The Philosophy of Mary Astell: An Early Modern Theory of Virtue 0198716818, 9780198716815

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The Philosophy of Mary Astell

The Philosophy of Mary Astell An Early Modern Theory of Virtue

Jacqueline Broad

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Jacqueline Broad 2015 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931217 ISBN 978–0–19–871681–5 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Preface In seventeenth-century England, the philosopher Mary Astell was remarkable for focusing her intellectual efforts on ‘the other half ’ of the human race—for constructing a sophisticated philosophy that was designed to help the female sex attain wisdom, virtue, and happiness. The main purpose of this book is to offer a clear and accessible account of Astell’s philosophical ideas and arguments. Today the experience of reading early modern texts can be a bit like seeing people dancing at a distance: if we are unable to hear their music, then we might wonder what on earth they are doing.1 In the case of canonical male thinkers of this era, the search for background ‘music’—the historical–intellectual context of their ideas, an understanding of the author’s bigger picture, and so on—can be easily met by any number of book-length overviews. But there are few such books about women thinkers of the period. As a result, readers are often left at some distance from their texts, puzzling their brains, and wondering what on earth they were doing. With this volume, I examine all the different aspects of Astell’s philosophical thought, ranging from her epistemology and theology to her metaphysics, ethics, and politics. My main contention is that all these different aspects come together as a unified whole if we approach her as a moral thinker, or as someone committed to providing women with guidance on how to live a good and virtuous life. The book is intended to appeal to both undergraduate students and advanced scholars in the disciplines of philosophy, intellectual history, and gender studies. I would like here to acknowledge the generous financial assistance of the Australian Research Council (ARC). The research for this book was supported under the ARC’s Future Fellowships funding scheme (project number FT0991199, 2010–16), and an ARC Discovery Project grant (DP140100109, 2013–16). I am also extremely grateful for the support and encouragement of my home department in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to two anonymous OUP readers who made many good and intelligent suggestions for revisions to earlier drafts. For their advice and assistance in the completion of this work, I would especially like to thank 1 I borrow the simile from Peter Colleton’s letter to John Locke, 22 July 1674, in The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer, 8 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), i, 404.

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PREFACE

Jeremy Aarons, Peter Anstey, Dirk Baltzly, Michael Bosson, Deborah Boyle, Jillian Britton, Sandra Broad, Eleanor Collins, Karen Detlefsen, Paul Gibbard, Karen Green, Lord Harrowby, Jen Hinchliffe, Nancy Kendrick, Marcy Lascano, Peter Momtchiloff, Susan Paterson Glover, Ruth Perry, Alice Sowaal, Patrick Spedding, and Michelle de Stefani. Jacqueline Broad

Contents 1. Introduction

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2. Knowledge

26

3. God

44

4. Soul and Body

63

5. Virtue and the Passions

84

6. Love

107

7. Marriage

126

8. Moderation

149

9. Conclusion

167

Bibliography Index

185 201

1 Introduction Mary Astell (1666–1731) was an early modern philosopher who lived in an age of philosophical greats, such as John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza, and George Berkeley. Like these men, she asked questions concerning the foundations of knowledge, the existence of God, the nature of soul and body, and our duties and obligations as moral and political subjects. Unlike these men, she was preoccupied with the concerns of women: their lack of education, their subjection in marriage, and the general absence of freedom in their lives. In a number of her works, she developed a moral theory designed to help the female sex attain lasting wisdom, virtue, and happiness. Toward those ends, she often distinguished between two types of woman or female character— the one weak and dissatisfied, the other strong and at peace with the world. In this book, I examine Astell’s moral project to bring about an awakening in her fellow women so that they might become the second character type. More specifically, I examine the epistemological, theological, metaphysical, ethical, and political principles underlying her project of reformation. Let me begin by spelling out the different character types. The first woman, according to Astell, has a ‘weak and injudicious’ mind; she is someone who ‘lives at Random without any design or end’.1 Her happiness depends on other people, material things, and circumstances beyond her control. She is especially concerned about the opinions of men: she likes to hear herself complimented, she enjoys one man’s attention, and she welcomes the gaze of another. Because her pleasures arise from ‘the constant flattery of external Objects’, she is ‘perpetually uneasy’, and she is anxious about ‘the great uncertainty and swift vicissitudes of worldly things’.2 She mourns the loss of youth and beauty. To distract herself, she plays card games, she visits the theatre, and she

1 Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 93. Hereafter the first and second parts of this work are referred to as Proposal I and Proposal II respectively. 2 Astell, Proposal I, 92.

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reads the latest novels and romances. Her humour must be ‘cocker’d and fed with Toys and Baubles to still its frowardness . . . like the crazy stomach of a sick Person’.3 In her quasi-intellectual pursuits, she skips from one subject to the other, never penetrating a topic to its depths, nor ever achieving anything but a superficial understanding. In her personal relationships, she is fickle and inconstant. She imagines that someone will make her happy, and when her passion cools and the object of her desire no longer pleases her, she feels empty and dissatisfied—and resentful. According to Astell, such women are always in extreams, they are either violently good or quite cold and indifferent; a perpetual trouble to themselves and others, by indecent Raptures, or unnecessary Scruples; there is no Beauty and order in their lives, all is rapid and unaccountable; they are now very furious in such a course; but they cannot well tell why, and anon as violent in the other extream.4

By contrast, the second type of woman has ‘a sort of Bravery and Greatness of Soul’. Her happiness does not depend on ‘so mutable a thing as this World’— other people, material goods, and the variable opinions of men.5 She does not waste her time daydreaming about the acquisition of a wealthy husband, a lavish estate, or ‘a well-chosen Pettycoat’.6 She is unmoved by both good and bad fortune: she is neither ‘corrupted by the one’ nor ‘deprest by the other’.7 She knows that her happiness does not depend on anything outside her own mind, and that what really matters is that she is a good and virtuous person. Above all, this woman lives her life in accordance with reason. She comprehends the rational principles underlying her actions. She conducts her life with purpose and order, with the true good always in mind. She is always cheerful, always ready with a smile and a kind word for others.8 She does not see someone else’s success as a cause for envy; she has too strong a sense of self-esteem to want to pull others down.9 Similarly, she has the mental fortitude to stand firm in the face of opposition, such as ridicule and criticism from others. In her close friendships,

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4 5 Ibid., 93. Ibid., 71–2. Ibid., 111. Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 80. 7 Astell, Proposal I, 111. 8 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }}161, 255. Unless otherwise noted, all my subsequent references to The Christian Religion are to subsections in this modernized edition. The subsection numbers (}}) in this volume correspond exactly to those in the 1717 second edition, available in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (by subscription). 9 Astell, Christian Religion, }}152–60. 6

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she is loving, loyal, and unselfish: she desires her friends’ well-being for their own sakes and not for her own pleasure or profit. She watches ‘all opportunities’, attacks ‘all avenues’, and calls in ‘all assistances to serve them [her friends] in their most important interest’.10 On the whole, she leads ‘a cheerful and pleasant life, innocent and sedate, calm and tranquile’.11 She cannot avoid feeling the passions on some occasions; she would hardly be human, if she did not feel love, desire, or joy every now and then. But her passions are always reserved for things that merit them: she loves those who steadfastly pursue virtue, she has a desire to see good prevail, and she feels joy when a friend triumphs.12 In short, this woman lives up to the dignity of her nature as a free and rational being. In her writings, Astell highlights the fact that seventeenth-century custom encourages women to cultivate the first set of character traits. The usual practices and fashions of society, she says, encourage the female sex to become irrational and foolish. Women are given so little training in reason and argument that they are incapable of recognizing the true source of their happiness. But their disposition to ignorance and folly is ‘acquired not natural’, and can be overcome with proper study and self-discipline.13 Astell therefore calls for the establishment of an academy where women can receive a proper education in religion and philosophy, so that they might see that happiness comes from doing ‘that which is fit to be done’ or ‘what is really proper for Rational Creatures to do’.14 In her view, no woman is necessarily condemned to have a weak disposition of character—every woman is capable of moral and intellectual improvement. Scholars have yet to examine this ethical dimension of Astell’s writings in full.15 In the 1980s, commentators approached Astell as one of the earliest English feminists. They highlighted her call for the higher education of women in her Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II (1694; 1697), as well as her criticisms of the injustices of married life in Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700).16 In the 1990s, scholars started to investigate Astell’s wider political

11 12 Ibid., }208. Astell, Proposal I, 112. Astell, Christian Religion, }254. 14 Astell, Proposal I, 59. Astell, Proposal II, 206. 15 For an overview of Astell scholarship to date, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell’, Oxford Bibliographies [online bibliography], ed. Margaret King (2014) accessed 30 September 2014. 16 See Joan K. Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism’, The Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979), 53–75; Hilda L. Smith, Reason’s Disciples: SeventeenthCentury English Feminists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 115–39; Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986); and Bridget Hill, introduction in Mary Astell, The First English Feminist: ‘Reflections on Marriage’ and Other Writings by Mary Astell, ed. and intro. Bridget Hill (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986), 1–62. 10 13

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thought.17 She was interpreted as a critic of the contractarian philosopher John Locke and as a strident opponent of the Whig theories of liberty, resistance, and toleration, especially in her 1704 political pamphlets: Moderation Truly Stated, An Impartial Enquiry, and A Fair Way with the Dissenters.18 Commentators puzzled over how Astell could be both a feminist and a High-Church Tory: they noted that her support for women’s freedom of mind seemed to be inconsistent with her support for a political party that opposed freedom of conscience, the right to resistance, and other perceived threats to church and sovereign. More recently, in the past decade or so, Astell has been interpreted as a rhetorician, an eloquent and skilled defender of women in print.19 She has also been described as an Anglican apologist,20 and as an avid defender of the Protestant right to make one’s own judgments about religion,21 as seen in her Christian Religion, as See Ruth Perry, ‘Mary Astell and the Feminist Critique of Possessive Individualism’, EighteenthCentury Studies, 23/4 (1990), 444–57; John McCrystal, ‘Revolting Women: The Use of Revolutionary Discourse in Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Compared’, History of Political Thought, 14/2 (1993), 189–203; Patricia Springborg, ‘Mary Astell (1666–1731), Critic of Locke’, American Political Science Review, 89/3 (1995), 621–33; Patricia Springborg, ‘Astell, Masham, and Locke: Religion and Politics’, in Hilda L. Smith, ed., Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 105–25; Patricia Springborg, ‘Mary Astell and John Locke’, in Steven Zwicker, ed., The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650 to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 276–306; Van C. Hartmann, ‘Tory Feminism in Mary Astell’s Bart’lemy Fair’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, 28/3 (1998), 243–65; Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family, and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 142–60; Patricia Springborg, ‘Republicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual Historians’, Political Studies, 49/5 (2001), 851–76; and Patricia Springborg, ‘Mary Astell, Critic of the Marriage Contract/Social Contract Analogue’, in Anita Pacheco, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (London: Blackwell, 2002), 216–28. Springborg’s articles are republished in Patricia Springborg, Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 18 [Mary Astell], Moderation truly Stated: Or, A Review of a Late Pamphlet, Entitul’d, Moderation a Vertue. With a Prefatory Discourse to Dr. D’Aveanant, Concerning His late Essays on Peace and War (London: J. L. for Rich. Wilkin, 1704); [Mary Astell], An Impartial Enquiry Into The Causes Of Rebellion and Civil War In This Kingdom: In an Examination of Dr. Kennett’s Sermon, Jan. 31, 1703/4. And Vindication of the Royal Martyr (London: E. P. for Richard Wilkin, 1704); republished in Astell: Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and [Mary Astell], A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons (London: E. P. for Richard Wilkin, 1704), also republished in Astell: Political Writings. 19 Christine Mason Sutherland, The Eloquence of Mary Astell (Calgary, AB: The University of Calgary Press, 2005). 20 Hannah Smith, ‘Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), and the Anglican Reformation of Manners in Late-Seventeenth-Century England’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 31–47. See also Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell’, 73. 21 Sarah Apetrei, ‘ “Call No Man Master Upon Earth”: Mary Astell’s Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41/4 (2008), 507–23; and Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 17

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Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705), and a 1705 correspondence with the Nonjuring bishop George Hickes.22 In various philosophical articles, scholars have also interpreted Astell as a metaphysician,23 an epistemologist,24 and a philosopher of the mind.25 In what follows, I interpret Mary Astell first and foremost as a moral philosopher. I interpret her, that is, as a philosopher in the classical sense of someone who is concerned with practical and theoretical questions about how we should live.26 In doing so, I do not challenge the prevailing scholarly interpretations of her philosophy. On the contrary, I hold that Astell is all the things that commentators have seen her to be: she is a feminist, a political theorist, a Tory pamphleteer, a rhetorician, an Anglican apologist, a devout Protestant, a metaphysician, a Cartesian rationalist, and a dualist. But I do maintain that by interpreting her primarily as a moral philosopher—as someone who asks the questions ‘what is the good life?’ and ‘how can we be happy?’—all the separate strands of her thought come together as a united and consistent whole. It is my central thesis that Astell’s moral theory lies at the heart of a philosophical system that includes a theory of knowledge (the subject of my Chapter 2), a theology based on reason and revelation (Chapter 3), a metaphysics of mind and matter (Chapter 4), a philosophy of the passions or emotions (Chapter 5), and a theory of love, friendship, and community (Chapter 6). I also argue that the same moral 22

[Mary Astell], The Christian Religion, As Profess’d by a Daughter Of The Church of England (London: R. Wilkin, 1705); and George Hickes and Mary Astell, ‘The Controversy betwixt Dr. Hickes & Mrs. Mary Astell’, in ‘The Genuine Remains of the late Pious and Learned George Hickes D. D. and Suffragen Bishop of Thetford’, Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 3171, fols. 171–205. 23 Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’s Critique of Locke’s View of Thinking Matter’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25/3 (1987), 433–9; Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’, in Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), iii, 87–99; E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Matter’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62/3 (2001), 505–22; and Eileen O’Neill, ‘Mary Astell on the Causation of Sensation’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 145–63. 24 Deborah Boyle, ‘Mary Astell and Cartesian “Scientia”’, in Judy Hayden, ed., The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 99–112. 25 Cynthia Bryson, ‘Mary Astell: Defender of the Disembodied Mind’, Hypatia:A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 13/4 (1998), 40–62; and Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal: Mind, Method, and Custom’, Philosophy Compass, 2/2 (2007), 227–43. 26 Here I develop an interpretive stance I take in two previous essays: Jacqueline Broad, ‘Astell, Cartesian Ethics, and the Critique of Custom’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 165–80; and Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell and the Virtues’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming).

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outlook grounds her critique of the tyranny of men over women in marriage (in Chapter 7), and her views about the importance of moderation and obedience in political subjects (Chapter 8). I think it makes good sense to interpret Astell as a moral philosopher because she herself highlights the moral purpose underlying her works. In her second Proposal, Astell says that ‘it is to little purpose to Think well and speak well, unless we Live well, this is our Great Affair and truest Excellency’.27 ‘Rational Creatures,’ she says, shou’d endeavour to have right Ideas of every thing that comes under their Cognizance, but yet our Ideas of Morality, our Thoughts about Religion are those which we shou’d with the greatest speed and diligence rectifie, because they are of most importance, the Life to come, as well as all the Occurences of This, depending on them. We shou’d search for Truth in our most abstracted Speculations, but it concerns us nearly to follow her close in what relates to the Conduct of our Lives.28

Here Astell makes no distinction between our ‘Ideas of Morality’ and ‘our Thoughts about Religion’. To her way of thinking, moral philosophy and moral theology are interchangeable. True happiness comes from living in conformity with the will of God, or in accordance with the divine law as revealed through reason and scripture. In this respect, Astell upholds a divine law conception of ethics: she maintains that it would be morally wrong for someone not to fulfil a duty required of them by God. Throughout this book, however, I interpret Astell’s project largely in terms of her theory of virtue, rather than her theory of duty.29 I do not deny that she highlights the moral agent’s obligation to follow the divine law, or to act in accordance with duty. She is a Christian deontologist, to be sure, insofar as she holds that certain acts toward God, ourselves, and our neighbours are right or obligatory. But in my view, Astell is deeply concerned with cultivating the agent’s disposition to follow the divine law. For her, it is not enough for agents simply ‘to stick to God’s rules’, so to speak; they must also have the right motives, feel the appropriate emotions, and choose and act accordingly in any given situation. I therefore associate her philosophy with that ethical approach that places 27

28 Astell, Proposal II, 199. Ibid., 169–70. Readers should note that I do not claim that Astell has a virtue ethic. This is because, strictly speaking, a virtue ethicist treats virtue or the moral character as the primary principle of moral evaluation, whereas Astell regards our duties—to God, to ourselves, and to other people—as paramount. I therefore characterize her views about moral character as a virtue theory, an account of virtue incorporated into a wider ethical theory. On the distinction between virtue ethics and virtue theory, see Rosalind Hursthouse, ‘Virtue Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online encyclopedia], ed. Edward Zalta (Fall 2013) accessed 1 August 2014. 29

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character, rather than rules or actions, at the centre of moral theory.30 I do so because Astell strongly urges the cultivation of those admirable character traits known as ‘the virtues’, such as love (or benevolence), generosity (or greatness of soul), courage, prudence, and moderation. Like Plato and Aristotle,31 and later Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, she maintains that a good person is someone who lives her life in accordance with the virtues. More specifically, in her view, a virtuous agent has a habitual disposition to feel, choose, or act in accordance with right reason (natural reason informed by revelation). An agent does not become virtuous simply by performing one or two virtuous actions. To cultivate lasting virtue, Astell says, an agent must be in the habit of performing her actions upon the right principles, for the right ends, with the right intentions, and in the right manner.32 Importantly, according to Astell, the acquisition of virtue requires a certain wisdom or knowledge. It requires knowledge of the right ends and principles on which to base our actions; it also demands a certain self-knowledge, or an understanding of our own worth and abilities; and it requires knowledge of the best means to bring about the right end in different times and places. This is why women should be formally educated in philosophy and religion. To acquire virtue, women need to learn about the existence and nature of God (the divine lawgiver), about the existence and nature of the soul (an immortal, immaterial substance), and about how to regulate the passions in accordance with reason. They must learn to be above the world and its petty concerns (to have generosity of spirit) and to have a disinterested goodwill (a love of benevolence) toward their fellow human beings. They must not behave like tyrants by selfishly desiring

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There has been a recent revival of interest in virtue ethics as an attractive alternative to Kantian deontology and utilitarianism, two ethical approaches that have dominated modern moral philosophy since the turn of the eighteenth century. For recent work in virtue ethics, see Roger Crisp, ed., How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking, Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics, A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Daniel C. Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Daniel C. Russell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 31 Astell’s understanding of these ancient philosophers likely comes from contemporary sources, such as René Rapin’s Comparison of Plato and Aristotle (1673), since she was unable to read Latin and Greek. Rapin’s work is cited in notes that Astell made toward a second edition of Proposal II. For details, see E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Work Towards a New Edition of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II’, Studies in Bibliography, 57 (2005–6), 197–232. 32 Astell, Christian Religion, }327.

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others purely for their own gratification, or by treating others as slaves to their will. Rather, they must feel and behave toward other people in the right way, for the right reasons, depending on the circumstances (they must be moderate, in Astell’s sense of this term). On the whole, as we will see, Astell emphasizes that the acquisition of virtue is the only true means to a woman’s happiness: ‘’tis Virtue only,’ Astell says, ‘which can make you truly happy in the world as well as in the next.’33 Because virtue relies on the individual’s capacity for judgment, a woman’s happiness ultimately depends on herself alone: ‘Happiness is not without us,’ according to Astell, ‘it must be found in our own Bosoms.’34 This is not happiness in the sense of a momentary conscious state of pleasure and delight. It is, rather, a continuous state of peace and well-being: ‘a sedate and solid thing, a tranquility of mind, not a boisterous and empty flash’.35 Once a woman has obtained this tranquillity of mind, her moral reformation is complete.

1.1 Influences In developing this moral outlook, Astell appropriates certain ideas and concepts from ancient and modern philosophical sources. In a letter to her friend Ann Coventry, Astell refers approvingly to the Stoic thinker Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80) and his view that we should not depend ‘upon Foreign Supports, nor beg [our] Happiness of another’.36 In his Meditations, Marcus emphasizes the importance of emotional detachment from worldly concerns. From his perspective, passionate anger in the face of life’s difficulties is both absurd and unhelpful; it is also inconsistent with the nature and dignity of a rational creature. The attainment of happiness, on this view, requires a calm acceptance of that which cannot be changed. Astell’s theory of happiness is Stoic insofar as it relies on these same insights: that external objects are outside of our control, and that true happiness arises from our inner life alone, something that is in our power. Astell also articulates an Epicurean idea of happiness insofar as she holds that the greatest pleasure in life is a certain ‘tranquillity of mind’, or freedom from mental anxiety and perturbation, as well as freedom from bodily pain (ataraxia

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34 35 Astell, Proposal I, 111. Astell, Proposal II, 225. Astell, Proposal I, 123. Astell says ‘Marcus Antoninus I know reproaches me for what he calls “depending on Foreign supports, & beging our Happiness of another” ’ (see Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 373). She quotes from Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor Marcus Antoninus His Conversation With Himself. . . . Translated into English from the Respective Originals. By Jeremy Collier, M.A. The Second Edition Corrected (London: Richard Sare, 1708): ‘Let your Air be chearful; depend not upon Foreign Supports, nor beg your Happiness of another’ (190). 36

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in the Epicurean philosophy). The Epicureans maintain that unhappiness comes from striving to fulfil desires that are unnatural, or by fixing our desires on objects that are potentially unattainable. Astell observes that there is almost ‘too much Epicurism’ in her moral thought, since ‘by living . . . according to nature’ we are capable of taking delight in the simplest things, and so happiness is ‘in almost everyone’s power’.37 She does express some ambivalence toward Epicureanism, however: she is especially dismissive of the ‘world of absurdities’ arising from Epicurean atomism, and she is deeply suspicious of any metaphysical theory that denies the immateriality and immortality of the soul (the Epicureans hold that the soul is both corporeal and mortal).38 She thus distinguishes her Christian theory of virtue from the Epicurean approach by referring to it as ‘in truth the highest Epicurism’, or by branding good Christians as ‘the truest Epicures’.39 Above all, Astell’s philosophical works are reflective of the ‘new way of ideas’ in her time. Of the early modern figures, she has most in common with the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1714) and his English follower John Norris (1657–1711), two seventeenth-century thinkers who develop a sophisticated synthesis of Cartesian and Augustinian principles in their texts. Astell’s writings include direct citations from Richard Sault’s 1694–5 English translation of Malebranche’s De la recherche de la vérité (Search After Truth, originally published in French in 1674–5),40 as well as numerous references to John Norris’s Practical Discourses (1693), his Theory and Regulation of Love (1688), his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life (1690), and his Theory of the Ideal and Intelligible World (1701–4). Like these men, Astell is indebted to the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Following Descartes, she adopts a rationalist epistemology, as well as ontological arguments for the existence of God, a dualist metaphysics of mind and body, and a moral theory of virtue and the passions. On more than one occasion, she cites from English translations of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy (1644) and his Passions of the Soul (1649), and she appropriates the method of his followers Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, the authors of Logic, or the Art of Thinking (1662). She also refers to popularizations of Descartes’ moral ideas in the works of Englishmen such as Henry More and John Somers. 38 Astell, Christian Religion, }312. Ibid., }81. Astell, Proposal I, 86; Proposal II, 221. 40 See Mary Astell, Reflections upon Marriage (1706), in Astell: Political Writings, 21–2; and Nicolas Malebranche, Malebranch’s Search After Truth, or, A Treatise of the Nature of the Humane Mind and of its Management for Avoiding Error in the Sciences, trans. Richard Sault, 2 vols (London: J. Dunton and S. Manship, 1694–5), ii, 359. 37 39

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But while Astell is a firm Cartesian, she also follows Malebranche and Norris in denying that we can have clear and distinct ideas of the soul and of God, and she is not a supporter of innate ideas. Like these men, she is deeply Augustinian in terms of her moral and epistemological commitments. She is especially committed to St Augustine’s view that all created beings are dependent on God, for what they know as well as for what they are. According to Augustine, the human mind is capable of understanding whatever it understands only by means of God’s ‘light’ or epistemic ‘illumination’. Along similar lines, Astell declares that ‘reason is one sort and degree of divine revelation, for it is from the father of lights that we derive our illumination of any kind’.41 ‘Tho’ we are Naturally Dark and Ignorant,’ she says, ‘Yet in his Light we may hope to see Light.’42 More significantly, Augustine’s theocentrism informs several crucial aspects of Astell’s moral philosophy, including her suggestion that the soul naturally desires union with the divine, her claim that we ought to ‘use’ other people (but not ‘enjoy’ them), and her conviction that virtue depends on the right regulation of the love of God and his creatures. Like Augustine, Astell emphasizes that a virtuous agent is someone who has cultivated rightly ordered love. Throughout this study, I examine Astell’s place in the key philosophical debates of her time, her criticisms and appropriations of other philosophers in her day, and those principles in her moral thought that have had continuing relevance in philosophy as a discipline. I thus privilege the philosophical dimensions of Astell’s moral thinking over the religious ones. Having said that, while I sometimes downplay Astell’s religious outlook, I do not ignore it. Like Augustine himself, and his followers Malebranche and Norris, Astell’s philosophy is always put to the service of Christian theology. Readers should therefore bear in mind that she tends to accept or reject an author’s insights depending on their compatibility with her religious principles. Religion is the touchstone by which she judges the worth of any particular philosophical position, and the Bible is by far the most frequently cited text in her writings. Finally, it must be noted that Astell builds on a growing tradition of feminist thought in her time. Though she rarely acknowledges predecessors, her writings implicitly develop the ideas of thinkers such as Anna Maria van Schurman, Hannah Woolley, Bathsua Makin, François Poulain de la Barre, and other defenders of women in the seventeenth century. These writers were also Astell, Christian Religion, }22. Astell, Proposal II, 165. On the metaphor of light in Astell’s writings, see Guyonne Leduc, ‘Femmes et images de lumière(s): émancipation intellectuelle et sens de la vie chez Mary Astell’, XVII–XVIII. Bulletin de la société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Vie, formes et lumière(s). Hommage à Paul Denizot, 38 (1999), 21–40. 41 42

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committed to showing that women were naturally capable of moral and intellectual improvement. In her Dissertation on the Natural Capacity of Women for Study and Learning (originally published 1641, in Latin), the Dutch scholar Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–78) called for the education of women—not only so that they might meet their domestic duties, but so that they might live up to the dignity and perfection of their nature as human beings.43 In The Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673), the English writer Hannah Woolley (1622?–c.1674) observed that most people thought a woman was ‘learned and wise enough if she [could] distinguish her Husbands Bed from anothers’; but in her view, a woman’s soul had ‘its efflux from the same eternal Immensity’ as a man’s, and was ‘therefore capable of the same improvement, by good Education’.44 In her Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673), Bathsua Makin (1600–c.1675) likewise insisted that a learned education could help women ‘to imploy their Lives to those noble, and excellent Ends for which the Omnipotent and all-wise Creator made them’.45 These writers argued that women possessed all the necessary psychological traits to be morally responsible for their choices and actions. To support their claims, they appealed to historical examples of wise and virtuous women: they cited figures from the scriptures, as well as famous names from Giovanni Boccaccio and Cornelius Agrippa’s works, and from various Greco–Roman sources. They also valorized the works and deeds of contemporary women, such as the philosophers Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. In doing so, these writers adopted an argumentative strategy that harkened back to the fifteenth-century querelle des femmes, an ongoing historical debate about the moral and intellectual competence of women.

43

See Anna Maria van Schurman, Dissertatio de Ingenii muliebris ad Doctrinam, & meliores Litteras aptitudine (Leiden: Elsevier, 1641). In 1659, this text was published in English as The Learned Maid; Or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar? (London: John Redmayne, 1659). For recent English translations, see Anna Maria van Schurman, Whether a Christian Woman Should be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle, ed. and trans. Joyce L. Irwin, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Desmond M. Clarke, trans. and ed., The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 44 Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion; Or, A Guide to the Female Sex: Containing Directions of Behaviour, in all Places, Companies, Relations, and Conditions, from their Childhood down to Old Age (London: A. Maxwell for Dorman Newman, 1673), 1. 45 [Bathsua Makin], An Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, In Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues. With An Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education (London: J. D. to be sold by Tho. Parkhurst, 1673), 7. For a modern edition, see Frances Teague, Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated Presses, 1998).

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In her own writings, Astell continues the spirit of the querelle. But she also follows in the footsteps of a feminist who shunned appeals to ancient authority and historical sources—the French Cartesian Poulain de la Barre (1647–1723). In his Physical and Moral Discourse Concerning the Equality of Both Sexes (originally published in French, 1673), Poulain critically examines the widely held belief that women are intellectually inferior to men and ought to be treated as social inferiors.46 In his Cartesian-inspired critique, he finds that this opinion is merely an ill-grounded prejudice rather than a well-established truth, and that many female defects can be attributed to poor education rather than innate deficiency. In his view, women naturally possess the mental competence needed to engage in advanced studies—‘the mind has no sex’,47 he says—and so women are perfectly capable of reflecting on their own natures, the nature of their bodies, and the nature of God. The only obstacle in their path is an acquired tendency to make hasty judgments—but this can be overcome. With proper attention and training, women might learn to think clearly and to arrange their thoughts in a natural order. They might come to comprehend the rules of conduct in wider society and fulfil their moral duties to God, themselves, and other people. Though there is no explicit evidence that Astell was familiar with Poulain’s text,48 she raises many similar points in her own writings. In particular, like Poulain, Astell employs Cartesian ideas to show that women have all the necessary abilities to attain virtue and knowledge.

1.2 Life and Works To support the central thesis of this book, I draw material from all of Astell’s published works—with special emphasis on the Proposals, the Reflections, and 46

François Poulain de la Barre, Discours physique et moral de l’égalité des deux sexes (Paris: Jean Du Puis, 1673). In 1677, this work was published in English as The Woman as Good as the Man: Or, The Equality of Both Sexes (London: T. M. for N. Brooks, 1677). For a modern French edition, see François Poulain de la Barre, De l’égalité des deux sexes. De l’éducation des dames. De l’excellence des hommes, ed. Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin (Paris: J. Vrin, 2011). For recent editions in English, see François Poulain de la Barre, The Woman as Good as the Man; Or, the Equality of Both Sexes, ed. and intro. Gerald M. MacLean (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988); François Poulain de la Barre, Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises, intro. and ed. Marcelle Maistre Welch, trans. Vivien Bosley, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and François Poulain de la Barre, A Physical and Moral Discourse concerning the Equality of Both Sexes, in Clarke, ed. and trans., The Equality of the Sexes. My quotations are taken from the last text. 47 Poulain de la Barre, Physical and Moral Discourse, 157. 48 In England, Poulain’s De l’égalité enjoyed its greatest popularity only after Astell’s death, when it was repeatedly translated and plagiarized in English in the mid- to late-eighteenth century (see Clarke, introduction in The Equality of the Sexes, 12–13).

