Reason: Pedagogy and Complementarity in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the role of reason in The Mirror of Simple Souls by Medieval French Beguine Marguerite Porete (c. 1250-1310). Our first strategy will be revising the function of Reason as a character throughout the text’s dialogues, in which Reason, Love, and Soul participate as main characters. Secondly, we intend to compare Reason and Love, as well as to understand whether these different forms of intellect are complementary or opposite to each other in some way, given the text’s inscription in a premodern Medieval philosophy. Finally, we would like to understand reason within the frame of the possible pedagogical uses that Marguerite conferred to it in her text.