Feminism and Modern Philosophy

2 DESCARTES Man of reason here does philosophy come from? Does it come out of human expe- Wrience, an extension of ordinary human abilities to respond and reflect? Is an Enquiry or a Metaphysics a personal statement: Here is how I, a man, lived or tried to live, in my time, in my place, in my social milieu, in my part of the world? Is philosophy then indistinguishable from expressive essay writing, autobiography, or story telling? If so it seems that philosophy can make little claim to truth. If Kant and Hume write out of their own experience in the eighteenth century, it may have little relevance in the pre- sent. If they write about their experience as men of a certain class, it may have little relevance for women or working people. Their world is not our world. We are unlikely to be enchanted by countesses in Parisian salons or devastated by sexual scandal in Königsberg. It is precisely the disavowal of contingency and dependence that informs many philosophers’ sense of their discipline’s identity and importance. The human agreeableness that is the basis for Hume’s ethics should stand on its own, regardless of the charm of Hume the man. Reason provides the logical foundation for Kant’s duty ethics, not one man’s soured romantic ideals. Otherwise it seems that ethics is reduced to autobiography of antiquarian or literary interest only.The modern period begins with a sense of the dan- gers of such relativism. In Europe, with religious certainty gone, with the authority of the universal Catholic Church and the divine right of kings com- promised, with even the heavens in doubt given new cosmologies, it could seem that nothing is real but a man’s private and personal sensations and ideas. But if this is all, what happens to knowledge? Adrift in a bewildering flux of sensation, bombarded by inconsistent claims from unreliable author- ities, nothing is certain. His dramatic portrayal of this primal modern predicament makes Descartes 34 DESCARTES the textbook choice for the first truly modern philosopher. Descartes will give the first rationalist answer to the anarchic skepticism of transitional fig- ures like Montaigne and Gassendi. Descartes will define the opening thesis in modernist debate, the thesis to which succeeding empiricist and vitalist philosophies are responses. Descartes marks out the terrain on which the themes of modern philosophy will be developed: the constitution of physical reality, the justification of knowledge, the reality of the external world, the basis for moral judgment. If philosophers like Kant or Hume had much to say about women, Descartes said nothing. He had few dealings with the opposite sex. He pre- ferred to stay at home rather than to dine out in aristocratic households or socialize in fashionable salons. As a young man gambling and drinking halls were his preference, and later university and academic circles closed to women. One glancing affair with a servant woman produced an illegitimate daughter whom he supported financially at a distance for a few years. For most of his productive life, he sought peace in the Dutch countryside. Other than a seven-year correspondence and friendship with the Palatine Princess Elisabeth and a brief and ill-fated foray into court life under the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden, he was a man’s man. In the extensive body of Descartes’s writing on science, metaphysics, pas- sions, and morality, there is no discourse on the nature of women, on the proper education for women, or on the pains and pleasures of marriage. Never does he speak of women with contempt and rancor, never does he gallantly patronize the fair sex. His Discourse on Method, traditional opening reading assignment in Modern Philosophy courses, outlines intellectual pro- cedures presumably available to anyone regardless of class, gender, race, or ethnic origin. Descartes never mentions the inferior intellectual capacities of “savages” or the sexual habits of natives. He takes no apparent interest in travel literature or colonial affairs. “Good sense,” he insists, “is the most evenly distributed commodity in the world . the power of judging rightly and of distinguishing the true from the false (which, properly speaking is what people call good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men” (Dis- course, I, 1–2, in Works). The reason for error, he said, is not lack of native ability but improper use of one’s rational faculties. Reason distinguishes men from animals; “it exists whole and entire in each one of us” (Discourse,I,2, in Works). Over and over, Descartes asserted the commonality and universality of rational capacity. “There does not exist the soul so ignoble, so firmly attached to objects of sense, that it does not sometimes turn away from these 35 DESCARTES to aspire after some other greater good” (Principles of Philosophy, in Works, p. 205). No mind is incapable of acquiring knowledge, he insisted, as long as it is trained in the rejection