankind
in The Book of the City of Ladies, 2020 (in print).

14 […] philosophes, poetes, tous orateurs desquieulx les noms dire seroit longue chose, semble que
tous parlent par une mesmes bouche et tus accordent une semblable conlcusion, determinant les
meurs femenins enclins et plains de tous les vices. Ces choses pensant a par moy tres parfondement,
je pris a examiner moy mesmes et mes meurs comme femme naturelle, et semblabmement discutoye
des autres femmes que j’ay hantees, tant princesses, grandes dames, moyennes et petites a grant
foison, qui de leur grace m’ont dit de leurs privetez et estroictes pensees, savoir mon a jugier en
conscience et sanz faveur se ce peut estre vray ce que tant de nottables hommes, et uns et autres,
en tesmoignent (ed. Richards, 1997, 42). The words between brackets were altered by me.
Pizan is taking her examination her own self and behavior (and that of other
women, one they communicate it) as a device to correct the negative view the clerical
milieu (composed only by men) have on women, as a way to judge impartially and in
good conscience (jugier en conscience et sanz faveur). The intimate knowledge one
can have about herself is more trustworthy a more sincere than the judgments made
on other groups of people. The expression femme naturelle, as well as homme naturel,
do not seem to have any equivalent antecedents in the theological or philosophical
texts that could have been a source to Pizan (Richards, 2003, 48–9). However, it
seems to have an important and precise role in this reasoning. We have seen that
throughout her writings, Pizan is constantly contrasting natural properties of the
female constitution and behavior to non-natural, non-essential constraints due to
costumes. Is she introducing her experience as femme naturelle on biological, social,
or philosophical grounds?
We can look for indications by examining the letters from the Querelle de la
Rose,15 where Pizan is addressing men who occupy a privileged position in the hier-
archy of knowledge. Four years before she wrote the City of Ladies, she sent a letter
to Jean de Montreuil criticizing his treatise praising Jean de Meun’s Roman (unfor-
tunately lost to us today). Pizan holds that, despite her lack of formal education and
training in arts of debating, she is in a legitimate position of rebuking the defamation
of women expressed by Meun’s verses.16 Having followed a university education,
Jean de Montreuil17 represents the clerical world: an intellectual elite from which
Pizan, as a woman, is necessarily excluded:
Reverence, honor, and all commendation to you, lord provost of Lille, most precious lord and
scholar, sage in conduct, lover of knowledge, soundly erudite, well versed in rhetoric, your
humble Christine de Pizan, an unlearned woman of small understanding and penetration,
with hopes that your wisdom will not despise my arguments withal but make due allowances
in consideration of female weakness. […] However, take heed of my firm disagreement with
15 The Querelle de la Rose is considered the first public debate in defense of women. It involved
Christine de Pizan and important names in the French humanism, as Jean de Montreuil, Gontier
Col, and Jean Gerson. The debate amounts to an exchange of letters held in 1401–1404 containing
evaluations of Jean de Meun’s celebrated Romance de la Rose, which verses present misogynistic
views and an offensive vision of love, incompatible to the courtly ideals. See McWebb (2006).
16 And there is more, my God! Let us look a little further! How can his excessive, impetuous, and
false accusations, insults, and defamation of women—whom he accuses of several great vices and
perverse habits—possibly be valid and purposeful? His appetite for such statements and examples
seems insatiable. […] Moreover, he speaks unnecessarily and defamingly of married women who
terribly betray their husbands, though he cannot know about the married state from experience, and
thus can only speak about it in general terms. What good does this do, and what can come of this? Et
ancore, pour Dieu! regardons oultre un petit: en quelle maniere peut estre valable et a bonne fi n ce
que tant et si excessivement, impettueusement et tres nonveritablement il accuse, blasme et diffame
femmes de plusieurs tres grans vices et leurs meurs tesmoigne estre plains de toute perversité; et par
tant de repliques et auques en tous personnages ne s’en peut saouler. […] Et ancore, tant supperfl
uement et laidement parla des femmes mariées qui si deçoivent leurs maris–duquel estat ne pot
savoir par experience et tant en parla generaument: a quelle bonne fi n pot ce estre et quel bien
ensuivre? McWebb (2006, 124–7).
17 Jean de Montreuil (1354–1418) studied at the Collège de Navarre, seen as a foyer d’humanistes.
In 1390 he becomes secretary to the king, Charles VI. See Ouy (1973).
130 A. R. Schmidt
certain elements which you express in your treatise. In truth, a mere assertion not rightfully
justified can be contradicted without bias. Although I am neither learned nor eloquent in style
(beautiful phrases and polite, elegant words would certainly make my arguments shine), I
will nevertheless express my opinion plainly and in simple French, even if I cannot express
it properly in adorned speech. (McWebb, 2006, 118)18
Even if Pizan seems to embrace the topos of the inept female interlocutor that
hides behind a veil of humbleness when writing to an educated male audience, she
is ready to fully overcome it—let us not miss the irony between the lines. Some
contrasts drawn here are worth mentioning: at the same time that Pizan opposes her
intellectual position to that of Montreuil’s, contrasting the prestige of his university
education to her rude intellect, his rhetoric and oratory skills to her choice to not
address him in Latin, but in the vernacular French (dire en gros vulgar). However,
none of that should matter nor distract readers from the real issue: the reasons Pizan
is about to present in order to contradict, without bias (sans prejudice), the cleric’s
unsound reasonings.
In another letter, more than a year latter, Pizan is addressing another member
of the Querelle, Gontier Col, who took sides with Montreuil. The human intellect
is not equipped to easily grasp essences or natures, so a discussion on the kind of
evidence available and on the method applied must be encouraged. Besides, the
presence of contradictory opinions in the context of a debate, even when it involves
learned parties, is a sign that the absolute truth is not being grasped but shadowed by
doubt. Pizan suggests that, in this case, the inquiring could benefit from a supporting
resource; experience:
Since human understanding cannot attain the height of absolute knowledge of the perfect
truth of hidden things (due to the thick worldly obscurity which hinders it from seeing the
entire and true meaning), it is appropriate to determine the truthfulness of imagined things
through opinion rather than through a certain knowledge. It is for this reason that questions are
often raised, even by the most learned, which represent contradictory opinions and in which
each party attempts to show, through forceful reasoning, the truth of one’s own opinion. And
that experience plays a part in this is obvious, as we may see in our own current debate.19
(Pizan, 1402)
18 Christine’s Reaction to Jean de Montreuil’s letter (June/July 1401): A moult souffi sant et sçavent
personne, maistre Jehan Jonhannez, secretaire du roy nostre sire, et Prevost de Lille. Reverence,
honneur avec recommandacion, a vous mon seigneur le prevost de Lille, tres cher sire et maistre,
sage en meurs, ameur de science, en clergie fondé et expert de rethorique, de par moy Cristine de
Pizan, femme ignorant d’entendement et de sentement leger – pour lesquelles choses vostre sagece
aucunement n’ait en despris la petitece de mes raisons, ains vueille supployer par la consideracion
de ma femenine foiblece […]; mais soit nottée la ferme et grant opinion qui me muet contre aucunes
particularitéz qui ou dit sont comprises – et, au fort, chose qui est dicte par oppinion et non de loy
commandee se puet redarguer sans prejudice. Et combien que ne soie en science apprise ne stillee de
lengage soubtil (dont sache user de belle arenge et mos pollis bien ordenéz qui mes raisons rendissent
luisans), pour tant ne lairay a dire materiellement et en gros vulgar l’oppinion de mon entente, tout
ne la sache proprement exprimer en ordre de paroles aournees. (Ed. and transl. McWebb, 2006,
117–8).
19 Christine’s Response to Pierre Col (October 2, 1402): Pour ce que entendement humain ne peut
estre eslevé jusques a haultesse de clere cognoiscence d’enterine verite attendre des choses occultes
(par l’offuscacion grosse et terrestre qui l’empesche et tolt vraie clarté), convient par oppinion
plus que de certainne science determiner des choses ymaginées plus voirsamblables: pour celle
In this next passage, we realize that Pizan is claiming to have access to an “inside
perspective” into these matters because she is a woman, which must be acknowl-
edged as a source of legitimate knowledge. She is sustaining that her experience is a
useful tool in the search for truth and certainty, especially when dealing with difficult
matters. Pizan is ready to introduce her experience conceived as qualified expertise.
And you must believe me, dear sir, that I do not sustain these opinions in favor of
women simply because I am myself a woman. For, to be sure, my purpose is simply
to uphold the absolute truth [pure verité] because I know from [certain knowledge
(certaine science)] that the truth is contrary to those things which I am denying. And
as much as I am a woman, I am much better able to speak of these things than one
who has no experience in this matter, and who thus can go only by mere assumption
and guessing (McWebb, 2006, 141).20
The terms applied here deserve our attention: to have experience as a woman
is a more legitimate reason to testify (tesmoingnier) in behalf of women’s nature.
This state of certainty (certaine science) is opposing the opinions held under poor
evidence and conjecture (par devinailles et d’aventure). Having been born and lived
as a woman, her statements are anchored in intimate reality. By this token, her
perspective guarantees a straight and non-biased view, thus the kind of evidence
she is ready to provide must be integrated into the debate. It is only because she
is a source of certain knowledge that she is allowed to testify in favor of her own
sex. As a result, to hear from her perspective makes it possible to grasp a more
reliable understanding of women’s nature than that available to men. In other words,
to include hers and other women’s experiences as evidence in this context amounts
to a better grasp of the truth. She is using her self-conscient existence as a member
of the female sex—that is, her gender—in order to reclaim epistemic authority in the
debate.21
Hence, she is entitled to challenge conventional male wisdom concerning female
natural inclinations. We can say that she is thereby proposing a correction in method-
ology: implying the clerical community should be open and responsive to criticism.
Pizan is very straightforward in challenging the very idea of authority—so dear to
scholastic thought—when it comes to the description of womenkind. Not even the
cause sont esmeues souventes fois diverses questions–mesmement entre les plus soubtilz – par
oppinions contraires, et chascun s’efforce de monstrer par vive raison son oppinion estre vraye.
Et que l’experience en soit magnifeste est clere chose, ce pouons nous veoir par nous mesmes
presentemente […]. (McWebb, 2006, 141).
20 Christine’s Reaction to Jean de Montreuil’s (June/July 1401): Et ne croiéz, chier sire, ne aucun
autre n’ait oppinion, que je die ou mette en ordre ces dites deffences par excusacion favourable
pour ce que femme sui: car veritablement mon motif n’est simplement fors soustenir pure verité
si comme je la sçay de certaine science estre au contraire des dictes choses de moy nyées. Et de
tant comme voirement suis femme, plus puis tesmoingnier en ceste partie que cellui qui n’en a
l’experience, ains parle par devinailles et d’aventure. (ed. and transl. McWebb, 2006, 128–9) The
term between brackets was replaced by me.
21 Mary Anne C. Case addresses Pizan’s recourse to her personal experience as a mean to reclaim
authority and give voice to oppressed women, focusing on the issues of epistemic injustice and
jurisprudence. See Case, 1998.
132 A. R. Schmidt
most eminent philosophers are free from error.22 Even if these authors seek to achieve
objectiveness and universality, the opinions they hold can be proven to be biased.
When concerned with women’s behavior and constitution, as well as their thoughts
on love and marriage, clerical conventional wisdom must encompass a broader array
of experiences. Precisely because they are members of the dominant intellectual
elite, their views on these matters will be largely based on the characteristics of
life as experienced by men. The overlooked experiences of women undermine the
prerogative of dismissing cultural traces as if they were natural or essential. In that
way, women grant themselves the authority to produce their own descriptions of
themselves.23
This precise account of experience and its epistemic relevance does not seem to
play any significant role in medieval discussions of knowledge. Medieval philoso-
phers relied on the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics as a canonical source to
determine the role of experience in knowledge.24 According to this text, science
emerges when our cognitive capacities (sense, memory, and imagination) are repeat-
edly directed to particulars objects.25 The process is completed when reason (which
is required for the comparison of all particular sense impressions) gives rise to art and
science. Hence, particulars are the object of experience, whereas universals are the
object of art and science. In a second interpretation, “experience” can be translated as
22 Now, if you turn your mind to the very highest realm of all, the realm of abstract ideas, think for a
moment whether or not those philosophers whose views against women you have been citing have
ever been proven wrong. In fact, they are all constantly correcting each other’s opinions, as you
yourself should know from reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics where he discusses and refutes both
their views and those of Plato and other philosophers. Don’t forget the Doctors of the Church either,
and Saint Augustine in particular, who all took issue with Aristotle himself on certain matters, even
though he is considered to be the greatest of all authorities on both moral and natural philosophy.
You seem to have accepted the philosophers’ views as articles of faith and thus as irrefutable on
every point. (Pizan, 1999, 8). Regardes se les tres plus grans philosophes qui ayente esté que
tu argues contre ton mesmes sexe en ont point determine faulx et au contraire du vray et se ilz
reppunent l’un l’autre et reprennent, si comme tu mesmes l’as veu ou livre de la Methaphisique, la
ou Aristote redargue et reprent leurs oppinions et recite semblablement de Platon et d’autres. Et
nottes derechef se saint Augustin et autres docteurs de l’Eglise ont point repris mesmement Aristote
en aucines pars, tout soit dit le prince des philosophes et en qui philosophie naturelle et morale fu
souverainement. Et il semble que tu cuides que toutes parole des philosophes soient article de foy
et que ils ne puissant errer. (ed. Richards, 1997, 48).
23 By the way, that is precisely the objective Pizan is pursuing in the Book of the City of Ladies,
where her experience is reinforced by other argumentation strategies, as the study of history, myths,
and the Scriptures, insofar as they allow the identification of female exempla from different times
and contexts. They will be applied as models of conduct as well as evidence to persuade her
readers of the real potential of women. Pizan is seeking to make space for what we could call a
“female body of knowledge”, with the aid of the muses—Lady Reason, Lady Justice, and Lady
Rectitude—symbolizing atemporal wisdom.
24 We know that Pizan was quite familiar with Aristotle’s Metaphysics through Aquinas’
commentary. See Dulac and Reno (1995).

25 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980b26-981a12 (Barnes, 1991, vol. 2, 2–3). See also Posterior Analytics,
100a3-100a9. (Barnes, 1991, vol. 1, 63–4). For the different readings and developments medieval
philosophers made of these passages, see King (2003).
“expertise”. This kind of knowledge can beat theoretical knowledge concerning prac-
tical affairs since it is seen as complementary to theoretical knowledge. As Thomas
Aquinas (Aquinas 1971) puts it, if anyone has the theoretical knowledge of an art
but lacks experience, he or she will be equipped with the universal, but will very
often make mistakes.26 Nonetheless, experience is not the highest form of knowl-
edge, since “those who know the causes and why things are more knowledgeable
and wise than those who merely know that things are so”.27 Knowledge in its most
perfect form (scientia) must provide the causes through scientific demonstration.
Philosophers preferred the first, more traditional conception of experience, while the
second conception (experience as expertise) was applied to the mechanical arts (less
noble forms of knowledge) as an acquired skill (King, 2003, 209).
None of these senses help us to understand precisely what Pizan means when
she speaks of her experience as femme naturelle. In this sense, Pizan’s conception of
‘experience’ and its methodological relevance is not properly scholastic: it is closer to
what we find in the humanist tradition, especially in moral philosophy. Humanists no
longer claim that the study of morality should be based in formal demonstrations but
must take into account personal experiences and reputable opinions (Kessler, 2013;
Mack, 2013). Following Petrarch’s moral writings,28 they believed other individ-
uals could benefit from the teachings build up on the author’s experiences, thereby
going beyond abstract speculations that ignore particular human being’s concerns
and desires. This understanding seems to meet the social import we find in Pizan’s
texts, that is to say, the idea that people acquire competencies by interacting with
the world. It supposes different knowers are not all exposed to the same facts and
experiences since they do not occupy the same spaces and do not perform the same
activities in the social organization. However, it is not clear to what extent humanists
believed that different people or different social groups would have a special claim
to certainty or authority in a given debate.
Several developments on contemporary feminist epistemology, however, can help
us to fully grasp Pizan’s argumentation strategy in the passages above. Generally
speaking, feminist epistemology studies the ways in which gender influence concep-
tions of knowledge and justification (Anderson, 1995a, 1995b, 2020). In this context,
women are denied epistemic authority and often excluded from scientific inquiry. The
central concept of feminist epistemology is that of situated knowledge: the knowledge
that reflects the particular perspectives of the knower. Standpoint theory (Harding,
2004; Janack, 1997) emerges from feminist epistemology insofar as it reflects on
26 Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, I, 1, 22: Unde cum
ars sit universalium, experientia singularium, si aliquis habet rationem artis sine experientia, erit
quidem perfectus in hoc quod universale cognoscat; sed quia ignorat singulare cum experimento
careat, multotiens in curando peccabit: quia curatio magis pertinet ad singulare quam ad universale,
cum ad hoc pertineat per se, ad illud per accidens.
27 Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, I, 1, 25: […] illi qui
sciunt causas et propter quid, sunt scientiores et sapientiores scientibus tantum quia.
28 On the influence of Augustin’s Confessions over Petrarch’s valorization of the authority of
personal experience, see Amtower (2000, 79–121).

