Astell and Cartesian “Scientia”

Abstract

In 1694, Mary Astell (1666–1731) published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, in which she advocates establishing a “Monastery” or “Religious Retirement” for women to provide them with a “convenient and blissful recess from the noise and hurry of the World” (73).1 In 1697, she published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II, subtitled, “Wherein a Method is offer’d for the improvement of their Minds.” As various scholars have noted, this “method” has much in common with the method advocated by Descartes, as well as by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole in their 1693 Logic or the Art of Thinking, which itself follows a Cartesian path.2 And it is not just in her epistemology that Astell seems Cartesian; she also endorses Descartes’ dualism of mind and body. Like Descartes, Astell links this dualistic ontology with a conception of method in which a thinker seeks certain knowledge by eschewing the information provided by the senses (what Descartes calls “adventitious ideas”), focusing instead on the deliverances of reason alone. Descartes calls this absolutely certain knowledge “scientia,” while Astell calls it “science.”3