Abstract
In the first part of this text, we present a reading of the Enlightenment that seeks to identify, among the different conceptualisations of reason displayed by enlightened thinking, the one offering the greatest emancipatory virtualities for feminism. The starting point is an analysis of Hume’s concept of personal identity that exposes its patriarchal bias. Against Hume’s notion of an inert reason we set the train of thought that led Poullain de la Barre to conceive reason as permanent work, or effort. The contribution of this feminist philosopher, an epigone of cartesianism, is liked to the spinozian «conatus» by a line that takes us all the way to Mary Wollstonecraft’s idea of reason as «meriting reason »: a reason that is free of adscriptive privileges in the network of forces in which it operates together with passions, a reason that is endowed with emerging critical value towards the Ancien Regime. In the second part, we argue that the critical- reflexive processes that challenge the legitimacy of institutions in force in a culture are not the monopoly of the Western World. In this sense, the Enlightenment is not an exclusive western property in so far as we can find, in other cultures, «veins of Enlightenment ». As endorsement of this hypothesis, we re-read the work of Maghreb philosopher Al -Yabri, author of Critique of Arab Reason, as a paradigmatic example of how it is possible to carry out a selective appropriation of a culture’s own past on the grounds of the «cultural interpellations» of the present. Under this light, Averroes is reclaimed as a classic of a «planetary modernity», a modernity committed to laicism, and one, moreover, that yields interesting implications for feminism.
Highlights
Se defiende que los procesos crítico-reflexivos que ponen en cuestión la legitimidad de las instituciones vigentes en una cultura no son monopolio de Occidente
In the first part of this text, we present a reading of the Enlightenment that seeks to identify, among the different conceptualisations of reason displayed by enlightened thinking, the one offering the greatest emancipatory virtualities for feminism
Against Hume’s notion of an inert reason we set the train of thought that led Poullain de la Barre to conceive reason as permanent work, or effort. The contribution of this feminist philosopher, an epigone of cartesianism, is liked to the spinozian «conatus» by a line that takes us all the way to Mary Wollstonecraft’s idea of reason as «meriting reason»: a reason that is free of adscriptive privileges in the network of forces in which it operates together with passions, a reason that is endowed with emerging critical value towards the Ancien Régime
Summary
En sus Prolegómenos, se refiere claramente a Hume al afirmar que las ideas metafísicas que la razón «cree haber engendrado en su seno» no son sino «bastardos de la fantasía». «Es evidente que, cuando alguien se jacta de la antigüedad de su familia, no son solamente el tiempo y el número de antepasados los motivos de su vanidad, sino también las riquezas y reputación de los antecesores, que parecen realzar a esta persona por medio de la relación que tienen con ella (...) Y, volviendo luego sobre sí mismo gracias a la relación de padres e hijos, se ve exaltado por la pasión del orgullo, mediante la doble relación de impresiones e ideas (...) Ahora bien, , es cierto que ser siempre dueño de las mismas posesiones refuerza la relación de ideas debida a la sangre y el parentesco, y hace que la fantasía pase más fácilmente de una generación a otra: de los más remotos antepasados a su posteridad, cuyos miembros son a la vez herederos y descendientes. Hume afirma en el Treatise: «... después de una repetición frecuente veo que cuando aparece uno de los objetos, la mente se ve determinada por costumbre a atender a su acompañante habitual, y a considerarlo bajo una luz más intensa, en virtud de su relación con el objeto primero.23» ¿Acaso no eran las madres, o al menos las mujeres, acompañantes habituales de los hijos? ¡Qué extraño mecanismo asociativo el de Hume, tan poco «natural»!
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