134 A. R. Schmidt
the relations between power and production of knowledge, where the claim of epis-
temic privilege ultimately justifies claims for authority, specifically of members of
socially marginalized groups when producing descriptions of themselves. This theory
provides women with theoretical tools to demand recognition as actors of knowl-
edge. Surely, this theory is subject to criticism: in a more radical understanding,
standpoint theory can lead to a relativist account of knowledge or to an assumption
of essentialism, according to which all women share the same knowledge in virtue
of having the same perspective. Taken in a moderate version, however, standpoint
theory allows us to provide insight into a particular comprehension better available
to the members of a group sharing a common perspective. In this case, a standpoint
is a place from which women define themselves and reflect on their place in society.
Of course, one should not conclude that Pizan developed a feminist standpoint
theory, but she surely tackled some of its key features. Also, I do not think Pizan
is reclaiming a new conceptual framework for women only. The claim that the
women possess unique faculties to produce knowledge is clearly problematic, partic-
ularly given the medieval context where this discussion enrolls and Pizan’s posi-
tion for the natural equality for both sexes concerning the inclination for learning.
Rather, it amounts to an effective strategy to debunk false claims and generaliza-
tions concerning the female sex.29 Pizan’s reasoning does not reject objectivity, but
rather seek to improve it by correcting sexist in scientific and philosophical inquiry
by promoting criticism of neglected resources. Moreover, one must ask if being a
learned woman in the French court sufficient for claim access to a privileged perspec-
tive. Of course, this kind of epistemic authority cannot be seen as simply given, but
achieved through critical reflection on the female condition.
One of the clearest instances of biased claims for knowledge in scientific history is
that of medieval medical texts.30 In another passage from the Book of City of Ladies,
Pizan explicitly enrolls the experience of the gendered bodies as a source of situated
knowledge. This assessment can integrate31 the refutation of the idea according to
which the female anatomy is naturally defective. In this case, the standpoint of women
29 My God, what a biased exhortation! And, Indeed, since he insults all women, I am forced to believe
that he did not know nor was he acquainted with any honorable and virtuous woman, but, having
known only fallen ones who led sinful lives, as the lecherous tend to do, he thought he knew—or
claimed to know—that they must all be like this. And if he had only insulted the dishonorable ones
and counseled men to flee them, he would have given a good lesson. But no, he accuses them all,
without exception. Dieux! quelle exortacion! comme elle est prouffitable et vrayement puis que en
general ainsi toutes blasma, de croire par ceste raison suis contrainte que oncques n’ot acoinctance
ne hantise de femme honnorable ne vertueuse, mais par plusieurs femmes dissollues et de male vie
hanter – comme font communement les luxurieux –, cuida ou faingni savoir que toutes teles feussent,
car d’autres n’avoit congnoissance et se seulement eust blasmé les deshonnestes et conseillié elles
fuir, bon enseignement et juste seroit. Mais non! ains sans excepcion toutes les accuse. (McWebb,
2006, 126–8).
30 Thomasset (2007, 70), a historian of medicine, writes about the androcentric view that doctors
had of the female body in medieval anatomy treatises.

31 I say ‘integrate’ because Pizan’s main argument for the perfectibility of women rests in under-
standing nature as dependent on God’s perfection ad his agency (as its efficient and final cause).
‘Oh Lord, how can this be? Unless I commit an error of faith, I cannot doubt that You, in your
infinite wisdom and perfect goodness, could make anything that wasn’t good. Didn’t you yourself
has an epistemic advantage over phenomena in which their bodies are is implicated.
It does not amount to scientific knowledge, but it should be sufficient to refute false
medical claims made from poor evidence:
I’ve also came across another small book in Latin, my lady, called the On the Secrets of
Women, which states that the female body is inherently flawed and defective in many of its
functions’. Reason replied, ‘You shouldn’t need any other evidence than of your own body to
realize that this book is a complete fabrication and stuffed with lies. Though many attribute
the book to Aristotle, it is unthinkable that a philosopher as great as he would have produced
such outrageous nonsense. Any woman who reads it can see that, since certain things it says
are complete opposite of her own experience […].32 (Pizan, 1999, 21).
Secreta mulierum was composed probably in Germany in the last quarter of the
thirteenth century, falsely attributed to Albert the Great—and not to Aristotle, as Pizan
claims, although it was undoubtedly influenced by Aristotelian views on women’s
constitution, despite her curious surprise over the possibility of that authorship.33
This book contains several observations concerning the female body leading to some
ludicrous conclusions, as the affirmation according to which the menstrual flow is so
toxic that women, when afflicted by this condition, can poison children with a glance
of the eye.34 Here Pizan argues by stating that every woman knows her own body well
create woman especially and then endow her with all the qualities that you wished her to have? How
could you possibly have made a mistake in anything? Yet here stand women not simply accused,
but already judged, sentenced and condemned! I cannot understand this contradiction. (Pizan, 1999,
7). Ha ! Dieux, comment peut cecy estre ? Car se je ne erre en la foy, je ne doy mie doubter que ton
infinie sapience et tres parfaicte bonté ait riens fait qui ne soit bon. Ne formas tu toy mesmes tres
singulierement femme et dés lors lui donnas toutes teles inclinacions qu’il te plaisoit qu’elle eust ?
Et comment pourroit ce estre que tu y eusses en riens failli ? Et toutevoyes voycy tant de si grandes
accusacions, voire toutes jugees, determinees et concluses contre elles. Je ne scay entendre ceste
repugnance. (ed. Richards, 1997, 44).
32 La Cité des Dames, I, 9: Un autre petit livre en latin vy, Dame, qui se nome Du secret des femmes,
quid it de la composition de leurs corps naturel moult de grans deffaulx […] Tu peus congnoistre
par toy mesmes sanz nulle autre preuve, que cellui livre fu fait a voulenté et faintement colouré, car
si tu l’as veu, ce te peut estre chose magnifeste que il est traicitié tout de mençonges. Et quoyque
aucuns dient que ce fist Aristote, il n’est mie a croire que tel philosophe se feust chargié de si faictes
bourdes, car par ce que les femmes pevent clerement par espreuve savoir que aucune chose que il
touche ne sont mie vrayes, ains pures bourdes, pevent elles conlcurre que les autres particularitez
dont il traicte sont droites mençonges. (ed. Richards, Milano, 1997, 76).
33 Further in the text Pizan criticizes the claim according to which the formation of a female fetus
is caused by a deficiency in the mother’s womb, reminiscent of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals

(737a25-35), but absent in the Secrets of women. See Miller (2014, 55–89) and Green (1998).
34 De Secretis mulierum, Chap. X: It should be noted and record in the memory that elderly women
who have the menstrual flow, or some who most of the time have the flow withheld, if they look
closely at children lying in their cradles, poison their eyes by the glance, as Albert says in the
treatise On the Menses. This is caused firstly in menstrual flow from women who suffer from it,
but also in the ones who do not suffer from it. Those who suffer from menstrual flow, which moves
throughout the body during menstruation, firstly infect the air, since this matter is directed primarily
to the eyes, and infects them due to its subtlety and porosity; then the infected eyes infect the air;
then the infected air infects the child once it reaches her. Est eciam notandum et diligenter memorie
imprimendum quod mulieres antique quibus menstrua fluunt vel quedam ut in pluribus quibus
menstrua retenta sunt, sepe si inspiciant pueros in cunis iacentes toxicant eos visu, ut ait Albertus
136 A. R. Schmidt
enough to debunk some of the claims in that book. Pizan’s female readers, her target
audience, should be able to recognize by themselves (congnoistre par toy mesmes
sanz nulle autre prevue) that these proposals are complete lies (droites mençonges).
In an epistemological level, Pizan is opposing women’s certainty of their
own being (certaineté de son estre), to outsider opinions (pluralité d’oppinions
estranges).35 To know one’s own identity, as opposed to blindly believe in false
testimony, means not only to overcome a state of ignorance, but to be able to provide
justification: self-knowledge has, in this case, a higher degree of certainty. Pizan is not
proposing to insert a new hierarchy of increasing levels of reliability concerning the
cognitive process itself . One should definitely avoid attributing to Pizan problematic
claims about feminine cognitive differences, as something as a gendered reason or
a dichotomy between male abstraction and female experience. Pizan could not hold
this position if she did not sustain that women were legitimate actors of knowledge
perfectly capable of understanding complex abstract ideas.
The central point in her arguments is the quality and the amount of the evidence on
which general conclusions about female nature are made. Ultimately, Pizan believes
in women’s experience as a corrective device to better grasp the truth and required
for increasing scientific objectivity. Speaking as a femme naturelle, if there is an
epistemic value into it, should also mean to bear witness of other women’s lives as
well as a certain social awareness. In this sense, she seems to be referring to women’s
personal experiences to the extent that they are universalizable, even if they may
bear the traces of the knower’s biography and identity. What’s at stake here is the
search for the due epistemic value of experiences in order to allow non-fallacious
generalizations. Pizan is aware that any claim to knowledge is not free of subjectivity:
social custom in particular can lead to mistakes concerning true knowledge if it is
tied to sexual bias. She is shading light to the gendered interests and experiences that
influence the production of knowledge. In that manner, Pizan is able to assume the
role of spokesperson of her sex in the debate against male conventional wisdom over
the female nature.
tractatu suo De menstruis mulierum. Causa autem huius est et primo reddetur causa in habentibus
et fluentibus menstruo et deinde in aliis quibus non fluunt. Hee quidem quibus fluunt menstrua, que
tempore fluxus per totum corpus moventur, primitus inficiunt aerem, quia ista materia primo vadit
ad oculos et inficit eos propter subtilitatem et porositatem oculorum. Oculis enim infectis inficiunt
aerem. Aere enim infecto inficitur puer cui iste aer advenit. (ed. Barragén Nieto, 2012, 452–3; my
translation).
35 Fille chere ne t’espouvantes, car nous ne sommes mie cy venues pour ton contraire, ne faire aucun
encombrier, ais pour toy consoler comme piteuses de ta turbacion et te giter hors de l’ignorance,
qui avugle ta mesmes congnoissance que tu deboutes de toy ce que tu ne scez de certaine Science,
et ajoustes foy a ce que tu ne scez ne vois ne cognois autrement fors par pluralité d’oppinions
estranges. Tu ressembles le fol, dont la truffe parle, qui em dormant au molin fu revestu de la robe
d’une femme et au reveiller, pour ce que ceulx qui moquoyent lui testemoignoient que femme estoit,
crut mieulx leurx dis que la certaineté de son estre. (ed. Richards, Milano, 1997, 46).
10.2 Conclusion
We have seen how Pizan introduces a discourse of self-determination as an integral

part of her critique of the clerical monopoly of knowledge. This is made through an
assessment of her status as a woman writer and an intellectual woman, by engaging
in the debate about the feminine nature and the place of women in society. Pizan’s
arguments rely on a distinction between what’s natural and what’s cultural: a distinc-
tion she is able to make through allegorical resources and literary devices, as the
opposition between Nature and Fortune Personified. In the narrative of her autobi-
ography, Pizan allows us to penetrate her understanding of the human being, within
which sex is an accidental property that is added to human essence, according to
the will of Nature—which is in turn submitted to divine intentionality in all His
perfection. Therefore, through the analysis of these passages, all of them making
reference to Pizan’s perspective—to the author’s place in the world—we are able to
understand the justifications she provided in order to be acknowledged as an actor
in her intellectual environment.
In the second section, Pizan is paving her way into authoritative ground: she says
the debate on female nature is deficient if women are not a part of it. To correct this
problem, she introduces her experiences as femme naturelle, meaning she is speaking
as an authority whose knowledge is sound and can contradict clerical male expertise.
This amounts to say that her perspective and insight should be taken into consideration
as a methodological prerogative. Finally, in L’Espitre au Dieu d’Amours, Pizan claims
that, if there were a balance between the amount of authority conceded to men and
women, the body of knowledge would not be the same:
But if women had written the books, I know for sure that things would be quite different;
for they know well that they have been falsely blamed. Things are not divided up evenly, for
the strongest ones take the biggest part, and the one who cuts up things takes the best part
for himself.36
Acknowledgements This study was financed in part by the Brazilian Council for the Improvement
of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES).
36Mais se femmes eussent les livres fait/Je sçay de vray qu’autrement fust du fait,/Car bien scevent
qu’a tort sont encoulpées,/Si ne sont pas a droit les pars coupees,/Car les plus fors prenent la plus
grant part,/Et le meilleur pour soy qui pieces part. L’Espitre au Dieu d’Amours, vv. 417–422, apud
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, in: The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, 299.
138 A. R. Schmidt
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Chapter 11
Conway and Spinoza on Individuals:
Frameworks for a Feminist Metaphysics
Nastassja Pugliese
Abstract In this chapter, I describe the contemporary debate on the nature of indi-
viduals and the contributions that feminist theorists have brought. Criticising the
atomic, isolated notion of individual self, feminist theorists have been looking for
alternative conceptions that do not exclude the relationships individuals bear among
themselves and that recognise social dynamics as constitutive of individuality. Within
this context, Spinoza appears as a “noble ancestor” of relational accounts of indi-
viduality and individual autonomy (Armstrong et al., 2019). Feminist historians and
Spinoza scholars such as Armstrong (2009) and Tucker (2019) have shown that
readings of Spinoza as a partisan of individual egoism are wrong. One reason lies
in what Ravven (1998), for example, defends: according to Spinoza’s metaphysics,
the bounds of individuals are always wider in body and in mind than the bounds
that are visible through the shapes of a person. Conway also offers a similar account
of individuals (Duran, 1989; Pugliese, 2019), but her relational theory is still not
yet read by feminist theorists in the context of the disputes over the metaphysics of
individuality. Given Spinoza and Conway’s common philosophical interests, I will
compare their theory of individuals so as to show how Conway offers an original
contribution to the feminist debate by using gender analogies to characterise her
metaphysical claims.
Keywords Conway · Spinoza · Feminist metaphysics · Individuals
11.1 Introduction
There is an ongoing debate over whether traditional notions of the individual self
are able to capture women’s experience of their individuality (Loyd, 2000; Holroyd,
2011; Mackenzie & Stoljar, 2000; Witt, 2011). What is understood as the traditional
notion of self is the conception of the individual in an atomic isolation, that is,
N. Pugliese (B)
Faculty of Education - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Avenida Pasteur 250, Rio de
Janeiro-RJ 22290-902, Brasil
e-mail: nastassjapugliese@ufrj.br
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_11
142 N. Pugliese
as an individual that is thought of as wholly independent from the external world

and conceived apart from its bodily dimension. Insofar as the individual is taken as
isolated from its environment, autonomy is understood as the ability to act alone and
independently from others. The assumption here is that there is a core selfhood that
is unchangeable and is atomic, working as an isolated center for all decision making
processes—a commonly held view in Early modern concepts of the subject (Thiel,
2011).1 Feminist critiques point out that this way of understanding the structure of
the individuals and the mechanics of their actions lead one to erect walls between
oneself and those around. The effect of this view is the legitimation and desirability
of egoistic actions, a disregard for the social bounds, and a devalue of relations
determined by care and nurture—activities historically associated with women and
their social role.
Feminists contributions to the development of the metaphysics of individuals are
various including a negative critique and positive shifts of interpretation. On one
hand, they criticise the idea of an individual as an atomic self disconnected from
the body and living in isolation. On the other hand, feminist metaphysics are, too,
associated with an increase in the importance of relations in defining individuals, and
the idea that agency is a concept that should be understood as depending on collective
and material organisation (Armstrong, 2009; Bottici, 2017; de Vega, 2018). In the
context of this recent research, Spinoza has been seen as offering a worth-looking
theory where individuals are thought of as constituted by their relations (Ravven,
2019; Steinberg, 2019; Tucker, 2019). It is still missing, however, an investigation
on how Seventeenth Century women philosopher’s conception of individuals could
contribute to this metaphysical debate. In this chapter, I argue that Conway’s concept
of the individual and her gender analogies comes in handy in this contemporary
discussion on the role of relations in defining individuals, illuminated by the feminist
metaphysics agenda (Armstrong, 2009; Gatens, 2009).
This is so because Conway thinks the individual as constituted by a changing
plurality, by a multitude of smaller bodies and spirits that support one another to
remain a whole. My hypothesis here is that Conway’s conception of individual can
help us think beyond the traditional dichotomies of dependency/independency and
in favor of a constitutive interdependency between individuals. Her idea that the
boundaries of individuality can expand and retract, together with the notion that
there is no substantial separation between individuals, might allow us to think of
a metaphysics of individuals that is able to account for the structuring nature of
relations.
1 I have drawn a general picture of an early modern conception of the self, but the problems regarding
selfhood in metaphysics are various and concern issues such as the problem of individuation, self-
consciousness, and subjectivity. Thiel (2011) offers an overview of the early modern theories of the
self showing their wide range and complexity.
11 Conway and Spinoza on Individuals: Frameworks for a Feminist Metaphysics 143
11.2 Why Look for Feminist Metaphysics

in Seventeenth-Century Texts?
When affirming that a historical text, a Seventeenth century metaphysical work,

should be read as a framework for a feminist metaphysics, one can argue, in one
sense, that this is an obvious interpretative mistake given that there was no feminism
in the Seventeen century. But in another sense, it is also easy to see that the idea
is a reading strategy to retrieve and locate the contributions of historical texts in
contemporary debates. The methodologically important question is, however, if it is
possible to do the second, that is, to have contemporary motivations in the method of
historical interpretation while avoiding twists that shift the goal of the original text.
It would certainly be an interpretative mistake to attribute to Conway or Spinoza
feminist political views or activism that are anachronistic to their social and histor-
ical context. Nevertheless, the interpretative hypothesis that Conway and Spinoza
offer metaphysical systems that are important for contemporary feminist debates is
legitimate insofar as the hypothesis involves exposing historical texts to present day
concerns showing that the history of philosophy is part of a process that is connected
with the present. Moreover, it indicates that past philosophy can bring valuable
insights to questions that animate current philosophical debates. Hence, I mean two
things when I claim that Spinoza and Conway offer a framework for a feminist meta-
physics: that their theories address philosophical questions of interest to feminists2
and that they offer conceptual structures that are helpful for the contemporary debate
on metaphysics.
Finally, this work is the result of an active search for clues that would answer the
question of what are women’s contributions—as female philosophers—to traditional
philosophical questions.3 Looking for clues on how a philosophical text written by
women can offer new insights to traditional questions is also to look for how certain
themes that have been historically important to women appear in the text. Hence,
I identify two occurrences of gender arguments in Conway’s Principia and bring
them to our attention in the context of her theory of individuals in order to make
the case that her work can be taken as a fertile framework for feminist metaphysics.
2 I use the term “feminist critique” and “feminists” very generally. I am aware that there are many
differences between feminists and, most importantly, that women do not form a homogeneous
group standing for the same causes and debating the same issues. I am not too concerned with these
differences here because I am interested in a specific critique of traditional accounts of selfhood
and individuality offered by certain feminists historians of philosophy. Recently there are moral
feminists that question the very need for a relational account of individuality such as the one offered
by Khader (2020). I am not going to engage with this criticism here because I am interested in
locating Conway on a specific debate where relational individuality is key.
3 This way of reading a text takes into consideration that context and first person idiosyncrasies
may have an active influence on the results of a philosophical investigation. Contingencies can
influence investigations even if those results—in the end—have a universal character and a genuine
ontological or metaphysical thesis that is supposed to describe everything that there is. In this sense,
the gender, race, geopolitical location, and social status of the person who is writing somehow
appear in their work no matter how far the argument in the text is from the contingent and particular
characteristics of the one who is offering the argument.
144 N. Pugliese
The gender comparisons that appear in the text are important keys to understanding
the metaphysics of transformation and her original contributions to the history of
philosophy. But for a contextualised and historically founded analysis of Conway’s
philosophical contributions, I start the chapter by offering a short state of the art
debate on relational individuals in the context of feminist critique and show how
Spinoza’s philosophy is nowadays seen—by feminist and non-feminists alike—as
offering important insights on the problem of autonomy and individual self. This is
significant because Conway names Spinoza as one of the authors she criticizes in her
Principia, so this comparative study might shed light on this critique and open new
questions for investigation. I intend to offer a comparison between Conway’s and
Spinoza’s account of individuals in order to, using Spinoza’s scholarship as a guide,
evaluate Conway’s original contribution to the recent discussion on individuals and
relations.
11.3 Spinoza on Individuals: Relationality as a Framework

