Cartesian prejudice: Gender, education and authority in Poulain de la Barre

Abstract

AbstractThe 17th century author François Poulain de la Barre was both an important contributor to the history of feminist thought and a thoroughgoing Cartesian. Poulain borrows from many of Descartes's doctrines, including his dualism, distrust of epistemic authority, accounts of imagination, and passion, and at least some aspects of his doxastic voluntarism; here, I examine how he uses a Cartesian notion of prejudice for an anti‐essentializing philosophy of women's education and the formation of the tastes, talents, and interests of individuals. “Prejudice” remains Descartes's notion of an entrenched, yet self‐imposed doxastic commitment, but also takes on the sense of social‐political group bias, founded on custom, transmitted through education, serving interests, and forming social expectations. Poulain also expands on the Cartesian notion and themes by emphasizing widespread yet unjustified social opinions in favor of the status quo in both epistemic practices and epistemic authorities, while considering how biased beliefs about sexual difference and gender identity can be internalized even by those who suffer most from them. At the same time, he shows how powerful Cartesian concepts can be for feminist methodology.