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The Christian Religion—as well as her correspondences,49 and various other surviving manuscripts. These sources reveal that Astell’s attention to the subject of how we should live was a career-long project. The same distinctive moral voice can be heard to some extent in all her writings. It is even present in an early manuscript of religious poetry from 1689.50 Astell began writing these poems shortly after she left her native Newcastleupon-Tyne to pursue her fortunes in London. Born in 1666, she was the only daughter in a respectable and well-to-do family with strong royalist ties.51 Her father was a gentleman and a member of the Company of Hostmen, a coal merchants’ guild with considerable power and influence in the Newcastle township. In her early years, Astell received some tuition from an uncle, Ralph Astell, a clergyman who attended Emmanuel College at the height of Cambridge Platonism. It is likely that she also received a typical gentlewoman’s education in the feminine accomplishments. Following her father’s death in 1678, however, the family fell upon hard times. For a period, Astell’s mother relied principally upon charity and loans for income. Then, following her mother’s death, Astell moved to the city as ‘a poor unknown’, and embarked upon her writing career, seemingly without assistance. She would remain unmarried and childless all her life. In one of her early poems, she begins: What shall I do? not to be Rich or Great, Not to be courted and admir’d, With Beauty blest, or Wit inspir’d, Alas! these merit not my care and sweat, These cannot my Ambition please, My high born Soul shall never stoop to these; But something I would be thats truly great In ‘ts self, and not by vulgar estimate.52 In particular, Astell and Norris, Letters; ‘The Controversy betwixt Dr. Hickes & Mrs. Mary Astell’; and Mary Astell, ‘Letters to Ann Coventry’, in appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 366–99. I am extremely grateful to Professor Perry for answering my recent queries about the current whereabouts of the original Astell-Coventry manuscripts. They are in the private collection of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, England. 50 [Mary Astell], ‘A Collection of Poems humbly presented and Dedicated To the most Reverend Father in God William By Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury & c’, 1689, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MSS Poet. 154, fols. 50–97. For transcriptions, see Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 400–54. Astell’s collection is dedicated to the Nonjuror William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. 51 For biographical details, see Florence M. Smith, Mary Astell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916); Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell; and Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell (1666–1731)’, British Philosophers, 1500–1799, eds. Philip B. Dematteis and Peter S. Fosl, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 252 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2002), 3–10. 52 ‘In emulation of Mr. Cowleys Poem call’d the Motto page I’ (1688), in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 402. 49

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In her later published works, Astell elaborates on these same Christian-Stoic themes of being above the world and attaining a sense of self-esteem despite lowly circumstances. Soon after completing her manuscript of poems, Astell initiated an intellectual correspondence with John Norris, the rector of Bemerton and the main English disciple of the French philosopher Malebranche.53 In their letters, from 1693 to 1694, Astell and Norris discuss the questions ‘how should we love God?’ and ‘how should we love other people?’—perhaps the most important recurring questions in all of Astell’s writings.54 To address these queries, the two writers draw on a distinction between the love of desire and the love of benevolence. According to this distinction, a love of desire (or concupiscence) is a general tendency of the soul to unite with, or to possess, its beloved object; while a love of benevolence (or charity) is a tendency of the soul to wish well toward the thing it loves. Astell and Norris agree that it is permissible to wish well toward other people, but they add that our love of desire must be reserved for God alone; we must never selfishly desire to possess our fellow human beings. In November 1694, Astell and Norris’s Letters Concerning the Love of God appeared in print at the same time as Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies.55 Astell published a second part to the Proposal in 1697.56 While the first Proposal details Astell’s plans for an all-female academy, the second offers ‘a method of improvement’ for women to practice at home. These works contain all the essential ingredients of Astell’s moral philosophy: her guidelines for women concerning the attainment of wisdom, virtue, and happiness, her advice on perfecting one’s capacity for practical judgment, her theory concerning the role of the passions in moral action, and her views about the moral significance of friendship.

53 Though John Norris is often described as a ‘Cambridge Platonist’, this is a misnomer. Norris was an Oxford-educated man who held a number of moral and metaphysical views that were radically distinct from those of the leading Cambridge Platonists, Henry More and Ralph Cudworth. On Norris, see Richard Acworth, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1712) (New York: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim, 1979); and W. J. Mander, The Philosophy of John Norris (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 54 These questions also struck a chord with the reading public. As late as 1732, ‘a question in Mrs. Astell’s letters to Mr. Norris’ was still a topic of discussion at John Henley’s ‘Oratory’ on the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. See the advertisement ‘At the Oratory’, (Anonymous) Daily Journal, 3676 (14 October 1732). 55 See Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues, 1668–1709 A.D.; with a Number for Easter Term, 1711 A.D., 3 vols (London: Professor Edward Arber, 1903–6), ii, 518. Though the title page of Astell and Norris’s Letters records the publication date as 1695, the Term Catalogues report that this work appeared in Michaelmas term (i.e., November) in 1694, together with the Proposal. 56 Like all her works, both the first and second Proposals were published anonymously.

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These works also continue the themes of Astell and Norris’s Letters. The view that we are obliged to love other people with a disinterested (that is, non-selfinterested) love deeply informs Astell’s project to further the moral and intellectual advancement of women. We should put aside petty prejudices and interests, she says, and recognize that all our fellow human beings are ‘members of one body’, or interdependent parts of the whole. For this reason, every human being—women as well as men—should be encouraged to be useful to themselves and to others. This is why women should receive a thorough education in reason and religion. Together with the Letters, the first and second Proposals established Astell’s reputation as an ingénue among the London intelligentsia. She was celebrated in her day, her books became bestsellers, and she was openly admired by the likes of John and Mary Evelyn, Daniel Defoe, John Dunton, and George Hickes. At the height of her fame, it appears that Astell also acquired the patronage and friendship of several wealthy gentlewomen, including Lady Catherine Jones, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, Lady Ann Coventry, and Elizabeth Hutcheson. These women provided invaluable financial and emotional support for Astell in the years to come. They also, to some extent, represented the target audience for her works: they were all devout, well-to-do gentlewomen with a strong interest in moral and religious subjects. In 1700, Astell published her most popular feminist work, Some Reflections upon Marriage. In this work, Astell reflects upon the unhappy marriage of Hortense Mancini, the duchess of Mazarin, as a pretext for a broader examination of the moral dangers of marriage in her time. Here again Astell’s emphasis is on the importance of women cultivating a certain greatness of mind and a disposition toward happiness, regardless of their external circumstances. But in this work, she also targets the questionable motives and brutish conduct of married men. Her point is that early modern marriages would be much happier if men married out of a love of benevolence toward their wives, rather than a selfish desire to possess their money and physical beauty. In 1706, Astell published the third edition of her Reflections with a long preface defending the work’s original design ‘to Correct some Abuses, which are not the less because Power and Prescription seem to Authorize them.’57 This new preface reflects the vocabulary of topical political debates in the early reign of Queen Anne. A few years earlier, Astell herself had entered those debates with three political pamphlets on the ‘occasional conformity’ controversy, a heated dispute concerning the practice of some Protestant dissenters who would occasionally 57

Astell, Reflections, 7.

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take communion in Anglican churches solely in order to qualify for public office. In her tracts, Astell takes the side of High-Church Anglicans and the Tory political party, firmly against the Whig ideology of religious toleration and liberty of conscience. In her first and longest pamphlet, Moderation Truly Stated, Astell applies her core moral theory to the ‘hypocritical’ actions of the occasional conformists. She concludes that these men do not exhibit the virtue of moderation—they do not proportion their esteem and value to the true worth of things. If they did, then they would acknowledge that being deprived of public office is a benefit, because it enables them to concentrate on spiritual affairs. In short, as we will see, Astell places the cultivation of virtue, and the extirpation of vice, at the centre of her arguments against occasional communion. Astell’s longest and most mature work of philosophy, The Christian Religion, as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England, represents a continuation of the same feminist themes as the Proposals. Scholars agree that this work is the crowning achievement of Astell’s career. At its heart lies a moral theology designed ‘to put women upon thinking, upon an examination of their principles, the motives and grounds of their belief and practice, and the frame and temper of their minds.’58 Toward this end, in a series of numbered, heavily annotated paragraphs, Astell presents reasoned arguments for the existence of God and for mind–body dualism, as well as counter-arguments to Locke’s assertion that matter might possibly think. She also provides justifications in favour of loving other people with goodwill rather than selfish desire, and she recommends techniques for purifying the mind and regulating the passions, those disturbing mental states that occur as a result of the mind–body union. Above all, Astell offers advice on how a woman can learn to judge for herself about the true source of her happiness, and come to live up to the dignity of her nature as a free and rational being. The Christian Religion thus represents the completion of Astell’s project to bring about the moral and intellectual advancement of the female sex. In her final work, Bart’lemy Fair, Astell provides a critique of A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm (1708), an anonymous work by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third earl of Shaftesbury.59 In his Letter, Shaftesbury suggests that religious enthusiasts should be subjected to trials of public ridicule rather than punished and persecuted. In response, Astell declares that Shaftesbury’s method is tantamount to exposing all morality and religion to public contempt. More specifically, she interprets his Letter as the work of an atheistic libertine, someone who values 58

Astell, Christian Religion, 45. [Mary Astell], Bart’lemy Fair: Or, An Enquiry after Wit; In which due Respect is had to a Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, To my LORD *** (London: Richard Wilkin, 1709). 59

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only the material world and fails to show due reverence to God and religion. Here again her focus is on exposing the flaws in a particular kind of moral character.

1.3 Legacy When Mary Astell died of breast cancer in May 1731, her literary reputation still preceded her: one obituary notice described her as ‘a Gentlewoman much admir’d for several ingenious Pieces’.60 There is some evidence that these ‘several ingenious Pieces’ were known to major philosophers of her day, including Leibniz, Locke, and Berkeley. In a 1697 letter to Claude Nicaise, Leibniz expresses his admiration for Astell’s part in the epistolary exchange with Norris, describing her as ‘a young English lady of 20’ who had ‘written admirably well’ about the love of God. He adds with approval that ‘it is reasonable that ladies should be the judges of questions of love, for we must form a conception of it which conforms to the love of reasonable creatures’.61 Because women are especially subject to the passion of love, he implies, it is desirable that they form a reasonable conception of how they should love. In a 1697 letter to Sophie, electress of Hanover, Leibniz repeats this sentiment, noting that ‘Of all the matters of Theology there are none about which ladies have more right to judge than this one [that is, the love of God], because it concerns the nature of love.’ To form sound judgments about such matters, according to Leibniz, women ought to emulate admirable women, such as either Madeleine de Scudéry or ‘the English Lady Miss Norris [that is, Astell], of whom it has been said that she has recently written so well on disinterested love.’62 The extent of Locke’s familiarity with Astell’s writings is difficult to determine. He owned a copy of the first edition of Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage,63 and one journal entry dated 22 December 1694 indicates that he purchased 60

The Historical Register, Containing an Impartial Relation of all Transactions, Foreign and Domestick (London: S. Nevill, [1731]), xvi, 26. 61 Leibniz to Nicaise, 28 May 1697; in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols (Berlin: Georg Olms Hildesheim, 1960), ii, 569. Leibniz himself does not appear to have read the Letters, since he gets Norris’s views wrong (he implies that Norris supports a love of benevolence for God), and simply paraphrases the earlier praise of another correspondent. In a letter to Leibniz (4 May 1697), Thomas Burnet calls Astell ‘Miss Ash, a young girl of 20 years’ who ‘has written marvellously well on the subject [of our love of desire for God]’ (Leibniz, Philosophischen Schriften, iii, 199). I am extremely grateful to Paul Gibbard and Jillian Britton for their assistance in the translation of these passages. 62 Leibniz to Sophie, (autumn?) 1697; in Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence, ed. and trans. Lloyd Strickland, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2011), 175–6. 63 See John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1965), 185: ‘1914. MARRIAGE. Some reflections upon Marriage occasion’d by the Duke & Dess: of Mazarines case [By M. Astell].’

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copies of Astell’s Proposal and possibly the Norris-Astell Letters for his good friend, Damaris Masham: To Oates, Delivered to my Lady Masham Mrs Astels Proposal to ye Ladies Mr Norris’s letters.64

Locke ascribes the newly published Proposal to ‘Mrs Astel’, despite the fact that the work was issued anonymously (signed only ‘By a Lover of her Sex’), and at that stage her authorship was not widely known. But while Masham alludes (somewhat disparagingly) to Astell in one of her published works,65 Locke never mentions Astell again in any of his writings. There are, however, good reasons to think that Berkeley was well acquainted with Astell’s moral project. In 1714, a three-volume compilation titled The Ladies Library appeared in print, containing ‘General Rules for Conduct in all the Circumstances of the Life of Woman’.66 The selected works include several passages taken (without acknowledgement) from the works of some of the ‘greatest Divines’, men such as Jeremy Taylor, Richard Allestree, and François Fenélon.67 In the first volume of this work, in a chapter on ‘Ignorance’, there are several long passages (approximately 20,000 words) reprinted verbatim from Astell’s first and second Proposals.68 The passages contain Astell’s recommendations to women for acquiring a capacity for sound practical judgment. They include her distinction between knowledge, faith, and opinion, her criteria of truth and certainty (clear and distinct ideas), her six rules for thinking, and her ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God, among other topics. Though the title pages declare that The Ladies Library is ‘Published by Mr. Steele’, George Berkeley was in 64 ‘Journals of John Locke’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Locke MS f. 10, fol. 251. Both Letters Concerning the Love of God and A Serious Proposal to the Ladies were available in print in November 1694 (see Arber, Term Catalogues, ii, 518). 65 See Damaris Masham, A Discourse concerning the Love of God (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1696). Masham refers to Norris’s correspondent as ‘a young Writer, whose Judgment may, perhaps, be thought Byassed by the Affectation of Novelty’ (78). 66 The Ladies Library, 3 vols (London: [Jacob Tonson], 1714), ‘Preface’, A6v. 67 Ladies Library, ‘Preface’, A6r. In this period, copyright laws and citation practices were rather different to what they are today. Despite this, however, one publisher did accuse Steele of violating ‘the Right and Property every Bookseller hath to his Copies’; see Richard H. Dammers, ‘Richard Steele and The Ladies Library’, Philological Quarterly, 62/4 (1983), 530. 68 Compare Ladies Library, 435–522, and Astell, Proposal I, 64–72; Proposal II, 144–97. Greg Hollingshead notes that the third volume of the same work includes unidentified passages on ‘the importance of mothering and of education by the mother’ (Ladies Library, iii, 205–19). See Greg Hollingshead, ‘Sources for The Ladies’ Library’, Berkeley Newsletter, 11 (1989–90), 1–9 (9). These passages have certain Astell overtones, but they are in fact from Damaris Masham, Occasional Thoughts, In Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1705), 176–97.

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fact the original compiler of the three volumes.69 A contract dated 13 October 1713 bears witness to the fact that The Reverend Mr. George Berkley Hath made a Comon place or Collection out of the best English Authors wch He hath agreed to print with Jacob Tonson Junr in two or more Vols in 8o or 12o & wch is to be Intituled the Ladys Library &c for wch Collection or Comon place the sd Jacob Tonson hath paid & satisfy’d the said George Berkley.70

It is therefore likely that Berkeley recommended Astell’s Proposal for inclusion, and that Berkeley was the editor who excised Astell’s approving comments about Malebranche’s theory ‘that we see all things in God’.71 (In his own works, Berkeley was at pains to deny the Malebranchean doctrine of vision in God.) But Berkeley seems to have been supportive of Astell’s plans to bring about a moral reformation in women through an institute of higher education. One recent scholar suggests that Astell’s proposal to educate women had a discernible impact on Berkeley’s Bermuda project to provide the ‘savage’ Americans with an academic (rather than a merely practical) education.72 Astell’s feminist ideas also had a strong and immediate impact on other women in early modern England. At the start of the eighteenth century, a number of women either praised or emulated Astell in manuscript and print, including Mary Chudleigh,73 Mary Evelyn,74 Elizabeth Thomas,75 Mary 69

In the second edition of her Bart’lemy Fair, Astell seems to hold Steele responsible for the plagiarism. See [Mary Astell], An Enquiry After Wit: Wherein the Trifling Arguing and Impious Raillery Of the Late Earl of Shaftsbury, In his Letter concerning Enthusiasm, and other Profane Writers, Are fully Answer’d, and justly Exposed (2nd edn, London: John Bateman, 1722), A2v. For the claim that Berkeley was the true originator of the compilation, see Stephen Parks, ‘George Berkeley, Sir Richard Steele, and The Ladies Library’, The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 13/1 (1980), 1–2. 70 Parks, ‘George Berkeley’, 2. The transcription is taken from a manuscript in the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Yale University, New Haven. For a photographic reprint of the letter, see E. J. Furlong and David Berman, ‘George Berkeley and The Ladies Library’, Berkeley Newsletter, 4 (1980), 4–15 (4). 71 Compare Ladies Library, 476, and Astell, Proposal II, 165–6. 72 See Nancy Kendrick, ‘Berkeley’s Bermuda Project in Context’, in Bertil Belfrage and Richard Brook, eds., The Continuum Companion to Berkeley (New York and London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). I am extremely grateful to Professor Kendrick for providing me with a draft of this paper. 73 See Margaret J. M. Ezell, introduction in Mary Chudleigh, The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, ed. Margaret J. M. Ezell (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), xxviii– xxx; and Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 106–8. 74 In a letter to Ralph Bohun, dated 7 April 1695, Mary Evelyn says ‘I suppose Mr Norrises letters to the Seraphick Lady with her answers and the same Ladyes proposalls to the Ladyes in a litle treatise are not unknowne to you’. In a later letter to John Evelyn, dated 2 November 1695, Mary Evelyn then says of Astell that ‘the woman has a good Character for virtue and is very litle above twenty which adds to her praise, to be so early good and knowing’. For these letters, see British Library, London, the ‘Evelyn Papers’ (uncatalogued). 75 Elizabeth Thomas wrote a poem addressed ‘To Almystrea, on her Divine Works’. See [Elizabeth Thomas], Miscellany Poems On Several Subjects (London: Thomas Combes, 1722), 218–19. ‘Almystrea’ is an anagram of ‘Mary Astel[l]’.

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Wortley Montagu,76 the anonymous ‘Eugenia’,77 Elizabeth Elstob,78 and Sarah Chapone.79 Mary Chudleigh (1656–1710), in particular, seems to have had the greatest sympathy for the moral philosophy underlying Astell’s feminism. She seems to have known Astell personally and even dedicated a poem to her (‘To Almystrea’, an anagram of Mary Astel[l]).80 Chudleigh was the author of The Ladies Defence (1701), a work with a preface blaming the irrationality and foolishness of women on the inadequacies of their education. She also wrote Essays upon Several Subjects in Prose and Verse (1710), a collection of papers upon various moral subjects, such as the proper regulation of the passions, the virtue of friendship, and the best way to lead a good life. While she never mentions Astell’s works, there are several notable similarities between Astell’s moral views and those of Chudleigh in this text. A few years after Astell’s death, an anonymous work titled The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives (1735) appeared in print. This seventy-page treatise was the work of Sarah Chapone (1699–1764), a feminist thinker who later assisted George Ballard with his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752), a work that contains the first Astell biography.81 Chapone’s letters to Ballard attest to her familiarity with Astell’s Proposals and her Letters to Norris. Chapone’s close friend John Wesley, a founder of the Methodist religion, also recalls discussing Astell’s Proposal with Chapone one night in 1731. In a letter to Ann Granville, Wesley reports ‘the pleasure’ that he and his friends had recently in Stanton, Chapone’s hometown in Gloucestershire: ‘nor was it a small share of it which we owed to Mrs. Astell,’ he says, Our dear Sappho [that is, Chapone] showed us her Proposal to the Ladies, which gave us several agreeable conversations. Surely her plan of female life must have pleased all the thinking part of her sex, had she not prescribed so much of those two dull things, reading and religion. Reading, indeed, would be less dull, as well as more improving, to those who, like her, would use method in it; but then it would not rid them of so much time, because

76

See Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 108. Eugenia urges her readers to pursue true knowledge and follow the example of ‘Mr Norris’s Correspondent’. See Eugenia, The Female Advocate; Or, A Plea for the Just Liberty of the Tender Sex, and Particularly of Married Women (London: Andrew Bell, 1700), vii. 78 See Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 106, 109. 79 Ibid., 82. See also Susan Paterson Glover, ‘Further Reflections Upon Marriage: Mary Astell and Sarah Chapone’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming). 80 See Chudleigh, Poems on Several Occasions (1703), in Poems and Prose, 66–7. 81 George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (Who have been Celebrated for their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts and Sciences), intro. and ed. Ruth Perry (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 382–92. 77

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half a dozen books read in course would take up no more of that than one or two read just as they came to hand.82

But it appears to have been Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage, and not the Proposal, that had the greatest impact on Chapone’s feminist thought. Chapone’s Hardships is an appeal to King George II and both houses of parliament ‘for an Alteration or a Repeal of some Laws, which, as we conceive, put us [that is, married women] in a worse Condition than Slavery itself ’. In particular, Chapone calls for the establishment of reasonable and just safeguards for a wife’s personal and real property, and property in her children. In this respect, she builds on the critique of marriage at the heart of Astell’s Reflections.83 It is likely that Astell’s works had some influence on subsequent generations of women. Berkeley’s Ladies Library was tremendously popular and reissued several times in the eighteenth century—women would have read his selected passages from the Proposal well into the enlightenment period. Some scholars speculate that Astell’s feminist writings may have had a notable impact on the novelists Samuel Richardson and Sarah Scott.84 Astell’s reputation was also kept alive through Ballard’s account of her life and works in his Memoirs. In 1803, Mary Hays included Ballard’s entry on Astell in her Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), a six-volume history of learned women. Hays herself was a feminist thinker. In her Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (1798), she examines whether or not the superiority of men is a result of the eternal and immutable laws of nature. Like Astell, she concludes that if women are intellectually inferior, then this is only because men deny them the means to improve their natural abilities.

82 John Wesley to Ann Granville, 17–18 June 1731; in John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, xxv: Letters I, 1721–1739, ed. Frank Baker, Oxford Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 285–6. Baker notes that ‘Wesley’s diary shows that on May 29 he “read Mrs. Astell to V[aranese] and M. G.” (apparently Miss Nancy Griffiths of Broadway), and his accounts for that month indicate that he bought two copies (selling them separately in 1732); he read the book carefully June 7–9’ (Works of John Wesley, xxv, 285–6 n.). Wesley evidently inspired Granville to read the Proposal as well. In a letter to Wesley, dated 29 September 1731, Granville writes: ‘I have been much delighted with Mrs. Astell. I wish I had read her books sooner, and I would have endeavoured last winter to have been acquainted with her. For alas! among the many I am obliged to converse with how very few give anyone either pleasure or improvement!’ (Works of John Wesley, xxv, 316–17). 83 See Glover, ‘Further Reflections’. 84 See Derek Taylor, ‘Clarissa Harlowe, Mary Astell, and Elizabeth Carter: John Norris of Bemerton’s Female “Descendants” ’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 12/1 (1999), 19–38; Jocelyn Harris, ‘Philosophy and Sexual Politics in Mary Astell and Samuel Richardson’, Intellectual History Review, 22/3 (2012), 445–63; and Johanna Devereaux, ‘A Paradise Within? Mary Astell, Sarah Scott and the Limits of Utopia’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32/1 (2009), 53–67.

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INTRODUCTION

In the late nineteenth century, in the period known as ‘the first wave’ of feminism, Astell’s ideas were familiar to at least one key member of the suffragist movement, Harriett McIlquham (1837–1910).85 McIlquham was a feminist author in her own right and strongly committed to defending the political rights of married women both to vote and to serve in office.86 In the 1890s, while still politically active, she published two articles on Astell in the Westminster Review.87 Demonstrating a strong familiarity with Astell’s writings, McIlquham declares that ‘Mary Astell must be regarded as the pioneer of the modern “Women’s Rights” movement’.88 In her 1902 essay ‘Marriage: A Just and Honourable Partnership’, McIlquham follows in Astell’s footsteps by presenting a critique of marriage. In one passage, she echoes Astell’s Reflections when she says of the marriage vows that ‘the most ignorant man knows when he utters them that such a promise means next to nothing’, and that a wife is expected to be subservient ‘not only to the proper wishes, but even to the wrongdoing of the husband’.89 This leads some men to think that ‘they had only to marry, and then their wives become their slaves’.90 In the early twentieth century, Astell was also remembered as a feminist pioneer. In 1916, in her first book-length biography, Florence Smith supports the view that Astell was ‘the first defender of “the rights and privileges of her sex”’, at least to the extent that she endeavoured to bring in a new era for women.91 In her Three Guineas (1938), Virginia Woolf admires Astell as a woman who fought for female education ‘in spite of all the impediments that tradition, poverty and ridicule could put in its way’.92 Later, in the period known as ‘the second wave’ of feminism, in The Female Eunuch (1970) Germaine Greer

85

In 1881, McIlquham was an organizer for the Birmingham Grand Demonstration for a woman’s right to vote; in 1889, she was a founding member of the Women’s Franchise League in London; then in 1892 she joined the Women’s Emancipation Union. For details, see Linda Walker, ‘McIlquham, Harriett (1837–1910)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edition] (2004) accessed 13 November 2013. 86 On this topic, see Harriett McIlquham, The Enfranchisement of Women: An Ancient Right, A Modern Need (London: Women’s Emancipation Union, 1891). 87 Harriett McIlquham, ‘Mary Astell: A Seventeenth-Century Advocate for Women’, Westminster Review, 149/4 (1898), 440–9; and Harriett McIlquham, ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Astell’, Westminster Review, 151/3 (1899), 289–99. 88 McIlquham, ‘Mary Astell’, 445. 89 Harriett McIlquham, ‘Marriage: A Just and Honourable Partnership’, Westminster Review, 157/4 (1902), 433–42 (436). 90 McIlquham, ‘Marriage’, 440. Here McIlquham repeats the words of a local police magistrate. 91 Smith, Mary Astell, 164, 165. 92 Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (London: The Hogarth Press, 1947), 47, 275–6.

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includes a mistaken reference to ‘Astell’s’ argument for female intellectual abilities.93 In her recent, authoritative biography, Perry concludes that Astell’s ‘most significant and lasting contribution to the history of ideas has been her feminism, the by-product of her experiences as a woman in the Age of Reason. She would have been surprised to know what posterity has made of her, for she considered herself more a metaphysician than a projector, more a philosopher than a crusader.’94 I agree with Perry that Astell is tremendously important for her contribution to feminism. In this book, however, I regard Astell ‘the metaphysician and philosopher’ and Astell ‘the feminist projector and crusader’ as one and the same. In what follows, I demonstrate that her philosophy was purposively designed to bring about changes in the practical lives of women—to influence how they lived and how they conducted themselves in wider society. To the extent that future thinkers were influenced by Astell’s feminism, they were also influenced by her philosophy.

1.4 Outline of the Work This study proceeds in thematic order, from Astell’s epistemology to her theology and metaphysics, to her ethics, and then to her politics. In the next chapter, ‘Knowledge’, I explain the Cartesian–Neoplatonist epistemological foundations of Astell’s moral theory. I provide an insight into her method for acquiring knowledge, her recommendations concerning purity of mind, and her stance on the Malebranchean doctrine of ‘seeing all things in God’. I then show that Astell’s theory of knowledge provides crucial support for two core presuppositions of her moral theory: her arguments for the existence of God and for the immateriality of the soul. In Chapter 3 on ‘God’, I examine Astell’s ontological and cosmological arguments for the claim that an infinitely perfect being exists, and I analyse Astell’s argument for believing that the Bible is the word of God on grounds that closely resemble those of Pascal’s Wager. I show that these arguments provide valuable support for her view that a virtuous person lives her life in accordance with the will of God.

93 Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: Paladin, 1971), 101. The quotation is in fact from Judith Drake, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696), a work that is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Astell. On the Essay, see Johanna Devereaux, ‘ “Affecting the Shade”: Attribution, Authorship, and Anonymity in An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 27/1 (2008), 17–37. 94 Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 12. Unless otherwise indicated, all emphases throughout this book are in the original text.

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INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 4 on ‘Soul and Body’, I examine Astell’s argument for the real distinction between soul and body, an argument that borrows crucial precepts from Cartesian dualist arguments of the period. I also examine the question of whether or not Astell was an occasionalist with respect to body–soul causation (the causation of sensation). I explain that Astell’s arguments concerning the true nature of the soul ground her moral views about the cultivation of proper selfesteem and self-love. In Chapter 5 on ‘Virtue and the Passions’, I move from examining the foundations of Astell’s moral theory to the heart of that theory itself. I examine Astell’s philosophy of the passions or emotions, those perceptions that arise in the mind as a result of its close intermingling with the body. I demonstrate that, for Astell, the regulation of the passions is the key to attaining virtue, a disposition to feel and act in the right manner, toward the right ends, in accordance with right reason. I highlight the special significance of the passion of generosity, a feeling of justified self-esteem, for the ultimate attainment of happiness. In Chapter 6 on ‘Love’, I show that the passion of love occupies an exalted place in Astell’s moral philosophy. I examine her theory of love in the context of her project to bring about a moral reformation in women. By cultivating a genuine goodwill and loving kindness toward others, she says, a woman can obtain moral advancement on a personal level. In addition, this attitude of disinterested benevolence toward others can also lead to the advancement of women as a social group. In Chapter 7 on ‘Marriage’, I examine the ethical underpinnings of Astell’s views concerning marriage in light of her theory of love. I show that if we pay attention to the basic moral message of her Reflections, then it amounts to a critique of a particular kind of character exemplified by some married men—that is, a tyrannical disposition to indulge excessive, unregulated passions, to act from selfish desires rather than benevolent motives, and to degrade other members of society. I follow up the implications of Astell’s critique of male tyranny in the home for her views about political tyranny in the state. In Chapter 8 on ‘Moderation’, I show that Astell extends her moral views about virtue and happiness to her political arguments about the maintenance of peace and security in civil society. I show that she opposes the occasional conformists because these Protestant dissenters fail to exhibit moderation in the normative Aristotelian sense of the term. That is to say, they do not demonstrate a virtuous capacity to determine the most proportionate response to their circumstances. In her view, the toleration of occasional conformity thus threatens to lead England back to rebellion, civil war, and tyranny. I end this chapter by spelling out the implied lessons for women in Astell’s political pamphlets.

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In the final chapter, I highlight those aspects of Astell’s moral philosophy that might hold interest and relevance for feminist philosophers today. I conclude that there are some significant implications for writing Astell back into the history of philosophy. Her work shows (i) that recent feminist philosophizing about moral freedom has a strong historical precedent in the early modern period; and (ii) that when we incorporate a woman’s thought into the history of ethics, that history need not be seen as a narrative of stereotypically masculine concepts and theories.

2 Knowledge In 1693, Mary Astell lamented the fact that ‘knowledge is thought so unnecessary an Accomplishment for a Woman, that few will give themselves the Trouble to assist us in the Attainment of it’.1 A few years later, in her second Proposal, Astell herself took the trouble to provide guidelines for the acquisition of knowledge. She presented her female readers with ‘a Method of using our Reason so as to discover Truth’ and a means to attain ‘a stock of solid and useful Knowledge’.2 But Astell was not concerned with truth and knowledge in a purely theoretical sense: ‘Truths merely Speculative and which have no influence on Practice,’ she warned, are ‘an impertinent and criminal wast of Time.’3 She sought to help women acquire knowledge of what pertained to their true happiness or to their ‘Well-Living’, as she put it.4 She considered the subject of knowledge in a practical way, providing young ladies with a way in which to throw off the prejudices they had accumulated in the course of their upbringing, and to start anew. Women suffer from a ‘habitual inadvertency’, she says.5 Through the course of their upbringing, they have become ‘habituated’ to folly: ‘But how hard is it to quit an old road? What courage as well as prudence does it require?’6 Astell’s book is an instruction manual about how to quit that old road and go down a new path of self-improvement. Good habits of mind, she says, will help women to attain happiness in this world as well as in the next.7 Her theory of knowledge is designed to give women those habits of mind or the necessary mental dispositions to attain virtue and happiness. In the past few decades, commentators have characterized Astell’s epistemological approach in different ways. Some have called her a ‘Cartesian rationalist’

1 Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 87. 2 Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 209, 77. 3 4 5 Astell, Proposal II, 143. Ibid., 143. Astell, Proposal I, 68. 6 7 Ibid., 94–5. Ibid., 80.