for a Feminist Metaphysics
The traditional and well-established view of rational action in Spinoza is one in

which to act rationally is, through the moral exercise of individual egoism, to avoid
what does not agree with our own nature (Bennet, 1984; Curley, 1988). In this
view, to be free is to progressively overcome the passions and increasingly employ
reason to become the single cause of one’s own actions (E1def7). Contesting this
view, contemporary scholars consider that Spinoza can be thought of as a ‘noble
ancestor’ of relational account of autonomy (Armstrong et al., 2019, 2). Spinoza is
read as proposing an alternative view that addresses the tensions between the notion of
individual autonomy and the dependency that is presupposed in the idea of a relational
identity. Conatus, passivity and activity of the mind, the notion of an embodied mind,
affects and the idea of affects, the unity of substance and nature, the relationship
between citizens and the state, are all resources to deal with the problem of being able
to exercise one’s power of action while being immersed—and constituted by—certain
material conditions. Most of the accounts on relational autonomy and Spinoza’s
contribution to the debate focus on his political philosophy. This focus is explained
by the fact that relational theories spring from feminist concerns with individual and
collective rights.
Mackenzie (2019) shows that relational theories derive from, mainly, three strands
of feminist critiques, all of them targeting classical liberal conceptions of the indi-
vidual. A focus of one of these critiques is the conception of self-determination
that assumes a “socially atomistic conception of persons” privileging independence
and individualism while devaluing interpersonal dependence, care, and connection.
Dependence on others and constraints of social bounds, especially those coming from
marriage and motherhood, have been historically associated with women’s social
role. Hence, given that this conception devalues dependence as well as interdepen-
dence, this kind of view on self-determination reduce the role of women’s experi-
ences, the values she has learned to cultivate, and the values that are expected from her
to display. Another strand of critique aims at the rhetoric of autonomy within liberal
politics where the liberal subject, based on a politically biased and flawed concep-
tion of self-interest, is conceived as a rational contractor, self-interested, independent
subject having autonomy and personal responsibility. This concept of liberal subject
serve as a model of a citizen-state relationship in liberal economies and its rhetoric,
according to this feminist strand critique, functions to mask social injustice and struc-
tural inequality by shifting the onus of the problem away from the state and onto
individuals. Finally, there is also the strand of feminist critique that targets the over-
rationalistic notion of self-governance grounded on a transparent and disembodied
notion of agency.
My aim here, however, is not to dwell on the specific political discussions
contained in the debate on relational autonomy. In fact, the goal of this investigation
is not even to discuss autonomy or relational accounts on freedom, but to motivate
the reading that in most relational theories underlies a metaphysical conception of
individuals that takes relations as fundamental constituents of individuality. This
metaphysical conception of individuals is the basis of Spinoza’s political philosophy
expressed in his theory of relational power in which the freedom of an individual is
tied to the power of the community of which that individual is part (Tucker, 2019,
150). This theory of relational power is based on a fundamental Spinozan notion that
the external conditions somehow determine our ability to flourish individually and
that different individuals should come together (or separate themselves from each
other if there is enough disagreement) so as to hold mutually empowering relations.
The theory of relational power in Spinoza depends on his metaphysical characteriza-
tion of individuals, turning the problem of individuation of central importance when
discussing theories of relational autonomy, relation individuality, and the feminist
concerns with the nature of the individual subject.
Spinoza’s immanent monism is such that finite individuals are conceived as part
of whole, not as independent and separate substances in themselves. Hence, individ-
uals are grounded in relations.4 In Spinoza, individuals are defined by two essential
characteristics: individuals are effects of the substance, so they are dependent on the
being of the substance, but at the same time, insofar as they are modes in the realm of
finite things, they have a certain degree of independency as modes. Individuals can
be conceived as moments in the single existence (of the substance), and they can be
conceived units that are formed according to a certain dynamic of cause and effect.
This double dimension of beings indicates that individuals should be conceived and
understood as beings characterized by two causal directions: individuals are self-
related and individuals are related to another. Individuals have some degree of power
to self-cause, but they have been caused by another are always being in causal rela-
tions with others. As effects of the process of differentiation of the substance, that
4 Merçon (2007), Ravven & Goodman (2002), Balibar (1997) argue that Spinoza’s epistemology
is a key to understand his theory of individuation.
146 N. Pugliese
is, as natura naturata, the individuals are not fully independent because they are
created by another. But as finite modes that follow necessarily and that partake in
the being of the substance or the natura naturans, individuals have some level of
independency (inside the world of finite modes, and as parts), and the individual can
become increasingly more independent by increasing their power to act. An indi-
vidual becomes increasingly more independent the more it know and recognizes the
relationships that constitute its being, and the more it knows that these relations with
other individuals are necessary and constitutive of the individual’s own nature. The
more the individual knows its dependency upon other modes who are themselves
dependent on the unity of substance by the expression of its attributes, the more
individuals know it is constituted by another. This knowledge is fundamental for the
individual to be able to understand its participation in larger social wholes and to
understand the importance of the collective conditions of action given that external
forces shape not only the individual freedom but it indicates the degree of collective
freedom that can or is experienced.
In Spinoza, an absolutely independent being that can be fully self-caused is a
description that only fits the substance, individuals are necessarily related to one
another. Moreover, individuals are fundamentally constituted by relations between
theirs own parts, and by the relations they bear with other individuals. Individuals are
defined by their proportion of motion and rest, and by the direction of the causality
that is constitutive of its conatus. Spinoza’s individuals are defined by proportions
of motion and rest, they are unities defined by a chain of causal relations going a
single direction. For this reason, the notion of a merely atomic (or fully independent)
individual does not fit in Spinoza’s system. The process of being and becoming of
individuals is permeated by interactions with other finite individuals because they are
always in relation to another Spinoza’s ontology demands a complete reconceptual-
isation of the notion of individuality, given that relations are the most fundamental
ground for the definition of individuals depend on the notions of cause of itself and
cause by another. Ravven (1998) argues that this fact indicates the extendible char-
acter of body and mind in Spinoza. She claims that there is a contrast between an
adequate and an inadequate version of this expansion where the expansion to only
the immediate environment is inadequate. The possible of extension of the person is
also part of Spinoza’s explanation of the constitution of a political body. She argues
that “the boundaries of the individual body and mind are extended to encompass the
body politic and the group mind, concepts which include law and constitution, on the
one hand, and, on the other, group emotions, collective desires, and also communal
moral values” (Ravven, 1998, 272). In this sense, Spinoza’s notion of individual
speaks to the recent critical reflection of relational theorists and feminist theorists
that recognize the complexities in the individual identity formation.5 In fact, Spinoza
recognizes the complexity and lack of transparency of individual desires and ideas
5 As Mackenzie (2019) characterized “the notion of intersectional identity is a metaphor used by

feminists and critical race theorists to characterize the way experiences of social subordination
across multiple identity categories, such as gender, race, class or sexual orientation, constitute
identities as complex and often internally conflicted.” (Mackenzie, 2019, 16).
by showing that they are shaped by external forces. This external constitution of
oneself is, as Ravven pointed out, sometimes taken adequately and some other times
inadequately. It is part of the process of individual development to attempt to over-
come the determinations that can be transformed and to develop engagements that
will be mutually empowering for the individual and the community. Some feminists,
it is also important to note, have also accused Spinoza of failing to properly address
feminist concerns such as the mind/body relation. As de Vega (2018) points out,
Irigaray claims that Spinoza is enforcing dualistic conception of mind and body due
to Spinoza’s parallelism where the mind cannot cause the body to act nor the body
can cause the mind to think. de Vega, on the other hand, considers that opposite, that
“Spinoza’s ontology may be said to invert the structure of gender domination”6 and
that “Spinoza’s ontology is absolutely key to questioning dualistic assumptions from
which the structures of domination are built”. Moreover, there is a great controversy
when it comes to Spinoza’s characterization of the social role of women, given that
on the Political Treatise, Chap. XI, paragraph 4, he distinguishes males and females
with respect to their level of success in governing the state and characterizing women
as having some kind of weakness (imbecillitate) in comparison to men.7 These are
issues that should be further explored, but in light of these controversies and given
that Conway has a critique of Spinoza’s metaphysics in her Principia, my claim
here is that her contribution to the metaphysical disputes of the seventeenth century
is even more interesting than Spinoza’s with respect to this contemporary feminist
debate.
11.4 Conway on Individuals: Otherness

and Transformation as a Framework for a Feminist
Metaphysics
In The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (Principles, for short),
Anne Conway constructs her metaphysics according to a moral realism of Neopla-
tonic inspiration (Hutton, 2004). What this means is that from the conception of
6 de Vega claims that this is the case because Spinoza argues that “the more complex the mechanisms
of the body, the more complex the mechanisms of thought in the mind. From this is would follow
that a more complex body is a more complex mind. In other words, the more the body is capable of,
the more the mind is also capable of. Without aiming to claim superiority of one over the other, I am
tempted to say that female bodies are more complex, and capable of more complex functions than
are male bodies. Granted they are both complex organisms, even without any medical knowledge
of human bodies one could certainly say that due to female reproductive organs, the female body is
inherently more complex and capable of doing much more. It has the capacity for more complexity,
even if this capacity (say, reproduction) is not instantiated.” (de Vaga, 2019, 3).
7 “But perhaps someone will ask whether women are under the power of their husbands by nature
or by custom. If this has happened only by custom, then no reason compels us to exclude women
from rule. But if we consult experience, we’ll see that this occurs only because of their weakness.”
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Chap. XI (Curley, 2016, 603).
148 N. Pugliese
substance, a tripartite division of being follows: the inferior species, the mediating
species, and the superior species (this division is said to be of Neoplatonic inspiration
because it is a division similar to those in Plotinus and Proclus,8 for example). These
species are hierarchically ordered according to their degree of perfection, and, as part
of the same substance that is constantly in motion, the individuals are also constantly
changing. But because they are part of and somehow share the same substance, indi-
viduals, if they increase their perfection, they become another, and transmute into
a being that is higher in the chain. If they diminish their perfection, they can also
transmute into a being that lies lower in the chain of hierarchically ordered beings.
Perfection, in this scenario, functions as a structuring principle that grounds the
individuation of beings and the direction of their motion; so, perfection is both the
end towards which every being strives and a metaphysical primitive determining the
identity of beings.
This explanation for the unity of nature is the foundation of what I call the trans-
mutation argument (Pugliese, 2019), the counterintuitive thesis defended by Conway
that one being can actually change into another provided that certain conditions are
given. Duran (1989) also recognizes that Conway’s view on the transformation of
individuals is central for her metaphysics, making it highly counterintuitive and orig-
inal. She interprets the scope of the possibilities of transformation within a single
individual as an indication that Conway argues for the continuity between living crea-
tures, and even between living and non-living creatures. Given Conway’s account of
substance and the idea that perfection is a metaphysically structuring principle that
grounds motion, the transformations in the quantity of corporeality can range from
stones that transforms into human beings and into horses.
The counterintuitive results of Conway’s transmutation argument make her work
occupy a unique place in the ontologies of the seventeenth century, where most of
the available ontologies entail a strict distinction between the rational humans and
other irrational (and soul-less) living creatures.9 The lack of demarcation between
the human and the nonhuman, the living and the nonliving occurs because, at the
most fundamental level, the three realms of being are strata in a single whole. Or
better, because spirit and matter are degrees or modes of a single substance that
strives to become ever more perfect, acting as an image of god, being sometimes
successful and some other times unsuccessful in this attempt. Conway explains the
relation between god and the beings of the mediating and the inferior species using
three metaphors: life, light, and will. These metaphors allow the readers to see that
the three realms of being compose a single continuum as if they were a single spectre
of light, ranging from the most luminous to the least luminous area of a beam of
light. This image represents the structure of spirit, which is the most fundamental
8 During the Q&A, Sabrina Ebbersmeyer suggested that during the Seventeenth Century the work
of the Renaissance philosopher Marcilio Ficino was more spread and better known than Proclus’.
She suggested that Ficino might be Conway’s reference for neoplatonism. It is important to note
that because the relationship between Conway and neoplatonic reception in the Renaissance should
be further investigated.
9 It is interesting to note here that Conway brings classical Ovidian themes to her metaphysics, just
like Spinoza (Pugliese, 2019).

characteristic of being, uniting everything that is. The form of spirit is such that
it goes from its lightest to its most gross expression. So, just like a beam of light,
everything that there is spirit, but spirit that “fades” into matter. This means that
although spirit is thought of as more fundamental, matter is a mode or a kind of
spirit—one that is less perfect but that still displays vitality, life, perfection, and
rationality. The continuity between spirit and matter, and the conception of spirit
as a form of matter and vice-versa, has important consequences. Conway considers
that every creature is composed of body and spirit in a unified composite where the
more active and the more passive principle operate simultaneously because they are
degrees within a single structure. Consequently, what individuates a creature is its
unique proportion of spirit and matter in its composition. This proportion, in turn, is
a function of the degree of perfection that it is capable at the moment as a being of
the inferior species that is constantly changing.
The notion of transformation in Conway, acts as a structuring movement of indi-
viduals in the lower species and is a result of the striving for greater perfection. Trans-
formation does not operate alone to structure these lower movements. The complexity
of theses changes depend upon the role played by otherness and by the principal ruler
in individual transformation. Given that for Conway the difference between body and
spirit is not a difference of substance, but a difference in degree of activity, matter
can change into spirit and vice-versa. Depending on the level of activity, there are
great and unexpected metamorphoses of a single individual. Since an individual
cannot change its substance, but only its movement (and consequently, its quan-
tity of matter/spirit or its degree of perfection), the individual can change its mode
of being completely (Conway, Principles, 65). Conway claims that transmutation
is a necessary condition for self-development and self-perfection. Since Conway’s
metaphysics is based on a fundamental metaphysical structure where the lower levels
strive to become as perfect as the highest level of perfection and goodness, she opens
spaces for radical transformations in order to allow a true gain of perfection. This
movement, however, is only possible because individuals are themselves related to
one another as part of the same substance, as beings in the same metaphysical stratum.
That is, in Conway’s metaphysics, individuals are necessarily related to one another
so that their relationship can stimulate better or worse transformations in themselves:
For if creatures were entirely limited by its own individuality and totally constrained and
confined within the very narrow boundaries of its own species to the point that there was
no mediator through which one creature could change into another, then no creature could
attain further perfection and greater participation in divine goodness, nor could creatures act
and react upon each other in different ways. [Chap. VI, S. 5] (Conway, 1996, 32)
The absence of strict boundaries between individuals and the claim that individuals
cannot be limited by their own individuality otherwise attaining greater perfection
would not be possible, is an original and important aspect of Conway’s metaphysics
of individuals. Her strong thesis on the absence of boundaries that limits and confine
individuals in themselves also allow us to locate her theory in both historical and
contemporary discussions on relational individuality. If it is the lack of confining
boundaries that makes individual movement possible, then it is through the relation
150 N. Pugliese
with another that one can move and perfect oneself. Conway’s bold claim on the
nature and function of relationality and otherness also depends on her characterization
of how spirit and matter operate in human beings. She says:
thus every human being, indeed, every creature whatsoever, contains many spirits and bodies.
(…) Truly, every body is a spirit and nothing else, and it differs from a spirit only insofar
as it is darker. (…) consequently, the distinction between spirt and body is only modal and
incremental, not essential and substantial. [Chap. VI, S. 11] (Conway, 1996, 40)
Given the non-essentiality of spirit and body, body can turn into spirit and vice
versa. My hypothesis on this paper, that Conway’s work can be fruitful as a frame-
work for a feminist metaphysics, finds confirming evidence not only in the role of
otherness and relationally, but also in her characterization of spirit and body. One
very interesting aspect of her view on body and spirit are the gendered analogies
offered.
11.5 Gendered Analogies in Conway
Conway makes explicit comparisons between body-spirit and the pairs active–
passive, male–female, husband-wife. On Chap. VI of the Principia, we can find
the following comparison:
let us consider briefly how creatures are composed and how the parts of this composition can
change into one another because they originally had one and the same essence and being. In
every visible creature there is body and spirit, or a more active and a more passive principle,
which are appropriately called male and female because they are analogous to husband and
wife. For just as the normal generation of human beings commonly requires the conjunction
and cooperation of male and female, so too does every generation and production, whatever
it may be, require the union and simultaneous operation of those two principles, namely
spirit and body. [Chap. VI, S. 11] (Conway, 1996, 38)
The strategy of employing gender comparison to illustrate a metaphysical argu-