of ideas not clearly understood, in attentive concentration, and in methodical investigation. The popular movement of Cartesianism that gathered momentum after Descartes’s death and that flourished in Parisian high society can be taken as proof of its founder’s lack of prejudice. These were circles singularly open to and even dominated by women. Cartesianism inspired women like Mary Astell to argue that, given the universality of reason, women should be edu- cated, trained to read critically, encouraged to reason in their religious and domestic duties, and allowed to choose a single life. The Cartesian François Poulain de la Barre ridiculed the irrationality of the assumption that women are inferior and cannot profit from education. Cartesian feminists were not radical in their politics; for the most part they tended to monarchist and conservative views, but they forced heated debates on women’s education to which Locke, Hume, and Rousseau were later contributors. Nevertheless, much of what makes modern philosophy unwelcoming to women has been laid at Descartes’s door: Descartes, feminist critics have argued, defined a dualist metaphysics that objectifies the natural world for man to master and control. Descartes theorized a solipsistic consciousness, removed from passion and imagination. Descartes projected a lifeless mech- anized cosmos. Descartes drove a wedge between feeling and knowing, creating a masculinist illusion of absolute truth. Cartesian ideals of object- ivity, rationality, mechanism, and control are hallmarks of philosophy’s masculinist identity. One of the first critical treatments of Cartesian reason was Genevieve Lloyd’s The Man of Reason. As philosophy is currently taught, said Lloyd, it is assumed without question that reason has no gender. The modern mind claims independence from the physical body, male or female, white or non- white; the mind has no sex, race, or caste. If this is true, asked Lloyd, why is it that women have found philosophic reason so difficult to achieve? Why is it that women seem to resist logical, objective thought detached from passion and personal involvement? One can say that in the past women were not permitted the education and position that would have allowed them to become rational philosophers and scientists, but even now when these fields are open to women, women are still underrepresented and are not regularly named among philosophy’s leading thinkers. Philosophy textbooks do not include readings by women, except perhaps a few recently added selections 36 DESCARTES on feminist political theory. In core areas like metaphysics, epistemology, and logic, women are not represented. To probe deeper the reasons for this exclusion, Lloyd proposed a “histor- ical treatment” of reason, itself controversial by “rational” standards. If reason is the means to universal truth, there should be no need for history. In some eras, reason may be defeated by dogma or superstition, but reason is reason and its truths are ahistorical. Descartes in his Discourse on Method made clear his own distrust of history. History, he said, reflecting on what he saw as defects in his education, leads reason astray, burdening it with past error that must be expunged in methodical doubt. History is innocent enough if used for amusement or out of antiquarian curiosity, but useless where knowledge is concerned. Reason must leave the past aside to begin afresh. It must begin free of error, basing conclusions only on clear and distinct ideas confirmed in carefully constructed experiments. Climate, geography, social role, religious conviction, are irrelevant to reason. Anyone can reason, in any time and in any place. No bodily disability, no lack of physical strength, no sexual difference makes any difference where reason is concerned. But, argued Lloyd, Descartes’s reason, when understood historically can be seen as a factor in women’s lack of power. The separation of sexless mind from sexed body that would seem to qualify women for intellectual activity in theory, as a matter of fact worked to their detriment. Logically there is no reason why women cannot be Cartesian philosophers and scientists. But the metaphysical division Descartes made between subjective bodily feeling and objective intellectual reason—the very distinction that might seem to pro- tect women from discrimination—created exclusive spheres of activity that could eventually be identified with female and male roles. In theory there is nothing that prevents a woman from living the life of the mind; practically and historically it was all but impossible, given her domestic and social com- mitments. Scientific reason, as a restricted activity removed from practical knowledge and skills, became the exclusive domain of men. Lloyd’s conclusion was chastening. The maleness of philosophical reason is not only in overtly misogynist attitudes such as those expressed by modern philosophers like Kant and Rousseau.

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