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and an advocate of ‘Cartesian method’,8 while others have labelled her a ‘Cartesian Platonist’.9 These epithets capture some important aspects of Astell’s thought. First, Astell is certainly a rationalist insofar as she regards knowledge as founded on reason and not sensory experience. Like Descartes, she agrees that we can depend on the senses to assist us in the day-to-day preservation of our bodies.10 But she shuns the empiricist view that knowledge can be founded on ideas gained through sense experience—she builds her theory in opposition to this standpoint.11 In her enumeration of ‘the several ways of Knowing’, she omits the senses on the grounds that ‘we’re more properly said to be Conscious of than to Know such things as we perceive by Sensation. And also because that Light which we suppose to be let into our Ideas by our Senses is indeed very dim and fallacious, and not to be relied on till it has past the Test of Reason.’12 Second, Astell is certainly an adherent of Descartes’ criteria of truth and certainty, clear and distinct ideas. She cites his rule of evidence in a key passage of her second Proposal.13 When it comes to her ‘Cartesian method’, however, I think we must be careful to specify her support for Descartes’ method of judgment and not his method of doubt. In works such as the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason (1637), Descartes’ method of judgment is a way to overcome the prejudices of the senses and to avoid error by following careful rules for thinking; while the method of doubt is a special process whereby he holds back assent from opinions he finds reasons for doubting, in order to find something certain and indubitable. Astell never engages in a general demolition of her former opinions or a ‘willful doubting of all previous knowledge’ (as one scholar has suggested);14 she is never a sceptic, not even in a hypothetical sense. Strictly speaking, therefore, Astell’s feminist motivation

8

Hilda L. Smith, Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 119, 129; and Ruth Perry, ‘Radical Doubt and the Liberation of Women’, Eighteenth Century Studies, 18/4 (1985), 472–93 (479, 491). 9 Joan K. Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism’, The Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979), 60. 10 Astell, Proposal II, 164. 11 Some scholars have misleadingly described Astell as an empiricist. See, for example, Jane Duran , ‘Mary Astell: A Pre-Humean Christian Empiricist and Feminist’, in Cecile Tougas and Sara Ebenreck, eds., Presenting Women Philosophers (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2000), 147–54; and E. Derek Taylor, ‘Are You Experienced? Astell, Locke, and Education’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 181–92. But Astell can be described as an empiricist only in a rather loose, indeterminate sense of the term. In a later work, Duran concedes that Astell’s ‘devout Christianity prevents her from being an empiricist in the full philosophical sense’; see Jane Duran, Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, and Feminism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 86. 12 13 14 Astell, Proposal II, 150. Ibid., 172. Perry, ‘Radical Doubt’, 479.

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cannot be traced back to the concept of ‘radical doubt’ or an anti-authoritarian strain in her thought.15 In this chapter, I show that Astell’s moral epistemology owes a substantial debt not only to Cartesian ideas but also to certain Neoplatonist and Augustinian principles at work in the philosophies of Nicolas Malebranche and John Norris. In developing her methodology, as we will see, Astell departs from the standard Cartesian approach by emphasizing the importance of purity of mind— withdrawal from the senses, the regulation of the passions, and disengagement from the love of material things—as well as attentive prayers to God. In her mind, there is a close interdependence between the search for truth and the pursuit of virtue and the good.

2.1 Truth and Error So what is knowledge according to Astell? Let us begin with her formal definition, that Knowledge in a proper and restricted Sense and as appropriated to Science, signifies that clear Perception which is follow’d by a firm assent to Conclusions rightly drawn from Premises of which we have clear and distinct Ideas. Which Premises or Principles must be so clear and Evident, that supposing us reasonable Creatures, and free from Prejudices and Passions, (which for the time they predominate as good as deprive us of our Reason) we cannot withhold our assent from them without manifest violence to our Reason.16

This definition requires some explication of the concepts ‘perception’, ‘assent’, and ‘clear and distinct ideas’. Typically, for Astell, a perception is whatever is immediately present to the understanding; while assent is an act or operation of the will, ‘the deliberating and directive Power’ of the mind.17 In the attainment of knowledge, we might say that the faculty of the understanding is like a percipient witness in a trial, while the will is more like a jury member who must decide

15

Ruth Perry and Hilda Smith trace Astell’s critique of patriarchy back to the Cartesian method of doubt. See Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 332; and Hilda L. Smith, ‘ “Cry up Liberty”: The Political Context of Mary Astell’s Feminism’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 193–204 (204). 16 Astell, Proposal II, 149. In the early modern period, ‘science’ typically refers to the study of necessary and immutable things. Science as we now know it is called experimental or natural philosophy. On Astell’s careful distinction between science, faith, and opinion, see Deborah Boyle, ‘Mary Astell and Cartesian “Scientia”’, in Judy Hayden, ed., The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 99–112. 17 Astell, Proposal I, 80. For a useful discussion of these two faculties of mind (the will and the understanding) in Astell’s philosophy, see Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal: Mind, Method, and Custom’, Philosophy Compass, 2 (2007), 227–43 (esp. 228–31).

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whether to accept that witness’s testimony. The understanding is a passive faculty of ‘Receiving and Comparing Ideas’, while the will is ‘the Power of Preferring any Thought or Motion, of Directing them to This or That thing rather than to another’.18 Once the understanding has perceived that ‘such and such is the case’, the will is capable of either suspending or putting forward its assent or dissent— its agreement or disagreement with the ideas of the intellect. In Astell’s view, both the understanding and the will have their natural defects. The understanding is finite and limited in scope: it receives or compares the ideas that are presented to it, but it cannot take in all ideas. Being finite, the understanding cannot avoid being ignorant of some things, and it can never possess an infinity of truths.19 To the extent that the understanding can be perfected, however, its perfection consists in ‘the Clearness and Largness of its view’.20 The ideas of the understanding can become more ‘clear and comprehensive’, and hence we can make a concerted effort ‘to form clear Idea’s in the mind’ and to enlarge our number of ideas through reading, meditation, and conversation.21 Above all, the perfection of the understanding consists in the contemplation of truth, or clear and distinct ideas. In his Third Meditation, Descartes decides upon clear and distinct ideas as a general rule of evidence, or a criterion for truth and certainty.22 These provide the mark or character of what is certain, and in this respect they give Descartes a useful methodological tool: if we assent only to clear and distinct ideas, he says, then we can keep to the path of truth and attain the goal of clear and certain knowledge. His first example of such a clear and distinct idea is the cogito, or the realization that ‘I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind’.23 Astell borrows Descartes’ definitions of ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’ from his Principles of Philosophy. ‘I call a perception “clear”,’ he says,

18

Astell, Proposal II, 205. Ibid., 158–9. Specifically, Astell says that ‘Some sort of Ignorance . . . or Non perception we cannot help; a Finite Mind, suppose it as large as you please, can never extend itself to Infinite Truths’ (158–9). Here I interpret Astell as saying that, unlike God himself, finite beings can never possess a limitless number of ideas—they will necessarily be ignorant of many truths. One might also interpret Astell as expressing Malebranche’s view that nothing finite can represent the infinite. See Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. and ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 232, 318, 320. 20 21 Astell, Proposal II, 144. Astell, Proposal I, 88, 92; Proposal II, 160. 22 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), ii, 24. 23 Descartes, Meditations, 17. 19

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when it is present and accessible to the attentive mind—just as we say that we see something clearly when it is present to the eye’s gaze and stimulates it with a sufficient degree of strength and accessibility. I call a perception “distinct” if, as well as being clear, it is so sharply separated from all other perceptions that it contains within itself only what is clear.24

Likewise, for Astell, an idea is clear when it is immediately present to the attentive mind; and it is distinct when it is ‘so Clear, Particular, and Different from all other things, that it contains not any thing in it self which appears not manifestly to him who considers it as he ought’.25 We know that something is true when it does not permit us ‘to resist the force and Evidence it carries’,26 or we cannot withhold our assent from it ‘without manifest violence to our Reason’.27 In Astell’s view, the understanding is not properly at fault when we lapse into error. In some rare cases of jaundice, for example, a person might perceive a white object to be yellow in colour. It would be incorrect to say that this person is mistaken in her bare perception of, say, a yellow snowman—to her mind, it might be undeniably clear and distinct that the snowman looks yellow. But if she were to insist to other people that ‘this snowman is yellow’, then she would be in error: ‘we do not mistake when we say the Object appears Yellow to our Sight,’ Astell says, ‘tho’ we do, when we affirm that it does, or ought to do so to others.’28 The fault in the latter case lies with the will: ‘the Will and not the Understanding is blameable when we Think amiss.’29 One main defect of the will is that it assents to more than it perceives: instead of obeying the understanding, it rushes forward and makes hasty judgments.30 In the case of the jaundiced person who affirms that the snowman is yellow, she errs by judging beyond the scope of her ideas; she hastily assents to the idea that the yellow snowman corresponds to something outside of her mind, when it does not. Astell concludes that ‘properly speaking it is not the Idea but the Judgment that is False; we err in supposing that our Idea is answerable to something without us when it is not’.31 To attain truth and happiness, according to Astell, a woman must first address these twin defects of her mind: she must overcome her ignorance, and she must regulate her will according to her understanding. Astell allows that this is no easy matter. Her readers are presumably adults who have accumulated a large amount of moral and intellectual baggage over the course of their lives. Naturally, in their early years, they have sought happiness by taking the path that ‘Education, 24

Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in Philosophical Writings, i, 207–8. Astell, Proposal II, 172. Here she acknowledges her debt to ‘a Celebrated Author’: ‘Les Princip. del la Philosof. de M. Des Cartes Pt. I. }45’ (ibid.). 26 27 28 Astell, Proposal II, 135. Ibid., 149. Ibid., 169. 29 30 31 Ibid., 159. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 169; my italics. 25

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Example or Custom’ has placed them in.32 They have been encouraged to be that first female character type, ‘sunk into an Animal life wholly taken up with sensible objects’.33 In their daily routine, with the usual round of visits, cardplaying, gossiping, and intrigue, they are ‘buried alive in a crowd of Material Beings’;34 and their restless, excited passions make it difficult for them to discern the voice of truth. As a result, in their initial searches for knowledge, their failings are usually moral ones, such as laziness, sloth, pride, vanity, and mistaken selflove—the love of the body and public reputation, as taught by custom.35 ‘Custom,’ Astell says elsewhere, citing Plato, ‘is no small matter.’36 But a woman who says she lacks a capacity for self-improvement altogether must be ranked ‘amongst the Fools and Idiots, or but one degree above them’.37 If such women were truly irrational, then they would be mere mechanisms, acting only according to the will of their creator.38 But no rational creature can be without certain ‘Rudiments of Knowledge’, or the materials that will help her build clear and certain knowledge.39 ‘Thinking,’ Astell observes in a letter to Norris, ‘is a Stock that no Rational Creature can want, if they know but how to use it.’40 Women might attain truth and knowledge provided that they use their faculties rightly and consult the ‘Master who is within them’.41

2.2 Rules for Thinking Astell’s solution to the ‘ungenerous inglorious Laziness’ of her readers is partCartesian and part-Neoplatonic. To begin with, she maintains that her readers can attain truth and happiness provided that they follow reliable rules for thinking. Here are her rules: 1. To ‘Acquaint our selves throughly with the State of the Question, have a Distinct Notion of our Subject whatever it be, and of the Terms we make use of, knowing precisely what it is we drive at.’42

32

33 34 35 Ibid., 130. Ibid., 126. Ibid., 212. Ibid., 135, 136. Astell and Norris, Letters, 117. Astell possibly refers to Francis Bacon’s apophthegm no. 190: ‘Plato reprehended severely a young man for entering into a dissolute house. The young man said to him, “Why do you reprehend so sharply for so small a matter?” Plato replied, “But custom is no small matter.” ’ See Francis Bacon, Apophthegmes New and Old. Collected by the Right Honourable, Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban (London: [J. Haviland] for Hanna Barret, and Richard Whittaker, 1625), 208–9. 37 38 39 Astell, Proposal II, 202. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 128. 40 41 Astell and Norris, Letters, 69. Astell, Proposal II, 168. 42 Ibid., 176; emphasis reversed. 36

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2. To ‘Cut off all needless Ideas and whatever has not a necessary Connexion to the matter under Consideration.’43 This entails that we ‘Reason only on those things of which we have Clear Ideas’.44 3. ‘To conduct our Thoughts by Order, beginning with the most Simple and Easie Objects, and ascending as by Degrees to the Knowledge of the more Compos’d.’45 4. ‘Not to leave any part of our Subject unexamined.’46 This entails ‘Dividing the Subject of our Meditations into as many Parts, as we can, and as shall be requisite to Understand it perfectly’.47 5. Always to ‘keep our Subject Directly in our Eye, and Closely pursue it thro’ all, our Progress’.48 6. ‘To judge no further than we Perceive, and not to take any thing for Truth, which we do not evidently Know to be so.’49 Such recommendations are commonplace in the Cartesian literature of the period.50 Astell’s words recall Descartes’ own in his Discourse on the Method,51 as well as the sentiments of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole in their Logic, or the Art of Thinking, a work that Astell cites repeatedly in her Proposal.52 Nevertheless, in both phraseology and content, Astell’s rules perhaps bear the closest resemblance to those of John Norris in his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life (1690). Summarizing Malebranche’s rules in this work, Norris recommends that ‘the state of the Question to be solved is to be most distinctly Conceived’; ‘that we ought not to Reason but only of those things whereof we have clear Ideas’; ‘that we ought always to begin with the most simple and easie things, and also to dwell long upon them, before we advance to the inquisition of things more Complex and Difficult’; ‘that the matter of our Meditation is to be divided by parts, and those parts to be handled singly according to their Natural Order’; and that ‘in every step of this Intellectual Progress, we ought to have our 43

44 Ibid.; emphasis reversed. Ibid., 177; emphasis reversed. 46 Ibid.; emphasis reversed. Ibid.; emphasis reversed. 47 48 Ibid., 178; emphasis reversed. Ibid.; emphasis reversed. 49 Ibid.; emphasis reversed. 50 Consider, for example, the similarities between Astell’s rules no. six and three and François Bayle’s rules no. one and three: ‘never to receive any thing for true, which is not evidently known to be such’ and ‘orderly to conduct our thoughts, by beginning with the most simple and easily knowable Objects, and so by degrees to ascend to the knowledge of the more compounded’, in François Bayle, The General Systeme of the Cartesian Philosophy (Little Britain: Moses Pitt, 1670), 80. 51 See Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in Philosophical Writings, i, 120. 52 Astell, Proposal II, 166, 184, 189. See Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, trans. and ed. Jill Vance Buroker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 238. The Art of Thinking is heavily indebted to both Descartes’ Discourse and the manuscript of his Rules for the Direction of the Mind (first written in 1628). 45

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eye perpetually fix’d upon the State of the Question’.53 The similarities between Norris’s and Astell’s rules are not surprising given that, in her private letters to Norris, Astell expresses her esteem ‘for those necessary and useful Rules you have already prescribed’, and she remarks that ‘by observing the Rules you have already enrich’d the World with, I may possibly find out Truth, yet’.54 In his Reflections, however, Norris’s method consists in three things: an attentive application of the mind (facilitated by his rules for thinking), plus ‘Purity of Heart and Life’, and then prayer.55 In another letter, Astell applauds this threefold methodology, affirming that Norris has taught her that ‘Thinking’, together ‘with Purity and Prayer . . . is the way and method to true Knowledge’.56 In her first Proposal, she refers her readers to ‘the course of Study’ recommended in Norris’s Reflections;57 and in the second, she implicitly follows Norris by recommending purity of the soul as one of the ways in which to attain enlightenment. ‘Any eminent degree of Knowledge, especially of Moral and Divine Knowledge,’ she says, ‘can never be obtain’d without considerable degrees of Purity.’58 In sum, the Cartesian rules form only part of Astell’s general method to attain knowledge—they are not the whole story. For women, their selfimprovement requires not only that they follow rules for thinking, but also that they undergo a certain purification process, and that they engage in prayers to God.

2.3 Purity So what is purity or purification according to Astell? In his Reflections, Norris maintains that there is an interdependent relationship between knowledge and virtue, and ignorance and vice. He observes that ignorance typically proceeds from viciousness insofar as our vices obscure our understanding and prevent it from discerning clear and distinct ideas. In our search for truth, according to Norris, it is necessary to exercise that ‘Pythagoric and Platonic . . . Method of Purification and Purgation so much talk’d of by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus,

53 See John Norris, Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life: With Reference to the Study of Learning and Knowledge. In a Letter to the Excellent Lady, the Lady Masham (London: S. Manship, 1690), 76, 75, 78, and 81. For Malebranche’s original set of rules, see Malebranche, Search After Truth, 437–9. Also like Norris (and Malebranche), Astell gives six rules not four (as Descartes, Arnauld, and Nicole do). 54 55 Astell and Norris, Letters, 87, 76. Norris, Reflections, 71–2. 56 57 Astell and Norris, Letters, 69. Astell, Proposal I, 77–8. 58 Astell, Proposal II, 131. In Springborg’s edition, the word ‘Mortal’ appears to be an error in transcription. In the 1697 edition of Proposal II, this line reads ‘of Moral and Divine Knowlege [sic]’. See [Mary Astell], A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II: Wherein a Method is Offered for the Improvement of their Minds (London: Richard Wilkin, 1697), 33.

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and particularly by Hierocles’.59 The fifth-century Neoplatonist Hierocles states that ‘a Soul not yet Clarify’d and refined by Vertue is not qualify’d to gaze upon the Beauty of Truth’.60 In 1682, Norris published an English translation of Hierocles upon the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans. In this work, Hierocles reiterates the view that moral virtue and knowledge share a mutual relation: the mind cannot acquire truth until it has regulated the bodily passions, and yet it cannot regulate the passions until it has at least attended to the truth—especially divine truth.61 Following Norris and the Neoplatonists, Astell likewise underscores the interdependence of truth and virtue. She says that ‘Ignorance disposes to Vice, and Wickedness reciprocally keeps us Ignorant, so that we cannot be free from the one unless we cure the other. . . . She then who desires a clear Head must have a pure Heart; and she who has the first in any Measure will never allow herself to be deficient in the other.’62 The problem is that our moral failings, such as our pride and misplaced self-love, prevent us from embracing the truth. ‘When a Truth comes thwart our Passions, when it dares contradict our Mistaken Pleasures and supposed Interests,’ Astell says, ‘let the Light shine never so Clear we shut our Eyes against it, will not be convinced not because there’s any want of Evidence, but because we’re unwilling to Obey.’63 Purity comes by regulating the passions according to reason, and acquiring the virtues—those admirable character traits or human excellences such as humility and courage. Purity can be attained only by turning the mind away from the sensible world—the contingent, temporal, mutable world of material things. More specifically, it requires disengaging the will from the love of material things. Astell’s practical proposal—her ‘Monastery ’ or place of ‘Religious Retirement’ for women64—plays an important role in the attainment of purity. She calls her academy ‘a Retreat from the World’65 and ‘a convenient and blissful recess from the noise and hurry of the World’.66 Living in the world gives women strong ideas and ‘warm perceptions’ of its vanities;67 and ‘the Mind being prepossess’d and gratefully entertain’d with those pleasing Perceptions which external Objects occasion, takes up with them as its only Good.’68 Norris provides similar arguments in favour of ‘Solitude and Retreat’ and the pleasures of a purely contemplative life. 59

60 Norris, Reflections, 83. Ibid. See Richard Acworth, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1712) (New York: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim, 1979), 23. 62 Astell, Proposal II, 127. We might think that Astell’s views about the interdependence of truth and virtue raise a problem of circularity: in order to obtain the truth, we must first have virtue; but in order to obtain virtue, we must know the truth. I address this difficulty later in this volume, in Chapter 5, Section 5.1. 63 64 65 Astell, Proposal II, 130. Astell, Proposal I, 73. Ibid. 66 67 68 Ibid. Ibid., 90. Ibid. 61

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In the first part of his Theory, he observes that ‘the Noise of the World, and the Ingagements of Conversation strike hard upon our Senses’.69 The outside world is like a troublesome buzzing fly, diverting and distracting our thoughts with sensible impressions, so that we cannot attend to clear and distinct ideas. For Astell, too, ‘the hurry and noise of the World . . . does generally so busy and pre-ingage us, that we have little time, and less inclination to stand still and reflect on our own Minds.’70 In the world, the mind ‘forms all its Notions by such Ideas only as it derives from sensation, being unacquainted with those more excellent ones which arise from its own operations and a serious reflection on them.’71 She recommends that ‘We must therefore withdraw our Minds from the World, from adhering to the Senses, from the Love of Material Beings’.72 For Astell, the attainment of purity—or disengagement from the senses, the passions, and the love (or, more accurately, the desire) of material things—is an important precondition for the attainment of clarity and distinctness in thought. To grasp clear and distinct ideas, she says, we must withdraw ‘our selves as much as may be from Corporeal things, that pure Reason may be heard the better’.73 [W]e’re commonly too much under the power of Inordinate Affections to have our Understandings always clear and our Judgments certain, are too rash, too precipitate not to need the assistance of a calmer thought, a more serious review; Reason wills that we shou’d think again, and not form our Conclusions or fix our foot till we can honestly say, that we have without Prejudice or Prepossession view’d the matter in Debate on all sides, seen it in every light, have no bias to encline us either way, but are only determined by Truth it self, shining brightly in our eyes, and not permitting us to resist the force and Evidence it carries.74

69 John Norris, An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. Design’d for Two Parts. The First considering it Absolutely in it self, and the Second in relation to Human Understanding. Part I (London: S. Manship and W. Hawes, 1701), 443. Norris observes that even those who can think well ‘in the noise and hurry of a Conversable Life’ would still benefit from a ‘State of Solitude and Retirement, where by they have the full Liberty, and free use of their Thoughts, and all is quiet and serene about them’ (Theory I, 446). 70 71 72 Astell, Proposal I, 68. Ibid., 90. Astell, Proposal II, 161; see also 217. 73 Ibid., 164. This emphasis on ‘pure Reason’ casts doubt on Margaret Atherton’s claim that Astell highlights the general characteristics underlying all human thought processes, without distinguishing between the trained and untrained mind. See Margaret Atherton, ‘Cartesian Reason and Gendered Reason’, in Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds., A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), 19–34. On the contrary, it appears that, like Descartes, Astell maintains that truth is attained through rigorous psychological discipline. 74 Astell, Proposal II, 135. Springborg’s edition contains the unfortunate transcription error ‘with our Prejudice or Prepossession’ (135; my italics). I have corrected this against the original, which reads ‘without Prejudice or Prepossession’ (my italic). See [Mary Astell], A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II: Wherein a Method is Offered for the Improvement of their Minds (London: Richard Wilkin, 1697), 44.

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Some commentators have suggested that, in between the first and second Proposals, Astell discarded her plans for an academy.75 Some have speculated that this might have been a response to the suggestion that her academy would ‘imitate Foreign [that is, Catholic] Monasteries’.76 In the conclusion of her second Proposal, however, Astell once again makes the same case for the necessity of a seminary or place of retirement for single women. Responding to her critics, she says that it is not her intention to seclude her fellow women away from the world, but that a seminary is nevertheless desirable because ‘it is fit we Retire a little, to furnish our Understandings with useful Principles, to set our Inclinations right, and to manage our Passions’.77 The beauty of a religious retirement is that it focuses the attention of the female knower. Astell emphasizes that error proceeds from ‘want of attention, and a hasty and partial Examination’;78 ‘without Attention and strict Examination,’ she says, ‘we are liable to false Judgments’.79 The demands of the everyday world take up all our attention, they distract us, and keep us from serious inquiries. But strictly speaking the only prerequisite for the attainment of knowledge and purity is ‘an Attent and Awakened Mind’.80 The question naturally arises: to what should we direct our attention? Where should the unpurified mind begin? Astell’s answer invokes the standard subject matter of Cartesian philosophy: with God, our souls, and material beings. I know not any Subjects more proper for our Meditation on this and all occasions, than our own Nature, the Nature of Material Beings, and the Nature of GOD; because it is thro the mistake of some of these that our Inclinations take a wrong bias, and consequently that we transgress against GOD, our Neighbour and our selves.81

Above all, Astell recommends that her readers endeavour ‘to procure a lively relish’ of their true good, of God himself.82 The ‘GOD of Truth,’ she says, ‘is ready to lead us into all Truth, if we Honestly and Attentively apply our selves to him.’83

Sowaal, ‘Astell’s Serious Proposal’, 233. Astell, Proposal II, 232. According to legend, a well-to-do lady had expressed interest in backing Astell’s academy, but was talked out of it by Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury. In a letter to George Ballard, Astell’s friend Elizabeth Elstob says: ‘I don’t remember that I ever heard Mrs. Astell mention the good lady’s name, you desire to know, but I very well remember, she told me, it was Bishop Burnet that prevented that good design by dissuading that lady from encouraging it’ (Elstob to Ballard, 16 July 1738; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ballard MS 43, fol. 53). 77 78 79 80 Astell, Proposal II, 232. Ibid., 163. Ibid., 161. Ibid., 162. 81 82 83 Ibid., 210. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 163. 75 76

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 6/6/2015, SPi

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2.4 Vision in God On the connection between God and truth, Astell holds a number of views in common with Malebranche and his disciple Norris.84 Both these men attempt a synthesis of Cartesian philosophy with the principles of St Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430), and, in so doing, they reject key aspects of Descartes’ thought, such as his theory of the divine creation of eternal truths, our clear and distinct ideas of both the soul and God, and the Cartesian theory of innate ideas. In his first and largest work, The Search After Truth, Malebranche develops a theory of knowledge based on a distinctively Augustinian epistemological outlook.85 According to Augustine’s illuminationist theory of knowledge, created beings are entirely dependent on God for any ‘light’ that they receive in their minds. This is the case because truth consists in perfection—it is uncreated, immutable, eternal, and above all things. Yet only God can have such perfections; therefore, according to Augustine, truth must be God—all human knowledge is, strictly speaking, a form of divine revelation.86 Along similar lines, Malebranche maintains that all the ideas in our minds—all those representations that are immediately present to the understanding—are ‘seen’ in the mind of God (the theory known as ‘vision in God’). Our ideas are not produced or created by us: everything we know, every representational idea we have, partakes of an eternal archetype in the divine understanding. We are capable of perceiving these ideas only by virtue of our minds’ close and intimate union with God. ‘All our ideas,’ Malebranche says, ‘are located in the efficacious substance of the Divinity, which alone is intelligible or capable of enlightening us.’87

84 On the influence of Malebranchean philosophy on Astell’s thought, see E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Matter’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62/3 (2001), 505–22; Sarah Ellenzweig, ‘The Love of God and the Radical Enlightenment: Mary Astell’s Brush with Spinoza’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64/3 (2003), 379–97; and Jacqueline Broad, ‘Impressions in the Brain: Malebranche on Women, Women on Malebranche’, Intellectual History Review, 22/3 (2012), 373–89. Astell’s response to Malebranchean occasionalism is discussed in Chapter 4 of this volume. 85 On Augustine’s influence on Malebranche’s epistemology, see Andrew Pyle, Malebranche (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 5–9. 86 See Malebranche, Search After Truth, 233–4. 87 Ibid., 232. For recent English works on Malebranche, see Charles J. McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Steven Nadler, Malebranche and Ideas (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Tad M. Schmaltz, Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpretation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Steven Nadler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Pyle, Malebranche; and Susan Peppers-Bates, Nicolas Malebranche: Freedom in an Occasionalist World (London and New York: Continuum, 2009).

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Following Malebranche, Norris claims that all the ideas in our minds—whether they be eternal truths or ideas that represent material objects to us—are perceived by way of the divine ideas, or ideas in the mind of God. Norris comes to this conclusion via an argument by elimination.88 First, he asks, where do the ideas by which we understand come from? The various possible explanations are that these ideas come either from external objects or from ourselves, or that they are created by God himself or by our own souls, or lastly that they are the divine ideas, eternally existent and uncreated. Step by step, Norris offers reasons for rejecting the first four explanations as implausible or impossible. Like Augustine, he considers that the ideas by which we understand are necessary, eternal, and immutable in nature (a prime example being that of eternal truth itself). But, being contingent, temporal, and mutable beings, we ourselves cannot be the source of such ideas. There is nothing that is necessary, eternal, and immutable except the divine nature itself. Therefore, he concludes, the ideas whereby we understand, and the immediate objects of our minds, must be the divine ideas themselves.89 There is some evidence that Astell herself upholds Norris’s theory that ‘the divine ideas are the ideas whereby we understand’ (his expression for Malebranche’s ‘seeing all things in God’). In the second part of her Proposal, she cautiously observes that Whatever the Notion That we see all things in GOD, may be as to the Truth of it, ’tis certainly very commendable for its Piety, in that it most effectually humbles the most dangerous sort of Pride, the being Proud of our Knowledge; and yet does not slacken our Endeavours after Knowledge but rather Excites them.90

Throughout the second Proposal, she also affirms the following precepts: 1. Truth is eternal. (‘All Truth is Antient, as being from Eternity . . . ’)91 2. Truth is immutable (‘Reason and Truth are firm and immutable, she who bottoms on them is on sure ground.’)92 3. God is ‘immutable in his own Nature’.93 4. Eternal truths exist in the divine ideas (‘All Truth is Antient, as being from Eternity in the Divine Ideas, ’tis only New in respect of our Discoveries.’)94 88 See John Norris, An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. Being the Relative Part of it. Wherein the Intelligible World is consider’d with relation to Human Understanding. Whereof some Account is here attempted and proposed. Part II (London: S. Manship and W. Hawes, 1704), 329–421. This work is hereafter referred to as Theory II. 89 90 91 Norris, Theory II, 426–7. Astell, Proposal II, 166. Ibid., 137. 92 93 Astell, Proposal I, 71. Astell, Proposal II, 154. 94 Ibid., 137; my italics. Astell also notes that ‘the Divine Being who contains in himself all Reality and Truth is Infinite in Perfection’ (154).

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5. We are entirely dependent on God for our knowledge (‘Above all things we must be throughly convinced of our entire Dependance on GOD, for what we Know as well as for what we Are.’)95 Nevertheless, while these claims are consistent with the theory that all the ideas in our minds are in fact the divine ideas ‘by which we understand things’, they are also compatible with other early modern theories about the origin of ideas. The remark that ‘All Truth is Antient, as being from Eternity in the Divine Ideas’ is consistent with the Cambridge Platonists’ rationalist view that God has granted human beings with an active capacity to discern innate ideas in the mind. These ideas include those of eternal and immutable moral truths—such as the essential differences between just and unjust, good and bad, and so on—ideas that God himself has eternally in mind, as the archetypes by which he created the world.96 One scholar notes that Astell’s claim that we have an ‘entire Dependance on GOD, for what we Know’ sounds ‘suspiciously Malebranchean’.97 But this, too, is compatible with the orthodox Cartesian position that we depend, metaphysically speaking, on the divine sustenance for everything, not only for the constant conservation of our minds but also the innate ideas within them. To some extent, the claim ‘that we depend on God for everything’ is also a commonplace religious view of the time.98 In short, Astell’s aforementioned precepts are compatible with the notion that our ideas are epistemologically independent of the divine mind; they do not entail Malebranche’s Augustinian view that our minds are intimately united to God.

95 Ibid., 165. Astell also says that ‘All that variety of sublime Truths of Beautiful and Wondrous Objects which surround us, are nothing else but a various display of his unbounded Excellencies’ (154); and ‘in him [i.e., God] are all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge which he Liberally dispences to all who Humbly, Honestly and Heartily ask ’em of him’ (165). 96 See Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Or, An Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, intro. G. A. J. Rogers (2nd edn, London: J. Flesher, 1655; facs. edn, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997); Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part; Wherein, All the Reason and Philosophy Of Atheism is Confuted; And Its Impossibility Demonstrated (London: Richard Royston, 1678; facs. edn, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1964); and Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, ed. and introduction, Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 97 Ellenzweig, ‘Mary Astell and the Radical Enlightenment’, 389. 98 In her Discourse Concerning the Love of God, Damaris Masham accepts that human beings have this dependence on God, despite her fierce opposition to Malebranche and Norris’s theory of vision in God. Masham describes God as ‘our Creator, and great Benefactor, upon whom we depend every Moment, and from whom we receive all the Good that we injoy, and from whose Bounty we expect all that we hope for’; see [Damaris Masham], Discourse concerning the Love of God (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1696), 43–4.