ment demands further investigation in itself, but it can be helpful to start with an
analysis of the use of these terms in the present excerpt. The second sentence of the
above paragraph starts with the sequence body-spirit, active–passive leading us to
infer that these are “appropriately called male and female”, that is, “analogous to
husband and wife”. So in this sentence, body and active are analogous to maleness
and the function of being the husband, whereas spirit is characterized as passivity,
analogous to the female and the wife. The last and third sentence of the paragraph is
a comparison between composition of creatures (the nature of spirit and body) and
the process of generation. Conway affirms that the process of generation requires
the cooperation of male and female, that is, a union and simultaneous operation of
spirit and body. In this sentence, it seems that she is making the same analogy while
shifting the terms and using spirit to stand for male and body to stand for female.
Although there is always the possibility that she was mistakenly associating body to
maleness and spiritual qualities to women, we can never be sure of the author’s inten-
tion beyond what is written. Since the only evidence we have is textual evidence,
we must deal with the fact that, in the text, Conway is using the terms male and
female interchangeably. At the end of this long paragraph, there is a note by the
editors that might be helpful in clarifying the meaning of this equivocation. Coudert
and Corse (1996) claim that Conway accepted the Galenic theory of reproduction.
Galenic theory was, in the Seventeenth Century, replaced by a revival of the Aris-
totelian view according to which only males produced semen and carried the active
principle of life. From this note, it will become apparent how Conway’s view on
gender is also a critique of the Seventeenth century revival of the Aristotelian view
and, more specifically, how it is connected with her perspective on the relationship
between mind and body.
Traditionally, maleness has been associated with rationality while womanhood
with human’s sensible and bodily nature. This association is now part of a cultural
common sense, but has roots in Aristotelism. Aristotle, in the Politics (1254b13-14)
considered that the imperfect rationality of women would put her in a condition of
subjugation with respect to men. The male sex, for Aristotle, is the active, superior
sex, so men are then expected to exercise political control over women who cannot
deliberate for themselves. This view is also expressed in his biology and theory of
inheritance where the father would have its active ensouling element (semen) brought
to life through a passive female element. As Coudert and Corse describe in the note 9
of Chap. VI, “while the males contributed spiritual and mental characteristics to the
foetus, the female contribution was limited to the physical and material. Analogies
were drawn between the womb and an over, in which bread is baked, or a field, in
which seed was sown.” (Conway, Principia, 39) Conway, however, did not accept
this view and was partisan of an egalitarian theory where both males and females
produced semen. Considering this, we can infer that Conway’s interchangeable usage
of gender terms is not a mistake, but an indication that she is rejecting the association
between womanhood and imperfection, womanhood and bodily things. In the Galenic
thesis, man and woman were equally responsible for inherence and equally bearers
of active principles in reproduction. Conway describes the bodily generation and the
spiritual generation using gender analogies, but from within the context of this theory
where men and women as seen as equally contributing to generation, a process that
is then fully dependent on the unity of diverse principles. She explains the coming
together of the external shape of a creature as a result of the following process:
The semen of a female creature, on account of its so perfect mixture, because it is the purest
extract of the whole body, has a remarkable power of retention. In this semen, as in the body,
the masculine semen, which is the spirit and image of the male, is received and retained
together with the other spirits which are in the women. And whatever spirit is strongest and
has the strongest image or idea in the women, whether male or female, or any other spirit
received from outside of one or the other of them, that spirit predominates in the semen and
forms a body as similar as possible to its image. [Chap. VI, S. 11] (Conway, 1996, 39)
She also describes the generation of thoughts, which are called “internal produc-
tions of the mind”, in a similar way. Thoughts are described as “our inner children”
who are “all masculine and feminine, that is, they have a body and spirit.” Conway
claims that thoughts must have a body so they can be retained in the memory and
be reflected upon, otherwise thoughts would vanish. Spiritual generation, that is,
152 N. Pugliese
the process of conceiving thoughts, depends upon memory and the bodily nature of
thoughts:
Thus memory requires a body in order to retain the spirit of the thing conceived of; otherwise
it vanishes, just as an image in a mirror immediately vanishes when the object is removed.
Thus when we remember something, we see within ourselves its image, which is the spirit
that proceeded from it, while we looked at it from the outside. This image, or spirit, is retained
in some body, which is the semen of our brain. This a certain spiritual generation occurs in
us. Consequently every spirit has its own body and every body its own spirit. [Chap. VI, S.
11] (Conway, 1996, 39)
Conway explains the generation of thoughts in the same way as she explains the
generation of bodies. This is expected if we consider that in her metaphysics body
and spirit are only degrees of clarity of a single spectre of light, that is, they are how
we call a certain shade of light, or a certain mixture of material and non-material stuff.
If we interpret this male/female analogy together with the argument of transmutation
and the claim for the possibility of radical transformations of individuals, we will
arrive at interesting results. Given the thesis that transmutation is possible for every
creature because they are constantly striving to gain more perfection, in the same way,
spiritual parts can become material, and material parts can become spiritual. Hence,
creatures of a gender can naturally turn into creatures of another without change in
substance. This is a trivial result when we consider the argument of transmutation as
being one that allows for a stone to turn into a human being. But when we analyze
transmutation in face of her gendered analogies, this comparison gives us clues with
respect to her views on the nature and role of women (as well as the nature of role of
men). In fact, it is enough to say that these analogies show us that her metaphysics
does not ignore gender differences and resemblances, given that Conway explicitly
uses gender terms to analyze and explain the workings of spirit and matter. In her
picture women and men are principles that act in unity, and where this unity is
constitutive of all there is, having the same role and importance in the generation of
things whether material or spiritual.
One problem that appears in this picture is how uniformity of motion arises in
a creature that is constituted by diverse principles. Conway then conceives an indi-
vidual constituted by an infinity of parts. There are an infinite number of creatures,
themselves made of spirit and matter, inside every creature, and “each of which
contains an infinity in itself, and so on to infinity. (Conway, Principles, 17) From the
conception of an individual as constituted by a plurality of other individuals, Conway
derives the notion of a central nature. The multitude of spirits and bodies are united,
they have a certain order that is governed by a principal ruler. So an individual has
the ability to enlarge and to shrink itself by having parts added or subtracted from
it, but its center remains impenetrable. This movement of individuality can only be
further advanced or diminished according to an individual’s current worthiness or
unworthiness, capacity or incapacity. This, says Conway on Chap. VII, implies that
“there is a certain mutuality between creatures in giving and receiving, through which
one supports another so that one cannot live without the other (…) the basis of all
love or desire, which brings one thing to another, is that they are of one nature and
substance, or they are like each other or of one mind, or that one has its being form
another”. (For a different account on the nature of love and sympathy on Conway
see Mercer, 2019).
Hence, with respect to possible frameworks for a feminist metaphysics, Conway’s
concept of the individual comes in handy not only for the reasons already stated, but
also because for her the individual is constituted by a plurality of creatures, that
is, a plurality of souls and a plurality of bodies acting together to form a single
individual. The countless multitude of bodies collected into one, and the countless
multitude of spirits united in a body are arranged in a certain order, that, bound
by sympathy, they help one another, conforming, therefore, to a principal ruler. In
this sense, Conway’s concept of individual is diametrically opposed to the notion
of atomic self, allowing us to think of the individual experience not in terms of
a unique immovable self-identical point of view, but as constituted by a changing
plurality, by a multitude of smaller bodies and spirits that support one another to
remain a whole. In this view, the individual whole can shrink and can augment,
diminishing and increasing its vitality depending on the collective organization of
its constituent parts (which are both male and female, material and spiritual). My
hypothesis in this chapter, then, is that Conway’s conception of individual can help
us think beyond the traditional dichotomies of dependency and independency and in
favor of a constitutive interdependency. Her idea that the boundaries of individuality
can expand and retract, her the notion that there is no strict or substantial separation
between individuals, and the equal characterization of genders based on Galenic
view on reproduction, might allow us to think of a metaphysics of individual able
to account for a relational conception of self, a collectivist notion of agency, and a
seventeenth century original metaphysical account of gender equality.
11.6 Conway and Spinoza as a Framework for a Feminist

Metaphysics: Final Notes
Anne Conway’s metaphysics of transmutation is part of of her theory of individua-

tion, and together they form a metaphysics that is highly original and unprecedented.
Conway, however, explicitly locates her own philosophical contribution (i.e., the
principles that ground the nature of matter and spirit) as a response to the failures of
scholastic philosophy and, most specially, the failures of modern philosophy. In the
very title of Conway’s Principia, she claims that her work is going to resolve the prob-
lems left unsolved by Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza. So, it is Conway herself that
categorizes her work as a reply to Spinoza. We still do not have a lot of information on
how much Conway knew of Spinoza and what it means to say that her metaphysics is a
criticism of Spinoza’s. One difficulty with mapping Spinoza’s philosophy’s presence
in Conway’s Principia is the apparent impossibility for Conway to have been a reader
of Spinoza given the dates of publication of Spinoza’s Ethics and the possible dates
of composition of the Principia. There are no good reasons to assume that Conway
did not read Spinoza or, worse, that she did not understand his philosophy. There are,
154 N. Pugliese
however, difficulties concerning publication and composition dates of the Spinoza’s

Ethics and of Conway’s Principia. Nicolson (1992) considers that the Principles
were written between 1671–1674 but Loptson argues that the oblique references to
Spinoza contribute to the thesis that it was composed later, between 1677 and 1679.
Considering that it is unlikely that Conway has had access to the Ethics in 1677,
that is, right after its publication, and considering that it is unlikely that she read
it while terminally ill and wrote a criticism to it right before her death in 1679,
which is actually possible, there is still an alternative. So if Nicolson is right and the
Principles were composed in the first years of the 1670s, Conway could have had
access to the main metaphysical theses defended in the Ethics if she had access to
the works that Spinoza published during his lifetime. Conway could have had access
to the contents of metaphysical thesis of Spinoza’s Ethics both through the TTP
(Chap. IV—the claim that the more we know natural things, the greater and more
perfect is the knowledge of God, a claim that also appears in E1p1def6—and Chaps.
XIII and XIV—where Spinoza argues that God’s essence is his existence and that
God, according to his essence, is everywhere) and by means of the correspondences
exchanged between Henry More and Oldenburg (Hutton, 1984, 190). In any case, it
is very likely that intellectuals from the Cambridge circle, including Conway, had
access if not to the whole manuscript of the Ethics, to parts or summaries synthesised
by Spinoza himself in his letters since 1665 (what Moreau calls the Ethica A version,
written before the TTP). I explore this theme more carefully elsewhere (Pugliese,
2019). Although we cannot know with certainty what Conway read and what exactly
she knew of Spinoza’s works, both Conway and Spinoza shared a common cultural
and intellectual background (including the influence of classical Latin sources as
represented by the works of Ovid and Lucretius, of Descartes, Jewish mysticism, and
Quakerism) that can be seen as an indirect cause of their complex, although not direct,
dialogue. I work with the hypothesis that Conway engaged with Spinoza’s theses and
constructed her work as a criticism of his metaphysics. There is simply no good reason
to assume otherwise, given that Conway herself enunciates her metaphysics as such.
In so doing, Conway becomes one of the first, if not the very first women philosopher
to engage with Spinoza’s work and publish her critique.
After analyzing Spinoza’s and Conway’s metaphysics of individuals and the role
they give to relations in structuring individuality, it is clear that Conway advances
the discussion that is already present in Spinoza in some respects. Namely, when
it comes to the relationship between mind and body, spirit and matter, and their
possible alteration into one another through transmutation. Consequently, she also
advances the discussion when it comes to characterizing genders, their relations,
and their possible transformation into one another in the likeness of matter and
spirit. Conway also uses gender analogies to advocate for the equality of sexes by
appealing to the Galenic view on reproduction. These gender comparisons both in
Spinoza and in Conway should be further analyzed, but for now it is enough to say
that Conway offers an original characterization of gender by means of the analogy
with the workings of spirit and matter. Hence, her work should—just like or even
more than Spinoza’s—be read as framework for a feminist metaphysics. Given that
the theories on relational individuality in question are metaphysical, it is still left to be
studied how Conway’s conception of individual advances Spinoza’s political views.

Since she did not explicitly show what politics can be derived from her metaphysics,
how her gender comparisons actually contribute to feminist agenda is something
that should be investigated in and of itself. For now it suffices to have Conway’s
metaphysics localised on the contemporary debate and to have seen that there is still
a lot of important insights to be found in her text while being guided by the present
conditions of interpretation of a historical text.
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being with others. Edinburgh University Press.
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Chapter 12
Sophie Charlotte: The Modern Woman
and the Reason of the Reason
Tessa Moura Lacerda
Abstract In this essay I propose a philosophical exercise: a reconstruction or recon-

figuration of Sophie Charlotte in Leibniz’s thought, and the implications and lessons
of her legacy. The study is somewhat guided by the remark Leibniz made on Sophie
Charlotte’s way of thinking, as someone who was always searching “the reason of the
reason”. Following this path, I propose a visit to the feminist literature (in Virginia
Woolf and Michelle Perrot) on the role of women in the history of thought and, from
then on, I explore some challenges in Brazil for a reflection on philosophical canon.
The upshot is a defense of difference, plurality and singularity as creative expressions
of a philosophical potency, for the reason of the reasons, in both ways.
Keywords Sophie Charlotte · Leibniz · Letters · Feminist literature · Virginia

Woolf · Michelle Perrot
12.1 Introduction
In this work I consider the legacy of an important interlocutor of Leibniz: the Queen
Sophie Charlotte. Her Letters were burnt and her philosophical contribution is lost,
so we were left with vestiges, traits of what she meant or if and how could she had
influenced Leibniz. I propose an exercise of imagination. I borrow some seminal
reflections from Virginia Woolf and Michelle Perrot on the history of women in
philosophy and literature, and consider “the reason of the reason” drive that Leibniz
identified in Sophie Charlotte’s thought. I consider the challenges to the philosophical
canon, and make considerations on this canon and its practice in Brazil, a post-
colonial part of the world plagued by the heavy heritage of a slaveholder culture and
brutal inequality.
My exercise of imagination unfolds in six parts. The point of departure is the
documented role Sophie Charlotte played in Leibniz’s life and possibly work. Then,
T. M. Lacerda (B)
Philosophy Department - FFLCH, University of São Paulo (USP), Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto,
315, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo 05508-900, Brasil
e-mail: tessalacerda@usp.br
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_12
158 T. M. Lacerda
I consider who the Queen could have been, both for Leibniz and, perhaps, in her own
place, by tracing back the impressions and reminiscences, as well as the reflections
upon this kind of material. To this end, I visit some lessons from Virginia Woolf and,
also, Michelle Perrot, regarding the role of women in the “world of letters” in history.
Then, the study turns to the challenge of rewriting a canon where there is not, exactly,
such a thing, insofar as the Brazilian post-colonial and slaveholder culture is part of
our intellectual landscape. The upshot is a suggestion to opening up to difference as
such, to singularity, and to exploring the creative potency of this kind of journey as
a philosophical path in its own right.
12.2 Sophie Charlotte’s Legacy
In March 1705, Leibniz writes a short letter to General Schulenbourg, one month
after the premature death of Sophie Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia:
Although my reason tells me that regrets are superfluous and that it is necessary to honor
the memory of the Queen of Prussia instead of weeping it, my imagination always presents
me this princess with all her perfections and tells me they are charming, and I have lost one
of the greatest satisfactions in the world, a satisfaction which I could never have reasonably
expected in my life. (Leibniz, Klopp, X, p. 270)
The Queen had been suffering from pneumonia and died at her 36 years old. At
the same time, Leibniz also writes to his English friend Mylady Mashan, explaining
her state of mind and justifying the delay in responding her letters:
The death of the Queen of Prussia caused a long interruption in my correspondence and my
meditations. (...) what a surprise to me and all Berlin when we knew of her death! It was a
shock particularly to me that, among general unhappiness, I suffered a particular loss. (...) I
was grossly disturbed by this fatality...” (Leibniz to Mylady Mashan, 10/7/1705, Klopp X,
pp. 287–288).
Who was Sophie Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia who had caused such intense
affections in Leibniz, a well-known philosopher at least since 1710, the year of
publication of her Essays of Theodicy, and still considered a singular thinker in the
gallery that exhibits side by side portraits of sublime men who constitute the canon
of the History of Philosophy as we know it? Leibniz may be not an inflection point in
this History of Philosophy as are, for example, Descartes, Kant or Hegel; but he has an
assured place in this gallery by his intuitions about perception, infinity, expression,
and even the individual—themes all retaken by contemporary philosophers who
thought questions of their time from Leibniz’s questions. We know a lot about who
Leibniz was. But who was Sophie Charlotte, this friend of him, with whom Leibniz
so intensely dialogued?
12 Sophie Charlotte: The Modern Woman and the Reason of the Reason 159
12.3 Sophie Charlotte by Leibniz: An Exercise

of Imagination
I would like to propose a reflection and, in part, an exercise of imagination. Reflection

on the meaning that we attribute to the rewriting of the canon in Philosophy. This
reflection is founded on this exercise of imagination. It’s about imagining, because I
propose to do so from the somewhat imaginary drawing that we will make of Sophie
Charlotte. I take “imagination” here in the current sense and linked to the literary
license. In this case, while retaining something of reality, since good literature is
endowed with truth, it is not the Cartesian-Leibnizian sense of imagination, rather,
that of Virgina Woolf. When Woolf is invited to give a lecture on “women and fiction”
at two colleges of Cambridge University attended by women in 1928 (Newnhan
College and Girton College), she wonders what is expected of this theme:
The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and
what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction could mean the women and the
fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them,
or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together (…). (Woolf, 2019,
Chap. 1, p. 1)
Woolf chooses to offer her listeners an opinion, rather than to discuss the subject
from one of these three possible points of view or the blend of the three. Because, she
says, “when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—
one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever
opinion one does hold” (Woolf, 2019, Chap. 1, pp. 1–2). The opposition that Virginia
Woolf brings to his discourse is the opposition between truth and opinion—a dissent
that dissolves, shortly afterward, in stating that “Fiction here is likely to contain more
truth than fact.” (Woolf, 2019, p. 2); and lines below, a phrase that if analyzed by the
simple rigorous laws of a simplistic logic would be said clearly in contradiction with
the previous one: “I need not say that what I am about describe has no existence; (…)
Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them
(…)” (Woolf, 2019, p. 2). The opposition between truth and opinion is dissolved by
literature.
The opposition I would like to dissolve, in turn, is between the imagination I
propose to exercise and the facts to which we preach the adjective “real.“ This exer-
cise of imagination to you has its reasons. Sophie Charlotte did not write any trea-
tise or physics grounding, such as Émilie Du Chatellet—which retakes Leibnizian
metaphysics in Physics Institutions (1740)—nor philosophy treatises like Anne
Conway—English philosopher of the Platonic School of Cambridge, and whose
works are considered an influence for Leibniz’s philosophy. It would be unusual for
Sophie Charlotte to write treatises on philosophy or physics at a time when women
did not have such space. Anne Conway and Émilie Du Chatelêt are undoubtedly
exceptional.
Women had, however, the freedom to write, at least, letters to theirs interlocutors.
The absence of a written work would not be a complete impediment to the reconsti-
tution of a thought if we had, for example, an epistolary dialogue, such as we have
160 T. M. Lacerda
between Sophie Charlotte’s aunt, Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Descartes. Although

