477. The Mind Has No Sex: Cartesianism and Gender

Why Cartesianism appealed to women and became the inspiration for a pioneering feminist, Poullain de la Barre; and why Cartesianism was not the only option for women philosophers of the age.

• V. Bosely, François Poullain de la Barre: Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises (Chicago: 2002).

• D. Clarke (trans.), The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century, (Oxford: 2013).

• J. Donawerth and J. Strongson, Madeleine de Scudéry: Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues (Chicago: 2004).

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• S. Bordo, Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes (University Park PA: 1999).

• J. Broad, “Early Modern Feminism and Cartesian Philosophy,” in A. Garry, S.J. Khader, and A. Stone (eds), The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy (London: 2017), 71-81.

• V. Desnain, “Gabrielle Suchon: Militant Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century France,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 49 (2012), 257-71. 

• W. Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-Century France (New York: 1989).

• E. Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: 1992).

• I. Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford: 1977).

• C. Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: 2012).

• M.-F. Pellegrin, “Cartesianism and the Education of Women,” in D. Cellamare and M. Mantovani (eds), Descartes in the Classroom: Teaching Cartesian Philosophy in the Modern Age (Leiden: 2023), 434-55.

• A.M. Schmitter, “Cartesian Prejudice: Gender, Education and Authority in Poulain de La Barre,” Philosophy Compass 13 (2018).