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In her later work, however, Astell explicitly draws the conclusion that our perception of truth is a participation of God himself. In The Christian Religion, she says that True knowledge, and not science falsely so called, is a ‘divine thing,’ as an excellent pen has proved it. For to know is to perceive truth, and the perception of truth is a participation of God Himself who is the truth, and the participation of God is the perfection of the mind.99

Norris is the ‘excellent pen’ to whom Astell refers, and the passage in question appears in the second part of his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1704), where he says that since ‘truth is of a divine extraction, and has a real divinity in its nature, what a divine thing must all true science be’.100 Astell’s subsequent point likewise echoes Norris’s observation that ‘the Truth which we see is Divine, and . . . the knowledge which we have of Truth, is, in some degree, a participation of the Divine Nature, and a kind of possession of God himself.’101 Given Astell’s commitment to this view, she cannot really be described as a supporter of innate ideas.102 Our ideas are not born with us or naturally inherent in our minds; we understand ideas only by virtue of our participation in the mind of God. Astell goes on to say that necessary truths—especially truths that are necessary for us to know—are most proper to be contemplated, but that our ideas of ‘intelligible extension’ are not so useful or instructive.103 Here again Astell appeals to a Malebranchean concept: intelligible extension is the ideal counterpart of matter, or matter as an idea in the mind of God. Like Norris, Astell says that we must turn away from the study of material things in our search for truth and knowledge. It is only contemplation of ideas about God and our immortal souls that leads to true happiness. 99 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }262. Further in the same work, Astell says ‘I will not “conjecture” what makes some people so warm against the hypothesis of “seeing all things in God,” nor why after so much discourse about ideas, they are so hard to be reconciled to an ideal world. But this I may say with due submission to better judgments, that that hypothesis and what is built upon it, gives a better answer than any hypothesis I have met with, to the trifling and unreasonable objections . . . against the divinity of the son of God’ (}369). 100 101 Norris, Theory II, 485–6. Ibid., 485. 102 Several scholars have ascribed a theory of innate ideas to Astell. See, for example, Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 51; Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’, in Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), iii, 92; Patricia Springborg, Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 98; Sowaal, ‘Astell’s Serious Proposal’, 240 n. 6; and Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online encyclopedia], ed. Edward Zalta (Fall 2008) accessed 12 November 2013. 103 Astell, Christian Religion, }263.

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At this point, we might think that Astell faces a rather awkward problem of theodicy (of vindicating the ways of God to human beings). If God is the true source of all the ideas in our minds, then how is it that we sometimes have false ideas of things? In fact, if all our faculties of mind are created by a supremely perfect being, how is it that we are ever mistaken? This is the problem of error, or the epistemological equivalent of the problem of evil. It is a problem because if God is truly omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly benevolent, then presumably he has the knowledge, the power, and the goodwill to create human beings such that they never fall into error. Astell’s solution recalls both Descartes’ and Malebranche’s solutions to the same problem.104 Like them, she appeals to the idea that God has bestowed on human beings the gift of free will. For Astell, it is a greater perfection for human beings to attain knowledge through free choice rather than necessity, even if they sometimes go astray and choose amiss. The fault does not lie with God. In his goodness and wisdom, God has given human beings both the understanding and the will, two faculties of the mind that are able to receive truth and avoid error. The understanding naturally desires truth, and when it encounters clear and distinct ideas, the mind is compelled to accept them. Likewise, the will also naturally and necessarily seeks after good, ‘as the hungry Appetite does to its Food’.105 God has necessarily inclined our wills ‘towards Good in general, or towards himself, for he only is our True Good’.106 It is impossible for human beings voluntarily to choose something that is contrary to their good. The will is determined to the choice of ‘such things as are most agreeable’; it cannot will evil as such.107 When the understanding and the will are used correctly, then they are reliable and trustworthy guides to truth and happiness. But ‘instead of making right use of our Faculties,’ Astell observes, ‘we employ them in keeping it [truth] out.’108 This is because the will is free to give or withhold assent to the ideas of the intellect, but it often abuses its freedom. The problem, as we know, is that we exercise the will before we learn to reason.109 Through custom, we get a wrong bias for particular goods—such as fine clothes, a husband, and a wealthy estate—and as a result the will does not desire its true good.110 104

See Descartes, Meditations, 38–41; Malebranche, Search After Truth, xxxvii. Astell and Norris, Letters, 116. 106 Astell, Proposal II, 205. Astell also says that ‘the only Natural Motion of the Will’ is to the good (Proposal II, 144); this echoes Norris’s sentiment in the Letters (119, 120). On the Malebranchean aspects of Astell’s concept of the will, see Broad, ‘Impressions in the Brain’. 107 Astell, Proposal II, 205; Astell and Norris, Letters, 120. 108 109 Astell, Proposal II, 175. Ibid., 206. 110 Ibid., 207. In all the aforementioned respects, Astell affirms Malebranche’s view that ‘God never deceives those who consult Him with serious purpose and with their mind turned fully toward 105

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To attain wisdom and happiness, according to Astell, a woman must methodically exercise her freedom of will. Throughout her works, she calls for the ‘liberation’ of the female sex from the ‘tyranny’ of men. She urges her readers to ‘have a greater share of sense, whatever some Men affirm, to be content to be kept any longer under their Tyranny in Ignorance and Folly, since it is in your Power to regain your Freedom, if you please but t’endeavour it.’111 In Astell’s view, women have for too long been taught to think and feel as others think and feel, and never to make judgments for themselves. In her Christian Religion, she writes that Perhaps I may be thought singular in what I am about to say, but I think I have reason to warrant me, and till I am convinced of the contrary, since it is a truth of great importance, I shall not scruple to declare it, without regarding the singularity. I therefore beg leave to say, that most of, if not all, the follies and vices that women are subject to (for I meddle not with the men) are owing to our paying too great a deference to other people’s judgments, and too little to our own, in suffering others to judge for us, when God has not only allowed, but required us to judge for ourselves.112

For Astell, women are unfree when they cannot exercise their power to give or withhold assent to the ideas of the understanding—when they cannot judge for themselves. A free agent is one who can determine the motions of her mind ‘this way or that’ according to her own pleasure, while a necessary agent ‘has no command over its own motions, but is absolutely governed by a foreign cause’.113 To attain freedom, she says, women must avoid being ‘over-persuaded and overruled’ by those men who seek to govern or enslave them.114 Women can assert their freedom by suspending their judgments about certain ideas, or withholding their assent, till they have attained clarity and distinctness of perception.115 Once women have regained the power to think for themselves—by following Astell’s threefold method of right thinking, purity, and prayer—they will be capable of affirming the true and the good in all their practical judgments. They will become wise, virtuous, and happy women. We have seen that Astell’s strict definition of knowledge is ‘that clear Perception which is follow’d by a firm assent to Conclusions rightly drawn from Premises of which we have clear and distinct Ideas’.116 For Astell, the main obstacles on the path to such knowledge are the defects of the understanding Him, although He does not always make them hear His responses; but when the mind turns from God and expends itself externally, when it consults only its body to be instructed in the truth, when it listens only to its senses, imagination, and passions, which speak to it constantly, then it must of necessity be deceived’ (Search After Truth, xxxvii). 111 114

112 Astell, Proposal II, 121. Astell, Christian Religion, }45. 115 116 Ibid., }47. Astell, Proposal II, 159. Ibid., 149.

113

Ibid., }78.

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(such as ignorance due to a poor education) and defects of the will (such as an irregular tendency to follow the passions and the senses rather than reason). To avoid error, a woman must assent only to clear and distinct ideas, and perfect her mind by regulating the will and directing it toward its proper good, the good in general or God himself. The problem is that women are habituated to folly: they do not have the right tempers or moral dispositions to engage in the search for knowledge. Astell’s proposal for a female academy is a necessary step in the reformation or reprogramming of women’s minds, to help women purify their minds and acquire the necessary capacity for attention. Such attentiveness leads to the purification of the mind, eventually resulting in its withdrawal from the senses, the regulating of the passions, and a disengagement of the will from the desire of material things. This requires that women begin by contemplating the good in general or God himself. ‘He who gave us these Dispositions,’ Astell says, ‘will excite us to the Use and Improvement of ’em; and unless we drive him from us by our Impurity, or thro negligence and want of Attention let slip his secret Whispers, this Master within us will lay most in our view such Lessons as he wou’d have us take.’117 On the whole, these sentiments—a blend of Cartesian, Neoplatonist, and Malebranchean-Augustinian principles—constitute the epistemological foundations of Astell’s wider moral theory. On these grounds, as we will see in the coming chapters, Astell develops her arguments for the existence of God, for the real distinction between soul and body, as well as her theories about virtue and the passions, love and friendship, and her wider feminist and political views.

117

Ibid., 156.

3 God Astell’s rules for thinking, as well as her recommendations concerning purification of the mind and contemplation of the divine, are designed to bring her readers to the recognition of a fundamental truth: the fact that living in conformity with the will of God will lead to happiness, both in this life and the next. Accordingly, we might expect that Astell would provide an argument for the existence of God in her works. As it turns out, she provides at least three. The first argument appears in the second Proposal in the form of an ontological argument—an argument for the existence of God that is supposed to be based on premises that can be known a priori or independently of empirical observation.1 In the same work, close on the heels of this ontological proof, she formulates a cosmological argument—an argument for the existence of God based upon observations about the world or ‘cosmos’.2 In The Christian Religion, she repeats this pattern of backing up an ontological argument with cosmological proof.3 Then in her final work Bart’lemy Fair, she omits the ontological argument altogether in favour of a cosmological argument with teleological support (premises that appeal to the complexity or intelligent organization of the world).4

1

Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 180. On ontological arguments more generally, see Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5; and Graham Oppy, ‘Ontological Arguments’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online encyclopedia], ed. Edward Zalta (Winter 2012) accessed 13 November 2013. Such arguments became known as ‘ontological’ arguments only after Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1787). 2 Astell, Proposal II, 181. On cosmological arguments, see William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 3. 3 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }}7–10. 4 [Mary Astell], Bart’lemy Fair: Or, An Enquiry after Wit; In which due Respect is had to a Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, To my LORD *** (London: Richard Wilkin, 1709), 116–17.

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Few scholars have clarified or critically examined Astell’s arguments for the existence of God.5 In this chapter, I begin by providing an exegesis of her ontological and cosmological arguments. Curiously, none of these arguments receives pride of place in the texts in question. The Proposal arguments seem to be mere pedagogical devices or instructive examples of her rules for thinking put to good use. The Christian Religion arguments occur in the first few ‘axiomatic’ pages, but are stunningly brief and simple. And the Bart’lemy Fair proofs are addressed in passing to atheists and libertines, rather than her usual audience— women who have been taught to believe without knowing why. There is no doubt, however, that the fact that God exists, and that human beings have certain obligations to him, are crucial presuppositions in her moral philosophy. While Astell might not be overly concerned about convincing others that there is a God (presumably most of her contemporaries already believed in him anyway), she is concerned about convincing them to live in accordance with the divine law, as revealed through reason and scripture. To illustrate this last point, in this chapter I highlight Astell’s justifications for belief in revealed religion or revelation—in particular, her argument for assenting to the evidence of testimony, and her Pascal’s Wager-style argument for the view that although we might never know with metaphysical certainty that the scriptures reveal the divine law, for prudential reasons it is better that we will ourselves to believe that this is the case and live accordingly. I conclude the chapter by spelling out the crucial role that God plays in Astell’s wider moral project to guide women to happiness. We will see that the bringing of her female readers to the explicit recognition that God is infinitely wise and perfectly benevolent has a specific consciousness-raising purpose in Astell’s work. Only with a proper understanding of God’s attributes, she says, will women come to see that ‘God does nothing in vain, he gives no Power or Faculty which he has not allotted to some proportionate use, if therefore he has given to Mankind a Rational Mind, every individual Understanding ought to be employ’d in somewhat worthy of it’.6 Here once again, then, Astell’s philosophical arguments are designed to help her

5 For brief discussions of Astell’s proofs, see Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online encyclopedia], ed. Edward Zalta (Fall 2008) accessed 12 November 2013; and Eileen O’Neill, ‘Astell, Mary (1666–1731)’, in Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 10 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), i, 527–30. Marcy Lascano has a forthcoming paper, ‘Mary Astell on the Existence and Nature of God’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). I am extremely grateful to Professor Lascano for sending me an early version of her paper. 6 Astell, Proposal II, 168.

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fellow women avoid being ‘sunk into an Animal life’ and to live in accordance with reason.7

3.1 The Ontological Arguments In late seventeenth-century England, the ontological argument for the existence of God enjoyed a brief renaissance following Descartes’ reformulations in his Discourse on the Method, the Meditations on First Philosophy, his First, Second, and Fifth Replies, and The Principles of Philosophy. In bare outline, the Cartesian proofs typically begin with an idea of God as a supremely perfect being, before identifying existence as a perfection, and then concluding that a supremely perfect being must have the perfection of existence: God must exist. Astell’s ontological arguments follow a similar logic. In her second Proposal, she begins by observing that we have a clear idea in our minds of God as infinite perfection or as ‘a being infinitely perfect’.8 Then she asks: But if it be made a Question Whether there is a GOD, or a Being Infinitely Perfect? We are then to Examin the Agreement between our Idea of GOD and that of Existence. Now this may be discern’d by Intuition, for upon a View of our Ideas we find that Existence is a Perfection, and the Foundation of all other Perfections, since that which has no Being cannot be suppos’d to have any Perfection. And tho the Idea of Existence is not Adequate to that of Perfection, yet the Idea of Perfection Includes that of Existence, and if That Idea were divided into parts, one part of it wou’d exactly agree with This. So that if we will allow that Any Being is Infinite in All Perfections, we cannot deny that Being Exists; Existence it self being one Perfection, and such an one as all the rest are built upon.9

Her argument can be formulated thus: 1. I have a clear idea of God as an infinitely perfect being. 2. Existence is a perfection (because ‘that which has no Being cannot be suppos’d to have any Perfection’). 3. If any being is infinite in all perfections, then we cannot deny that being exists. 4. Therefore, we cannot deny that God exists. 7

Ibid., 126. Ibid., 179–80. Astell was possibly familiar with a late seventeenth-century English translation of the Meditations: René Descartes, Six Metaphysical Meditations; Wherein it is Proved That there is a God. And that Mans Mind is really distinct from his Body, trans. William Molyneux (London: B. G. for Benjamin Tooke, 1680). This text explicitly appeals to ‘a being infinitely perfect’ (Descartes, Metaphysical Meditations, 45, 75). 9 Astell, Proposal II, 180. 8

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At first glance, it must be said, this argument appears to be rather weak. There are no stated premises that allow Astell to bridge the divide between ideas in the mind and objects in the real world, and so it would seem that we can easily deny that there is a being infinite in all perfections in reality. It might be the case that whenever we entertain the idea of an infinitely perfect being in our minds, we must also think of him as having the perfection of existence; but it does not follow that this being necessarily exists in the real world.10 In the Fifth Meditation and his Replies, Descartes defends his ontological argument by emphasizing that we can infer God’s necessary existence from our clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being. He invokes the rule that whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to a thing really does belong to that thing, and then he deduces God’s existence from the fact that he has a clear and distinct idea of God’s true and immutable nature as a supremely perfect being, a being that does not depend on anything else for its existence.11 But Astell is unable to defend her ontological argument with appeal to the criteria of clarity and distinctness. In the Proposal, she observes that ‘we may have a Clear, but not a Distinct and Perfect Idea of God’, because he is infinite and the human intellect is only finite.12 In The Christian Religion, she further asks ‘Who can pry into the divine essence or understand any more of it than God condescends to impart?’ and ‘Would she not be extravagantly impertinent and silly beyond measure, should she pretend to comprehend the divine nature’?13 Here again she recalls the sentiments of Norris and Malebranche, both of whom maintain that we do not gain an understanding of God’s essence through clear and distinct ideas, but rather through an ‘interior sentiment’ or an inward feeling. Astell likewise suggests that we can have a perception of God in the sense that he is immediately present to the intellect, but we do not know him through clear and distinct ideas. 10

In the First Objections, the Dutch theologian Johannes Caterus raises a similar criticism of Descartes’ Fifth Meditation argument. Caterus says that: ‘Even if it is granted that a supremely perfect being carries the implication of existence in virtue of its very title, it still does not follow that the existence in question is anything actual in the real world; all that follows is that the concept of existence is inseparably linked to the concept of a supreme being.’ See ‘First Set of Objections’, in René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), ii, 72. 11 Descartes, Meditations, 44–5. 12 Astell, Proposal II, 173. On this point, Deborah Boyle notes that ‘It is perhaps unsurprising that Astell would maintain that we cannot have a distinct idea of God, for if God is infinite, then the idea of God presumably contains an infinite number of other ideas, and no finite thinker could perceive them all.’ See Deborah Boyle, ‘Mary Astell and Cartesian “Scientia” ’, in Judy Hayden, ed., The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 105. 13 Astell, Christian Religion, }}26, 17.

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Astell’s ontological argument does not completely lack epistemological support, however. In the last chapter, we saw that for Astell our perceptions are reliable guides to truth provided that we contemplate those perceptions in ideal epistemic conditions. She recommends that her reader first applies the appropriate rules for thinking in the search for truth. Among other things, the reader must reason upon clear ideas alone, and she must not judge any further than she perceives, or affirm anything as true that is not evidently known to be so.14 The reader must also purify her mind by withdrawing her understanding from the senses, regulating her passions, and disengaging her will from the desire of material things. In the Proposal, Astell’s ontological argument directly follows her first explication of the six rules. In formulating her proof, then, she presupposes that her reader is making an effort to follow those rules, to attain purity of mind, and to pay proper attention to her idea of God. In these ideal circumstances, when the reader clearly perceives that her idea of God contains that of existence, presumably then God’s existence cannot be denied, according to Astell. In }}7–8 of The Christian Religion, Astell describes this exercise of attentively turning to God, in the process of formulating a second ontological argument. ‘When I think of God,’ she says, ‘I can’t possibly think Him to be any other than the most perfect being; a being infinite in all perfections.’15 If we were to enumerate those perfections, our list would undoubtedly include the virtues of wisdom, goodness, justice, and holiness. Then we must allow that in order to be infinitely wise, good, just, and holy, this being must also have the attributes of omnipresence and omnipotence. Finally, we must add to our list the perfection of self-existence ‘as being the original and basis of all the rest’ and ‘such a perfection as necessarily includes all other perfections’.16 God is self-existent in the sense that he does not derive his being from anyone but himself.17 He must have this perfection because ‘there can be no absolute and infinite perfection but where there is self-existence’.18 If God derived his existence from something else, then he would not be perfect. We might think that he would lack the perfection of omnipotence, for example, because something else would have equal or greater power than him. In The Christian Religion, Astell once again tells her readers that they can know that God exists, provided that they make a right use of their reason, and withdraw themselves ‘from the noise and hurry of the world’, to apply themselves to serious

15 16 Astell, Proposal II, 177, 178. Astell, Christian Religion, }7. Ibid., }}7, 8. In Bart’lemy Fair, Astell further remarks that ‘a Being whose Existence is Necessary Cannot, and certainly he who is Self-Existent will not, Annihilate himself ’ (Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 116). 18 Astell, Christian Religion, }8. 14 17

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reflections.19 God will always provide ‘a perception of Himself ’, she says, ‘to those minds that reverently and attentively turn towards Him’.20 Any creature, even the very meanest ‘who uses his reason can’t but perceive the existence of God, which is so bright and obvious a truth that it manifests itself to all understandings’, if only ‘they will but apply themselves to it’.21 The fact that God exists can be known by those readers who have extirpated their prejudices and engaged in an attentive application of their minds toward God. In light of these presuppositions, Astell’s ontological argument appears to face a problem of circularity.22 If the ontological proof relies on the fact that God himself guarantees the truth of its premises—by providing ‘a perception of Himself ’ in ideal epistemic conditions, that is—then this would seem to beg the question. Wouldn’t we already have to accept that God exists, in order to affirm the truth of the proposition that an infinitely perfect being necessarily exists? Astell makes no real effort to address this concern. In her Proposal, she simply concedes that some readers might have difficulty accepting her ontological argument. ‘Unreasonable Men’, she says, might ask: ‘And tho it be true that that Being who has all Perfection must needs Exist, yet where’s the Necessity of an All-Perfect Being?’23 They might also ask: why does infinite perfection have to be confined to one being? Couldn’t perfection be distributed among many existing things, for example? Or a compound creature?24 In response to these difficulties, Astell makes a surprising move—instead of defending her ontological proof, she invokes the cosmological argument.

3.2 The Cosmological Arguments One might wonder why Astell offers an ontological proof at all, given that her cosmological argument, if successful, renders that proof unnecessary and gratuitous. But there are good strategic reasons for Astell to offer a variety of

20 21 Ibid., }9. Ibid., }117. Ibid., }120. Marcy Lascano also raises a circularity objection in her analysis of Astell’s arguments for the existence of God. See Lascano, ‘Astell on the Existence and Nature of God’, forthcoming. 23 Astell, Proposal II, 180; italics reversed. In his Antidote Against Atheism (1655), the Cambridge Platonist Henry More entertains a similar criticism: ‘viz. That indeed this Idea of God, supposing God did exist, shews us that his Existence is necessary, but it doth not shew us that he doth necessarily exist’. See Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Or, An Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, intro. G. A. J. Rogers (2nd edn, London: J. Flesher, 1655; facs. edn, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 29. 24 Astell, Proposal II, 180. 19 22

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arguments for the existence of God. To grasp the ontological argument, as we have seen, it is necessary for the reader to achieve a certain psychological discipline and purity of mind. In works such as the Proposal and The Christian Religion—works designed to instruct the uneducated female reader—Astell cannot assume that everyone will be enlightened upon a first reading. There may be ‘as great a variety in Minds as there is in Faces,’ she says, ‘and tho All Truth is amiable to a Reasonable Mind, and proper to employ it, yet why may there not be some particular Truths, more agreeable to each individual Understanding than others are?’25 Some minds may take longer than others to arrive at fundamental truths. Some minds might simply deny that they can have a clear idea of an infinitely perfect being at all.26 And so Astell also provides premises that an untrained mind can accept without difficulty, premises based on simple empirical observations about the physical world, or premises that start with brute facts, such as that ‘there is something rather than nothing’ or that ‘I exist’. Cosmological arguments begin with such premises. Cosmological arguments typically start with some kind of fact or observation about the cosmos (such as that it is created or contingent), and then proceed either deductively or inductively to the view that there is a first cause or a necessary being. They usually have two components: an argument for the existence of a necessary, self-existent being, and an argument for the view that this necessary, self-existent being has all the attributes of the theistic God.27 Astell gives at least two different kinds of cosmological argument in her works. First, there is some resemblance between her arguments and St Aquinas’s Third Way in his ‘Five Ways’ of the Summa Theologiae—the argument for the necessity of a first cause. Second, her arguments have features in common with those of her immediate contemporaries, such as Locke’s cosmological argument in his Essay (IV.x.1–19), and Samuel Clarke’s in his Demonstration of the Being and

25 Ibid., 153. She makes a similar point in The Christian Religion: ‘There is as great variety in understandings as in faces, they have not all the same beauties nor the same defects, but every genius has its particular turn, and therefore the same course of study is not equally fit for everyone’ (}261). 26 Along these lines, in the Essay, Locke writes of the ontological argument that ‘in the different Make of Mens Tempers and Application of their Thoughts, some Arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the Confirmation of the same Truth. But yet, I think, this I may say, that it is an ill way of establishing this Truth, and silencing Atheists, to lay the whole stress of so important a Point as this upon that sole Foundation: and take some Mens having that Idea of God in their Minds (for ’tis evident some Men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very different) for the only Proof of a Deity’; see John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), IV.x.7. All my subsequent references to Locke’s Essay are to book, chapter, and section numbers in this text. 27 Rowe, Cosmological Argument, 5–6.

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Attributes of God (1705).28 Their arguments purport to explain the existence of certain perfections in the world by appealing to a superior or higher cause. Astell’s Proposal argument is presented in the following way. If the unreasonable mind will demand why the infinitely perfect being must be simple and not compound, she responds that . . . those Many whose Particular Ideas it wou’d have joyn’d together to make a Compound one of All-Perfection, are no other than Creatures, as will appear if we consider our Idea of Particular Being and of Creature, which are so far from having any thing to distinguish ’em, that in all Points they resemble each other. Now this Idea naturally suggests to us that of Creation, or of a Power of giving Being to that which before the exerting of that Power had none, which Idea if we use it as a Medium, will serve to discover to us the necessity of an All-Perfect Being. For in the first place, whatever has any Perfection or Excellency (for that’s all we mean by Perfection here) must either have it of it self, or derive it from some other Being. Now Creatures cannot have their Perfections from themselves because they have not their Being, for to suppose that they Made themselves is an Absurdity too ridiculous to be seriously refuted, ’tis to suppose them to Be and not to Be at the same time, and that when they were Nothing, they were able to do the greatest Matter. Nor can they derive either Being or Perfection from any other Creature. For tho some Particular Beings may seem to be the Cause of the Perfections of others, as the Watch-maker may be said to be the Cause of the Regular Motions of the Watch, yet trace it a little farther, and you’l find this very Cause shall need another, and so without End, till you come to the Fountain-head, to that All-Perfect Being, who is the last resort of our Thoughts, and in whom they Naturally and Necessarily rest and terminate.29

In simple outline, the argument can be formulated thus: 1. I have an idea of a creature (or ‘particular being’) with certain perfections. 2. This idea of a creature naturally suggests that of a first and true cause (that is, something with the ‘power of giving being to that which before the exerting of that power had none’). 28 These authors, in turn, follow the logic of Ralph Cudworth’s cosmological argument in his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). See J. J. MacIntosh, ‘The Argument from the Need for Similar or “Higher” Qualities: Cudworth, Locke, and Clarke on God’s Existence’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 16 (1997), 29–59. Astell was undoubtedly familiar with Locke’s Essay (see Astell, Proposal II, 191 n. 3), and there is also reason to think that she was familiar with Clarke’s Demonstration. A few months after the publication of Clarke’s work, in her Christian Religion, Astell refers disapprovingly to ‘those bold discourses about the nature and attributes of God’, and those authors who deny God ‘to be infinite in all perfections, either directly or by consequence’ (Astell, Christian Religion, }151). In his text, Clarke denies that the certainty of God’s existence can be grounded on an idea or definition of God as ‘a being of all possible perfections’; see Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, and Other Writings, ed. Ezio Vailati, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16. 29 Astell, Proposal II, 180–1.

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3. Either the creature itself was the first and true cause of its own being and perfections or some other being was the first and true cause of its being and perfections. 4. The creature cannot be the first and true cause of its own being and perfections because this would entail a contradiction (that is, ‘’tis to suppose them to Be and not to Be at the same time, and that when they were Nothing, they were able to do the greatest Matter’). 5. [Unstated.] The first and true cause of a creature’s being and perfections must be self-existent (it must not depend ontologically on anything else for its existence). 6. Other creatures cannot be the first and true cause of the creature’s being and perfections (they are not self-existent). 7. Only an all-perfect being (a being of ‘infinite perfection’) can be selfexistent. 8. Therefore, an all-perfect being is the first and true cause of the creature’s being and perfections. 9. Therefore, an all-perfect being exists. In support of the sixth premise, Astell points out that the supposition that another created thing was the cause of a creature’s being and perfections leads to an infinite regress of causes (what caused that creature? And that creature? And that one?), which must eventually terminate in a ‘last resort’, or else risk absurdity. This is a typical argumentative feature of Thomist cosmological arguments.30 Her premise relies on the idea that an infinite regress without a last resort is intuitively implausible—it contravenes our basic intuition that something cannot come from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit). The last resort, according to Astell, must be a ‘Self-Existing Being, who is the Maker and Lord of all things’ and ‘the First and only True Cause, without whom it is impossible that any thing should ever have Existed’.31 A much shorter cosmological argument in The Christian Religion follows this same line of reasoning. It is essentially the same argument except that Astell puts herself in the shoes of someone who has been ‘shut up in a den’ from early childhood. If this person were capable of reasoning, Astell says, she would ask herself: ‘from whence had I my being?’ Using her reason alone, she could then immediately discount the idea that she owed her being to other human beings, creatures ‘who are as weak, as precarious as I am’.32 Instead, she would be forced

30 See William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument From Plato to Leibniz (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1980), 283–6. 31 32 Astell, Proposal II, 181, 182. Astell, Christian Religion, }10.

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to trace her origins—and the origins of all humankind—back to ‘a last resort’, a self-existing being: That there is a self-existing being is evident to the meanest understanding, for without it there could have been no men, no world, no being at all; since that which once was not, could never make itself; nor can any being communicate that to another which it has not itself. Therefore the self-existing being must contain all other perfections, therefore it must be an intelligent being, and therefore it must be God. Hence I conclude, ‘that God only is,’ and that all beings beside His, are only the mere creatures of His will.33

Later, in Bart’lemy Fair, Astell clarifies some of the above remarks. This work has a different target audience to that of the Proposal and The Christian Religion: it is directed at those thinkers who deny the existence of God. She challenges atheists and libertines to explain ‘from whence the World had its being’. Again, she says, it must be concluded that whatever brought the world into being has the attribute of self-existence or necessary existence. This is the case because if there were no selfexistent being, then something would have been created from nothing (an absurd idea); therefore ‘something must necessarily Exist, or else not any thing cou’d be’.34 Yet we cannot attribute self-existence to any material being—to the first human being, to ‘nymphs’ and ‘fairies’,35 or to the entire material world itself—because these beings are contingent (in the sense of perishable), partial, and limited; they depend on something else for their existence. We can attribute self-existence only to an ‘Infinitely Perfect and Self-Existing Mind’.36 In the Proposal, Astell considers a few objections to this type of argument. The first criticism is that when she affirms that an all-perfect being is self-existent, she implies that he has made himself; and so she too falls prey to the absurdity of supposing that a particular being can bring itself into existence.37 In response, Astell denies that God self-exists in the sense of being his own maker; she simply affirms that ‘if he did not exist of himself no other Being could ever have Existed’.38 Modern-day philosopher Richard Taylor clarifies what it means to say that something is self-made or self-caused in this way: To say that something—God, for example—is self-caused, or is the cause of its own existence, does not mean that this being brings itself into existence, which is a perfectly

34 35 Ibid., }8. Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 116. Ibid., 116–17. 37 Ibid., 116. Astell, Proposal II, 181. 38 Astell says that ‘we do not say he Made himself, we only affirm that his Nature is such, that tho we can’t sufficiently Explain because we can’t comprehend it, yet thus much we can discern, that if he did not Exist of himself no other Being could ever have Existed. So that either All must be swallow’d up in Infinite Nothing, if Nothing can properly have that Epithet, and we must suppose, that neither we our selves, nor any of those Creatures about us ever had, or ever can have a Being, which is too ridiculous to imagine, or else we must needs have recourse to a Self-Existing Being, who is the Maker and Lord of all things’ (ibid., 181). 33 36

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absurd idea. Nothing can bring itself into existence. To say that something is self-caused (causa sui) means only that it exists, not contingently or in dependence upon something else, but by its own nature, which is only to say that it is a being which is such that it can neither come into being nor perish.39

I think this is what Astell has in mind when she says that God has ‘self-existence’. In the Proposal, Astell also responds to an unspoken question: why must we regard this self-existent being as the theistic God? Her answer constitutes yet another cosmological argument, one that highlights the perfections (rather than the mere existence) of creatures as a starting premise. Her logic resembles that of Locke and Clarke, insofar as she appeals to ‘the need, or supposed need, for a cause to have qualities similar to, or higher in perfection than, those found in its effect’.40 The same causal principle can be found in Descartes’ Meditations.41 Astell says that we must suppose that ‘he who Communicates an innumerable variety of Perfections to his Creatures . . . must needs contain in himself all those Beauties and Perfections he is pleas’d to Communicate to Inferior Beings’.42 In Bart’lemy Fair, Astell adopts the same argumentative strategy in a proof that begins with the physical fact of gravity or of ‘mutual attraction’ between material bodies. Like Clarke in his Discourse and Demonstration, Astell draws on the new Newtonian science to illustrate her point. If nature consists entirely of material particles in motion, she asks, then how do we explain the phenomenon of gravity? MUTUAL Attraction or Gravitation, is one of the most Universal and Uniform Affections of Bodies; but it is not essential to Matter, any more than Motion is, both proceeding from the Will and Power of a Superior Cause.43 Which can’t be a Material One, for that wou’d imply a Contradiction, as supposing a Matter Superior to Matter in general, and such as can give that to another which it has not in it self, nor any sufficient Power to produce. And yet this Mutual Attraction, tho’ not essential to Matter, but foreign and superinduc’d by a Superior Being, is so necessary to the very Being of the Universe, in that Form in which we now behold it, or at least to our Solar System, and as far as our Observation and Reasoning can carry us; that were it once suspended, unless a Miraculous Power

39

Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, Foundations of Philosophy Series (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), 93. 40 MacIntosh, ‘Cudworth, Locke, and Clarke on God’s Existence’, 30. 41 42 Descartes, Meditations, 28. Astell, Proposal II, 182. 43 This statement echoes that of Locke in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education: ‘by mere Matter and Motion,’ he says, ‘none of the great Phaenomena of Nature can be resolved, to instance but in that common one of Gravity, which I think impossible to be explained by any natural Operation of Matter, or any Law of Motion, but the positive Will of a Superiour Being, so ordering it’; see John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), }192.