we know of the affectionate friendship between Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte for
at least five years from 1700—when he, an employee in Hannover, had the oppor-
tunity to travel to Berlin and visit Luxemburg Castle (today called Charlottenburg)
aiming to start the project of creation of the Society of Sciences of Berlin—until
1705, when Sophie Charlotte died unexpectedly; although we know of this intense
friendship of the two who were almost never under the sky of the same city (and for
that very reason exchanged many letters), we have not, however Sophie Charlotte’s
letters. When Leibniz learned of the death of the Queen of Prussia, she was visiting
her mother Sofia in Hannover, and he was in Berlin; he asked acquaintances of the
Prussian court to save the letters she had written to him. In vain. Frederick III, king
of Prussia, fearing that Sophie Charlotte’s letters would speak against him, had them
burn.
12.4 Michele Perrot: Letters as “Form of Sociability”
Women have historically suffered a series of oppressions, silencing even after death is
just one of them. Historian Michelle Perrot recalls that burning women’s papers and
letters is a historical tradition, often reproduced by women themselves—“anonymity
runs in their blood”, says Virginia Woolf (2019, Chap. 3, p. 37), from the time of
Pericles, to whom the publicity of women was abominable. Perrot claims that, in a
couple in which the male spouse is celebrated, his papers are preserved, not hers,
exactly what happened to Sophie Charlotte’s papers, although it was also publicly
known.
Michelle Perrot is one of those historians who took part in the task of writing
the history of women from the 1960s, who considered that highlighting a history of
women is a way of fight for women´s visibility and showing we are active subjects,
while faced before the problem of lack of documents and traces of the lives of women.
And that was required, as Virginia Woolf puts it in the essay on women and literature,
when Mary, the character, goes through dozens of books on women, but written by
men, to find traces and make them visible. For if there is a “stream” of discourse
about women, as Virginia Woolf’s character Mary claims, and an “avalanche” of
women’s literary and plastic images, “it is almost always unknown what women
thought about it, how they saw or felt them.” (Perrot, 2017, p. 22).
In this work of searching vestiges, Michelle Perrot realized that the correspon-
dence, the intimate diary and the autobiography were “authorized”. Women’s writing,
she says, “is a private, even intimate, handwriting linked to the family, practiced at
night in the silence of the room, to respond to letters received, keep a diary and, more
exceptionally, tell her life to herself.” (Perrot, 2017, p. 28). As many companions
of her genre, Sophie Charlotte wrote letters; “The letter is a form of sociability, and
feminine expression, authoritative and even recommended, or tolerated,” says Perrot,

but “they are rarely published, except when they portray great men” (2019, p. 29).1
The absence of written text is a problem for reconstituting Sophie Charlotte’s
thinking. But perhaps this lack is useful in our reflection, perhaps Sophie Charlotte
fits more than other modern women to think about what it means to rewrite the
philosophical canon. Let’s see.
12.5 Sophie Charlotte for Leibniz: On the Role of Sophie

Charlotte in Leibniz’s Thought
Virginia Woolf imagines a Mary, supposedly Shakespeare’s sister, to reconstitute

the difficulties a woman would experience if she tried, as the theatrical author, to
be a consecrated author in the second half of the sixteenth century. We do not need
to imagine an entirely fictional character. We have information about the Queen of
Prussia in the traditional history books. Just as we may know a little about Elisabeth,
Princess of Bohemia, Anne Conway, Viscountess of Conway, Émilie Du Chatelêt,
Marquise de Chatelêt-Laumont. All these women belonged to the nobility in a court
society. And we can not disregard this. If the task of rewriting the philosophical
canon is undoubtedly important in order to give visibility to women in Philosophy,
we must also take into account the social origin of these women.
In other words, it is very important the entrance of women into the philosophical
theater—women who were usually reserved for domestic life, or a secondary political
role and frame (when, for being noble, they participated in public life), since with very
few exceptions2 women did not exercise political power, their parents, husbands and
children had this prerogative—not marrying or not having children, it may perhaps
be seen as an act of resistance. But the undoubted importance of the task of rewriting
the canon and inscribing the names of these women in the History of Philosophy
should not exempt us from realizing that the fact that these women belong to the
nobility and live in a society of courts is to a great extent what allowed that their
names would survive the time in our patriarchal society.
Under what conditions did women live? Question Virginia Woolf. And she justifies
his question: “is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century
(…) “I am not sure how they were educated, wether they were taught to write; wether
they had sitting-rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they
were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night.”
(Woolf, 2019, Chap. 3, p. 33). And due the shortage of traces, we are left without
systematic landscape “occasionally an individual woman is mentioned, an Elisabeth
or a Mary; a queen or a great lady. But by no possible means could middle-class
women (…) have taken part in any of the great movements which, brought together,
1 Could we say that the correspondence between Sophie Charlotte and Leibniz was preserved
because it sets in motion a great man who was Leibniz?
2 The most obvious example is Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603), from England.
162 T. M. Lacerda
constitute the historian’s view of the past.” (Woolf, 2019, Chap. 3, p. 33).We stop,
suggests Michelle Perrot, for lack of sources: there is “a lack of sources not on women
or on women, but on their concrete existence and their unique history.” (Perrot, 2017,
p. 22).
12.6 Sophie Charlotte: Searching for the Reason

of the Reason
Sophie Charlotte (1668–1705) was the only daughter of the seven children of Princess
Sofia (1630–1714) and the Elector Palatin of Hanover Ernst August (1582–1641).
Daughter of a Lutheran father and a Calvinist mother, in a Europe that lived the wars
of religion, particularly the Thirty Years War, Sophie Charlotte was raised without
religion until adolescence so that she could adopt the religion, Catholic or Protestant,
of a future husband. She was the intendant of Louis of France and after of his father,
Louis XIV, when he became a widower. Sophie Charlotte married Frederick, heir to
the Electorate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia. Legend has it her husband
was so in love with her that he did not use the lover who also lived in the palace.
Sophie Charlotte built a summer residence in Berlin, where she spent most of her
time surrounded by artists and thinkers. On it, his grandson Frederick II writes in his
Memoirs that she had an insatiable curiosity, always in search of the first principles
of things, to the point that one day Leibniz would say to him “Madam, there is no
way to satisfy you: you want to know the reason for the reason” (apud Strickland,
2011, p. 3).
The reason for the reason, one might imagine, would be the Leibnizian Sufficient
Reason Principle, which is at the heart of Leibniz’s metaphysics: there is always a
reason for things to be and to be as they are. Principle that provides the foundation of
Being and of existence. This foundation is explained in the Essays of Theodicy as the
free action of a just God. The Theodicy is the only book published in life by Leibniz
and published purposely in French, a language accessible to a wider audience than
theologians and philosophers by profession.3 For these reasons alone, we see the
importance that Leibniz himself attached to this text. And the self-attributing value
he will cultivate after publishing the book and gaining notoriety in the intellectual
world.4
Leibniz himself states that the text of Theodicy derives from the conversations
with Sophie Charlotte: “Your Majesty frequently commanded me to write down
my answers so that she could consider them carefully.” (Leibniz apud Brunschwig,
3 Language “most read by those to whom we want to be useful with this little work” (Leibniz apud
Brunschwig, 1969, p. 13).

4 The Disobedience to his employer Georg Ludwig leads us to conjecture this. Leibniz, recognized
as a philosopher and mathematician since the publication of Theodicea in 1710, had traveled to
Vienna in 1712 to cooperate in the founding of an Imperial Academy of Sciences and refused to
return to Hannover, despite the pleas of Sofia and even the court payment of his salary.
1969, p. 12). Jacques Brunschwig proposes, in his introduction to Theodicy, that we

imagine the scene:
The scene takes place in the summer of the 1700s in Luxemburg near Berlin, in this country
residence of the royal house of Prussia that will be called Charlottenburg after the death of the
queen. In a pleasant and solemn hall, in the presence of a select company, the queen does read
some passage “difficult to digest” Bayle; (...). In the midst of smiles and scandalized small
shouts, she turns to Leibniz: ‘Let us see what you say to that, lord philosopher’ (Brunschwig,
1969, p. 12).
Note that Sophie Charlotte herself dubbed her summer castle, Luxemburg, “Lus-
tenburg”, meaning “castle of pleasures”. The Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte dialogue
that will bear fruit in the publication of Theodicy, which can be viewed partially as a
text of occasion—however, the text is not only so, since Leibniz also comments on
it the Bayle’s Dictionary, published after the death of the Queen. In any case, it is
the philosopher himself who explains the fundamental role of Sophie Charlotte for
his life and her work in a letter to Mylady Mashan:
This great Princess had, for me, infinite goodness: she pleased to be informed of my spec-
ulations, she even deepened them; and I let her know of what was on her side, and which I
had the honor to answer. Perhaps a Queen has never been so perfect and so philosophical
at the same time. Judge, Madame, what a pleasure it must have been to be always near a
Princess like this and to be encouraged by the ardor she witnessed for the knowledge of the
truth. (Leibniz, 1970, to Mylady Mashan, 10/7/1705, Klopp X, p. 287)
The first temptation in inscribing Sophie Charlotte’s name in the philosophical

canon is to imagine a philosophy strongly influenced by Leibniz. But how to speak
of a philosophy of Sophie Charlotte? By no means do I suggest that we try to guess
Sophie Charlotte’s “philosophy” in Leibniz’s lines and the lines between the letters
that remain. Nor do I believe that Sophie Charlotte should be taken as the devoted
disciple she claims to be—“You may regard me as one of your disciples from the
present day, one of those who esteem you and consider you as merit” (Leibniz,
1970, Sophie Charlotte to Leibniz, 22/8, Klopp, X, p. 54)—is the best way to think
about this relationship and this dialogue. Would that not be the same as editing a
correspondence where one of the voices is female only because it puts a “great man”
on the scene? Would not it be puting Leibniz as the great philosopher who patiently
instructs the young and naive queen,5 as he also does with her mother, Princess Sofia?
Instead of proposing to read between Leibniz’s letters a philosophy of Sophie
Charlotte, I think it would be more useful to imagine the scenes and scenario in
which this dialogue between Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte unfolded, to consider the
fact that they lived in a court society (Elias, 1996). The court is characterized by the
non-differentiation between the structuring of the royal family and the central organ
of state administration. In other words, personal relations and an eventual professional
position of princes did not differ, so that “family alliances and rivalries, friendships
and personal enmities acted as normal factors in the handling of government affairs,
5 Maybe Sophie Charlotte felt this just before they established the strong friendship, she and Leibniz;
in effect, complains with a friend about the treatment that Leibniz dispenses with her: “I like this
man, but he only speaks superficially to me” (Aíton, 1992, pp. 345–356).
164 T. M. Lacerda
as in all other official affairs.” (Elias, 1996, p. 25). In the context of the Old Regime’s
court, a king like Louis XIV, for example, who apparently represents an absolute
power, is actually part of a network of interdependency, he is not absolutely free, he
is intertwined with court society.
Sophie Charlotte, in court society, occupied the very high post of queen. Queen,
we can not fail to mention, from Prussia, one of the greatest empires at that time.
Leibniz was an employee of the Elector Palatin of Hanover, Ernst August, father of
Sophie Charlotte, and from 1698 until his death, employee Georg Ludwig, brother of
Sophie Charlotte, who was not as tolerant as the father with the escapades that Leibniz
liked to give, traveling to other cities, with the most varied excuses. The Hanoverian
electorate had good relations with Prussia for obvious reasons, but Leibniz owed
Hannover obedience. So much so that he tried countless times to travel to find Sophie
Charlotte in Berlin from 1697, when Sophie Charlotte proposed to him to construct
an observatory in Berlin and he suggested the more ambitious plan to found a Society
of Sciences. Georg Ludwig refused all requests made by Leibniz for this short trip
to Berlin to hold talks with Sophie Charlotte about the Society of Sciences. The first
trip was only authorized in 1700, when the Elector of Brandenburg approved the
foundation of the Society of Sciences of Berlin.
Sophie Charlotte’s mother, Sophie, spent her entire life trying to prove her claim
to the throne of England. Much of Leibniz’s work as a historian and librarian in
Hanover is dedicated to finding sufficient evidence to justify his employer claim
of the English crown. Although not officially involved, Leibniz can be taken as a
counselor and on his own made a campaign in 1701 between those born in Hannover
and residents of London to achieve this. (cf. Strickland, 2011, p. 16). When, however,
Georg Ludwig took the English throne in 1714 and the Hanoverian court moved to
England, Leibniz, no longer relying on Sophie Charlotte’s protectionSophie Charlotte
or Sophie Charlotte’s appreciation, was left back.6
The fact that in a courtly society being employed is certainly what explains the
respect that Leibniz demonstrates (at least until 1710, when he became known in
the thinking world) in the letters to Sophie Charlotte to the social hierarchy: even
though he was friend of Sophie Charlotte, and even before that, friend of her mother,
Sophie, the letters to the Queen of Prussia follow the protocol. In a letter to the
Queen, Leibniz uses the vocative Your Majesty, and introduces the subject of the
letter affirming obedience to the queen: “I would like to explain myself… to obey
orders and to satisfy Your Majesty’s curiosity” (Leibniz, 1970, Klopp, X, p. 154).
There is no doubt about the role that Sophie Charlotte played in Leibniz’s life and
work, he describes it, we have said, as “one of the greatest satisfactions in the world,
satisfaction that could reasonably never have been expected in (…) life.” (Leibniz,
1970, Klopp, X, p. 270). The Theodicy is written from the dialogue with Sophie
Charlotte about Bayle’s ideas. The Berlin Science Society is thought together by
6 It is worth noting, however, that Leibniz, recognized as a philosopher and mathematician since
the publication of Theodicy in 1710, had traveled to Vienna in 1712 to cooperate in the founding
of an Imperial Academy of Sciences and refused to return to Hannover, despite appeals of Sofia
and even of the cut of payment of his salary. He returned only in 1714, when part of the court had
already moved to England, including Georg Ludwig, his employer.
Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte, who named the philosopher president for life. Leibniz
considers her a philosopher (cf. Leibniz, 1970, Klopp, X, p. 288). However, I think it
would be far too much for us to determine Sophie Charlotte’s philosophical thought—
not even the editor of the recent English translation of Leibniz’s correspondence
with the two Sophies goes that. Indeed, although he asserts that it is a “disservice
to suppose that their place in the history of philosophy can be secured only though
the services they rendered to Leibniz,” (Strickland, 2011, p. 3) he himself considers
that the only evidence that both mother and daughter were involved in philosophical
discussions contributing directly to the debates at that time should be found in their
writings for Leibniz, and “unfortunately nowhere else” (Ibid., p. 3): “By restricting
their philosophical writings to their letters for Leibniz, Sophie and Sophie Charlotte
elected to keep their philosophical views private” (ibid., p. 3). Philosophical perspec-
tives that appear little in the letters that remain; certainly different from other corre-
spondences, the philosophical questions that occasionally appear in the exchange of
letters between Leibniz and Sofia and Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte could be directly
debated in the philosopher’s meetings with them. Moreover, much of what Sophie
Charlotte writes in her letters to Leibniz relates precisely to this blend that char-
acterizes court society in Norbert Elias’s description: government affairs and court
gossip. Certainly for this reason, conjecture the editor of the English version of the
letters (Strickland, 2011, p. 4), many of the scholars of this correspondence, such as
Foucher de Careil, MacDonald Ross, and Michel Fichant, have chosen not to mention
the philosophical contributions of Sophie Charlotte. In front of the letters burned by
her husband, what can we conjecture about our character’s thinking? Is it not worth
recognizing the immense importance it had for the diffusion of modern philosophy
and science? Is it no longer worth recognizing how, through its vision and perhaps her
philosophical conceptions, she made philosophers like Bayle, Leibniz, and Toland
talk? Her name is inscribed in the history of philosophy, but thus: “skewed.”
12.7 Women as “Outsiders Within”7 : Feminism

and Philosophical Canon
“Every story is contemporary history: it has a commitment to the present,” suggests

Carla Pinsky (2017, p. 11) in the introduction to Michelle Perrot’s book. History
questions the past with present issues. Or, in Ranke’s words taken up by Norbert
Elias, “history is always being rewritten … Every age, with its principal orientation,
appropriates it” (Elias, 1996, p. 30); there is what he calls the “impulse of the present,”
so that current contemporary situations determine the way one looks at history.
I believe history is made of philosophy as well. If we propose to inscribe women
in modern philosophy today, it is because we have a commitment to our present. It
is not only a matter of simply “doing justice” to these women who have gone before
us and whose voices have been stifled, but to make us their heirs. And as heirs of
7 The expression is from Patricia Hill Collins (2016).

