Dedicated to Descartes' Niece: The Women's Movement in the Nineteenth Century and Anti-Vivisection

Abstract

From the moment that Descartes' concept of the animal machine-legitimating vivisection-appeared in philosophical circles, there was opposition to the concept voiced by famous women of the era. Madame de Scudery, friend of Leibniz, ran an anti-Cartesian salon and wrote novel praising animal virtue. worldly Madame de Sevigny wrote daughter: which love, which show preference for someone, machines which are jealous, machines which are afraid, come, come, be serious, never did Descartes intend to make us believe that.1 Madame de Scudery wittily argues that pets, monkey, parrot, and dog, demonstrated intelligence by their affection for her, and she determinedly spoke Latin to parrot. More seriously, she wrote: The tiniest monkey, by its industry and intelligence, destroys all of Descartes' doctrines. Curiously, it was this in animals which contributed deadly plank to Descartes' thesis, for he argues that it was animals' showing such perfection that raised the suspicion of their being machines. Among the famous, many rejected Descartes' thesis of the animal-machine: Montaigne, La Fontaine, Fontenelle, Cyrano de Bergerac. Among the women, Descartes' niece, Catherine. A poet of note in time, position caused a little domestic disagreement within the family of the great Descartes, when his brother's daughter espoused the doctrine of rival philosopher (Gassendi) rather than accept the hypothesis of the beast-machine. Leonora Cohen Rosenfield has written that her rebellion against animal automatism stands out in startling relief against the general pattern of fervent adoration for celebrated uncle.2 Gassendi argued for the principle of the two-fold soul: that possessed by human beings which was immortal, and that possessed by animal life, which was not immortal. It was compromise position between theological difficulty about salvation and position which would expunge vitalism from the universe and could, as Bossuet predicted it would, make common cause with atheism. These opposing views in the interpretation of animal virtue foreshadowed the difference two centuries later between Claude Bernard, the father of animal research, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the frrst woman to receive medical degree. Both beheld the intricate interior of animal life with amazement. But where Bernard saw the possibilities of mechanistic science in the body of the animal, Elizabeth Blackwell saw evidence of living God. Many who were engaged in the crusade against vivisection, notably Frances Power Cobbe and Anna Kingsford in this regard, understand the struggle in