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interpos’d, there wou’d be no more distinction among Material Beings; all wou’d crumble into Dust, and every single Atom, either remain at rest, or else proceed in strait Lines, according as its Projectile Motion happen’d to be at the withdrawing of the mutual Attraction. WE must then allow a Providence as well as a Deity, one is as necessary as the other in order to the Solution of the Phaenomena of the Universe; which can no more Subsist a moment, than it cou’d at first Be, without the Omnipotent Power and Efficacy of its Divine Cause.44

This cosmological argument can be summarized in the following way: 1. Gravity (or ‘mutual attraction’ between material bodies) is a known fact of the universe. 2. Either gravity is an essential property of matter or it proceeds from the will and power of a superior cause (it is ‘foreign and superinduc’d by a Superior Being’). 3. Gravity is not an essential property of matter. 4. Therefore, gravity proceeds from the will and power of a superior cause. 5. [Unstated.] This superior cause is either material or immaterial. 6. The superior cause is not material (‘for that wou’d imply a Contradiction, as supposing a Matter Superior to Matter in general, and such as can give that to another which it has not in it self, nor any sufficient Power to produce’). 7. [Unstated]. Therefore, the superior cause is immaterial. 8. If this immaterial superior cause were not an omnipotent being with the will and power to sustain mutual attraction between bodies, the universe would be disorderly and chaotic. 9. The universe is not disorderly and chaotic (there is evidence of providence—or intelligent governance—in nature). 10. Therefore, the immaterial superior cause is an omnipotent being with the will and power to sustain mutual attraction between bodies (that is, it is God). 11. Therefore, God exists. Astell’s third premise relies on the Cartesian conception of matter as essentially extended in length, breadth, and depth, and naturally lacking the capacity for thought and self-motion. She provides a detailed argument for this premise in her Christian Religion.45 Her sixth premise relies on the principle that the cause must have either the same or higher qualities than the effect. The fact that there is

44

Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 117–18.

45

See Chapter 4 in this volume.

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mutual attraction and gravitation between material bodies, she suggests, requires an explanation with appeal to something of a superior nature to mere matter itself. Her eighth and ninth premises constitute an independent argument—a teleological argument that appeals to evidence of complexity and organization in nature. The argument is brief, but it relies on the intuition that the ‘Beautiful Form’ of the universe could never be accounted for by a ‘lucky Jumble’ of selfmoving atoms. She often repeats this same point in passing throughout her works.

3.3 Practical Theism On the whole, then, these are Astell’s arguments for theoretical theism (for belief in God) based on natural reason. In addition, as we will now see, she also offers arguments for practical theism (for living a religious life) based on belief in divine revelation. These arguments are much more closely connected to Astell’s moral agenda. They are designed to help her female readers recognize that they must live their lives in accordance with the divine will, as revealed through reason and scripture. In The Christian Religion, Astell argues that no rational, unprejudiced person could reasonably doubt that the Old and New Testaments are the word of God. Our natural intuition tells us, she says, that it is reasonable to accept the testimony of others with respect to matters of fact that we cannot witness in person. We accept that Julius Caesar was the author of the Commentaries, and we allow that Marcus Aurelius was the author of the Meditations, despite the fact that we never met those men and never saw them write those books. When it comes to the Bible, she says, we must be consistent in our application of reason. We must acknowledge that ‘no objection can be made against the holy scriptures but what are stronger against all other writings and facts’.46 If we were to reject the scriptures as the word of God, to be consistent we would also have to disbelieve everything that we did not see or hear. But this would be a most untenable and unreasonable position. If we were to adopt this stance, then we would cease to be functioning members of society—we would have to be confined to a lunatic asylum.47 46 Astell, Christian Religion, }22. On this topic, Astell echoes Locke’s position concerning matters of fact in his Essay: ‘when there can be no supposition,’ he says, ‘that there is as fair testimony against, as for the matter of fact attested; which by inquiry, is to be learned, e.g., whether there was 1700 years ago such a man at Rome as Julius Caesar: in all such cases, I say, I think it is not in any rational man’s power to refuse his assent’ (Locke, Essay, IV.xx.15). 47 Astell, Christian Religion, }19.

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It follows then, that if we mean to act like reasonable creatures, since the principles of reason are general, we ought to be guided by them, not only in some particular cases, but in all. For if we will govern ourselves by a certain principle upon one occasion, and take no notice of it, nay, even act contrary to it in parallel cases, it is plain that we follow our humors, or passions, or follies, but by no means our reason. If therefore I discard the holy scriptures for want of proof, I must upon the same principle, and for much stronger reasons, disbelieve and reject everything that has passed in the world before my time, or of which I have not been an eye or ear witness. How the wise men may make a shift to govern themselves by such measures I know not; sure I am, that it is above the understanding and skill of any woman to live in the world and conduct herself by such rules.48

In short, Astell maintains that while we cannot have metaphysical certainty that the Bible is the word of God, we can have moral certainty: the testimony in favour of its authenticity is beyond reasonable doubt. All reasonable persons should therefore live their lives in accordance with its rules and directions. At one point, however, Astell concedes that this argument might not be enough to convince some ‘pert and pretending men’, those men who are led by their passions rather than their reason.49 In response, she adopts an argumentative strategy that is similar to Blaise Pascal’s in his Pensées (first published posthumously in 1669)—a prudential argument for belief in revelation, based on an estimate of the hazards associated with believing or not believing that the Bible is the word of God. Various manuscript sources attest to Astell’s strong admiration for Pascal’s Pensées. In a 1714 letter to Ann Coventry, Astell observes that Pascal’s arguments against attachment to other people are so persuasive that we might be obliged to keep even our most innocent desires for others in check.50 In another manuscript, she observes that ‘Pensées de Pascal are profound, solid, just, full of noble sentiments[,] good sense & true reasoning, clearly yet concisely express’d in proper language’.51

49 Ibid., }37. Ibid., }42. See Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 10 December 1714; appendix C in Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 371. 51 These words are written in Astell’s handwriting on the first flyleaf of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s personal copy of Pierre Bayle’s Pensées Diverses (4th edn, 1704), held in Lord Harrowby’s private library at Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. With ‘a just Indignation’, Astell remarks that, by comparison with Pascal’s work, Bayle’s Pensées are a ‘loose, rambling, incoherent rapsody, wth all ye affectation of Method, Reasoning & Exactness, full of words, wth every thing strain’d to a latent ill meaning or else very impertinent, Trifling, or worse.’ I am extremely grateful to Lord Harrowby and his archivist, Michael Bosson, for kindly providing me with digital photocopies from this book. A slightly imperfect transcription can be found in appendix B to Christine Mason Sutherland, The Eloquence of Mary Astell (Calgary, AB: The University of Calgary Press, 2005), 169. 48 50

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In one ‘thought’ of his Pensées, Pascal argues that it is in the interests of those men ‘in a state of suspense between Faith and Infidelity’ to believe in God.52 Pascal invites such men to a game of chance. Granted that either God does or does not exist, he asks, what will you wager? In his view, there is a necessity of wagering; the thing is placed beyond the indifference of your Will; you are embark’d in the Cause, and by not laying that God is, you in effect lay that He is not. Which will you take? Let us balance the Gain and the Loss of sticking to the Affirmative. If you gain, you gain All; if you lose, it is meer Nothing that’s lost.53

Pascal’s wager is heralded as one of the first examples of modern-day decision theory, the theory of deciding which course of action to take in conditions of uncertainty.54 Along similar lines, in }41 of her Christian Religion, Astell calculates the risks associated with believing or not believing that the Bible is the word of God. For the sake of argument, she grants her opponents their ‘most unreasonable demands’.55 Let us suppose that reason cannot assure us that the Bible is the word of God. Let us then weigh up ‘the hazard of receiving’ and the ‘danger of rejecting’ the scriptures as divine revelation. She then asks: For upon supposition, that they have no just pretence to divine authority, and I receive them as the oracles of God, what do I lose by it? I am imposed upon it is true (and so we are all of us in twenty matters) but not to my hurt. For though the gospel were only a mere human invention, to live according to its rules would be the wisest course I could take, since nothing could be more for my present interest, safety, and pleasure: if there be a future state, I am prepared for it; if there be none, I shall not be sensible of any loss. On the other side, if the scripture is indeed the word of God, and I disbelieve it, can I offer a greater affront to the divine majesty than by rejecting those commands which He graciously affords me for my good? And since God is essentially holy and just, how can I appear in His presence having abused His goodness? How can I endure His displeasure! Or to be in eternal opposition and enmity towards Him? Shall I run this risk because, forsooth, I would not be thought credulous, I would not be imposed upon, I would distinguish myself though it were by my folly!56

Her argument implicitly appeals to the decision matrix in Table 3.1: 52

Blaise Pascal, Thoughts on Religion, and other Subjects (London: W. B. for A. J. Churchill, R. Sare, and J. Tonson, 1704), 57. I refer to this seventeenth-century English translation because it is a likely source for Astell’s Christian Religion argument. 53 Pascal, Thoughts, 60. 54 Ian Hacking, ‘The Logic of Pascal’s Wager’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 9/2 (1972), 186–92: ‘Decision theory is the theory of deciding what to do when it is uncertain what will happen. Given an exhaustive list of possible hypotheses about the way the world is, the observations or experimental data relevant to these hypotheses, together with an inventory of possible decisions, and the various utilities of making these decisions in various possible states of the world: determine the best decision’ (186). 55 56 Astell, Christian Religion, }41. Ibid.

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Table 3.1. Astell’s decision matrix

I believe Bible is word of God I do not believe Bible is word of God

Bible is word of God

Bible is not word of God

I gain eternal happiness I lose eternal happiness

I lose nothing I lose nothing

Given these hypotheses about the state of the world (that the Bible either is or is not the word of God), together with the possible decisions that might be made (I believe or I do not believe), and the expected utility of making those decisions in those various states of the world (eternal happiness or eternal misery): what does reason dictate I should do? According to Astell, even the infidel must agree that the most reasonable course of action is to receive the Bible as the word of God. She repeats this same argumentative point in her Bart’lemy Fair, a work that is specifically targeted at atheists and libertines. She advises such men to apply the same prudence in matters of religion as they do in worldly affairs. Their rational self-interest will inform them that ‘no Man in his Wits wou’d risque a very great Danger, or Loss, in a mere Bravado, for nothing . . . no Wise Man . . . will hazard the Loss of Everlasting Happiness, and the suffering of Everlasting Misery, for any the greatest Advantage the World can offer him’.57 While Pascal asserts the prudence of affirming that God exists, Astell focuses on a different claim—the claim that the Bible is the word of God. The difference is telling. Astell’s emphasis demonstrates, once again, that her chief concern is to provide practical guidelines on how to live. To achieve this end, it is not enough for her to establish simply that it is prudent to believe in God, or that it is reasonable to take steps toward a religious faith. She also requires her readers to take the holy scriptures as their ‘rule of faith and manners’, to study them for their ‘better direction’ in life, and to live accordingly.58 For Astell, believing that the Bible is the word of God is the most desirable course, even if the Bible turns out to be a fake, ‘since nothing could be more for my present interest, safety, and pleasure’.59 Even if we are cheated of immortality in the hereafter, belief in the scriptures raises our spirits in the here and now; it makes us happier than any ‘Wine and Revelling, or any Libertine Pleasure can’.60 This is because the word of God spurs us on toward ‘great and generous Actions’—it assists in our character

57 58 60

Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 107; see also 94–5, 104, 141, 143, 150, and 152. 59 Astell, Christian Religion, }43. Ibid., }41. Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 141.

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development, and leads us to a virtuous life.61 And virtue alone, Astell says, can make us truly happy in this world.62

3.4 Nature of God Notwithstanding these views, Astell does caution that our dependence on the Bible—and on others’ interpretations of scriptural passages—can take us only so far. Women, in particular, must learn to rely on their own natural capacity for judgment concerning matters of faith. They must never render blind submission to clerical authorities or to other spiritual directors, since this is likely to lead them astray.63 In Astell’s opinion, it is possible to recognize this truth if we attentively consider the nature of God’s attributes and what these attributes imply for his creation. We have seen that Astell affirms the view that God is self-existent (he does not depend ontologically on anything else) and that he contains ‘in himself all those Beauties and Perfections he is pleas’d to Communicate to Inferior Beings’.64 These properties of God—his ontic independence and his supreme perfection (his infinite wisdom, omnipotence, and perfect benevolence)—are important presuppositions of Astell’s moral theory. In her view, we can be assured that God is constrained to act in accordance with his infinite wisdom and supreme benevolence; his rationality and his goodwill cannot be arbitrarily trumped by his will or his omnipotence.65 As an infinitely wise being, he must always choose what is wisest or most reasonable; and, as a perfectly benevolent being, he must always act for the good.66 As a result, according to Astell, we can be assured that the world and everything in it is created according to eternal and immutable measures of rectitude. She says This is then the sum of the matter; God who is infinite in all perfections, in justice and holiness, as well as in goodness and mercy, always does what is best and most becoming His perfections, and cannot act but according to the nature and reason of things;67 nor is it

61

62 Ibid. Astell, Proposal I, 111. 64 Astell, Christian Religion, }}44–50. Astell, Proposal II, 182. 65 Here Astell adopts a rationalist or an ‘intellectualist’ conception of God by contrast with a voluntarist conception, according to which God is capable of acting arbitrarily by virtue of his supreme power and will. For an overview of different conceptions of God in the early modern period, see Steven Nadler, ‘Conceptions of God’, in Desmond M. Clarke and Catherine Wilson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 525–47. 66 Astell, Proposal II, 201, 205, 213, and 227; Astell, Christian Religion, }}21, 64, 80, 408. 67 In the first edition, this sentence reads ‘according to the Essential Nature and Reason of things’; see [Mary Astell], The Christian Religion, As Profess’d by a Daughter Of The Church of England (London: R. Wilkin, 1705), }105; my italic. 63

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possible that our wishes or actions should make any alteration in the immutable rectitude of His conduct.68

From reflection upon the divine attributes, women can gain a clear knowledge of their duties and obligations to God, to themselves, and to other people. First, they can recognize that God is veracious or truthful, because to say ‘He can’t deceive nor be deceived, is no limitation of His wisdom or power, because to be capable of those were an argument of imperfection’.69 Second, they can know that, given that God cannot deceive them, they can trust their reason to provide guidance on how they should live. Reason is a kind of ‘natural revelation’ of the will of God that informs women that ‘it is the indispensable duty of all reasonable persons to conform themselves entirely to God’s will, so soon as they can be informed of it’.70 I can inform myself of God’s will by ‘endeavoring to fix in my mind clear, distinct, and just notions of all those sins He has forbid, and all those duties He has commanded’.71 Above all, a woman can know a priori that God has determined her for happiness: ‘the essential rectitude of the divine nature, will not permit Him to use His power and lawful authority otherwise than is just and fit, so that when of His free bounty He gave us being, He did not intend to make us miserable but happy.’72 And both natural and supernatural revelation tell her that her happiness consists in loving and worshipping God himself: I find indeed a light in my mind, directing me to the author of my being, making it necessary to adore, to love, to devote myself to Him, if I would avoid the reproaches of my own mind. How happy am I when thus employed! How uneasy, how wretched when it is neglected! But who is the gainer by this service? Not this all-perfect being, for there can be no addition to infinite perfection. It is I only who get by it, I do what is fit, I answer the end of my being . . . 73

According to Astell, God does not depend on anything outside of himself, either for his being or his happiness. Hence we can know that he does not require anything from us—‘God can neither be hurt by our wickedness, nor benefited by our obedience’74—everything we are obliged to do is for our own advantage only. But we must also keep in mind the dire consequences of our disobedience: ‘He punishes because He must, that is, because the eternal reason of things requires His vengeance.’75 On the whole, then, we can see that Astell’s arguments for the existence of God form part of a wider strategy to bring women to the knowledge of the true source

68 70 74

Astell, Christian Religion, }91. 71 Ibid., }}22, 23. Ibid., }110. 75 Ibid., }79. Ibid., }121.

69

Ibid., }408. See also }}40, 80, 120, 121, and 133. 72 73 Ibid., }84. Ibid., }12.

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of their happiness. Despite appearances, her arguments are no mere pedagogical exercises—they play a crucial role in Astell’s feminist ethical project as a whole. No matter how she arrives at her end—whether by ontological, cosmological, or teleological argument, or by means of a wager—Astell intends for all her readers, from the purified mind, to the untrained mind, to the inveterate sinner, to be persuaded to live according to the law of God and the law of reason. The love of God does not come naturally to the uninstructed mind, to those women who are sunk in sense and caught within the ‘enchanted circle’ of custom. But once they are persuaded to undertake the purification process, they will not have to try too hard to accept that there is a God and that they must live in conformity with his will. Those readers will see that . . . it can never be supposed that God created us, that is our minds, after His own image, for no better purpose than to wait upon the body, while it eats, drinks, and sleeps, and saunters away a useless life; or to forget themselves so far as to be plunged into the cares of a busy one. God, whose works are all in number, weight, and measure, could never form a rational being for so trivial a purpose. . . . Shall I then receive the bounty of God in vain? God forbid!76

For Astell, it is crucial for women to recognize that their lives must be lived in accordance with the law of reason, and that God has given them their rational faculties for the sole purpose of directing them to the ultimate source of their happiness.

76

Ibid., }}107–8.

4 Soul and Body In her advice concerning study, Astell recommends that her readers meditate not only on the nature of God but also on the nature of the self and material beings.1 The self is a crucial concept in her moral philosophy. Above all, the wise, virtuous, and happy woman has proper self-love: she seeks to do things that make her a better person, to improve her mind, and to attain excellence of character.2 She also has a healthy sense of self-esteem: she prides herself on things of intrinsic worth, on the ‘highest attainments’, and not according to what custom deems worthy or valuable.3 This woman’s life thus abounds in selfsatisfaction, or that tranquillity of mind that can be enjoyed even in the midst of outward troubles and disturbances.4 To appreciate these moral ideals, it is important to recognize that Astell regards the self as the immaterial soul and not the material body or the soul–body composite. In this chapter, I examine Astell’s arguments for the soul–body distinction, as well as her views about body–soul causation (the causation of sensation). Like Descartes, Astell holds that there are two independently subsisting things: the soul (or mind), which is a thinking thing, and the body or matter, which is essentially extended substance (a thing extended in length, breadth, and depth). She also maintains that the soul and body enjoy a substantial union in the human subject. But Astell is not explicit about how, or even if, these two substances are capable of causally influencing 1 Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 210. 2 For many seventeenth-century thinkers, the term ‘self-love’ can have purely negative connotations. For Astell, however, the term can be both negative and positive: it can mean mistaken or ‘vicious’ self-love in the sense of a petty, selfish concern for one’s body; or it can be proper or true self-love in the sense of a willing of good to one’s soul. On this distinction, see Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }203. For an entirely negative view of female self-love, see the anonymous A Farther Essay Relating to the Female-Sex: Containing Six Characters, and Six Perfections. With the Description of Self-Love (London: A. Roper and E. Wilkinson, 1696), 72–103. 3 4 Astell, Christian Religion, }237. Ibid., }254.

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one another. Some commentators suggest that, in her mature writings, Astell is in fact an occasionalist, meaning someone who holds the view that the soul and body interact only by virtue of God’s direct causal intervention.5 Others maintain that she occupies a consistent Cartesian interactionist position on the subject.6 To clarify Astell’s views, I propose to examine the metaphysical opinions expressed in her Letters, the second Proposal, and The Christian Religion.7

4.1 The Soul–Body Distinction In The Christian Religion, Astell’s argument for the real distinction between soul and body is a small subsection of a multi-layered argument for the immortality of the soul. According to Astell, if a thing consists in parts, ‘whose particular composition and figure is that which denominate it this or that being, and which distinguish it from all other beings’, then that thing is corruptible (it is subject to decay).8 When an individual’s parts are divided or disunited, we say that that particular individual no longer exists. So if a thing is corruptible, then it is also mortal. By the same logic, it follows that if a thing is without parts or indivisible, then it is naturally immortal: it ‘is in its own nature incorruptible, it must always be the same individual being, and can never cease to be’,9 it can be destroyed by neither an internal nor external force.10 For the moral benefit of her readers, Astell proposes to show that the soul is naturally immortal by virtue of its nonmaterial and indivisible nature. At the outset, however, she faces a difficulty: by her own confession, she has no clear and distinct idea of the soul. In the Letters to Norris, she says ‘I have no clear Idea of 5 Richard Acworth, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1712) (New York: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim, 1979), 178; E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Matter’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62/3 (2001), 511–12; and Sarah Ellenzweig, ‘The Love of God and the Radical Enlightenment: Mary Astell’s Brush with Spinoza’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64/3 (2003), 382. 6 Eileen O’Neill, ‘Mary Astell on the Causation of Sensation’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 145–63. 7 Some commentators have confusingly branded Astell an ‘idealist’. See Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 71, 77; and Springborg, introduction in Astell, Proposal I and II, 35. I do not discuss Astell’s idealism here because she is not a metaphysical idealist in George Berkeley’s sense of someone who denies the existence of material things, or asserts that material things exist only as ideas in the mind. She is an idealist only insofar as she regards the ideas in our minds as reflective of a necessary, eternal, and immutable realm of ideas, and she sees our knowledge and happiness as lying in contemplation of this ideal world. 8 9 Astell, Christian Religion, }227. Astell, Christian Religion, }229. 10 Of course, in theory, God might be able to destroy this being, but he is unlikely to annihilate something he has created: ‘For He does nothing in vain, and can’t be supposed to make a creature with a design to destroy or unmake it’ (Astell, Christian Religion, }227).

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that which is properly my self, nor do I well know how to distinguish its Powers and Operations’.11 She reiterates this point both in the second Proposal (‘we can’t Know the Nature of our Souls Distinctly’)12 and in The Christian Religion (‘we have no idea of the noblest part of us’).13 In this respect, once again, she follows Norris and Malebranche, and not the orthodox Cartesian position. Norris and Malebranche both deny that we can have self-knowledge through clear and distinct ideas, but allow that we can have intuitive knowledge of the soul and its operations through immediate consciousness. In his Theory, Norris remarks: ‘That we do Think is what we are inwardly conscious of to our selves, what we feel and know by a Sentiment as clear and evident as that of Pleasure or Pain. And as ’tis impossible to prove it to another, so we need not go to prove it to our selves.’14 Astell likewise affirms ‘That we all think, needs no proof.’15 From this starting point, she turns her attention to two rival hypotheses about ‘the thing in us that thinks’: one, that it is immaterial, and the other, that it is material. Her principal aim is to dismiss the latter theory of thinking matter as unintelligible. In a well-known passage of his Essay, Locke states that we cannot know by the mere contemplation of our ideas of matter and thinking that an omnipotent being ‘has not given to some Systems of Matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think’.16 For Locke, we are simply incapable of knowing the real essence of substance, or the substratum underlying the properties we perceive. From his epistemological standpoint, it is just as conceivable that God could superadd a faculty of thinking to matter as to any other substance, ‘since we know not wherein Thinking consists’.17 In the early eighteenth century, Locke’s suggestion was mistakenly interpreted as an affirmation of materialism.18 While Astell does not outrightly accuse Locke of materialism, she is suspicious of the irreligious implications of his assertions about matter and thinking. In her view, if the soul is 11

Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 88. 12 13 Astell, Proposal II, 173. Astell, Christian Religion, }226. 14 John Norris, An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. Being the Relative Part of it. Wherein the Intelligible World is consider’d with relation to Human Understanding. Whereof some Account is here attempted and proposed. Part II (London: S. Manship and W. Hawes, 1704), 5 and see also 109, 111, 252, 279. For similar sentiments in Malebranche, see Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. and ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 198–202. 15 Astell, Christian Religion, }229. 16 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), IV.iii.6. 17 Locke, Essay, IV.iii.6. 18 On this topic, see John Yolton, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

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material, then it will be divisible and corruptible—and therefore mortal. In order to refute Locke’s suggestion, she demonstrates how the idea of thinking matter is inconsistent with other assertions he makes about knowledge.19 She attempts to defeat Locke, as one admirer puts it, with his own artillery.20 In the Essay IV. iii.29, Locke explicitly concedes that in ‘some of our Ideas there are certain Relations, Habitudes, and Connexions, so visibly included in the Nature of the Ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them, by any Power whatsoever. And in these only are we capable of certain and universal Knowledge’.21 As an example, Locke cites the idea of a right-lined triangle which as a matter of necessity must have angles that are equal to two right angles. The relation between these ideas, the triangle and the sum of its angles, cannot be altered ‘by any Power whatsoever’. This connection is necessary, according to Astell, ‘because it is repugnant to the idea of such a triangle, that its angles should be either greater or less’.22 In the same way, Locke agrees that we can know that it is contradictory to say that a substance is both solid and not solid at the same time. We can also know that the idea of a sphere is ‘repugnant’ to, or incompatible with, the idea of a cube, and that motion is not rest, and so on. Astell aims to show that the ideas of thinking and matter are as repugnant as the idea of a triangle having, say, the property of being equal to a square. Toward that end, Astell presents her own version of Descartes’ ‘epistemological argument’ for mind–body dualism.23 In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes argues from the proposition that he can clearly and distinctly conceive of the mind existing apart from the body, to the conclusion that the mind is really distinct from the body and can exist without it.24 Astell also offers an argument from conceivability. But while Descartes’ argument relies on the premise that he has a clear and distinct perception of the mind that does not include extension, Astell cannot appeal to the language of clear and distinct ideas. Like Norris and

On Astell’s critique of Locke’s ‘thinking matter’, see Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’s Critique of Locke’s View of Thinking Matter’, Journal of History of Philosophy, 25 (1987), 433–9; Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’, in Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), iii, 87–99; and Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’. 20 William Parry to George Ballard, 12 February 1743; quoted in George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (Who have been Celebrated for their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts and Sciences), intro. and ed. Ruth Perry (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 389. 21 22 Locke, Essay, IV.iii.29. Astell, Christian Religion, }388. 23 See Margaret Dauler Wilson, Descartes (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 186. 24 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), ii, 54. 19

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Malebranche, she denies having a clear and distinct idea of the soul. Instead, she says there is: no way to judge of things but by their ideas, or to distinguish this from that, but by the distinction and difference of ideas; therefore when two complete ideas (as complete is opposed to abstraction, or a partial consideration of an idea) have different properties and affections, and can be considered without any relation to, or dependence on each other, so that we can be sure of the existence of the one, even at the same time we can suppose that the other does not exist, as is indeed the case of a thinking and of an extended being, or of mind and body; here these two ideas, and consequently the things they represent, are truly distinct and of different natures. Now, to be distinct from a thing, is all one as not to be this thing, so that since thought and extension are distinct and different in their own natures, as we have seen, it is evident that a thinking being as such, excludes extension; and an extended being excludes thought.25

With a little rearrangement, here is a formal statement of her argument: 1. If I can have a complete idea of x that has no relation to, or dependence on, my complete idea of y, then x and y are truly distinct and of different natures. 2. I can have a complete idea of mind as thinking being without any relation to, or dependence on, my complete idea of body as extended being. 3. Therefore, mind and body are truly distinct and of different natures. Here Astell’s crucial point concerns the completeness of our ideas. When she affirms that she has a complete idea of soul as thinking being without ‘any relation to, or dependence on’ the body, she does not affirm that she has a comprehensive knowledge of it, but rather that she has a distinct idea of the soul as an independently existing thing. Her appeal to this notion of completeness as ‘opposed to abstraction, or a partial consideration of an idea’ strongly recalls Norris’s wording in his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World.26 In that work, Norris makes a distinction between distinct ideas that are complete and those that are incomplete or inadequate. The first are made distinct by a real distinction between the objects of the ideas. The second are made distinct ‘only by abstraction and partial consideration’ of the objects in question;27 they involve considering different aspects or different ‘Modes or Manners of Being’ of one and

Astell, Christian Religion, }228. Taylor is right to say that ‘Astell makes no direct appeal to [Norris] in her critique of Locke’s view of thinking matter’ (Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’, 521). But despite her lack of explicit acknowledgement, in }}228–9 of The Christian Religion, Astell closely follows (sometimes almost verbatim) Norris’s way of arguing against Locke’s idea (see Norris, Theory II, 1–57). 27 Norris, Theory II, 19. 25 26

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the same thing.28 For example, he says, our ideas of a figured substance and of a moveable substance can be distinct ideas. We might easily conceive of a substance’s figure without conceiving of its motion, or vice versa. But although figure and motion are distinct, ‘yet a figured Substance and a moveable Substance need not be so’.29 The figured substance and the moveable substance might not be different things, but rather the same thing partially considered. Abstraction just is ‘considering one thing without another in things that are not in reality deniable or exclusive of one another’.30 Now, Norris asks, how do we know when the distinctness of our ideas comes from a real distinction and not from abstraction alone? His answer is that we may not always know—but there is a useful test. Let us begin by supposing that the idea in question is a mere abstraction. If this is really the case, then we know that the object of the idea cannot exist apart from the foundation of its abstraction. In the case of figure and motion, ‘tho I can conceive Motion without Figure, and Figure without Motion, and abstract both from extended Being, yet I cannot understand Motion or Figure to be without extended Being’.31 Now, what of our ideas of extended being and thinking being? Are these ideas distinct in themselves or only distinct in abstraction? Let us begin by supposing that thinking being is a mere abstraction from extended being. Can we conceive of thinking apart from the foundation of its abstraction, extended being? The answer is Yes. On these grounds, Norris concludes that thinking being and extended being are really distinct and different things. Astell’s aforementioned argument follows the same logic. She affirms that we can be certain of the existence of thinking being even while supposing that extended being does not exist. She also concludes with Norris’s same reference to triangles and circles: ‘The one [thinking being] is not, cannot be, extended, nor does, or can the other [extended being] think, any more than a circle can have the properties of a triangle, or a triangle those of a circle.’32 With these arguments, it must be said, both Astell and Norris face the problem of reasoning about conceivability in conditions of ignorance. The problem is that while our idea of x might have no apparent dependence on our idea of y, it is still the case that we might find out that x metaphysically depends upon y for its existence. It might be the case that, regardless of what our ideas tell us is conceivable, thought could still be an inseparable property of extended substance. Unlike Descartes, neither author can give an independent reason, such as the

28

29 30 31 Ibid., 21. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 25. Astell, Christian Religion, }229. See Norris, Theory II: ‘to suppose thought to be contained in the idea of matter, notwithstanding this ideal diversity between a thinking and an extended being, would be all one as if you should suppose that a circle should have the property of a triangle’ (47). 32

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Cartesian rule of evidence (clear and distinct ideas, guaranteed by God), to think that our ideas are reliable guides to the true nature of things. In a separate subsection, however, Astell uses the same abstractive reasoning to mount a reductio against the idea of thinking matter. She begins with the supposition that all thought is a mere abstraction from, or a mere mode of, extended being. But if we allow that ‘modes do immediately depend upon, and are inseparable from the thing whose modes they are, existing no otherwise but in it’, she says, then absurdities will arise.33 In particular, it will follow that God is an extended being ‘otherwise upon this supposition He could not think’.34 But an all-perfect being cannot be extended, because divisibility (a property of extension) would detract from his perfection. For this reason, we can know that thought cannot be a mode of extended being. This argument is not necessarily convincing or conclusive in itself, but it does serve to back up her initial real distinction argument. From Astell’s conclusion that thought and extension are distinct and different in their own natures, she affirms the incompatibility or repugnancy of the ideas of thinking and matter: ‘it is evident that a thinking being as such, excludes extension; and an extended being excludes thought.’35 An extended being can no more have the property of thinking than a triangle can have the property of being equal to a square. She declares that Locke’s argument for thinking matter is therefore ‘destroyed by his own principles’.36 This is because ‘in the words of the Essay, [God] “cannot separate that which is so included in the nature of an idea, that we can’t conceive it separable”: and by a parity of reason, can’t add that which is so excluded from the nature of an idea, that we can’t conceive the idea capable of that addition’.37 It is as absurd to suggest that thought could be superadded to matter, as to suggest that a triangle could have a speaking and dancing faculty superadded to it.38 Astell is therefore able to complete her argument for the immortality of the soul, despite her lack of a clear and distinct idea of her own nature as a thinking thing. Her argument simply relies on the negative thesis that ‘body can’t think’. From this, she infers that ‘because I and all other reasonable creatures think, therefore we are something that is not body’.39 34 35 Astell, Christian Religion, }231. Ibid. Ibid., }229. 37 Ibid., }388. Ibid., }387. 38 Ibid., }388. Of course, Astell allows, it is still possible that an omnipotent God may do the logically impossible—he may endue matter with thought. But in the search for knowledge, we do not consider what God may do; rather, we consider ‘the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas’. If we allow that God may do the logically impossible, ‘then there’s an end of knowledge’ (ibid., }392). 39 Ibid., }230. 33 36

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Now all beings whatsoever, are either material or immaterial; therefore since that which thinks is not material, it must be immaterial; and for this reason it is not liable to separation of parts or corruption, as all material beings are; consequently the human mind is in its own nature immortal, as was to be proved.40

This knowledge of our immortality has significant implications for Astell’s views on how we should live.