166 T. M. Lacerda
all those who could not speak or of whom we heard only an indiscernible buzz, like
the Leibnizian walker who, at the edge of a lake or the sea, perceives the infinite,
perceives every drop of water, but is only capable of realizing the sound of the whole
wave.
Virginia Woolf suggests this same idea when she states that “the experience of
the mass is behind the single voice,” (Woolf, 2019, Chap. 4, pp. 48–49) and “books
continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.” (Woolf, 2019,
Chap. 5, p. 63). But for this tradition to be constituted it is necessary to recognize these
precursors and the immense difficulty that they faced. It refers to nineteenth-century
novelists, but I think the same goes for an Anne Connway, a Margaret Cavendish, an
Emilie Du Châtelet, an Elisabeth of Bohemia, and even to Sophie Charlotte:
When they came to set their thoughts on paper – that is that they had no tradition behind
them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help. For we think back through our
mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, (...). (Woolf,
2019, Chap. 4, p. 61).
12.8 Wait: Do We Have a Tradition?
Do we have a tradition? I can not fail to mention Professor Marilena Chaui, the
intellectual “mother” of many of us gathered here in Brazil. And before her, Gilda de
Melo e Souza, Lélia Gonzalez and Clarice Lispector. And well before Nisia Floresta,
Estamira and Rosa Egipcíaca. I mention, it became evident, the Brazilians. Because
I think if every story is committed to the present, we who are here wanting to rewrite
history, we are situated. Situated in a Leibnizian sense: time and space are nothing in
themselves, they are orders of relation: it is a point in time and space that we relate to
everything and to everyone. We talked from a time and a place. We have a singular
situation. Considering tradition is necessary to ask what it is for us, from our singular
situation, to rewrite the philosophical canon. Does it mean to include women’s names
according to the existing criteria? What are these criteria? Let’s create new ones? Are
we going to rethink the question of oppression and inequality in the face of profound
differences that constitutes the landmark of Brazilian society?
To think about the very idea of tradition, we must at least mention that we
speak from this post-colonial country, deeply wounded, if I may put in this way, by
inequality and its historical slaveholder culture. Denise Ferreira da Silva, a Brazilian
and feminist black philosopher but based in the United States, suggests what she
calls “fractal figuration of the colonial, racial, and capital triad” (Silva, 2017, p. 12)
to think of modern European responses to the ontological question “Who are we?”
And to the ethical question “how should we live and act?” Answers that build “the
European man as representative of all that is human.” (Silva, 2017, p. 11). Answers
that thus justify the oppression of all other existences as “non-human,” and create an
ominous “Other.” In Brazil, says Denise, this is manifested, for example, by those
who have impeached President Dilma Rousseff “by launching moral attacks against
those who have only recently had their rights recognized on the basis of social identity
(gender, sexual, racial and religious identity).” (Silva, 2016, p. 63).
Although she speaks about the current situation of Brazil, what Denise Ferreira
da Silva wants to rescue is the historical-philosophical construction of this Other. If
other black feminists like bell hooks, Kimberlé Creshaw, and Angela Davis showed
intersectionality, that is, overlapping systems of oppression, domination, and discrim-
ination, Denise Ferreira da Silva shows from where comes the constitution of the
“Other” in the history of the Philosophy and Science. The “Other” that is dehu-
manized. This constitution of the “Other” is a fundamental element of the modern
subject, starting from Descartes, but especially with Kant. In this way Denise may,
somewhat as A. Mbembe, highlight the role of “racialization,” as she puts it, in the
constitution of the dominating subject as opposed to the dominated and oppressed.
More explicitly and more directly linked to historical experience, Lélia Gonzalez
affirms this same relation between forms of domination or oppression:
For us, the Amphricans of Brazil and other countries in the region—as well as for the
Amerindians—the awareness of oppression is, above all, racial. Class exploitation and racial
discrimination constitute the basic elements of the common struggle of men and women
belonging to a subordinate ethnic group. (Gonzalez, 2011, p. 18).*
Reading a series of books on women written by men, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of

One’s Own character is dominated by anger against the statement of Professor von
X “on the mental, moral and physical inferiority of the female sex” (Woolf, 2019,
p. 26); anger against what she will later call:
that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon
the women’s movement; that deep-seated desire, not so much that SHE shall be inferior as
that HE shall be superior. (...) The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is
more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. (Woolf, 2019, Chap. 3,
p. 40).
Women have served as mirrors to men, glasses possessing “the magical and deli-
cious power of reflecting the figure of man twice its natural size,” says Virginia
Woolf (2019, Chap. 2, p. 25). Perhaps that is why the anger that dominated the
Virginia character has also dominated many women who wrote before her, such as
the seventeenth-century poet “noble by birth and marriage”—Virginia Woolf makes
a point of marking—Lady Winchilsea:
How we are fallen! fallen by mistaken rules / And Education’s more than Nature’s fools; /
Debarred from all improvements of the mind, / And to be dull, expected and designed; //
And if someone would soar above the rest, / With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed, / So
strong the opposing faction still appears, / The hopes to thrive can ne’er outweigh the fears.
(apud. Woolf, 2019, Chap. 4, p. 80).
Men, the opposing faction to the poetess, are hated and feared. So angry, indignant,
write many women, analyzes Virginia Woolf (who even quotes Margaret Cavendish),
until the miracle happens, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a writing
“without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching.”
168 T. M. Lacerda
(Woolf, 2019, Chap. 4, p. 54)8 And years later, in the twentieth century, men cease to
be “the opposing faction,” and the writer no longer needs to waste time recriminating
them, “fear and hatred almost disappeared,” it is possible to write “as a woman, but
as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman.” (Woolf, 2019, Chap. 5, p. 73).9
The idea of a tradition that female writers may feel heirs to is linked, for Virginia
Woolf, to that possibility of writing without anger.
I do not know if we can write without anger, especially not in Brazil. But there is something
in the words of Virginia Woolf that interests me more than the question of anger: the idea of
a woman writing as a woman. Yes, it is necessary to mark the difference. And particularly
if we are talking about the present and this situation. Following the trail of Denise Ferreira
da Silva, in his Toward the global idea of race (2007), instead of covering up the difference
(difference that has social and political existence, which appears as legal and economic
inequality) by the ideological discourse that affirms a supposed equality, when put under
the sign of universality, I suggest that we affirm difference with all force, but also state that
difference can be thought without separation, without segregation. Searching the reason of
the reason in both ways, such as to affirm difference as something creative!
Acknowledgements Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal do Ensino Superior (CAPES).

Programa de Apoio a Eventos no País (PAEP) (proposal number: 647 218).
References
Aíton, E. J. (1992). Leibniz. Una biografia [Leibniz. A biography]. Alianza Editorial.

Brunschwig, J. (1969). Introduction. In Leibniz (Ed.), Essais de Théodicée. GF – Flammarion.
Collins, P. H. (2016). Aprendendo com a outsider within: a significação sociológica do pensamento
feminista negro. Revista Sociedade e Estado, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-699220160
00100006
Elias, N. (1996). A sociedade de corte [The court society]. Zahar.
Gonzalez, L. (2011). Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano [For an Afro-Latin American
feminism]. Cadernos de Formação política do Círculo Palmarino, (1), 12–20.
Leibniz, G. W. (1970). Correspondenz von Leibniz mit Sphie Charlotte, Königin von Preussen.
Herausgegeben von Onno Klopp. Georg Olms Verlag, Band X [Klopp, X].
Perrot, M. (2017). Minha história das mulheres [My women story]. Contexto.
Pinsky, C. (2017). Introdução. In M. Perrot (Ed.), Minha história das mulheres [My women History].
Contexto.
Silva, D. F. (2007). Toward a global idea of race. University of Minnesota Press.
Silva, D. F. (2016). Sobre diferença sem separabilidade [About difference without separability].
Oficina de Imaginação política e Living Commons.
Silva, D. F. (2017). A dívida impagável:lendo cenas de valor contra a flecha do tempo [Unpayable
Debt: Reading Scenes of Value against the Arrow of Time]. Oficina de Imaginação política e
Living Commons.
Strickland, L. (Ed.). (2011). Introduction. The other voice. In Leibniz and the two Sophies: The
philosophical correspondence. Iter Inc./Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
Woolf, V. (2019). Um quarto só seu [A room of one’s own]. L&PM.
8 Woolf refers to Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

9 Woolf refers to Mary Carmichael, Life’s adventure.
Chapter 13
Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira: Two
Thinkers in a Colonial Society
Fabiano de Lemos Britto and Ulysses Pinheiro
Abstract This paper discusses the presence (or rather absence) of Brazilian women
in the history of modern philosophy. We perform a comparative analysis of the intel-
lectual production of two thinkers who lived in very different moments of Brazilian
society but whose theories shared multiple connections. Rosa Egipcíaca was a mystic
writer and slave who lived from 1719 to 1771 and circulated between Africa, Brazil,
and Portugal. Estamira was an improbable juxtaposition of a metaphysical thinker
and a garbage collector, who lived in Rio de Janeiro from 1941 to 2011. Comparing
the intellectual production of a thinker who lived during the “modern” period with
the thoughts of a contemporary woman exposes the temporal distance that separates
them and helps us problematize the very question of temporality as it has often been
applied to the metropolis and colonies.
Keywords Apocalypses · Brazilian women · Destruction · Exclusion · Colonial ·

Inquisitor · Authorship · Drift
13.1 Introduction
This text must be understood in the broader context of attempting to record the pres-
ence of Brazilian women in the history of modern philosophy. The central problem
of this proposal is that there was no “modern philosophy” in Brazil, at least not in
the sense that academia usually means. Developing this subject is especially diffi-
cult because there are few records of texts written by Brazilian women between
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a period within which “modern philosophy”
is usually inscribed. Our research must confront then three types of displacement:
F. de Lemos Britto
Department of Philosophy, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), São Francisco Xavier
Street, 524, Rio de Janeiro 20550-900, Brazil
U. Pinheiro (B)
Department of Philosophy, Federal University Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Largo de São Francisco de
Paula, 1, sala 320-B, Rio de Janeiro 20051-070, Brazil
e-mail: ulyssespinheiro@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_13
170 F. de Lemos Britto and U. Pinheiro
temporal, geographical, and gendered. To account for these obstacles, we perform

a comparative analysis of the intellectual production of two thinkers who lived in
very different moments of Brazilian society but whose theories were connected in
multiple ways. Rosa Egipcíaca was a mystic writer and slave1 who lived from 1719
to 1771, circulating between Africa, Brazil, and Portugal. Improbably, Estamira was
a metaphysical thinker and a garbage collector who lived in Rio de Janeiro from
1941 to 2011. Comparing the intellectual production of a thinker who lived during
the “modern” period, at least in the sense this periodization has in Europe, with the
thoughts of a contemporary woman reveals the temporal distance between them. The
confrontation between messianic time, as conceptualized by Rosa Egipcíaca, and the
view toward eternity adopted by Estamira helps us to problematize the question of
temporality in general. From their conceptions of time, we can draw conclusions
about the insertion of a colonial, peripheral nation such as Brazil into the abstract,
ideal temporality of the history of philosophy; or, at least, draw conclusions about
the very concept of history of philosophy.
But geographical connections are those that interest us above all else. We investi-
gate how two thinkers articulating perspectives from which the philosophical produc-
tion of women in a colonial, racial, and patriarchal order can become conceivable,
let alone visible. Each is situated at the periphery of their society, one in slavery
and the other in the informal work of collecting garbage (perhaps another form of
slavery). Their society is a nation peripheral to the imperialist-capitalist order. We
take the periphery of the periphery, or the margin of the margin, as a sign that makes
the colonial situation thinkable. The register within it are marks of gender and race
in the construction of philosophical thought. This duplication of marginality alone
makes it possible to examine another type of duplicity, namely the exclusion of exclu-
sion, or the destruction of destruction. We must fold ourselves over ourselves to see
our reflected image and criticize it if possible.
Rather than taking these two women as mere illustrations of doctrines that are
extrinsic to them, we seek to characterize the images and the visibility of images
that emerges from the thought of these two authors. Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira
are two thinkers who have largely remained invisible even within academic circles
that are increasingly dedicated to rewriting the historiographical canon to include
women and of which this congress is one more index. Both were black women and
could have been diagnosed (and Estamira was) with the disease psychiatrists call
schizophrenia or psychosis.2 Even when they were taken as objects of study, they
were generally treated as symptoms that would illustrate certain schemes of political
domination rather than elaborators of philosophical systems worthy of exploration.
1 We prefer to use here the term “slave” instead of the more precise alternative, “enslaved,” to
emphasize the symbolic mechanisms used by colonizers to encrypt and silence the intellectual
production of the population with African origins in Brazil.
2 In the documentary that introduces Estamira to a wider audience, Estamira reads her own diagnosis:
“I certify that Estamira Gomes de Souza, with a psychotic picture of chronic evolution, auditory
hallucinations, mystical discourse, must remain in psychiatric treatment, continuing, continued”
(Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 53). Later it becomes apparent how an awareness of the condition
called insanity structures criticisms of medical institutions.
13 Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira: Two Thinkers in a Colonial Society 171
It is the opposite of what happens with names such as Nisia Floresta, a white feminist
intellectual of the early nineteenth century and a correspondent of Auguste Comte.
Her class inscription made her gendered exclusion, even in her time, socially visible
and therefore ripe for thematization and even denouncement.
Due to the social invisibility of Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira, the same treatment
was not available to them. By erasure we mean that the concepts they developed have
not received proper appreciation even today, and their names remain unknown by the
majority of the philosophical community. Indeed, if we think of eighteenth-century
Brazil, the woman who first comes to mind is certainly not Rosa Egipcíaca but
Barbara Heliodora; nevertheless, the amount of written documents left by the former
is much more extensive than that of the second, of which only two poems remain.3
Before discussing the thoughts of Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira, we will present their
biographical sketches to try to reduce such ignorance. These biographical introduc-
tions do not merely constitute a digression from the arguments to be examined.
Conceptualizing authorship for these two thinkers is essential to understanding their
philosophical reflections and the broader situation of Brazilian women’s philosoph-
ical production in colonial and postcolonial ages.4 The place from which enunciation
is articulated grounds the geographic-symbolic space that we seek to map here with
a general outline.
Much of what we know about Rosa Egipcíaca is due to the discovery of anthro-
pologist Luiz Mott, who found in the archives of the Inquisition of Torre do Tombo,
Lisbon, the processes containing all known documents relating to it. Mott published,
in 1993, a book entitled Rosa Egipcíaca: An African Saint in Brazil, in which he
reconstructs her trajectory (Mott, 1993). Rosa Egipcíaca called herself, for most of
her life, only Rosa, a name given to her by her first owner (and the question of
names and the process of baptism is important, as we will see). Captured as a slave
in Africa and coming from Costa da Mina, now Benin, Rosa arrived in Brazil at
the age of six. She was bought by an inhabitant of Minas Gerais, who exploited
her as a prostitute among the gold miners—a common practice in Brazilian slavery.
At the age of thirty, affected by a mysterious illness, she was subjected to various
exorcisms by her spiritual guide, Father Francisco Gonçalves Lopes. Initially, she
believed that she was possessed by the devil, for she entered into trances, had visions,
and heard voices. Then she understood what she took to be the divine nature of her
mission and devoted herself with great success to preaching the word of God. She
was arrested and tortured in 1749 in Minas Gerais. Leaving for Rio de Janeiro after
obtaining her manumission, she heard a voice instructing her and from then on, it
3 On Bárbara Heliodora’s literary production (including the authorship of the poems attributed to
her), cf. Coelho (2002), pp. 85–86. One reason for the discrepancy between the study of the two
writers is that Rosa Egipcíaca’s written work was only discovered in the 1980s. Nevertheless, it is
remarkable how her name is less recognized than that of her successor from Minas Gerais. This
deficiency has gradually begun to be addressed; see, for example, the entry “Rosa Maria Egipcíaca
da Vera Cruz” in the Brazilian Women Dictionary, published in 2000 (Schumaher & Vital Brazil
(2000), p. 487).
4 The Independence of Brazil from Portugal happened in 1822; in 1888, Brazil became the last
country in the world to abolish slavery.