4.2 Duties to our Souls According to Astell, ‘if we know ourselves, we shall know what is our true good’.41 Knowledge of the soul’s immortality teaches us our duties toward God and our selves (more specifically, how to love them) and our duties toward other people (how not to love them).42 As for our duties to our selves, Astell distinguishes between the self considered as ‘a mere natural person’ and the self considered as a member of the Christian community: To speak as a mere natural person, our duty to ourselves consists in making the best use of our talents, and hereby aspiring to the highest degree of happiness and perfection of which we are capable. But considering it as a Christian, I place it in doing nothing that misbecomes the relation we bear to Christ as members of His body, and in living suitably to so high a dignity.43

Let us focus here on the duties to the self as a mere natural person.44 How do we make the best use of our talents? And how do we attain happiness and perfection? Astell advises that we must acquaint ourselves ‘with the weaknesses and the excellencies of human nature, that we may provide against the one and improve the other’.45 She says that since the mind is immaterial as we have seen, it is evident, that this world and the things thereof, are not, cannot be its good; they are of a much inferior nature, and their duration is contemptible. Nay, supposing them to be real goods, and ever so fit to be enjoyed, yet how can a material good satisfy or improve a spiritual nature? How can a temporal good render an immortal being happy?46

41 Ibid., }230. Ibid., }225. Astell asserts that we must not love other people with a selfish love of desire (a desire to possess or unite with them), but rather by wishing well toward their souls. On this topic, see Chapter 6 on ‘Love’ in this volume. 43 Astell, Christian Religion, }224. 44 I discuss Astell’s views about our duties to our selves as part of the Christian community in Chapter 6 on ‘Love’ in this volume. 45 46 Astell, Christian Religion, }225. Ibid., }243. 40 42

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The answers are obvious. We must not waste our talents in pursuing present pleasure or mutable worldly interests—we must focus on our long-term good and our eternal legacy. We must pursue what is conducive to our happiness and perfection as immaterial and immortal beings. Astell’s philosophical conception of the self also informs her arguments in the Proposal. She advises her readers that, in this book, ‘No solicitude in the adornation of your selves is discommended, provided you employ your care about that which is really your self.’47 The problem is that custom has taught women to live like Cartesian machines, those pure material beings devoid of souls or spiritual substance, and so they engage in an ‘unthinking mechanical way of living’.48 The bulk of the female sex are ‘sunk into an Animal life wholly taken up with sensible objects’.49 They think that their best achievement consists in attracting the eyes of men to their bodies. But we ‘value them too much, and our selves too little,’ Astell says, ‘if we place any part of our worth in their Opinion; and do not think our selves capable of Nobler Things than the pitiful Conquest of some worthless heart’.50 In her view, knowledge of the true nature of the self can liberate women from thinking and living as if they were mere bodily creatures. Self-knowledge can teach women the value of proper self-love: love of the mind and not love of the body. Such self-love, rightly applied, is a natural inducement to virtue, the cultivation of excellence of character.51 In The Christian Religion, Astell continues to explore the feminist implications of her metaphysics of mind and matter. She observes that true self-love should make a woman abhor the flattery of admirers, on the one hand, and welcome the honest admonition of friends, on the other.52 The first makes a woman complacent, the second spurs her on to self-improvement. A woman with true self-love will prefer the purity of her soul to that of public reputation, even to the point of offending a man by ‘breaking off conversation’ with him. ‘For she can’t well pretend any damage to her soul by this; her soul which is the only thing preferable to her reputation, and to be considered before the scandal.’53 True self-love also informs a woman that she dishonours her self whenever she takes up ‘with the base and contemptible office of making provision for the flesh, whether to fulfil its irregular appetites, or to supply its pretended necessities’.54 A true Christian woman will live ‘above the pleasures of sense, and the low concerns of the body’: And it is not to be wondered that our holy religion requires this, for even reason will inform us, that an all-wise God could never design an immortal mind so contemptible an 47 49 52

48 Astell, Proposal I, 52–3. Astell, Proposal I and II, 94, 215. 50 51 Astell, Proposal II, 126. Astell, Proposal I, 55–6. Astell, Proposal II, 211. 53 54 Astell, Christian Religion, }203. Ibid., }196. Ibid., }271.

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employment, as the busying itself about a corruptible body. Nor is the subjecting of the body to the mind in reality a pain; on the contrary it is a pleasure, as being most agreeable to the nature and reason of things.55

In turn, as we saw in Chapter 2, this purification of the mind from the body can lead to greater wisdom and knowledge. As the soul withdraws from the body and regulates the passions, it also disengages itself from the desire of material things. Once freed from excessive worldly interest, the individual is then in a better position to discern the truth. ‘For every sin, and more particularly, impurity, pride, and worldly interest, is a prejudice that shuts out the light of truth, keeps men obstinate in error, and hardens their minds against conviction.’56 Knowledge of the true nature of the self, in short, helps to assist individual women in the attainment of truth and virtue.

4.3 Body–Soul Causation While Astell is clear about the moral lessons to be drawn from her metaphysics of substance, she is not so clear about the nature of causal relations between the soul and body. For Astell, the two substances are undoubtedly united in the human subject. ‘Human nature is indeed a composition of mind and body, which are two distinct substances having different properties, and yet make but one person.’57 But she provides very few statements about how such different substances are capable of interaction. There is little detail about how the soul moves the body (soul–body causation) and how the body creates sensations (body–soul causation). Some commentators argue that Astell defends an occasionalist theory of body–soul causation in her later work,58 while others argue that Astell consistently occupies an orthodox Cartesian position.59 In my opinion, this point of interpretation is a reasonably significant one. If Astell is an occasionalist, then this poses a potentially serious problem for her moral philosophy as a whole—the problem of free will. Generally speaking, Malebranchean occasionalism is the view that God is the sole efficient cause of all natural phenomena, and that created beings have no genuine causal efficacy. In his Search after Truth, Malebranche argues for this theory on the grounds that

56 57 Ibid., }307. Ibid., }258. Ibid., }272. Acworth, Philosophy of John Norris, 178; Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’, 511–12; Ellenzweig, ‘The Love of God’, 382. 59 O’Neill, ‘Astell on the Causation of Sensation’. 55 58

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a true cause is ‘one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect’. Yet such a connection can exist only between ‘the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects’.60 This is because it would be a contradiction for this being to will something and for that thing not to come about. Therefore, according to Malebranche, God must be the only true and proper cause in nature. Even the greatest minds are causally impotent: they can know nothing, sense nothing, and will nothing, unless God acts upon them.61 The Malebranchean occasionalist holds that God alone has the causal power to bring about changes or modifications in the mind. In his mature works and in his letters to Astell, Norris endorses this view: he says that ‘being the Author of our Beings [God] has the sole Power to act upon our Spirits, and to give them new Modifications’.62 The problem is that if we affirm this occasionalist thesis—that God is the only true and proper cause of all modifications in the mind—then there appears to be no logical space for freedom of the will.63 Malebranche himself addresses this difficulty by highlighting the importance of consent to his notion of freedom. Throughout his works, he expresses a strong and unswerving commitment to human free will. In order to be morally responsible for their choices and actions, he says, moral agents must have freedom of will. He allows that God has determined the will to the extent that he has given it an invincible (insurmountable) inclination to love the good in general, or God himself.64 But God has also given human beings the power to direct their natural inclinations toward particular created goods, and to devote their love to something other than God. This inclination toward particular goods is not invincible (it can be surmounted), because the will is always free not to consent to love particular objects. In order to avoid sin, Malebranche says, ‘it is of the greatest 60

61 Malebranche, Search After Truth, 450. Ibid., 449. Astell and Norris, Letters, 133. To be clear, however, for Norris the occasionalist theory of causation applies only to soul–body and body–soul relations, not to body–body relations. He allows that bodies can have a causal effect on each other through impact and resistance. By contrast, Malebranche’s occasionalism is global: it is a theory about body–body relations as well as soul–body and body–soul ‘interaction’. 63 On the problem of reconciling Malebranche’s philosophy with freedom of the will, see Elmar J. Kremer, ‘Malebranche on Human Freedom’, in Steven Nadler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 190–219; Andrew Pessin, ‘Malebranche’s Doctrine of Freedom/Consent and the Incompleteness of God’s Volitions’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 8/1 (2000), 21–53; Andrew Pyle, Malebranche (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), chapter 9; Tad M. Schmaltz, Malebranche’s Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpretation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 6; Sean Greenberg, ‘Things That Undermine Each Other: Occasionalism, Freedom, and Attention in Malebranche’, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, 4 (2008), 113–40; and Susan Peppers-Bates, Nicolas Malebranche: Freedom in an Occasionalist World (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). 64 Malebranche, Search After Truth, 5. 62

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importance to make good use of our freedom by always refraining from consenting to things and loving them until forced to do so by the powerful voice of the Author of Nature’.65 On this view, God has determined moral agents to have inclinations toward particular goods as a natural consequence of their irresistible inclination toward the good in general. But it is an agent’s own fault if she does not hold back and critically reflect on whether or not these particular objects truly merit her love. According to Malebranche, the freedom to suspend our consent to particular goods does not challenge God’s causal power because it does not create any new modification or real change in the mind. Many scholars, however, find Malebranche’s attempts to reconcile occasionalism and free will far from convincing. Some assert that the suspension of consent must surely count as action rather than inaction, and therefore represents a new modification in the soul.66 Others point to the fact that, for Malebranche, the point of suspending our consent to particular goods is to create good habits or dispositions of mind in the moral agent.67 Yet the formation of such habits must surely give rise to real changes or modifications in the character. In short, if ‘each and every such modification of every human soul owes its existence to the direct action of God,’ Andrew Pyle says, ‘it seems impossible to find any room for human freedom’.68 The same problem might be raised for Astell’s philosophy. Like Malebranche, Astell presupposes that ordinary women are free to overcome the bodily influence of the senses and the passions on their minds. She asserts that women are capable of bringing about a transformation of moral character—a change in their mental habits and dispositions—merely by an exercise of free will. If Astell were a thoroughgoing occasionalist about the mind—if she adopted Norris’s Malebranchean view that God alone has the ‘Power and Knowledge to new modifie our Beings’69—then this is potentially incompatible with her moral commitment to freedom. Her moral and metaphysical views are potentially inconsistent.

65

Ibid., 11. See, for example, Kremer, ‘Malebranche on Human Freedom’, 214; and Pyle, Malebranche, 226. Taking a different approach, Sean Greenberg highlights the importance of the notion of attention, rather than consent, at the heart of Malebranche’s concept of freedom. He concludes that ‘occasionalism and attention undermine each other’: the attribution of the mastery of attention to agents cannot be reconciled with a commitment to occasionalism (Greenberg, ‘Things That Undermine’, 117). 67 See Pyle, Malebranche, 232–3. 68 Ibid., 210. Pyle says that the problem of free will is ‘perhaps the most intractable problem in Malebranche’s philosophy’ (ibid., 209). 69 Astell and Norris, Letters, 134. 66

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To resolve this issue, it is necessary to examine Astell’s explicit statements about occasionalism in her writings, to determine whether or not she gives outright endorsement to the theory. In the Letters, Astell engages with the occasionalist arguments of John Norris. In his 1693 essay, ‘A Discourse Concerning the Measure of Divine Love’, Norris argues in favour of the view that God is the only true cause of our sensations, and that bodies or material things are incapable of having a causal influence on our souls. On these grounds, he concludes that God alone deserves all our love of desire, since it is God alone who causes our sensations of pleasure. His argument begins with the Cartesian idea that there is nothing conceivable in material bodies but magnitude (size), figure (shape), and motion. On this view, there are no inherent qualities in material bodies that correspond to our sensations: there is no such thing as sweetness in sugar, fragrance in a flower, or heat and light in the sun. Such objects are composed entirely of material particles of a particular size and shape, in a certain degree of motion. According to Norris, the view that sensible qualities reside in objects themselves is merely a hangover from the unexamined prejudices of our upbringing—an obscure and confused notion rather than a clear and distinct idea. By the same logic, the view that material objects produce or cause our sensations is also an unwarranted prejudice of the senses. The mere concomitancy of our sensations with the presence of certain objects, he says, is no argument for the causal dependence of those sensations on the objects themselves.70 To support his point, Norris relies on the containment principle, or the idea that ‘whatever reality or perfection exists formally in a thing or objectively in an idea must be contained formally [that is, in a similar form] or eminently [that is, in some higher form] in its total, efficient cause’.71 On the basis of this causal principle, he maintains that an effect cannot be ‘above the Order of its Cause’.72 If material objects were the true and proper causes of our sensations, then they would have to somehow partake of the ‘perfection’ (that is, the sensation, sentiment, or thought) that they cause; yet they do not—they are thoughtless. But a thoughtless object cannot produce a thought: material things cannot produce sensations ‘which they have not, which they feel not, which they know not, and which they cannot ever cause in themselves’.73 We must therefore conclude that sugar does not have the capacity to cause the idea of sweetness in 70 John Norris, ‘Discourse Concerning the Measure of Divine Love’, in Practical Discourses Upon Several Divine Subjects (London: S. Manship, 1693), 23. 71 I borrow this helpful definition from Eileen O’Neill, ‘Mind–Body Interaction and Metaphysical Consistency: A Defense of Descartes’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25/2 (1987), 227–45 (230). 72 73 Norris, ‘Discourse’, 31. Ibid., 33.

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our minds, flowers do not produce sensations of perfume, and the sun is not the true cause of our sensations of heat and light. According to Norris, the true and proper cause of all our sensations is the will of God—or, quite simply, God himself. The cause of our sensations must be ‘a Being of infinite Understanding and Power, one that need not go abroad for his Intelligence, but sees all things immediately in him self, and produces all things by the immediate Efficacy of his Will’.74 On this view, material objects are merely the conditions or occasions that determine the nature of God’s operations. When I add sugar to my coffee, and the motion of the sugar particles makes an impression on my tongue, this is the occasion for God to give me the sensation of sweetness. When I look directly at the sun, and the motion of the sun’s rays makes an impression in my eyes, this is the occasion for God to give me the sensation of light. In her correspondence with Norris, Astell raises two objections to this particular occasionalist theory of body–soul causation. In a final letter ‘by way of review’, dated 14 August 1694, she objects ‘First, That this Theory renders a great Part of GOD’s Workmanship vain and useless’.75 If sensible objects have no inherent power to cause sensations in our minds, she says, then they ‘have nothing in their own Nature to qualifie them to be instrumental to the Production of such and such Sensations’; they are merely ‘positive and arbitrary Conditions’ of our sensations.76 But then God may well cause the sensation of warmth in our souls without the presence of fire, because there is nothing in the nature of fire that means we must necessarily feel warmth whenever we approach it. The problem is that sensible objects appear to be unnecessary and superfluous features of creation. This does not sit well with Astell’s intellectualist conception of God as primarily rational and benevolent. An infinitely wise, perfect being who ‘does nothing in vain’ cannot be supposed to create a variety of sensible objects that serve no purpose. Second, Astell objects that Norris’s theory ‘does not well comport with [God’s] Majesty’. In her view, the existence of genuine secondary causes is more befitting the ‘Majesty of GOD, and that Order he has established in the World’, because it allows the almighty God to delegate the task of producing sensations to his ‘Servant Nature’.77 On the heels of these two objections, Astell makes a positive suggestion. ‘Why therefore may there not be a sensible Congruity,’ she says, ‘between those Powers of the Soul that are employed in Sensation, and those Objects which occasion it?’78 She likens this idea to Henry More’s concept of vital congruity in his 74 77

Ibid., 54. Ibid., 131, 132.

75

Astell and Norris, Letters, 131. 78 Ibid., 132.

76

Ibid., 131.

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Immortality of the Soul. According to More, this congruity (a correspondence or harmony) between the soul and body unites or ‘ties’ the two together in the living human subject.79 Whenever this vital congruity is absent, the soul and body are no longer united together as one, as in the case of mortality (when the human being dies). By analogy, according to Astell, whenever a sensible congruity is absent, the soul is no longer capable of receiving sensations from the body, as in the case of blindness or deafness.80 On this view, there is still no such thing as a thought, sentiment, or sensation in material bodies. Yet bodies nevertheless have ‘a Congruity in them by their Presence to draw forth such Sensations in the Soul’.81 In short, with this hypothesis, Astell implies that there is a natural power in bodies to cause sensations in the soul. Provided that this sensible congruity exists between my body and soul, then fire genuinely has the power to cause the sensation of warmth in me whenever I approach it; sugar genuinely has the power to draw forth sensations of sweetness; and the sun genuinely has the power to produce the sensations of heat and light. This theory avoids the aforementioned difficulties because material things are necessary instruments and not arbitrary or superfluous features of God’s creation. Here, in short, Astell favours an interactionist theory of body–soul causation as an alternative to Norris’s noninteractionist occasionalism. The question now arises: does Astell change her position in her later works, the Proposal and The Christian Religion? In the second part of the Proposal, it must be said, Astell does not explicitly revive her theory of sensible congruity when she details the relationship between the soul and the body. She does, however, make remarks that would appear to be consistent with the orthodox Cartesian position concerning body–soul causation, the view that material things do really cause our sensations by producing certain motions in the brain. To support this point, Eileen O’Neill highlights the fact that Astell espouses the Cartesian theory of ‘animal spirits’, those tiny material particles responsible for conveying sense impressions to the immaterial mind via the brain’s pineal gland.82 In one passage of the second Proposal, Astell says 79

Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul; So farre forth as it is demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason (London: J. Flesher, 1659; facs. edn, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 263–4. 80 Astell and Norris, Letters, 132. Here I revise my former view that Astell endorses More’s theory of the spirit of nature in her correspondence with Norris. See Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 108. I agree that Astell intends for her idea of sensible congruity to be analogous to, rather than identical with, More’s theory. For this point, I am indebted to O’Neill, ‘Astell on the Causation of Sensation’, 155–9. 81 Astell and Norris, Letters, 132. 82 O’Neill, ‘Astell on the Causation of Sensation’, 160.

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that ‘several Impressions on the Body are communicated to, and affect the Soul, all this being perform’d by the means of the Animal Spirits’. The Active Powers of the Soul, her Will and Inclinations are at her own dispose, her Passive are not, she can’t avoid feeling Pain or other sensible Impressions so long as she’s united to a Body, and that Body is dispos’d to convey these Impressions. And when outward Objects occasion such Commotions in the Bloud and Animal Spirits, as are attended with those Perceptions in the Soul which we call the Passions, she can’t be insensible of or avoid ’em, being no more able to prevent these first Impressions than she is to stop the Circulation of the Bloud, or to hinder Digestion.83

Nevertheless, I think that this picture of body–soul relations is also consistent with Norris’s occasionalist account of sensation. Norris himself allows the existence of animal spirits in the body.84 Unlike Descartes, however, he holds that the movements of the animal spirits in the brain are merely the occasions for God to cause sensations in the mind. Though these spirits might ‘serve to excite them’, strictly speaking, they are not the true and proper causes of those sensations. In light of Norris’s stance on animal spirits, the above passage from the Proposal might be read either way. Astell’s references to animal spirits do not necessarily provide evidence for her continuing commitment to body–soul interactionism, as O’Neill suggests they do. Let us now turn to The Christian Religion. Derek Taylor asserts that, in this work, Astell offers unequivocal evidence in support of Norris’s occasionalist theory of causation. In particular, Taylor points to two passages that seemingly amount to defences of occasionalism. ‘One often overlooked aspect of Astell’s concluding demur in the Letters,’ Taylor notes, ‘is that it is not the conclusion at all—the text ends with Norris’s response.’85 In his view, Astell was convinced by Norris’s rejoinder to her final letter concerning sensible congruity. In that rejoinder, Norris further denies that material objects have any power to produce sensations in our souls. A few years later, in his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, Norris repeats the same point, but concedes that there is some sense in which sensible objects are more than ‘purely Positive and Arbitrary Conditions’

83

Astell, Proposal II, 213–14. Norris, Theory II: ‘tho the Brain does not perceive it self, nor is yet the immediate Object of that which does, yet by virtue of that Law of Union which is between Soul and Body, certain Impressions upon some parts of the Brain . . . are connected with certain Perceptions in the Mind, and accordingly serve to excite them. I suppose again that those Movements or Impressions to which our Perceptions are annex’d, are communicated to the Brain by the Mediation of the Nerves’ (198–9) or, as he says later, ‘by the Course or Flux of the Animal Spirits’ (199). 85 Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’, 512. 84

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of our sensations.86 On the one hand, they are merely arbitrary in the sense that there is no necessary connection between their impressions on our body and the sensations in our soul. ‘For most assuredly there is nothing in those Impressions that either resembles the following Sensations, or that Naturally and Necessarily infers them.’87 On the other hand, they are not merely arbitrary and positive because God has a ‘greater reason’ for causing a sensation in the soul upon the impression from a body: the good or preservation of the human machine or body. God gives me the sentiment he does because it is his will that I should avoid injurious impressions made by sensible objects. Taylor asserts that ‘without doubt’ Astell had Norris’s final rebuttal in mind when she wrote her ‘defenses of occasionalism’ in The Christian Religion.88 In the first passage, Taylor points out, Astell maintains that the efficacy of the divine will is responsible for the causation of sensations in the mind. She says of God that it is for very good reasons that He has so united a corruptible body to an immortal mind, that the impressions which are made on the former, shall be perceived and attended with certain sensations in the other, and this by ways altogether mysterious and incomprehensible, and only to be resolved into the efficacy of the divine will. The body then may be of great service to us, if we know how to employ it according to the design of our maker.89

Here Astell’s claims are certainly compatible with the occasionalist view that God brings about certain sensations in the mind upon the occasion of certain sensible objects making an impression on the body. Like Norris, she appeals to God’s ‘very good reasons’ or ‘design’ for producing sensations in our minds in response to the impressions of sensible objects. Nevertheless, O’Neill points out (rightly, I think) that Astell’s remarks about ‘the efficacy of the divine will’ can also be accommodated by an orthodox Cartesian account of sensation. Descartes himself claims that the fact that the brain affects the mind, and causes sensations that are conducive to the preservation of the body, bears witness to ‘the power and goodness of God’.90 When Astell refers to God’s ‘efficacy’, she too may be referring to God’s capacity to ensure the preservation of the body by the simplest and most effective means (the brain’s effect on the soul). It is not clear, then, that the above passage provides sufficient evidence of Astell’s conversion to occasionalism, the view that God is the sole efficient cause of our sensations. 86 Norris, Theory II, 234. Here Norris explicitly addresses Astell’s sensible congruity objection once again, a fact that is yet to be remarked upon in the literature. 87 Ibid., 235. Compare Astell and Norris, Letters: ‘For most assuredly there is nothing in those Motions that either answers the following Sensations, or naturally and necessarily infers them’ (137). 88 Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’, 512. 89 90 Astell, Christian Religion, }305; my italics. Descartes, Meditations, 60.

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In the second passage of The Christian Religion, however, Astell seemingly expresses a much stronger commitment to occasionalism. In }378, she says that Having therefore upon your mind that truly rational and sublime pleasure, of approving yourself to God and enjoying Him, you are not at leisure to attend the little poignancy of meat and drink, though the health and soundness of your constitution makes these as relishing to you as to anybody. If meditation and a just disquisition of truth has carried you beyond the prejudices of sense, you are convinced that God is the true efficient cause of all our good, of all our pleasing sensations, and that without any reflection on the purity of His nature. You look through the creature to the creator as the author of all your delight, and thus every morsel gives a double pleasure, considering the hand that feeds you, or to speak more correctly, the power of God giving you diverse modifications.91

It is difficult to ignore the occasionalist overtones of this passage. Astell allows that, when speaking correctly, my pleasing sensations are really ‘diverse modifications’ of the mind brought about by God’s causal power.92 While Astell does not affirm that God is the sole efficient cause of all our pleasing sensations, she does imply that creatures are not true causes or authors of our delight. She also echoes Norris’s language in the ‘Discourse’: once the ‘prejudice of sense’ is removed, he says in this essay, it is not difficult to be persuaded that God alone is ‘the true Efficient Cause’ of our sensations.93 Notwithstanding such similarities, in my view, this passage still provides insufficient evidence of Astell’s commitment to occasionalism. To grasp this point, it is necessary for us to observe the wider context of Astell’s aforementioned remarks about God being ‘the true efficient cause’ of our sensations. These remarks come on the heels of Astell’s response to Damaris Masham’s criticisms of Norris’s view that we are obliged to love God alone with a love of desire. Masham (1659–1708) was the daughter of the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth, and one of John Locke’s closest companions in the final years of his life.94 Astell, Christian Religion, }378. Taylor specifically highlights this point (see ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’, 512). 93 Norris, ‘Discourse’, 49, 20, 36, and 56. 94 On Damaris Masham, see Luisa Simonutti, ‘Damaris Cudworth Masham: una Lady della Repubblica delle Lettere’, in Scritti in Onore di Eugenio Garin (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1987), 141–65; Lois Frankel, ‘Damaris Masham: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist Philosopher’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 4/1 (1989), 80–90; Lois Frankel, ‘Damaris Cudworth Masham’, in Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), iii, 73–85; Sarah Hutton, ‘Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham: Between Platonism and Enlightenment’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 1/1 (1993), 29–54; Broad, Women Philosophers, chapter 5; James G. Buickerood, ‘What Is It With Damaris, Lady Masham? The Historiography of One Early Modern Woman Philosopher’, Locke Studies, 5 (2005), 179–214; Robert C. Sleigh, ‘Reflections on the Masham–Leibniz correspondence’, in Christia Mercer and Eileen O’Neill, eds., Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford 91 92

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She also seems to have known Norris personally. In 1688, Norris dedicated his Theory and Regulation of Love to Masham, praising her as someone of ‘extraordinary Genius’.95 Then, in 1690 he addressed his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life to ‘the Excellent Lady, the Lady Masham’, exhorting her to abandon her pursuit of learning and knowledge, following her supposed loss of eyesight.96 Masham’s first published work, A Discourse concerning the Love of God, appeared in early 1697.97 In this text, Masham attacks the moral and metaphysical views of Norris’s Practical Discourses (1693) and his 1693–4 letters to Astell. She argues that Norris’s theory of the love of God renders the duties of a moral life impracticable. Human beings simply do not have the constitution to withdraw their affections from material things and other people; they are best suited to the duties of a sociable life, not a life of abstract contemplation. For some people, she says, a religious theory that requires impossible performances—such as complete emotional disengagement from the world—will lead them to abandon religion altogether as ridiculous and nonsensical. Whereas for others, the same religious theory will drive them to live in ‘Monasteries, and Hermitages; with all those Sottish and Wicked Superstitions which have accompanied them whereever they have been in use’.98 These people will see, as Masham claims Malebranche himself does, that it is impossible to love God alone without removing themselves from ‘the Commerce and Conversation of the World’.99

University Press, 2005), 119–26; Jacqueline Broad, ‘A Woman’s Influence? John Locke and Damaris Masham on Moral Accountability’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67/3 (2006), 489–510; Pauline Phemister, ‘ “All the Time and Everywhere Everything’s the Same as Here”: The Principle of Uniformity in the Correspondence between Leibniz and Lady Masham’, in Paul Lodge, ed., Leibniz and his Correspondents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 193–213; Marcy P. Lascano, ‘Damaris Masham and “The Law of Reason or Nature” ’, The Modern Schoolman, 88/3–4 (2011), 245–65; and Sarah Hutton, ‘Debating the Faith: Damaris Masham (1658–1708) and Religious Controversy’, in Anne Dunan-Page and Clotilde Prunier, eds., Debating the Faith: Religion and Letter Writing in Great Britain, 1550–1800 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 159–75. 95

John Norris, The Theory and Regulation of Love. A Moral Essay. In Two Parts. To which are added Letters Philosophical and Moral between the Author and Dr Henry More (Oxford: Printed at the Theatre for Hen. Clements, 1688), ii–v. 96 John Norris, Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life: With reference to the Study of Learning and Knowledge. In a Letter to the Excellent Lady, the Lady Masham (London: S. Manship, 1690), sig. A4. 97 [Damaris Masham], Discourse concerning the Love of God (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1696). The title page is dated 1696, but this work did not appear in print until Hilary term (i.e., February) in 1697. See Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues, 1668–1709 A.D.; with a Number for Easter Term, 1711 A.D., 3 vols (London: Professor Edward Arber, 1903–6), iii, 1. 98 Masham, Discourse, 120. 99 Ibid., 121.

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In her Christian Religion of 1705, Astell’s addresses Masham’s critical remarks.100 Not surprisingly, Astell takes a number of Masham’s disparaging comments as criticisms of her own moral opinions.101 Like Norris, she too extols the benefits of a contemplative life, a life withdrawn from the hurry and noise of the world, and of disengagement from the love of material things and other people. Astell’s supposed defence of occasionalism forms part of her response to Masham. She begins }378 with a supposition for the addressee of The Christian Religion, her friend Lady Catherine Jones. ‘Suppose your Ladyship, or any other good Christian,’ Astell says, ‘is addicted to study.’ And let us suppose that study pleases her because it puts her in the possession of truth, or of her true good, God himself. During the course of study, Your spirits fail and you grow faint, you eat and drink, or if they like it better, you love to eat and drink upon this occasion; and why so? Not for the mere pleasure of eating and drinking, this, I may say without “rhapsody,” were below a rational, much more a Christian mind. Though it is certain you feel pleasure in it, and you thank God for it, since by this easy sensible way, without engaging yourself in the troublesome examination of the state of your body and the suitableness of the nourishment, you eat and drink what will support it. But you do this only to keep your body in health that it may be able to serve your mind, that both may serve their redeemer, in which service all your happiness consists. And as great pains usually withdraw our attention from little ones, so do greater pleasures extinguish our sense of the lesser.102

This lady continues her meditations in this way, Astell says, and she is ‘carried beyond the prejudices of sense’ and persuaded that God is the ‘true efficient cause’ of all her good, and of all her pleasing sensations. Astell then asks: where is 100 There are several recent studies of Astell’s response to Masham. See Patricia Springborg, ‘Astell, Masham, and Locke: Religion and Politics’, in Hilda L. Smith, ed., Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 105–25; Taylor, ‘Astell’s Ironic Assault’; Jacqueline Broad, ‘Adversaries or Allies? Occasional Thoughts on the Masham–Astell Exchange’, Eighteenth-Century Thought, 1 (2003), 123–49; Catherine Wilson, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: The Masham–Astell Debate’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21/3 (2004), 281–98; Buickerood, ‘What Is It With Damaris, Lady Masham?’; O’Neill, ‘Astell on the Causation of Sensation’; Catherine Wilson, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: the Masham–Astell Exchange’, in Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, eds., The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press, 2007), 125–39; and Joanne E. Myers, ‘Enthusiastic Improvement: Mary Astell and Damaris Masham on Sociability’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 28/3 (2013), 534–50. 101 James Buickerood observes that Astell does so, despite the fact that ‘there are no clear references or allusions to or quotations from Astell in Masham’s Discourse’; see Buickerood, ‘What Is It With Damaris, Lady Masham?’, 213. In her Discourse, Masham does, however, make one disparaging reference to a ‘young Writer, whose Judgment may, perhaps, be Byassed by the Affectation of Novelty’ (Masham, Discourse, 78)—she likely has Astell in mind. 102 Astell, Christian Religion, }378.

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the hurt of all this? Why should anyone think that such a contemplative life is ‘destructive of all religion, and even of morality’?103 In short, here she offers a supposition for the sake of argument. There is no positive defence of occasionalism in this passage, or a declarative statement in support of the view that ‘God is the true efficient cause’ of sensations. She merely denies Masham’s negative claim that the Malebranchean philosophy logically leads to either atheism or enthusiasm. Toward this end, Astell reiterates her favourite point about Malebranchean philosophy more generally: the idea that, regardless of whether or not it is true, it is conducive to a wise, virtuous, and happy Christian life. In a later paragraph, Astell says But certainly the way of using the world mentioned in the 378th paragraph, is more like to restrain us from abusing it, than if we should say to ourselves, why may not we “satisfy” our “natural cravings” with the “good things of this world,” which as we learn from the “common sense and experience of mankind,” as well as from the Discourses of great men, “were given to be enjoyed”?104

The contemplative life enables one to avoid a materialistic lifestyle and instant gratification of desires, in favour of spiritual goods and long-term benefits. Herein lies one of the chief benefits of a female monastery, Astell says, or ‘a reasonable provision for the education of one half of mankind’.105 A quiet life of contemplation can provide a young woman with the rules for thinking and the purity and prayer required to attain wisdom and virtue. Where is the harm in that? Earlier I stated that if Astell is a Malebranchean occasionalist, then this potentially raises the problem of free will for her moral philosophy as a whole. There is no positive textual evidence, however, that Astell actively endorses occasionalism in any of her works. In those passages where she writes approvingly about occasionalism, she merely emphasizes its compatibility with a moral and religious life. This is all apiece with Astell’s other writings on metaphysical subjects. In her arguments, she never loses sight of the ultimate moral benefit of contemplation on the immaterial and immortal nature of the self. More importantly, she always affirms a woman’s ability to use her free will to raise herself up, to direct her mind’s attention to the best things, and to acquire a certain ‘greatness of soul’ through her voluntary efforts. Thus far, we have discussed the foundations of Astell’s philosophy, or the epistemological, theological, and metaphysical presuppositions upon which her moral theory is built. Let us now turn to the heart of that theory itself. 103

Ibid.

104

Ibid., }383.

105

Ibid., }379.

5 Virtue and the Passions In light of Astell’s arguments concerning the immateriality of the soul, we might expect that she would have little to say about the role of the material body in the good life. Some recent commentators have taken this view. According to one scholar, Astell suggests that women must ‘repress the body in order to release the mind’.1 Another notes that Astell’s philosophy depends ‘upon a mind–body separation and upon a veneration of reason and the mind over the body’.2 And yet another makes the point that for Astell ‘the body was unimportant to philosophy; for her and other Cartesians, all that really mattered was the “freedom” of the disembodied mind for “self ”-determination’.3 But it must be said that, when it comes to Astell’s moral thought, these claims are not strictly true. By and large, Astell acknowledges that her fellow women must learn to negotiate practical moral situations as embodied subjects—as a substantial union of soul and body—and not just disembodied minds. In her moral philosophy, then, there is no such thing as the freedom of the disembodied mind. Nevertheless, Astell does say that women can use their freedom of will to attain mastery over the body. In fact, she advises that in order to attain virtue, women must first learn to use their will to govern and regulate those mental disturbances known as ‘the passions’.4 For Astell, the passions are perceptions that arise involuntarily in the soul as a result of its close intermingling with the human body. They consist in emotions

1 Catharine R. Stimpson, foreword in Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), xii. 2 Corrinne Harol, ‘Mary Astell’s Law of the Heart’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 87–97 (88). 3 Cynthia Bryson, ‘Mary Astell: Defender of the Disembodied Mind’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 13/4 (1998), 45. 4 On this topic, see also Jacqueline Broad, ‘Astell, Cartesian Ethics, and the Critique of Custom’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 165–80; and Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell and the Virtues’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming).

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such as love, hatred, desire, hope, fear, jealousy, sadness, and so on. More specifically, they are perceptions that correspond to certain actions in the body, such as disturbances and commotions in the blood, and animal spirits.5 Astell’s characterization of the passions closely resembles that of Descartes in his final work, The Passions of the Soul (1649).6 In this text, Descartes is not the strident advocate of the pure intellect over the emotions, as he is commonly depicted 5

Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 213. 6 There is now an extensive literature on Descartes and the passions. See, for example, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ‘From Passions to Emotions and Sentiments’, Philosophy, 57/220 (1982), 159–72; Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ‘Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body’, in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Descartes’ Meditations (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), 513–34; Paul Hoffman, ‘Cartesian Passions and Cartesian Dualism’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 71 (1990), 310–33; Paul Hoffman, ‘Three Dualist Theories of the Passions’, Philosophical Topics, 19/1 (1991), 153–200; Derk Pereboom, ‘Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza’, Faith and Philosophy, 11/4 (1994), 592–625; John Cottingham, ‘Cartesian Ethics: Reason and the Passions’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 195/1 (1996), 193–216; Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), especially chapter 5; Byron Williston, ‘Descartes on Love and/as Error’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 58/3 (1997), 429–44; John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially chapter 3; Susan James, ‘Reason, the Passions, and the Good Life’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, eds., The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ii, 1358–96; Byron Williston, ‘Akrasia and the Passions in Descartes’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7/1 (1999), 33–55; Lisa Shapiro, ‘Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The Union of Soul and Body and the Practice of Philosophy’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7/3 (1999), 503–20; Lilli Alanen, Descartes’s Concept of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), chapter 6; Lilli Alanen, ‘The Intentionality of Cartesian Emotions’, in Byron Williston and André Gombay, eds., Passion and Virtue in Descartes (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), 107–27; Paul Hoffman, ‘The Passions and Freedom of the Will’, in Williston and Gombay, eds., Passion and Virtue in Descartes, 261–99; Lisa Shapiro, ‘Descartes’ Passions of the Soul and the Union of Mind and Body’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 85/3 (2003), 211–48; Lisa Shapiro, ‘The Structure of The Passions of the Soul and the Soul–Body Union’, in Williston and Gombay, eds., Passion and Virtue in Descartes, 31–79; Amy M. Schmitter, ‘The Passionate Intellect: Reading the (Non-)Opposition of Intellect and Emotion in Descartes’, in Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams, eds., Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 48–82; Deborah J. Brown, Descartes and the Passionate Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Sean Greenberg, ‘Descartes on the Passions: Function, Representation and Motivation’, Noûs, 41/4 (2007), 714–34; Amy M. Schmitter, ‘How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes’, in Janet Broughton and John Carriero, eds., A Companion to Descartes (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 426–44; Lisa Shapiro, ‘Descartes’s Ethics’, in Broughton and Carriero, eds., Companion to Descartes, 445–63; Amy M. Schmitter, ‘Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Theories of Emotions’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online encyclopedia], ed. Edward Zalta (Winter 2010) accessed 13 November 2013; Shoshana Brassfield, ‘Never Let the Passions Be Your Guide: Descartes and the Role of the Passions’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20/3 (2012), 459–77; and Amy M. Schmitter, ‘Passions and Affections’, in Peter R. Anstey, ed., The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 442–71.

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today.7 Rather, his central concern is to explore the nature of the passionate mind and to explain the passions themselves, ‘those perceptions, sensations or emotions of the soul which we refer particularly to it, and which are caused, maintained and strengthened by some movement of the [animal] spirits’ in the body.8 Not surprisingly, Astell appears to have been intimately acquainted with Descartes’ text. In the final chapter of her second Proposal, she cites the Passions of the Soul in the margin.9 Then in her Christian Religion, she closely follows Descartes’ enumeration of the passions in part two of his work: she mentions his six primitive passions of admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness, and then names several other passions that derive from them.10 In her final piece, Bart’lemy Fair, she refers (without explicit acknowledgement, however) to the same treatise once again.11 In the Passions of the Soul, Descartes emphasizes that the passions serve an important function insofar as they aid in the preservation of the soul–body composite.12 The passion of fear moves the soul to flee from danger, the passion of courage motivates it to fight, and certain desires urge it to pursue things that are vital to bodily health.13 But while the passions might be useful for the purposes of preservation, they also frequently cloud and obscure the understanding. The problem is that the passions cause us to dwell on thoughts that do not really require our attention, and they often motivate us to perform actions that On the common caricature of Descartes as someone who has ‘little use for the affective dimensions of thought’, see Schmitter, ‘The Passionate Intellect’, 48–51. 8 Descartes, Passions of the Soul, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), i, article 27, pp. 338–9. 9 Astell, Proposal II, 218. Astell cites Descartes’ ‘Passions de l’Ame’ alongside Henry More’s Account of Virtue (1690). On More’s indebtedness to the Cartesian theory of the passions, see Christopher Tilmouth, ‘Generosity and the Utility of the Passions: Cartesian Ethics in Restoration England’, The Seventeenth Century, 22/1 (2007), 152–7 (esp. 155). On the wider influence of Descartes’ philosophy of the passions in early modern Britain, see Schmitter, ‘Passions and Affections’. 10 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }254. Astell’s wording here indicates that she was most likely familiar with a 1650 English translation of Descartes’ work titled The Passions of the Soule In three Books. The first, Treating of the Passions in Generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, Of the Number, and order of the Passions, and the explication of the six Primitive ones. The third, of Particular Passions. By R. des Cartes. And Translated out of French into English (London: A.C., 1650). She follows his taxonomy of the passions in part II, articles 53–67, of this work. 11 [Mary Astell], Bart’lemy Fair: Or, An Enquiry after Wit; In which due Respect is had to a Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, To my LORD *** (London: Richard Wilkin, 1709), 140. 12 Descartes, Passions of the Soul, art. 52, p. 349. 13 Ibid., art. 40, p. 343; art. 137, p. 376. 7

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are foolish and contrary to reason. ‘The passions almost always cause the goods they represent, as well as the evils, to appear much greater and more important than they are,’ according to Descartes, ‘thus moving us to pursue the former and flee from the latter with more ardour and zeal than is appropriate.’14 The soul cannot easily control or suspend its strong and violent passions because they are accompanied by equally strong and violent disturbances in the body. When we are in the grip of such passions, we cannot easily exert our will to stop their perturbing effect on the soul. But as a remedy, Descartes does not advise that we suppress or eradicate the passions altogether. In his opinion, some of the most exquisite pleasures in life consist in being deeply moved by the passions. He emphasizes that the passions ‘are all by nature good, and that we have nothing to avoid but their misuse or their excess’.15 Like Descartes, Astell agrees that the passions can be beneficial, they can have ‘both their Use and Pleasure’.16 ‘It is not a fault to have Passions,’ she says, ‘since they are natural and unavoidable, and useful too.’17 In particular, they dispose the body to act according to the determinations of the mind—they are great motivators to action in situations that call for a quick response. But the passions also ‘discompose’, ‘disquiet’, and ‘rebel against’ us, they ‘get Mastry of the Mind’ and ‘hurry it on to what objects they please’.18 They place us ‘all in a ferment’ such that it is impossible to ignore or avoid them.19 She observes that the ‘Condition of our present State . . . in which we feel the force of our Passions e’re we discern the strength of our Reason, necessitates us to take up with such Principles and Reasonings to direct and determine those Passions as we happen to meet with . . . not [those] right Reason disposes us to’.20 As a result, the passions typically lead us headlong into sin and folly—they encourage us to make poor moral decisions. Unlike Descartes, Astell is seemingly ambivalent about the best way to remedy the disordering effect of the passions on the soul. On the one hand, in keeping with his approach, she expressly rejects those Stoic-inspired techniques that aim to eradicate or extirpate the passions altogether.21 In a letter to Norris, she says ‘I am not for a Stoical Apathy, I would not have my Hands and Feet cut off 14

15 Ibid., art. 138, p. 377. Ibid., art. 211, p. 403. Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 99. 17 18 Astell, Proposal II, 214. Ibid., 217, 214; Astell and Norris, Letters, 99. 19 20 Astell, Proposal II, 222. Ibid., 136. 21 Susan James notes that in the seventeenth century there are few advocates of an extreme Stoic position—most concede that a life free from passion is unattainable or even inconceivable (James, ‘Reason, the Passions, and the Good Life’, 1373–4). Yet many philosophers still refer to the Stoics as targets against which they define their views. 16

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lest they should sometimes Incommode me. The Fault is not in our Passions considered in themselves, but in our voluntary Misapplication and unsuitable Management of them’.22 Christian morality, in her view, does not teach us to extirpate the passions, ‘it only teaches us to place them upon their proper objects’.23 Once a passion is directed toward the right object in accordance with right reason, then that passion is no longer an obstacle on the path to virtue and happiness. The passions cannot hurt us, no matter how ‘brisk’ or ‘active’ they might be, provided that they are fixed upon appropriate things.24 On this view, the virtuous person is not dispassionate or unfeeling about other people or unfortunate circumstances. Rather, she has a disposition to feel the right way in proportion to the circumstances and toward those ends or objects that are truly worthy of her concern. Astell says that virtue consists in the mind governing the body and directing its emotions toward the right objects, with the right degree of intensity (or ‘pitch’), according to right reason.25 The virtuous person might sometimes have strong or violent passions—she might be tremendously angry or sad, for example—but provided that her feelings are guided by right reason, and toward the right ends, then they are good and proper. On the other hand, Astell sometimes expresses the view that we ought to eradicate the passions of pride, anger, hatred, and overwhelming sorrow (excessive grief or mourning). This position is explicitly articulated in her replies to the religious writings of an Irish clergyman named Charles Hickman (1648–1713), the author of a work titled Fourteen Sermons (1700).26 In one passage of her Christian Religion, she emphasizes that the above passions are sins that the Bible urges us to eliminate in order to attain salvation. It is true, she says, addressing Hickman, that ‘God has not bid a man put off all his passions,’27 taking passion in a strict and proper sense, exclusive of those vices into which our natural passions too often hurry us; for Christianity does not extirpate the passions, it only teaches us to place them upon their proper objects, as has been already said. But if anyone by passions will needs understand sins, such as pride, anger, hatred, and overwhelming sorrow, and so on, it is very certain that the gospel commands us ‘to put off all these’ [Colossians 3:8] of what kind so

23 Astell and Norris, Letters, 99. Astell, Christian Religion, }337. 25 Astell, Proposal II, 218. Ibid., 214. 26 See Astell, Christian Religion, }}327, 334–44. Though Astell does not mention Hickman by name, her numerous quotations are taken verbatim from Charles Hickman, Fourteen Sermons Preach’d, at St James’s Church in Westminster (London: James Orme, 1700). On Hickman, see S. J. Connolly, ‘Hickman, Charles’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edition] (May 2008) accessed 20 January 2012. 27 Hickman, ‘Sermon Ninth’, in Fourteen Sermons, 263. 22 24

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ever, assuring us that such sinful ‘flesh and blood can’t inherit the kingdom of God’ [1 Corinthians 15:50].28

So it would seem that Astell departs from Descartes’ philosophy of the passions in this respect. For her, there are some passions that are not useful and that ought to be discarded in the pursuit of virtue and happiness. Malebranche expresses a similar ambivalence about the passions.29 On the one hand, he supports Descartes’ positive assessment of the passions as useful and beneficial to the body; but on the other, he adopts Augustine’s strongly negative views about their disordering effect on the human mind.30 Malebranche emphasizes that as a result of the Fall, human passions have become degraded and corrupted. The body ‘tyrannizes’ the mind, he says, and ‘tears it away from God, to whom it should be inseparably united, and it unceasingly applies the mind to the search after sensible things’.31 The bodily passions ‘dominate, or rather, tyrannize reason’,32 they enslave us and lead us away from our true good. Echoing Malebranche, Astell observes that it is ‘the misery of our depraved nature to be too fast tied to sensible things, to be strongly, and in a manner wholly affected with them; and whatever loosens this tie and weans us from them, does us a very considerable service’.33 Regardless of our fallen human state, she claims, we must assert our freedom of will and overcome ‘the dominion of passion’.34 At this point, then, we might ask: how can Astell affirm that all the passions are good if directed to their right ends, while at the same time affirming that some are sinful and ought to be eliminated? The solution to this difficulty, I believe, can be found in a careful examination of Astell’s views concerning the relationship between the passions, the virtues, and the attainment of happiness. In the first

Astell, Christian Religion, }337. Astell is being a little disingenuous here: Colossians 3:8 refers only to anger and hatred, not pride and overwhelming sorrow (‘But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth’). 29 For recent English-language commentaries on Malebranche and the passions, see Hoffman, ‘Three Dualist Theories’, 182–94; James, Passion and Action, 108–23; Tad Schmaltz, ‘Malebranche on Natural and Free Loves’, in Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, eds., The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press, 2007), 95–111; Sean Greenberg, ‘Malebranche on the Passions: Biology, Morality and the Fall’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18/2 (2010), 191–207; and Schmitter, ‘Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Theories’. 30 See Greenberg, ‘Malebranche on the Passions’, 191–2. 31 Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. and ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 339. 32 Malebranche, Search After Truth, 415. 33 34 Astell, Christian Religion, }264. Ibid., }249. 28

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part of this chapter, I highlight the importance that Astell places on the role of right reason in the regulation of the passions and the pursuit of virtue. In the second part, I spell out the significance of the passion-cum-virtue known as generosity (or ‘greatness of soul’) in terms of Astell’s project for the moral advancement of women. Then, in the third and final part, I explain the connection between a woman’s cultivation of generosity and her ultimate attainment of happiness. In this way, I aim to show that Astell takes a consistent approach to the passions, and to affirm that, in her opinion, women do not necessarily have to repress the body in order to lead a happy and virtuous life.35

5.1 Virtue Generally speaking, for Astell a passion is a certain passive receptivity on the part of the soul. She agrees that when the passions are violent, there is little that we can do to control them: the soul ‘can’t be insensible of or avoid ’em, being no more able to prevent these first Impressions than she is to stop the Circulation of the Bloud, or to hinder Digestion’.36 But the soul also has an active capacity—it is capable of volition or the exercising of free will. Consequently, even in the midst of overwhelming passion, there are courses of action that we might take: we might either allow the passion to continue until it has subsided, or we might direct it to another object.37 These observations correspond to those of Descartes. He too advises that, while in the grip of an excessive passion, we can ‘distract ourselves by other thoughts until time and repose have completely calmed the disturbance in our blood’.38 He also offers more long-term techniques of governance. According to Descartes, with the proper guidance and training, it is possible to strengthen our souls such that we can learn to ‘conquer the passions and stop the bodily movements which accompany them’.39 Toward this end, he advises that we use our reason to determine what is truly good and what is truly evil, ‘so as not to take the one for the other or rush into anything immoderately’.40 Souls can be judged as strong or weak ‘according to their ability to follow these judgments more or less closely and resist the present passions which are opposed to them’.41 For Descartes, the passion of desire provides a salient example of how judgments 35 In this chapter, I emphasize the philosophical rather than the religious aspects of Astell’s theory of the passions. On the religious underpinnings, see Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 95–116. 36 37 Astell, Proposal II, 214. Ibid., 214. 38 39 Descartes, Passions of the Soul, art. 211, p. 403. Ibid., art. 48, p. 347. 40 41 Ibid., art. 138, p. 377. Ibid., art. 49, p. 347.

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formed on reasonable grounds can help to control the passions. The passion of desire is good and useful when it avoids excess and ‘proceeds from true knowledge’.42 Toward this end, it is important that we desire only those good things that depend on us. Vain desire, or desire for those things that are independent of our capacity to satisfy them, can lead only to feelings of dissatisfaction. For Descartes, as we will see in Section 5.2, the passion of generosity offers an apt remedy for these vain desires: it teaches us to value ourselves on the exercise of our will, which is entirely in our power. Like Descartes, Astell also claims that in order to regulate the passions it is important to acquire knowledge of the right ends. In her Proposal, she advises women that they must reason only according to their pure non-sensory perceptions, or those clear ideas of the intellect, if they wish to attain knowledge.43 They must reason in a logical, orderly manner from simple to complex ideas; they must avoid being drawn into irrelevant considerations; and they must never judge anything to be true that is not clearly known to be so. The problem, however, is that one ‘irregular Passion will put a greater Obstacle between us and Truth, then the bright Understanding and clearest Reasoning can easily remove’.44 The Cartesian rules for thinking can only get us so far. To acquire a capacity for sound judgment, Astell advises that a woman must also purify her mind. Purity of the mind, it will be recalled, comes by withdrawing from the senses, regulating the passions, and overcoming desire for material things and other people. At this point, it might seem that Astell’s method for governing the passions is disturbingly circular.45 In order to regulate our passions, she says, we must engage in the search for truth and knowledge of the right ends. To search for truth and knowledge, however, it is first necessary to regulate our passions, because wayward passions typically present obstacles to seeing the truth. Her method for regulating the passions, in other words, seems to require that we have already regulated our passions. To dispel this difficulty, we might recall that Astell is committed to the Neoplatonist idea that truth and virtue are mutually interdependent.46 Like Norris, she points out that ‘Ignorance disposes to Vice, and Wickedness reciprocally keeps us Ignorant, so that we cannot be free from the one unless we cure the other’.47 Accordingly, for Astell, it does not matter where her readers begin—all that matters is that they turn their attention, at some point, to their moral and intellectual improvement. They must endeavour to gain

42 44 45 46

43 Ibid., art. 141, p. 378. On this topic, see Chapter 2, Section 2.2, in this volume. Astell, Proposal II, 185. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for bringing this point to my attention. 47 On this topic, see Chapter 2, Section 2.3, in this volume. Astell, Proposal II, 127.

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‘some Clearness of Head’ and ‘some lower degrees of Knowledge’, at least as much as excites them to gain more.48 Following this, once they have obtained ‘a competent measure’ of purity and knowledge, the two will ‘mutually assist’ once another: ‘the more Pure we are the clearer will our Knowledge be, and the more we Know, the more we shall Purify.’49 To achieve mastery over her passions, then, the female reader is advised simply to begin by focusing her attention. She is advised to withdraw herself from the hurry and noise of the everyday world, and to immerse herself in a life of contemplation. ‘Pure speculations of any kind,’ Astell says, ‘do us service by withdrawing our minds from sense, whereby they moderate our passions, and bring them into subjection to reason, which those speculations enlarge and fortify.’50 More particularly, she advises her readers to meditate upon their own natures, the nature of material beings, and the nature of God, for ‘it is thro the mistake of some of these that our Inclinations take a wrong bias’.51 Through meditation and study, a woman can learn to make sound judgments about matters of moral and religious significance. She can come to the judgment that an infinitely perfect being exists and that she is obliged to live in conformity with his will, a will that corresponds to the law of reason. She can also judge that her soul is immaterial and immortal by nature, and she can determine that material things, including her body, are essentially corruptible and perishable.52 For Astell, these rational judgments, together with a belief in revelation, form the basic tenets of Christianity. In her view, study of the Christian religion enables a woman to recognize those objects that demand her intense emotional commitment, including her love, admiration, esteem, desire, and so on. Astell says In a word, we judge and choose amiss, because our judgments are hasty and partial; it is our passions for the most part that make our judgments thus precipitate and defective, we suffer passion to lead when it ought to follow; and sensible things, the love of this world, and present pleasure, is that which moves our passions. Wise men in all ages have exclaimed against prejudices and prepossessions, and advised us to get rid of them, but they have not informed us how, nor enabled us to do it, Christianity only does this. And it does it by stripping sensible things of their deceitful appearances, and finding us nobler objects of our passions than any this world affords.53

48

Ibid., 131; my italics. Ibid. On this topic, see Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal: Mind, Method, and Custom’, Philosophy Compass, 2 (2007), 227–43 (230). 50 51 Astell, Christian Religion, }263. Astell, Proposal II, 210. 52 On these topics, see Chapters 3 and 4 in this volume. 53 Astell, Christian Religion, }253. 49

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In sum, by following a certain method of judgment, by purifying her mind, by attending to the Christian religion, and by contemplating her immortal soul and God, the moral agent can determine where her passions ought to lie. In this way, she will attain virtue. In Astell’s view, virtue ‘consists in governing Animal Impressions, in directing our Passions to such Objects, and keeping ’em in such a pitch, as right Reason requires’.54 To perform a virtuous action, we must perform it with the right intentions, for the right reason, and with the proper end in mind. ‘Some virtues and some vices bear a great resemblance in the mere outward act,’ she says, ‘so that they are not to be distinguished but by the intention, the reason, and the end of the action.’55 In a lengthy passage of her Christian Religion (}254), Astell maintains that Christianity reveals those things which are truly worthy of our admiration. It proposes to us the love of God, an infinite good; and the hatred of sin, the greatest of all evils. It convinces us that our desires will not labor in vain, when they put us upon pursuing the one, and avoiding the other. So that despair, whose business is by the pain it gives, to admonish us that felicity is not in worldly enjoyments, is superseded here, for whatever our lot may be in this world, we are carried on by an active and vigorous hope of the next . . . 56

Astell then proceeds to mention almost every passion in the second part of Descartes’ Passions of the Soul, including admiration, esteem, generosity, pride, humility, veneration, disdain, love, hatred, desire, hope, fear, jealousy, security, despair, irresolution, courage, boldness, remorse, joy, envy, pity, satisfaction, repentance, gratitude, indignation, glory, shame, and sorrow.57 Her main point in this passage, and in a strikingly similar passage in the Proposal,58 is that we can ‘hallow’ or purify our passions by placing them upon their proper objects. The passion of hatred can be directed toward our sins, the passion of anger can be Astell, Proposal II, 214. In Springborg’s edition, this line reads ‘as right Reasons requires’ (my italic). In the 1697 edition, however, this line simply reads ‘as right Reason requires’. See [Mary Astell], A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II: Wherein a Method is Offered for the Improvement of their Minds (London: Richard Wilkin, 1697), 240. 55 Astell, Christian Religion, }303. See also }}300 and 327. 56 Ibid., }254. 57 See Descartes, Passions of the Soul, arts. 53–67. In addition to these passions, Astell also mentions presumption, firmness, despising, favour, delight, thankfulness, regret, emulation, rashness, caution, and grief. These additions suggest that Astell also compiles her list with one eye on Henry More’s taxonomy of the passions in An Account of Virtue: Or, Dr. Henry More’s Abridgment of Morals, Put into English, trans. Edward Southwell (London: Benjamin Tooke, 1690; facs. edn, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 43–54. More says that he is indebted to Descartes’ ordering of the passions (47), but he also adds a few extras and uses his own idiosyncratic terminology (e.g., ‘cupidity’ instead of ‘desire’). On the similarities between Astell and More’s theories of the passions, see Broad, ‘Astell, Cartesian Ethics, and the Critique of Custom’, 173–5. 58 Astell, Proposal II, 219–20. 54

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directed at injustice and wickedness, the passion of pride can be felt for our wilfully good actions, and the passion of sorrow can be directed toward past offences. Such passions become virtues when they are intentionally directed to the right ends in accordance with right reason. Accordingly, virtuous persons are in the habit of having the correct emotional responses in any given situation. They have a standing disposition to feel or act in the right measure, toward the right ends, in accordance with right reason. Such persons are masters of the art of prudence, ‘the being all of a Piece, managing all our Words and Actions as it becomes Wise Persons and Good Christians’.59 They are capable of accommodating the many vicissitudes of life, because their ‘Reason is always on her Guard and ready to exert her self ’, and so they ‘chuse a right End’, they ‘proportion the Means to the End’, and they ‘rate ev’rything according to its proper value’.60 Though virtuous persons might sometimes exhibit extreme or excessive emotion, their feelings are always appropriate and proportionate to their circumstances. Let us now turn to Astell’s claim that some passions, including the aforementioned emotions of anger, hatred, pride, and (overwhelming) sorrow, ought to be eliminated. Astell makes this point in response to Hickman’s ‘Sermon Ninth’ on Acts 14:15, ‘We also are men of like passions with you’. In this text, Hickman observes that there are ‘two famous Sects of Philosophers of old’: one that favours the governing of the passions (presumably he means the Aristotelian approach), and another that requires the passions to be abolished or ‘rooted out’ (the Stoic tradition).61 In his view, the Stoic approach is to be shunned because it is impracticable. God has made human beings such that their constitution naturally inclines them toward the passions. Even the Bible reflects the fact that no one is perfect and that we are all naturally subject to the distempers of our passions. The scriptures are replete with examples of passionate men: Moses is subject to anger, David is transported by hatred, and even Christ himself is ‘overwhelm’d with sorrow’.62 According to Hickman, this indicates that God will pardon us for those

Ibid., 170. On Astell and prudence, see Broad, ‘Astell and the Virtues’. Ibid., 215; Proposal I, 64. 61 Hickman, ‘Sermon Ninth’, in Fourteen Sermons, 251. Susan James notes that ‘Seventeenthcentury writers were heirs to a long-standing dispute over this issue between the advocates of two traditions, one Stoic, the other Aristotelian. According to the Stoics, it is possible to overcome the passions altogether; the struggle between the rational and emotional aspects of human nature can be so thoroughly won by reason that we no longer experience any passions at all. By contrast, Aristotle held that, even it if were possible, it would be undesirable to quell the passions completely. Instead, reason should control them in such a way that our emotions are appropriate to their objects’ (‘Reason, the Passions, and the Good Life’, 1373–4). 62 Hickman, ‘Sermon Ninth’, in Fourteen Sermons, 250. 59 60

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sinful passions that we are unable to control. Anger is therefore morally permissible on some occasions, and ‘what has been said of Anger, may in great part be applied to Hatred, Disdain, and Pride’, as well as sorrow.63 It is important to develop an attitude of acceptance toward such passions, he says, because ‘All Men must needs despise a Religion that is not consistent with Humanity, and when they find its Precepts are not practicable, they will believe its Author is not True.’64 By contrast, Astell emphasizes that we must strive to conquer our infirmities. Hickman’s complacency strikes at the heart of her project to bring about a moral awakening in the lives of women. As a necessary part of this project, women must be made conscious of their natural power to rise above their vices and attain virtue—they must be made aware of their freedom of will.65 In Astell’s view, women cannot afford to remain complacent about their shortcomings because their happiness in both this life and the next depends on it. She therefore rejects Hickman’s implication that human beings are necessarily determined to be vicious and sinful. In her view, it is not impracticable or inconsistent with human nature for moral agents to extinguish the passions of anger, hatred, pride, and overwhelming sorrow. These emotions are voluntary or ‘wilful’ sins and transgressions.66 We are subject to them only insofar as we misuse our freedom of the will, not because they are a necessary part of our constitution. A virtuous agent must not rest content in the thrall of such passions—she must strive to conquer them. In terms of her approach to the passions, then, Astell seemingly upholds two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, she claims that some passions are sinful and must be eliminated, and on the other, she holds that all the passions are good provided that they are governed by right reason and directed toward their right ends. Does she contradict herself? To address this difficulty, let us examine a passion that plays a pivotal role in Astell’s moral project—the passion of generosity. In my view, this passion provides the key to putting a charitable interpretation on Astell’s remarks.