never left her; it told her that she had to learn to read and write. Returning to the
city that was her first slave destination when she came to Brazil, she took the name,
Rosa Maria Egipcíaca da Vera Cruz, in honor of the holy ascetic and former prosti-
tute Maria Egipcíaca, from the fourth century. In Rio de Janeiro, in the 1750s, she
founded Recolhimento do Parto [Shelter of Parturition]5 and linked it to the Igreja de
Nossa Senhora do Parto [Our Lady of Parturition Church]. It still exists today on Rua
Rodrigo Silva, near Rua da Assembleia, but the original building was destroyed. It
had housed former prostitutes and pious women in general. Rosa Egipcíaca became
an important charismatic leader in the city, and she had as spiritual guides, in addi-
tion to the aforementioned priest Francisco Lopes, the Franciscan priests of Santo
Antônio Convent, which continue today to reigns over Largo da Carioca. Confronted
with local ecclesiastical authorities, she was accused of heresy, and, after the first
investigation pursued by the representatives of the Holy Office in Rio de Janeiro, she
was sent with Father Lopes to Lisbon. On her second crossing of the Atlantic, the
former slave was now seen as heretical and was subjected to lengthy interrogations.
She died forgotten in prison two years later.
Thanks to the Inquisition, many of Rosa Egipcíaca’s texts were preserved: letters
between her and her correspondents, testimonies from prosecution witnesses and
whistleblowers, and letters and testimonies from Father Lopes. This mode of preser-
vation poses a considerable epistemological challenge since, in most cases, her voice
is modulated and buried in the writings of her judges. Unfortunately, her most valu-
able writings, a handwritten book of approximately 250 pages, entitled The Sacred
Theology of the Divine Love of Pilgrim Souls (Sagrada teologia do amor divino das
almas peregrinas), was destroyed by someone in her inner circle (probably by Father
Lopes) shortly before her arrest.6 There are two pages remained of the original work
in the process documents of the Lisbon Inquisition (Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon
Inquisition, proc. 2901, fols. 117–119).7
Estamira also renamed herself, but with a peculiar procedure that retained the
name from her baptism and subjected it to an antonomastic drift. Unlike the royal
and theological extension of the name Rosa Maria Egipcíaca da Vera Cruz, Estamira
reduced her name to become a pure deictic; she was baptized as Estamira Gomes de
Sousa, and the cognomen “Estamira” was not limited simply to retain her first name.
As she explains in her own words, the name “Estamira” must be understood as the
5 Mott convincingly argues why we should attribute to Rosa Egipcíaca the foundation of this insti-
tution, although the official history of the Brazilian Church omits her name. It is certainly due to
her being black, ex-slave, and a woman. Instead, it attributes the creation of Recolhimento do Parto
to the bishop of the city of Rio de Janeiro at that time. See Mott (1993), pp. 255–278.
6 Maria Theresa de Jesús Arvelos affirms, in her testimony in the process against Father Lopes, that
the book was in her house, but that she no longer knows its whereabouts (Holy Office Tribunal,
Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 2901, fol. 116). Rosa Egipcíaca informs the inquisitors of the title of her
book, stating that a voice she heard “in the understanding” had ordered the composition of the work.
7 The irony of the fate of the book is that it was burned by a man belonging to the ecclesiastical
structure, thus anticipating the Inquisition. Although moved by the impulse to protect Rosa Egipcíaca
from the accusation of heresy, the gesture of destroying evidence against her exemplifies the general
procedures aimed at black women in the colony.
articulation of two words: “Esta [this] mira [perspective].”, i.e., this perspective from
which a revelation is enunciated (“Look over there, the hills, the moors, the mountain-
s…Landscape and Estamira…Estascape, Estamoors…Estamira is on every corner,
on all sides. Even my own sentiments sees it, everyone sees Estamira”) (Estamira &
Prado, 2013, p. 12). Hence the reference to herself in the third person. When she
says, “I am this perspective,” the designation draws an antonomasia from within her
name. In fact, instead of being heard as a conventional presentation, as when we
say: “I am Ulysses” or “My name is Fabiano,” Estamira presents an enumeration
that is also a counterpoint: “Estamira, I.” This onomastic difference separating Rosa
Egipcíaca and Estamira is reflected in another deeper conceptual differences. These
distinctions are founded on the names of the two re-found perspectives established
by baptism. They are based on the cognomens of their foundational perspectives as
established by their baptisms of themselves.
To what text does the name “Estamira” correspond? Does it perform the function
of signing a work, assuming a signature is ever possible?8 The answer here can only
be negative: she never wrote a text—as it is also the case of so many other founders
of literary lines, such as Socrates and Christ. All the records we have of her are
summarized in Marcos Prado’s documentary film, released in 2005 and winner of
several national and international awards.9 In this sense, Estamira is not the author
of a “work.” Originally, Prado intended to document the miserable living conditions
of the garbage pickers of Jardim Gramacho, a sanitation landfill where a good part
of the waste produced in Rio de Janeiro is dumped. Finding Estamira among the
garbage collectors, the film changed direction. It came to be directed, colonized, and
parasitized by Estamira, who became its true author.
What is left of Estamira is her inflamed speech, which apparently had an apoca-
lyptic tone,10 to mention a concept of Jacques Derrida, in a record that perhaps only
finds a parallel in a radio emission from 1947 (censored at the time, only airing years
later) of Antonin Artaud that was titled To Have Done with the Judgment of God
(Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu). As much as Artaud, Estamira’s challenge
to God required the creation of a new locution and a new body posture. The images
that capture her body moving in the shelter of objects and food rejected by consumer
society are as much a part of her “text” as her words are. Thus, at its climax, the film
shows Estamira raging against thunder, showing also, behind her, the rich South Zone
of Rio, only thirty minutes from absolute poverty and degradation. It was the only
place from which to announce the end of everything: Brazil, the world, capitalism
(“Higher communism, the only communism”) (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 48.)
8 On the impossibility of signing a text, cf. Derrida (1972), pp. 365–393.

9 There is free access to the film at Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Interativismo_Estamira_F
ilme Consulted on 11/06/2019.
10 Later in this paper, we will examine the proximity/distance between the apocalyptic speech and
tonality of the voices of Estamira and Artaud.

13.2 The Apocalypse Arrives at the Colony
To compare the authorial positions that Estamira and Rosa Egipcíaca developed to
accommodate their thinking, we will proceed in chronological order. Our inves-
tigation occurs in the context of the history of women in philosophy. The broad
corpus of Rosa Egipcíaca’s work contains various records: autographed letters, avulse
texts, dictated correspondences, processes of inquisition drawn up by ecclesiastical
notaries, and the testimonies of others. To understand the self-conceptualization of
Rosa Egipcíaca within this polyphony of discourses, we will visit two prophetic texts
belonging to different registers. The first corresponds to an excerpt from her testi-
mony to the inquisitors of the Holy Office of Lisbon. The second is a long passage
dictated by her to one of her followers. These writings were produced by third parties;
the first was made by the enemy, and the second by an ally. Under their surfaces,
we perhaps can listen to the voice of Rose Egipcíaca as long as we are attentive to
the displacements and hesitations they contain. The tone and style of this vocaliza-
tion will allow us to identify what might be called a “colonial apocalypse,” which is
conceptually distinct from the traditional apocalyptic genre, assuming there is such
a thing.
The first text is part of Process Number 9065 of the Lisbon Inquisition, entitled
“Process of the Black Woman Rosa Maria Egyçiaca” [Processo da pretta Rosa Maria
Egyçiaca], dated 1765. In it, the defendant recounts one of the visions she had in
1760. On the third day of the Novena of the Child God, going to the chorus of the
Recolhimento do Parto at night, she saw a light emanating from the image of Our
Lady and heard a whisper. Rosa Egipcíaca asked the voice who it was and received
the following answer, “I am the Sun of the East [I say] the Sun of the midnight that
is visiting those who walk in my service in this hour as you and your companions.”
(Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 32).11 Rosa inquired twice
more about its origins until she finally obtained an answer, as the record the inquisitor
made of Rosa Egipcíaca’s responding shows:
and asking it where it was from, it replied that in the Empire and that it was going west
and asking it where this was from, it told her that in the chest of the Defendant which made
her shake [….] and she, the Defendant, continued to ask what meant the Red Rays, which
shined as radiance surrounding the statue the voice answered that they were the offenses
that the children of the Church would do to her, and soon the light disappeared and the
Church remained in the same darkness in which it was before (Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon
Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 32).
In this section, it seems to be a spatial, or more properly, geographical concern

that guides the reasoning of Rosa Egipcíaca. She wants to know first and foremost
where the voice came from and where it was going. The answers, “from the East”
and “from the Empire,” indicate that it has a metropolitan, European origin and is
addressed to the colony. This origin, both spatial and political, will mark a decisive
dimension of Rosa Egypcíaca colonial apocalyptic view.
11We did not attempt to maintain the register of eighteenth-century Portuguese language in this
English version, nor the peculiar locution of Rosa Egipcíaca.
Nevertheless, what, if any, could have been the voice’s message for colonial
Brazil? On the following pages of the interrogation, the defendant recounts new
revelations that followed the first statement, one of which was quite disturbing. The
voice told her that a flood would destroy the provinces of Rio de Janeiro and Minas
Gerais in 1762, “to bound those who are free, and let free those who are bound.”
(Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 33.). It is significant that
the two locations of the catastrophe were the provinces where Rosa Egipcíaca had
lived in Brazil since it is around her that the eschatological destiny of the colony
would take place.
The second text to be examined is also from Process Number 9065 of the Tribunal
of the Holy Office. However, it is not like the previous text; it is not a transcript of the
deposition of the defendant written by the priests responsible for the proceeding but
a document attached to the case as a piece of evidence of her heresies. It discusses a
prophecy dictated by Rosa Egipcíaca to a sister of Recolhimento do Parto who was
her scribe, Maria Theresa do Sacramento. In it, we find a central element of Rosa
Egipcíaca’s eschatological theology.12 One passage says:
it will be a flood that has never been seen in the whole world... this flood will come to
give the sea [the power of] overthrowing all those hills and unite with that salty sea that
you see in front of the palace13 and that all the rivers shall be loosened, and the sea shall
run out of its bounds, and the whole city shall remain within its bowels. [...] And when he
sees a star appear in the sky very resplendent, throwing many rays of itself, and from this
star will appear spears from the sun and come to dead hours a grandiose throng as a beast,
that all the people of Minas prepare, because the number ten is reached, which are the ten
commandments broken [...] the Hidden One is to be unhidden. (Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon
Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 84.)
Before examining the content of this prophecy, let us briefly consider its act of
enunciation. In it, we find the marks of Rosa Egipcíaca’s concept of authorship. This
enunciation shows an indeterminacy as to who is the emissary of the prophecy. It is a
text dictated by Rosa Egipcíaca, but it describes a voice heard “in the understanding”
by the copyist herself, Maria Theresa do Sacramento—a voice that asks her to tell his
“Mother and Teacher” what will happen, referring to a vision held by Rosa Egipcíaca
years before and now elucidated through her disciple. The text is the result of an
interpretation that Rosa Egipcíaca makes of her apostle’s revelation who, in turn,
copies the interpretation as dictated by the teacher. This is a rather complex chain of
messengers: Rosa Egipcíaca dictates a letter narrating a prophecy that was verbally
communicated to her by the very voice of the copyist and apostle; the prophecy
originated in another supernatural voice, which in turn interprets a visual revelation
that occurred years earlier to Rosa Egipcíaca; in turn, it should all be passed on to
12 Again using the condescending attitude that permeates his entire book, Mott says that the story is
“childish,” and asks “that the reader be patient with the claudicating style” (Mott, 1993, pp. 549–550).
We try to distance ourselves from this attitude.
13 At the time, the Paço Imperial, in downtown Rio de Janeiro, near the 15th Square, faced the sea;
it has since been torn razed to the ground.

the special people named in the text.14 Writing, listening, and seeing create a long
series of telecommunication (Derrida, 1972, pp. 369–381).
The statement about the prophecy passes through another mediation, as it is para-
phrased and commented one by one of the witnesses heard by the Court of the Holy
Office, Faustina Maria de Jesus, one of the interns of Recolhimento do Parto—but
we must not forget that the testimonies were recorded by a male European priest,
according to the ecclesiastical structure. A new series is presented here: the Tribunal,
which listens to the witness, records in writing what the latter has heard the voice
of Rosa Egipcíaca says. According to the intern, the final part of the prophecy is
that the Lord “gave to her the new Empire, in which she was to reign” with Dom
Sebastião,15 “and that then all the infidels will be converted.” (Holy Office Tribunal,
Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 110).16 The content of the prophecy often suffers
variations in the writings of Rosa Egipcíaca and her testimony to the Inquisition.
Either she is God’s new incarnation (“I am God,” as she often said), or she is the new
mother of Christ, who is the offspring of her mystical marriage with Dom Sebastião,
or her marriage with the Holy Trinity.
Although we proposed to examine separately the enunciative act and the content
enunciated by Rosa Egipcíaca’s prophecy, we can now realize that such a separa-
tion is not really possible: the enunciative act and the content of the enunciation
coincide perfectly. In “On an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy”
(Derrida, 1981, pp. 445–486). Derrida provides a clear explanation for the indistinc-
tion between form and content, common to all prophetic discourses—and it is this
tone we seek to hear in the written records of the Inquisition. The very structure of
truth, as it is conceived by what we have called “philosophy” for many centuries,
is apocalyptic. “Truth,” says Derrida, “is the end and the instance of the final judg-
ment.” (Derrida, 1981, p. 468). In fact, it is not unusual to propose an elucidation of
apocalyptic phenomena departing from the literal sense of the word “apocalypse.”—
that is to say, “revelation”. Derrida proposes to reverse this hermeneutic procedure,
understanding the very idea of “revelation” (as well as “unveiling” and “truth”) based
on the eschatological semantic field. All those who speak the truth, or who intend to
speak the truth, are taken by the violent passion of the consummation of the times;
14 Few privileged people can communicate the prophecy to others, under the condition of the
emissary’s anonymity (“you may show this notice to several people, but not saying about who sent
it”). Idem, ibidem. This letter, dictated by Rosa Egipcíaca, uses an indirect form of diction that
mixes the written and the spoken in a peculiar register.
15 The myth of Dom Sebastião, King of Potugal and Algarves, (1554–1578) is pervasive in
Portuguese and Brazilian popular culture. He disappeared during the battle of Alcácer-Quibir
(Morocco) and was named The Desired or The Asleep; his return to the throne was seen as the
redemption of Portugal.
16 As stated in the initial reasoning of the Notice of Complaint drawn up in 1762, during the process
instituted in Rio de Janeiro, but added later to the process of the Lisbon Inquisition, Rosa Egipcíaca
would have prophesied that it would “flood, and subvert this City”; only the Recolhimento do Parto,
transformed into a new Noah’s Ark, would escape destruction, as well as “all the Creatures that
would be gathered there, and that in their water would embody the Divine Word to establish a new
world more perfect than present” (Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 2901, fol. 131).
For other versions of this prophecy, see fol. 132 and fol. 138.
the apocalyptic word has the vocation to be the last word, which closes the debate
by finally removing the illusions and showing the imminence of what is to come,
of the thing itself. The desire for light or enlightenment, which a chosen few know
how to recognize, is the very vocation of philosophy, its definition, and its end. For
this reason, Derrida continues, a “certain apocalyptic tone” belongs to the transcen-
dental structure of true discourses or to discourses which claim to say the truth.
Once engaged in them, one must always go beyond and unveil the obscurities of the
apocalyptic discourse itself and its ultimate goal of spreading clarity. Given the very
structure of language, we who share the will of truth (which implies telling the truth
about the essence of truth), are doomed to linguistically articulate an apocalypse of
the apocalypse itself, without ever being sure of having arrived at the determinate
identification of the transmitter or the receiver. It is always necessary to go beyond the
identified transmitter to search for a more original voice, the true author (the spirit,
the unconscious, history). What the apocalyptic discourse shows, then, is nothing
more than the apocalypse itself (Derrida, 1981, p. 471). Derrida’s conclusion clearly
applies to the eschatological discourse of Rosa Egipcíaca: “as long as it is not known
who speaks or writes, the text becomes apocalyptic.” (Derrida, 1981, p. 471).
If we accept the premise of the fundamentally shared identity between the content
of an enunciation and the enunciative act, we may ask about the peculiarity of the
colonial apocalypse articulated by Rosa Egipcíaca (and the indefinite multitude that
this name carries with it), regarding what we might call, under some risk, the “tra-
ditional apocalyptic genre.” The latter, in fact, has such a diversity of variants that
we might even doubt that it forms a genre. In The Apocalyptic Imagination: An
Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, John Collins proposes a preliminary
definition of the apocalypse in the following terms: “a genre of revelatory literature
with a narrative structure in which revelation to a human receiver is mediated by a
supernatural being, unraveling a transcendent reality that is both temporal, in that it
envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another world”
(Collins, 2010, p. 22).17
Let us concentrate on the spatial or geographical aspect, given our purpose to char-
acterize colonial apocalypse, that is, a cosmology essentially located on the periph-
eries of the modern metropolis and the thought systems generated within them. In
terms of the geographical or geopolitical aspect of traditional apocalyptical narra-
tives, apocalypse refers almost always to a literature of resistance. Consulting the
literary paradigm of the entire apocalyptic genre in the West, the Apocalypse of John,
we understand that the revelation indicates the destruction of the Roman Empire,
which, according to an already long tradition, had banished John to the island of
Patmos, where the text would have been composed.
In Rosa Egipcíaca’s apocalypse, the means of the destruction of the world—the
oceanic waters—is also the means of escape from a mystical community toward
the East. For the American colonies, the Atlantic Ocean represents not only the
physical distance that separates them from the European metropolises but also the
17John Collins refers the reader to a study by the Society of Biblical Literature’s Gender Project
called Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre (Collins, 1979).
epistemological frontier—a true abyss. It allows the projection of alternating and

non-exclusive images of a new paradise on Earth and/or the depths of an unknown
hell. The theological mapping that Europeans were forced to project over American
territories to complete their symbolic colonization included crossing an unfathomable
ocean as the epistemic space separating the two worlds, the old and the new. When
Rosa Egipcíaca enters her mystical ship, she goes in the opposite direction as the
slave trade, meeting Dom Sebastião in an indeterminate place in the sea, in the
middle of the crossing. Proposing that the encounter with the Hidden One took
place in this pure medianity leaves behind not the solid earth, but only the sea, in
which the colony submerged and disappeared. The ocean ceased to be the mediation
between the metropolis and the colony, and the pre-colonial world was restored by the
destruction of the colony. From then on, there would be only the old world, Europe
and Africa. Thus, in a letter to his friend and protector Pedro Rodrigues Arvelos,
father of several of her interns, Rosa Egipcíaca writes:
I confess to my lord that I am with such a great Scare, that I do not know what to do, because
he punished the Kingdom of Portugal which he called his beloved; what He will make with
America, which He calls his opponent?, but with all this he has always been merciful, because
in America, he has given us his heart, to teach us that we always do good to those who do
evil to him (–Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316).18
In Rosa Egipcíaca’s apocalypse, the return to a pre-colonial planetary situation

introduces in her discourse a curious anti-eschatological tone. Indeed, while the
Apocalypse of John is inscribed in the eschatological tradition of the Old Testament
(especially noticeable in the book of Daniel), the salvific synthesis made by Rosa
Egipcíaca (as any Hegelian reader knows, every synthesis is salvific) points not to
the future, but the past. If Sebastianism has always been a millenarianism, Rosa
Egipcíaca’s colonial apocalypse transforms the return of the Hidden One, the Mystic
King/Christ, into a reconstitution of a past in which the very existence of the colonial
experience is denied and all traces of it erased from existence.
To conclude this brief presentation of Rosa Egipcíaca’s cosmology, we would
like to make a further observation. In one of the few comments we found about her
thoughts, an article entitled “Covert Afro-Catholic agency in the mystical visions of
early modern Brazil’s Rosa Maria Egipçíaca.” (Spaulding, 2017). Rachel Spaulding
suggests (following Mott) that there is a syncretic character in Rosa Egipcíaca’s
experience. According to Spaulding, “In Yorùbá worship, women usually occupy the
role of priestess. The priestess functions as medium between this world and the next.”
(Spaulding, 2017, p. 44). Spaulding interprets certain passages from Rosa Egipcíaca’s
testimonies to the Inquisition to show that, due to her Catholicism, it is possible to find
hybrid signs of African-American religions. For her interpretation to be sustained,
however, Spaulding must assume that Rosa Egipcíaca’s testimony to the Inquisition
in Brazil was more sincere than that which she made in Portugal. In the latter, being
18Cf. The denunciation by Maria Theresa de Jesús de Arvelos, in: Post Scriptum, CARDS3047.
“1756. Non-autograph letter from Rosa Maria Egipcíaca, slave, to Pedro Rodrigues Arvelos,
peasant.“ The transcript can be found at: http://ps.clul.ul.pt/pt/index.php?action=file&id=CAR
DS3047). Consulted on May 30, 2019.
on metropolitan soil and in the center of the Portuguese ecclesiastical structure, the
defendant would have tried to disguise her opinions [and her descriptions in Rio de
Janeiro, says Spaulding, “may be read as more overtly syncretic”] (Spaulding, 2017,
p. 42). The numerous methodological problems of a “hermeneutic of suspicion,”
to use Paul Ricoeur’s expression in his commentary on Leo Strauss’s theory of
reading, appear here. (Ricoeur, 1978 apud Levene, 2000, p. 62). When the interpreter,
instead of sticking to the letter of the text, imagines that its surface hides a hidden,
more truthful sense, kept secret for prudence in the face of political and religious
persecution, the doors open for the uncontrollable assignment of secret intentions
to the authors under examination. Instead of betting on a syncretic interpretation,
it may be more prudent simply not to interpret Rosa Egipcíaca’s text. It is better
to deconstruct it as if in an intertextual cross-reference game with other apocalyptic
texts. From it, its singularity can emerge, which will also be a repetition of its colonial
apocalypse.
13.2.1 Sub Species Aeternitatis
If Rosa Egipcíaca’s apocalypse is non-millenarian, the total destruction of the world,

and particularly this colonial part of the world we call Brazil, anticipated by Estamira,
is non-apocalyptic in nature. In fact, if we return to the definition of “apocalypse”
proposed by Collins, according to which this literary genre refers to “a transcendent
reality that is both temporal, in so far as it envisages eschatological salvation, and
spatial, insofar as it involves another world,” we can understand, hearing Estamira
that the concept of destruction, on which she elaborates, does not have a temporally or
spatially transcendental dimension. The antonomastic aspect of her name, however,
does refer to the idea of a spatial perspective. But it is a space without the promise
of salvation, and indeed a space beyond spaciality itself. To destroy the world does
not mean to migrate to another space, as it does in the millenarian discourse. Let us
hear/read Estamira’s consideration of her enemy (God himself):
The accursed, unholy, hypocritical, scoundrel, undignified, incompetent, do you know what
he did? He lie to men, seduce men, blinded me and… toss them into the abyss. That’s what
he did, you understand? That’s why I’m flesh… You know why? So I can expose him and
his whole gang. I will knock him down, I will. If I say so, you can rely on it. Do you want to
defy me? Ain’t got a chance! He is so powerful in reverse, that even though my flesh is this
aged, this ugly, this silly, he still wants more… (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 11).
Estamira puts herself on the “edge of the world” (“I am the edge of the world. I
am this perspective [esta mira; Estamira]. I am the edge. I am there, I am here, I am
everywhere. And everyone depends on me.”) (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 33). Her
“mission” is less to point to a place beyond the world than it is to denounce the lie of
God (“this kind of God, their God, this filthy God, this rapist God, this all-usurping
God, this home-wrecking God, this kind of God, I do not accept…I am the truth. I
am the truth.”) (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 55). Because it is everywhere, her gaze
keeps the world in existence from a point of view that does not fit in this space,
which is too human and planetary (“I am in a place far away, in a space far away.
Estamira is distant. Estamira is in every place. Estamira could be a sister, or daughter,
or wife of space, but she is not.”) (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 36). Estamira does
not understand space in terms of geography but rather as a kind of celestial geometry
(“All creation is abstract. All space is abstract. Water is abstract. Fire is abstract. All
is abstract. And as such, so is Estamira.”) (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 16). Rather
than referring us to another space, Estamira announces the unreality of this space
that we inhabit and its true, abstract nature.
The maintenance of the existing world depends on her act of will, namely, the act
of her wanting to look at the world. The possibility of closing the world, of closing
one’s eyes, is always present as a possibility. In a lengthy speculation about her fate
to combat God, she makes this conclusion explicitly: “The solution is fire. Fire is the
only solution. Incinerate all the beings, and replenish the spaces with other beings.
The Earth said, she spoke, now that she is already dead, she said she would no longer
be a witness to anything…If you incinerate all spaces, and I am in the midst, go ahead
and burn me, I am in the midst, invisible”. (Estamira & Prado, 2013, pp. 55–56).
While identifying herself with a pure abstract gaze that sweeps through every-
thing and keeps everything in existence, Estamira promises the destruction of the
visible world. She also assures that she, the all-seeing, invisible, in-the-center-of-all,
the all-pervading gaze, will remain indestructible. The consummation of the flesh
and feelings will affect neither the geometrical point from where things are kept in
existence nor the being that is itself abstract and ideal.
Since pure geometry is eternal, Estamira’s struggle also ignores time—or, at least,
messianic time. Soon after announcing that “everyone depends on me,” she adds,
“I’ll do much worse when I disincarnate.” (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 33). This
threat of “doing much worse” refers to the war against “Trocadilo” (the Punster,
an epithet of Satan, that is, of God).19 It is a continuation of the battle already
going on. Shortly before, Estamira says, “These misfortunes, these parasites from the
forsaken, filthy earth, this accursed, unholy earth, denied man as the sole conditional.
The more evil I become, the worse I am!” (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 33). Men
have denied themselves as the “sole conditionals”—an expression which, in her
vocabulary, designates the special status of man before other beings of the world.
The struggle will not end in a decisive act, and salvation will not be achieved. She will
continue her task of destruction to the end, without promises or remission. According
to her, “everything is imaginary,” including space and time, and thus, the perspective
itself turns into eternity.
Estamira is aware of her own psychiatric condition. During her speech, she reads
a psychiatrist’s diagnosis of her severe psychosis and immediately refuses it, assim-
ilating her condition to that of all human beings. The reflection on her own enuncia-
tive position involves a political critique of the medical institutions of which she has
always been a victim, which occupies a considerable part of the film.
19“What kind of God is that? What Jesus is this, who only speaks of war […]? Isn’t he himself the
Punster?” (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 32).
Soon after reading aloud his war to remove God from his self-proclaimed posi-
tion of supreme judge, the French metaphysician Artaud reflects on his own sanity,
similarly to Estamira. In the aforementioned radio broadcast, To Have Done with the
Judgment of God, in an addendum to the act of the destitution of God but still part
of the radio broadcast, Artaud develops a reflection on what psychiatrists say about
him. Importantly, he associates the validity of his perspective to that of the American
Indians, especially in the pre-Columbian, that is, pre-colonial, era. Artaud says, “It
is that the Indians of before Columbus were, contrary to all that might be believed, a
strangely civilized people, and that they justly knew a form of civilization based on
the exclusive principle of cruelty.” (Artaud, 2004, pp. 1652–1653). He defines “cru-
elty” as “to extirpate through blood, and even the blood of God, the bestial chance of
human unconscious animality, wherever it can be found.” (Artaud, 2004, pp. 1652–
1653). This proposal is not far removed from Estamira’s charge against God, which
would have turned men into “quadrupeds.” (Estamira & Prado, 2013, p. 26). For
Artaud, men must be extirpated from the curse inscribed in them by god. Without
this radical act, man remains as an “erotic animal” and a “producer of numberless
beasts that are the form that the ancient land peoples universally attributed to god.”
Artaud continues: God is the microbes that cause disease and the bomb’s atoms.
At this point, the discussion is interrupted, and Artaud introduces, in the form of
a fictional dialogue, the interpellation: “You are hallucinating, Mr. Artaud. You are
crazy,” to which he responds, “I do not hallucinate. I’m not crazy.” (Artaud, 2004,
p. 1653). The end of god, he concludes, must coincide with the end of man.
The text of Artaud should not be read. The fact that it is a radio broadcast indicates
that it was meant to be listened to. The sound of Artaud’s voice reading To Have
Done with the Judgment of God has supernatural, or infra-natural, inflections and
uses a voice that seems to come from another world, or from another dimension of
our world. It is accessible today on a YouTube channel,20 and its vocal variations are
as important as what we used to call, in a thoughtless, superficial way, its meaning.
It is no accident that Artaud and Estamira share a vocal, auditory level of discourse
in their shared war but remain separate. It is not possible to fight this battle, against
God, in any way but alone. Glossolalia unites them in an untranslatable language.
Nevertheless, this tone, which Artaud shares with Estamira, is not, contrary to what
we initially suggested, apocalyptic, as it does not aim at the salvation of man.
Like Artaud, Estamira must destroy man in order to destroy God. However, neither
of them expresses themselves in an “apocalyptic” tone. They do not want to “tell
the truth” or build a “new man,” insofar as it is veridiction itself that finds its own
limits in their speeches. If the being and the truth are convertible, as certain medieval
philosophers posited, then the nullification of being as a being is also the annihilation
of truth, without an eschatological horizon that would limit the destructive power
of words. It was a presentation of what was already given, and not a promise of
renewal. Artaud’s final warning was, “I have found the way to end once and for
all with the monkey [that is, god];” he continues, “If no one else believes in god,
20Antonin Artaud, Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu (Version intégrale). In: https://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=EXy7lsGNZ5A. Consulted on June 6, 2019.
everyone believes more and more in man. Now, it is man whom we must now decide
to emasculate.” (Artaud, 2004, p. 1654).21 The assertion that every imaginary thing
exists introduces a disturbing ontological multiplication in the world, which has
infinite levels of “abstract” coexistence, beyond man and his “salvation.”
13.3 From Estamira to Rosa Egipcíaca: Searching

for a Common Drift
Let us conclude, although still inconclusively, the route that took us from Rosa
Egipcíaca to Estamira, by now going in reverse, from Estamira to Rosa Egipcíaca. In
his Philosophy of History, Hegel says, “By repetition, what first appears merely as
a matter of chance and contingency becomes a real and ratified existence.” (Hegel,
1970, p. 380). Hegel uses for an example the death of Caesar. His murder, aiming at
the destruction of the tyrant, produced exactly what it intended to deny, namely, the
rise of the tyranny of Augustus. (Žižek, 2014, p. 114). In a sense, Caesar “returned”
from death to be emperor, obviously, not as a concrete individual, but as a function.
The inevitability of duplication makes it a necessary condition of the very first “orig-
inal” occurrence. It would be impossible for an event to occur only once, for it is only
in its repetition that it gains a symbolic and, therefore, effective status; social realities
only exist if they are represented. Every revolution is a repetition as the etymology of
the word “revolution” indicates. When we juxtapose Estamira with Rosa Egipcíaca,
we want to suggest that a development was made visible by our slave and inquisi-
torial past. This development is synthesized by Estamira: she alone accomplishes
the colonial destruction envisaged by Rosa Egipcíaca. She frees herself from the
millenarian ideology in favor of a centrality of the gaze that no longer has to join the
Hidden One (male, white, European) to fulfill her apocalyptic task. The moment that
we, after Artaud, include the name of Estamira in a philosophical publication, we can
retrospectively see Rosa Egipcíaca emerge as a precursor. Estamira’s concepts on
feminine and historical time are the means with which we can understand the double
displacement, temporal and spatial, of women’s roles in the modern philosophy of
a colonial society. Estamira, perhaps more than anyone else, managed to deal with
being on the margins (of Western society, a European metropolis, the male gender,
of whiteness in a society built on the system of slavery).
To conclude this preliminary presentation of the thoughts of Rosa Egipcíaca and
Estamira, we must turn reflexively to our own enunciative and authorial position.
We would like to close our text with two questions rather than with statements. We,
the authors of this text, are (at last following the discourse of a certain normative
biology) men, and we are white men. That is, we are white in the context of the color
and class divisions of our colonial society. We would also be classified as “normal”
in psychological terms. Is there then something in common between our authorial
21 The passage cited appears in the radio broadcast at 36 min.

position and that of the two thinkers on the fringes of the sexual, racial, and psychic
centralized power that structures our society? This is our first question.
The second question concerns the authors who we used to set the parameters
of reading the thoughts of Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira and were also white men:
Derrida and Artaud. They were both inhabitants of Europe, which separates them
from us. It is true that Derrida was a Jewish Algerian migrant in the Christian
metropolis of Paris, and Artaud left France in search of the Mexican Tarahumaras
and was locked up for years in psychiatric institutions, diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Nevertheless, something incommensurable seems to be announced in the differences
that separate them—and also us, as far as we use them to build up our argument—from
Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira as well as from the other women who tried to express
their thoughts and were muted because of their gender. Our case examines black
women, a slave and a garbage collector, one deemed crazy and the other heretical. Is
this new projection of European masculinity onto the two thinkers not a fundamental
betrayal of their ideas? This is the second question.
We do not have answers to these questions. We have attempted to thematize the
places or perspectives in which the thoughts of Rosa Egipcíaca and Estamira were
formulated and we suspect that our claims are not assimilable—or at least not without
many modifications—to the contemporary concept of the place of speech. Perhaps
to answer these questions we must confront them with a more fundamental question.
Such a question or meta-question could take any of the following formulations. Does
a faithful reading really need to achieve something common to different perspectives
of enunciation? How faithful must a reading be? How much betrayal is constitu-
tive of the very act of reading? How to express this betrayal in the very act of its
accomplishment? How to betray in the open, in broad daylight? These “questions
on questions” point to the colonial destiny common to all thinkers, women and men,
to all philosophers, women and men, who find themselves on the margins of the
European metropolis. That is, we who live on the periphery of the dominant cultural
system must learn to occupy (as popular movements do with abandoned buildings and
unproductive lands) the peripheries of this periphery. We must learn how to recog-
nize a peculiar type of de-centering that, paradoxically, can take us back to Europe,
but now with some virus hidden in the luggage. Our European return has to be like
that of Rosa Egipcíaca at the Lisbon Inquisition: mystical, crazy, and heretical. It
should be far from the illusion of creation ex nihilo of an authentic colonial thought,
which supposedly refers to “our” own singularizing reality; Europeans have always
projected on us a new image of Eden, and since our Brazilian modernism (in the 1920s
and 1930s), we have often accepted it naively as a mission. It is only with a folding of
the peripheral situation on itself that perhaps something new can be produced here. It
is a question of circulating between the two series, the metropolitan and the colonial,
shuffling their signs, and not fixing a supposed “place” as specifically ours. This was
illusion of our nationalists (especially those on the right of the political field), who,
for a long time, tried to reconstruct, in names like Farias Britto and Tobias Barreto
(white European men), something that was properly ours. It is only in the improper
that our non-place resides; as Gilles Deleuze says at the beginning of Logic of Sense:
“From the paradoxical instance, it must be said that it is never where we seek it and,
conversely, we never find it where it is.”22 Instead of a common place, perhaps we

can, as did Rosa Egipcíaca, seek a common drift. It may be a paradoxical drift that
goes in both directions, moving away from and approaching Europe as one does in
preparation for combat. Only then would it be possible, in a distant day—that is,
now—to aim for something like an exclusion of exclusion.
References
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Lisboa. Processos 2901, 9065, 18078, 14316. https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/results?t=PROCESSO+
DE+ROSA+MARIA+EGIPC%C3%8DACA
Artaud, A. (2004). Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. In: OEuvres. Paris: Gallimard.
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Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 13

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15896

Latin American Perspectives

ISSN 2523-8760 ISSN 2523-8779 (electronic)

Beyond the Centuries, Culture, and other Boundaries: Why

October 2021 Ruth E. Hagengruber

Part I Women, Voices, History

Part II Feminism, Silencing, and Colonization

About the Editors

Christine Lopes has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Birkbeck, University of London.

Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto is a researcher on early modern philosophy and post-

Pedro Pricladnitzky holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the State University of Rio

intersection with natural philosophy, philosophy of science and philosophy of percep-

Christine Lopes, Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto, and Pedro Pricladnitzky

Keywords Canon · Voices · Women philosophers · Colonial · Latin America ·

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

for such a metaphysics in Spinoza’s philosophy and outlines a feminist metaphysics

Southampton, UK Christine Lopes

Keywords History · Women philosophers · Recovery · Canon · Alterity ·

2.1 Introduction: This is not a Time for Complacency

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 9

2.2 Where We Are Now

Project Vox website http://projectvox.library.duke.edu/.

2.3 Alterity and Context

2.4 Absence and Loss

4Madame de Scudéry was partly rehabilitated by Victor Cousin mid-nineteenth-century.

2.5 Ways Forward

There is, however, an upside to challenges presented by recovering the forgotten

2.6 A New Renaissance?

The Renaissance of women’s philosophy has only just begun. We must go on

Keywords Affect · Soul · Body · Brain · Health · Disease · Emotion · Rational ·

The name of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera (1562–1629) is famously associ-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 19

3.2 The Sabuco Question or El Caso Sabuco

Renaissance open-mindedness and passion for practical, experience-based knowl-

According to Pomata, it is not possible to decide if Acosta is referring to Oliva

3.3 Oliva as a Woman Philosopher

In particular, Oliva challenged Galen’s medical view on the causes of disease,

3.4 Oliva’s Philosophical Thought

(Pérez, 2008, 37)

Katarina Ribeiro Peixoto

Keywords Elisabeth of Bohemia · René Descartes · Intentionality · Passions of

If there is any practical philosophy as such in Cartesian philosophy, it is due to Elis-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 33

4.2 Towards the Practical Turn

4.2.1 Self-Related Contentment: Myself Alone X Sinning

4.2.2 The Additional Remark: “No One Has Ever Explained

and Descartes made by professor Shapiro.

4.2.3 Seneca’s De Vita Beata: A Proposal “Without Method”

4.3 Context and Self-Related Reflection: Elisabeth’s Moral

4.3.1 Context as Epistemic Boundary

4.3.2 The Self-Related Objectiveness Required to Assess

to the displacements promoted by Descartes as a result of Elisabeth’s provocation,

peculiar theater. Of course it could be easier if we were supposedly to take passions

and Phenomenal Consciousness”. Studia philosophica, 75/2016, pp. 18–19.

in a way that raises expectation of a complement, an outcome or a counterpart to it,

4.4 Final Remarks: Elisabeth’s conceptual legacy

Hume, D. (2012). A Treatise of Human Nature. Project Gutenberg License at www.gutenberg.org

Juliana Abuzaglo Elias Martins

Keywords Matter · Motion · Cavendish · Materialism and bodies

5.1 Introduction—The Role of Cavendish on Mechanicism

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 53

5.2 Cavendish’s Materialism

5.3 Movement of Bodies