5.2 Generosity In her works, Astell frequently reflects on the ideas of ‘generosity’, being ‘generous’, and having a ‘great and generous soul’. There is a crucial difference between her early modern usage of the concept (derived from Descartes) and our present-day 63

64 Ibid., 275, 278. Ibid., 263. This accounts for the high consciousness-raising tone of Astell’s feminist works, as well as her use of rhetoric. On the latter, see Christine Mason Sutherland, The Eloquence of Mary Astell (Calgary, AB: The University of Calgary Press, 2005). 66 Astell, Christian Religion, }342. 65

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understanding of generosity as munificence or liberality. In the seventeenth century, the term generosity means something like ‘greatness of soul’, or a ‘wellfounded high regard for oneself manifesting as generosity of spirit and equanimity in the face of trouble’ (Oxford English Dictionary). On this understanding, ‘being generous’ is not so much the performance of an action, such as giving money to charity, but rather the possession of a character trait or a disposition to feel and behave a certain way. For Descartes, the passion of generosity (generosité) plays an important role in the cultivation of the virtues, those ‘habits in the soul which dispose us to have certain thoughts’.67 If we can train ourselves to arouse the passion of generosity, he says, then this might provide us with ‘a general remedy for every disorder of the passions’.68 Generally speaking, for Descartes, generosity is a species of esteem, a passion that we naturally feel whenever we consider an object to be worthy or valuable.69 Esteem derives from the primitive passion of admiration, that wonder or surprise we feel whenever our attention turns to something new (regardless of whether that thing is valuable or contemptible).70 More narrowly, generosity is a species of self-esteem, since it involves considering ourselves as wonderful or admirable in some way. Generosity differs from vanity because the latter consists in having an unwarranted good opinion of ourselves, whereas generosity consists in having a well-founded self-esteem.71 According to Descartes, generosity has two components: (i) it consists in knowing that we ought to be praised or blamed only for those actions that depend upon our free will (because only our will is entirely in our power); and (ii) it consists in feeling within ourselves ‘a firm and constant resolution’ to use our freedom to do what is best.72 Generosity is a legitimate form of self-esteem because it involves valuing ourselves upon something that is truly worthy—our ‘absolute control over ourselves’ or the correct exercise of our free will.73

67

Descartes, Passions of the Soul, art. 161, p. 387. On Cartesian generosity, see Brown, Descartes and the Passionate Mind, 188–209; Lisa Shapiro, ‘Cartesian Generosity’, in Norms and Modes of Thinking in Descartes, ed. Tuomo Aho and Mikko Yrjonsuuri, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 64 (1999), 249–75; Patrick R. Frierson, ‘Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 40/3 (2002), 313–38; and Tilmouth, ‘Generosity and the Utility of the Passions’, 144–67. On Astell and generosity, see Alice Sowaal, ‘Mary Astell and the Development of Vice: Pride, Courtship, and the Woman’s Human Nature Question’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming). 68 69 Descartes, Passions of the Soul, art. 161, p. 388. Ibid., art. 149, p. 383. 70 71 72 Ibid., art. 150, p. 383. Ibid., art. 160, p. 387. Ibid., art. 152–3, p. 384. 73 Ibid., art. 203, p. 400. To be a generous soul, in Descartes’ view, it is not necessary to make correct judgments about what is best. Provided that we never lack the will to perform what we judge best, then in his opinion we are ‘pursuing virtue’ (ibid., art. 170, p. 391; art. 153, p. 384).

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In a 1714 letter to her friend Ann Coventry, Astell enclosed ‘a little Book’ on the Cartesian notion of generosity which she described as ‘a Favorite of mine this 20 years’.74 The book is almost certainly John Somers’ A Discourse concerning Generosity (1693), a short tract that is openly indebted to ‘the Learned and ingenious Des Cartes’.75 In his book, Somers observes that women and people ‘of effeminate and feeble Spirits’ are most likely to lack the principle of generosity.76 They have a kind of impotence, he says, that keeps them ‘servilely under the power of Custom and Prepossession; and renders them unable to quit those Errors which are fixt in them by Custom, Education, or the Power of fancy and corporeal Impression’.77 They act purely by chance and cannot give a rational account of the reasons why they act. By contrast, he associates the passion of generosity with a certain manliness or masculinity of character: generosity arms the moral agent with ‘Masculine Firmness of Mind’, ‘Masculine Resolution’, and a ‘fortitude or manliness of Spirit’.78 Despite this male bias, Somers nevertheless affirms that all human beings are born with a natural principle of self-esteem. The main argument of his book is that since the passion of self-esteem is present in all human beings, and since the passions are great motivators to action, then we should be sure to have just self-esteem—we should value ourselves upon something worth valuing. Ignoring Somers’ gendered language, Astell applauds his egalitarianism. The author handsomely proves, she says, that generosity is ‘not unsuitable to the lowest Rank of Rational Creatures’.79 In the same spirit of equality, in her own works, she endeavours to show that generosity is not unsuitable to the female sex. In this respect, Astell follows in the footsteps of the Frenchman, François Poulain de la Barre, another Cartesian defender of the female sex. In his Equallity of Both Sexes, he argues ‘that the Mind is no less capable in Women, than in Men,’ of exhibiting the Cartesian virtue of generosity, ‘a firm and constant Resolution, of doing that which we judge, the best’.80 74 Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 26 July 1714; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 370. To make these letters more accessible to the modern reader, in my subsequent quotations I have removed the thorn symbol and spelt out abbreviated words. 75 A Discourse concerning Generosity (London: H. Clark for James Adamson, 1693), ‘The Preface’, A5r. According to the English Short Title Catalogue, the author of this work is Baron John Somers (1651–1716). Astell tells Coventry that she cannot regard the ‘Discourse’ as ‘more so’ her favourite since she has discovered the identity of the author. This remark is understandable if we consider the fact that Somers was a Whig and Astell a Tory. On Somers, see Stuart Handley, ‘Somers, John, Baron Somers (1651–1716)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edition] (May 2008) accessed 19 July 2010. 76 77 78 Discourse concerning Generosity, 59–60. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 77, 80, 104. 79 Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 26 July 1714; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 370. 80 See François Poulain de la Barre, The Woman as Good as the Man; Or, the Equallity of Both Sexes, Written Originally in French, And Translated into English by A.L. (London: T. M. for N. Brooks, 1677), 156, 155. If Astell knew Poulain’s writings, it is likely she would have been familiar

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If we trace Astell’s interest in generosity back ‘this 20 years’, this brings us to the first Proposal of 1694. This work contains only a few explicit references to being ‘generous’,81 but the concepts of self-esteem and ‘living up to the dignity of one’s nature’ are central preoccupations of the text. Astell observes that women are particularly likely to have two degenerate forms of self-esteem—pride and mistaken self-love: she who has nothing else to value her self upon, will be proud of her Beauty, or Money, and what that can purchase; and think her self mightily oblig’d to him, who tells her she has those Perfections which she naturally longs for. Her inbred self-esteem and desire of good, which are degenerated into Pride and mistaken Self-love, will easily open her Ears to whatever goes about to nourish and delight them . . . 82

Custom, education, and authority have made the cultivation of well-founded selfesteem particularly difficult for women. Most women do not rightly understand wherein the perfection of their nature consists. As a result of their upbringing, they are kept in ignorance and so they take up with the first objects that offer themselves as plausible sources of perfection—such as outward beauty, fashionable clothes, and other material objects. This is how a woman’s natural selfesteem becomes corrupted and deformed. Astell observes that When a poor Young Lady is taught to value her self on nothing but her Cloaths, and to think she’s very fine when well accoutred. When she hears say that ’tis Wisdom enough for her to know how to dress her self, that she may become amiable in his eyes; to whom it appertains to be knowing and learned; who can blame her if she lay out her Industry and Money on such Accomplishments, and sometimes extends it farther than her misinformer desires she should?83

Like all the passions, this pride could be transformed into a virtue if only women would ‘pride themselves in somewhat truly perfective of a Rational nature’.84 While pride and vanity are in themselves ‘bad Weeds’, they are ‘the product of a good Soil’—they are degenerated forms of the virtue generosity.85 If these women had been properly nourished with learning and knowledge, then their natural self-esteem would have grown strong and hardy. Astell observes that

with this 1677 English translation. Thus far, however, there is no explicit evidence that Astell had ever read Poulain’s work. On Astell and Poulain, see the Introduction to this volume. 81 Astell proposes to excite in her readers ‘a generous Emulation to excel in the best things’ and she urges them to be ‘so generous then Ladies, as to do nothing unworthy of you’ (Astell, Proposal I, 51, 56). She tells them that their pride and vanity is ‘nothing else but Generosity degenerated and corrupted’ (ibid., 62). The female students of her institution will have ‘Dispositions . . . to be Generous’, and their teachers will aim ‘to form a generous temper’ in their minds (ibid., 87, 103). 82 83 84 85 Ibid., 62–3. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 62. Ibid.

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She who makes the most Grimace at a Woman of Sense, who employs all her little skill in endeavouring to render Learning and Ingenuity ridiculous, is yet very desirous to be thought Knowing in a Dress, in the Management of an Intreague, in Coquetry or good Houswifry. If then either the Nobleness or Necessity of our Nature unavoidably excites us to a desire of Advancing, shall it be thought a fault to do it by pursuing the best things? and since we will value our selves on somewhat or other, why shou’d it not be on the most substantial ground?86

In her view, it is important to return to the original soil, that natural principle of self-esteem within us, and strive to yield a better harvest—to cultivate generosity and not pride and vanity. In the second Proposal, Astell urges the cultivation of generosity as a remedy to the supposed feebleness of the female mind. Once again, she affirms that the ‘Humblest Person that lives has some Self-Esteem, nor is it either Fit or Possible that any one should be without it’.87 But in this work, generosity also becomes a tool in the service of female emancipation from custom. According to Astell, it is necessary for women to acquire the virtues of both generosity (‘Generous Resolution’) and courage in order to ‘throw off Sloth’ and ‘Conquer the Prejudices of Education, Authority and Custom’.88 These same virtues can also give us the strength of mind to continue on an unconventional path, despite ‘Inconveniences’. She says that the Author of our Nature to whom all the Inconveniences we are liable to in this earthly Pilgrimage are fully known, has endow’d us with Principles sufficient to carry us safely thro them all, if we will but observe and make use of ’em. One of these is Generosity, which (so long as we keep it from degenerating into Pride) is of admirable advantage to us in this matter.89

Generosity is especially advantageous because it enables women to cultivate certain feelings of indifference to worldly opinion. In the letter to Coventry, Astell muses that there may be so few generous souls because ‘it requires all that Firmness of Mind they possess, to get above Vulgar Prejudices, to make an estimate of themselves and others by their intrinsic Value, and not by the Measures that are commonly taken’.90 She points outs that scorn and contempt are ‘to be submitted to, I had almost said Gloried in, by all who make a Right use of their Liberty, endeavouring to do always what is Best’.91 She admires ‘the truly Generous’, she says, because ‘It is indeed essential to the Character of the 86

87 88 89 Astell, Proposal II, 232–3. Ibid., 233. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 141. Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 26 July 1714; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 370. 91 Ibid., 371. Astell makes a similar point in a letter to Norris: ‘I suppose ’tis scarce possible to command our selves, and arrive at a true generosity of Temper, till we are perfectly mortified to Praise and Dispraise as well as to other things’ (Astell and Norris, Letters, 65). 90

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Generous that they govern themselves by Right Reason, and not by Example, or the received Maxims and Fashions of the Age’.92 Similarly, in her second Proposal, Astell indicates that ‘a Generous neglect’ of other people’s opinions is a vital ingredient in the moral development of women.93 Educated women must learn to withstand ‘being Censur’d as Singular and Laugh’d at for Fools, rather than comply with the evil Customs of the Age’—they must have the disposition of mind to stand strong in the face of criticism.94 The cultivation of generosity can help them to continue in a singular lifestyle, because generous souls are ‘above it all’—they are ‘above the Hope or Fear of vulgar breath’.95 How does generosity enable a woman to ‘throw off Sloth’ and to withstand the censure and ridicule that comes with defying custom? Here it must be recalled that generosity involves recognizing that our moral worth consists in exercising our will alone (because only the will is truly in our power), as well as a feeling of strong resolution always to do our best. So, first of all, a woman’s generosity consists in her recognition that she has such a freedom, or that she can direct her mind ‘this way or that’ according to her own pleasure.96 She is therefore attentive to the fact that she does not have to continue on the conventional path that her forefathers and foremothers took; she might follow the dictates of her own natural reason instead. Second, a generous temper of mind consists in moral constancy or firmness of mind—a resolve to use this inward power of selfdetermination for good. Generosity thus leads a woman to ‘abhor and disdain a vile action’ and it spurs her on ‘to the highest attainments’.97 A woman with a generous disposition does not care what the outside world thinks because her self-approbation does not depend on other people’s opinions, it is a matter between herself and her conscience. Provided that her conscience is clear—that she has sincerely striven to do her best and lived up to the dignity of her nature— then she has nothing to reproach herself with. Astell believes that the Christian religion can help to facilitate the cultivation of a generous disposition. She says that the word of God provides instructions on how ‘to have a great and generous mind without pride, by showing us what is valuable and what contemptible’.98 The Christian religion teaches us that rational creatures must distinguish themselves not by their outward circumstances—their clothes, their money, their title, and so on—but by making ‘a due use of their liberty’.99 The problem with a woman’s upbringing is that it encourages her to 92

Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 26 July 1714; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 370. 94 95 Astell, Proposal II, 141. Ibid., 226. Ibid., 119. 96 Astell, Christian Religion, }78. On this aspect of Cartesian generosity, see Shapiro, ‘Cartesian Generosity’, 257–8. 97 98 99 Astell, Christian Religion, }237. Ibid., }254. Ibid. 93

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place her self-esteem in objects that are beyond her control. A woman can never have any real power over her outward beauty—it might fade with time, she might be blighted by disease, she might not be able to afford the latest fashions, or the best milliner and tailor. As a remedy, Astell proposes that those ‘who value themselves only on external accomplishments, consider how liable they are to decay, and how soon they may be depriv’d of them, and that supposing they shou’d continue, they are but sandy Foundations to build Esteem upon’.100 The study of Christianity can help a woman in this respect, by focusing her attention on internal accomplishments (the exercise of her virtuous will) and those things that will never perish (her immortal soul). In short, Astell maintains that with a proper moral education, women can learn to purify their minds—to withdraw from the senses, the bodily passions, and their desire for material goods—and thus acquire a generous indifference toward the world and its petty concerns.

5.3 Happiness Further reflection on Astell’s concept of generosity can help to dispel some of the seeming inconsistencies in her approach to the passions. In Descartes’ view, as we have seen, generosity provides a remedy for all the disorders of the passions. Generous persons have ‘complete command over their passions’, and especially over their wayward desires, ‘because everything they think sufficiently valuable to be worth pursuing is such that its acquisition depends solely on themselves’.101 This generous disposition of character naturally promotes the agent’s happiness: For if anyone lives in such a way that his conscience cannot reproach him for ever failing to do something he judges to be best (which is what I here call “pursuing virtue”), he will receive from this a satisfaction which has such power to make him happy that the most violent assaults of the passions will never have sufficient power to disturb the tranquility of his soul.102

Descartes declares that this feeling of tranquillity or self-satisfaction is the ‘sweetest of all the passions’.103 Astell’s own concept of happiness closely resembles that of Descartes. She too promotes a rather Christianized-Stoic ideal of happiness as that satisfaction or equanimity of mind that can be achieved independently of external circumstances. In her view, the soul already has everything it needs for its happiness within itself—it need not seek it elsewhere. ‘Happiness is not without us,’ she says,

100 102

Astell, Proposal I, 111. Ibid., art. 148, p. 382.

101 103

Descartes, Passions of the Soul, art. 156, p. 385. Ibid., art. 63, p. 352.

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‘it must be found in our own Bosoms.’104 She urges her readers to ‘secure your Grandeur by fixing it on a firm bottom, such as the caprice of Fortune cannot shake or overthrow’.105 They must come to see that ‘he who places his happiness only in God and in a good conscience, is out of the reach of all sublunary things, and enjoys a peace that this world can neither give nor take away’.106 But Astell’s idea of happiness is also somewhat Epicurean, since it consists in the highest form of pleasure—the soul’s freedom from vexation or disturbance (ataraxia).107 In the Proposal, she affirms that strictly speaking the Christian religion ‘is the highest Epicurism exalting our Pleasures by refining them; keeping our Appetites in that due regularity which not only Grace, but even Nature require, in the breach of which, tho’ there may be transport, there can be no true and substantial delight’.108 Along similar lines, Astell extols the Cartesian passion of self-satisfaction in at least three of her works. First, in the Proposal, she says that only the Christian religion can provide that ‘Joy and Satisfaction of the Mind’ that results from the right use of our reason, and enables us to taste ‘a Pleasure which the World can neither give nor take away’.109 She adds that ‘He who is Happy is satisfied with his Condition and free from Anxious Cares and Solicitude’.110 Second, in The Christian Religion, she observes that the virtuous religious life abounds with self-satisfaction, ‘Which as a great man who had thoroughly considered this subject [that is, Descartes] tells us, is “the sweetest of all the passions”’.111 The good Christian is capable of enjoying such tranquillity of mind, even ‘in the midst of all outward troubles’, because the love of God is a source of never-ending joy— both in this mortal life and the life to come. Then in Bart’lemy Fair, Astell once again touches on the value of feeling self-satisfaction. She asks: what greater ‘Satisfaction and Glory can a Man enjoy in this present Life, than the Approbation of his own Mind, of Wise and Good Men, and even of GOD himself ’?112 Astell says that A Man who lives by Principle, is steady and consistent with himself, Master of his Passions, and therefore free from the Torment of opposite Inclinations and Desires 104

105 Astell, Proposal II, 225. Astell, Proposal I, 110. Astell, Christian Religion, }244. 107 On this aspect of Descartes’ notion of happiness, see Donald Rutherford, ‘On the Happy Life: Descartes vis-á-vis Seneca’, in Steven K. Strange and Jack Zupko, eds., Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 177–97 (181). 108 Astell, Proposal I, 86. See also Astell, Christian Religion, }312. 109 110 Astell, Proposal II, 220. Ibid., 183. 111 Astell, Christian Religion, }254. She does not acknowledge Descartes explicitly, but her words are taken from the Passions of the Soul, art. 63, p. 352. 112 Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 133. 106

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impossible to be Gratify’d; always at ease in his own Mind, whatever happens without him; enjoying Self-satisfaction, which, in the Opinion of a great Philosopher, is the sweetest of all the Passions. And as such a Man is beyond all Comparison Wiser, so must he needs be Happier than the Libertine who is the Reverse of all this, always a Slave to his Appetites, and for this reason to every Thing without him; uneasy to himself, as well as to every one who happens to stand in his way.113

The libertine’s pleasures depend on limited and precarious objects that are often beyond his control. For this reason, he is subject to ‘Solicitude, Disquiet and Grief ’.114 By contrast, a good and virtuous person is much more cheerful because she has subdued all those passions that embitter life: she is filled with ‘Rational Pleasure, that Solid Joy, that Peace and Satisfaction of Mind’.115 In the Cartesian philosophy, generosity plays an important role in the attainment of happiness. Generosity enables the moral agent to acquire a disposition such that those passions that embitter life need never arise and disturb her equanimity. Like Descartes, Astell proposes that generosity can be a remedy to bitter feelings of anger and vengefulness. In her Christian Religion, she emphasizes that a generous soul never seeks to exact revenge, however much she is provoked or however great the injury. She knows that revenge degrades the soul by setting her on a level with her adversaries—it is an admission that they have discomposed or harmed her in some way. By contrast, ‘a generous neglect and forgiveness’ raises her above other people.116 In those cases where her adversaries are beyond amendment, the generous soul does not take revenge, but rather accepts that all her goodness has been lost upon them, and that she can offer only her compassion and prayers.117 The generous soul recognizes that such enemies do not warrant her anger.118 Likewise, Astell emphasizes that the ‘great mind’ cultivates the virtues of humility and modesty in the place of pride.119 A great mind has a large understanding, and a strong resolution to do what is best, such that it always has an idea of excellence and perfection in view. This produces a humble disposition, because the great mind recognizes that its performances will always fall short of such excellence and perfection: ‘it is rather mortified through consideration of what it wants, than exalted with any attainment.’120 Those individuals who are 113

114 Ibid., 140. Ibid., 90. Ibid., 124. In Astell’s view, this person does not live with ‘a Stoical Apathy, but a Rational Conviction, that they are under the All-wise Government, Conduct, Care of Infinite Goodness which will provide better for them than they can for themselves. The Religious Person being what the Stoics vainly boasted of in their Wise Men: Not through an Insensibility of Pain, and other Inconveniences, but by finding a Support and Pleasure that does more than Counter-ballance them’ (ibid., 137). 116 117 118 Astell, Christian Religion, }241. Ibid., }242. Ibid. 119 120 Ibid., }290. Ibid. 115

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subject to pride and vanity (unwarranted self-esteem) become more easily carried away with anger. They have a mistaken, inflated sense of their own self-importance, and so their wrath is quickly aroused by the smallest slights and injuries. They are easily offended. By contrast, a noble soul does not feel resentment at someone else’s success, but rather ‘a generous Resolution’ to repair her ‘former neglects’ by ‘future diligence’.121 The generous soul does not attempt to pull down her neighbours, because she has too strong a sense of her own merit ‘to envy or detract from others’.122 Similarly, the great mind rarely feels envy, hatred, or spite toward her neighbours. Astell observes that the person with a ‘truly great and generous mind’ will not despise the failings of others—she will have compassion and esteem for her fellow human beings.123 This is because the generous person will be more aware of her own shortcomings, and be intent upon correcting them; she will not be at leisure to observe her neighbours’ faults. Rather, she will assume that other people deserve equal respect until they give a ‘demonstration to the contrary’. Even then, her love of virtue will lead her to feel pity rather than hatred toward them.124 The generous soul is capable of feeling true compassion for other people’s misfortunes, and true benevolence toward others, because her feelings are not tainted by petty, selfish, or competitive interests. The great mind is ‘free from selfish narrowness, humane and compassionate to all who need our help, and offensive to none’.125 In addition, a woman with a truly virtuous disposition of mind, according to Astell, will not indulge in unnecessary or excessive mourning for the loss of external things that are beyond her control. In sum, in the great and generous soul, cheerfulness replaces overwhelming grief; pity and forgiveness replace anger; humility and modesty are substitutes for pride; and love, benevolence, and charity (an attitude of loving kindness) are cultivated in the place of hatred. Generosity helps to give a woman the right disposition of character such that those feelings need never arise. In their place are the pleasurable feelings of joy, tranquillity, and peace—all the key ingredients of self-satisfaction. At the start of this chapter, I observed that there appeared to be some confusion in Astell’s thinking about the best remedy for the passions. On the one hand, she claims that all the passions are useful and beneficial in themselves, provided that they are intentionally directed at their right objects in accordance with reason. On the other, she recommends extirpating or extinguishing some passions—the passions of pride, anger, hatred, and overwhelming sorrow—for 121 124

122 Astell, Proposal II, 122. Ibid. 125 Ibid., }290. Ibid., }288.

123

Astell, Christian Religion, }303.

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the sake of happiness. I think we are now in a position to dispel the confusion and to show that the two approaches need not be contradictory. I propose that these remedies are compatible if we see the first as a short-term technique of governance, or an immediate strategy that we might employ while in the grip of such intense feelings, and the second as a more long-term strategy toward acquiring an enduring disposition of character. In the first case, when we are overcome with emotion, Astell suggests that we must strive to meditate upon what is truly good, and use our free will to channel our passions toward the right objects in accordance with reason. In short, we must remind ourselves of what is truly valuable in life: we must contemplate God, our immortal, immaterial souls, and the souls of our fellow human beings. In this way, we might possibly avoid the destructive outcomes of our emotions on particular occasions. Of course, in the short term, this approach may not always work—our emotions might get the better of us. But in the long run, if we steadfastly endeavour to improve our knowledge, to purify our minds, and to perfect our capacity for sound judgment, then we might acquire a fixed disposition toward virtue. We might acquire the habit of directing our passions to the right ends, ‘in such a pitch, as right Reason requires’.126 Astell’s second claim, that we ought to extirpate the passions of anger, hatred, pride, and overwhelming sorrow, can be interpreted in light of her recommendations for women to bring about a change in their habits of mind, such that they might attain a generous disposition of character. According to Astell, the strong and violent passions pose a problem for the acquisition of happiness in the long term, especially as happiness signifies ‘true Joy . . . a sedate and solid thing, a tranquility of mind, not a boisterous and empty flash’.127 These passions typically arise from things that are beyond the power of the will. The cultivation of a generous disposition, or a generous indifference to the petty concerns of this world, helps us to avoid feeling such passions altogether. Generosity or greatness of soul is a remedy to our feelings of anger, hatred, pride, and overwhelming sorrow about material circumstances beyond our control. It does not follow that the generous temper of mind is one of Stoic apatheia. On the contrary, the woman who attains generosity strongly experiences certain positive passions: she is capable of wonder, joy, delight, and love (directed at their proper objects, that is, in accordance with reason). Strictly speaking, then, we can affirm that Astell does not require the repression of the body as a necessary precondition for human happiness. There are certain passions that arise in the

126

Astell, Proposal II, 214.

127

Ibid., 123.

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mind as a result of the mind–body union that are crucial to living a happy life. In the next chapter, we will see that there is one passion in particular that lies ‘at the bottom of all the Passions’ such that ‘one wou’d think they’re nothing else but different Modifications of it’.128 Without a doubt, this passion occupies the most exalted place in Astell’s moral philosophy—it is the passion of love.

128

Ibid., 219.

6 Love Love is a prime example of a passion that might be transformed into a virtue, given the right understanding and the proper exercise of free will. According to Astell, in the most general sense, love is a ‘motion’ or a tendency of the soul toward whatever appears to be agreeable or pleasing to it.1 It is especially important to regulate this motion because the passion of love has a tremendously powerful influence on our minds. If we are passionately in love, then we are indifferent to all things besides the object of our desire. If our beloved smiles, it matters not who frowns upon us; in conversation, we can think and talk about nothing else; and despite our best efforts, the mind always wanders back to its beloved subject. In short, whatever we love is foremost in our thoughts.2 If we love irregularly—if we desire to join with someone who is unattainable or unworthy of our love—then we are liable to think irrationally, to be tormented by jealousy and fear, and to be deeply unhappy. The misapplication of love, according to Astell, ‘is the true Source of all our Disorder, the corrupt Root of all our Faults’.3 Yet, for the morally corrupt woman, love is also the key to her reformation of character. This is because, in Astell’s view, all the passions might be regarded as various modifications of love: desire is a love of future good, hope is the 1

Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002): ‘Love . . . is a motion of the Soul to joyn it self to that which appears to be grateful to it’ (219). In this context, ‘grateful’ means ‘pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome’ (OED). Astell’s definition of love closely resembles that of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More in his Account of Virtue: ‘Love is a Passion of the Soul, by which it is excited willingly to join it self unto Objects which seem grateful thereunto’. See Henry More, An Account of Virtue: Or, Dr. Henry More’s Abridgment of Morals, Put into English, trans. Edward Southwell (London: Benjamin Tooke, 1690; facs. edn, Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 84. In turn, More’s definition resembles that of Descartes: ‘Love,’ Descartes says, ‘is an emotion of the soul caused by a movement of the spirits, which impel the soul to join itself willingly to objects that appear agreeable to it.’ See René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91), i, article 79, p. 356. 2 Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 128, 112. 3 Astell and Norris, Letters, 113.

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disposition to believe that she might obtain that good, fear is the disposition to believe that she might not, and so on.4 If a woman gets her love right, the rest of her passions will fall into line: if Love which is the leading and master Passion were but once wisely regulated, our Passions would be so far from rebelling against and disquieting us, that on the contrary they would mightily facilitate the great Work we have to do, give Wings to this Earthly Body that presses down the Soul, and in a good Measure remove those Impediments that hinder her from mounting to the Original and End of her Being.5

To regulate our passions and cultivate virtue, according to Astell, it is essential to ‘tune our Love to the right Key’.6 Not surprisingly, her recommended tuning key is the good in general, or God himself. In keeping with Norris’s moral theology, she suggests that a life well regulated is one in which we love nothing but God with a love of desire. In her view, we stray from the virtuous path when we misplace our love upon the creatures (created beings). When a man allows his desires to tend toward his fellow mortals, ‘all is unhinged and falls into disorder . . . his Passions grow unruly, his Intentions corrupt, and his good Actions become lame and broken’.7 To reform our love, we ought to keep in mind that all worldly enjoyments, including other people, ‘are given us for our use and exercise, but ought not to be considered as our good or our reward’.8 In this last respect, Astell takes a distinctly Augustinian approach to the topic of love. In the first book of his De doctrina christiana (AD 397), Augustine draws a distinction between ‘that which is to be enjoyed’ ( frui) and ‘that which is to be used’ (uti).9 To ‘enjoy’ a thing means ‘to cling to it with love for its own sake’,10 while to ‘use’ it means to love it ‘for the sake of something else’.11 His crucial point is that only God is to be enjoyed—only God must be loved for his own sake;

Astell, Proposal II: ‘since this [i.e., love] is at the bottom of all the Passions, one wou’d think they’re nothing else but different Modifications of it’ (219). Here Astell echoes Norris’s Augustinian view that ‘the reduction of all Vertue and Vice to the various Modification of Love be Obvious enough to any one that will consider’; see John Norris, The Theory and Regulation of Love. A Moral Essay. In Two Parts. To which are added Letters Philosophical and Moral between the Author and Dr Henry More (Oxford: Printed at the Theatre for Hen. Clements, 1688), ‘To the Reader’. In the same work, Norris also observes that ‘’Tis from her [i.e., ‘Mother’ love] that all the Inclinations and Passions of the Soul take their rise, and did we not first love we should neither Hope nor Fear, nor hate nor be Angry, nor Envy nor be any other way affected’ (Norris, Theory and Regulation, 24). 5 6 7 Astell and Norris, Letters, 99. Ibid. Ibid., 113. 8 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }100. 9 St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. and intro. D. W. Robertson (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), book I, chapter 3, paragraph 3. 10 11 St Augustine, Christian Doctrine, I.4.4. Ibid., I.22.20. 4

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all other creatures must be loved for the sake of God, or because they belong to God.12 While the Fall of humankind has torn the mind away from its true good, in his view human beings are nevertheless capable of freely exercising their wills and turning back to the eternal and immutable order. Human beings are capable of directing ‘the whole current’ of their love for themselves and their neighbours into the ‘channel’ of the love of God.13 The mark of a virtuous person, according to this view, consists in ‘rightly ordered love’.14 While Astell herself never refers to Augustine’s work explicitly, Norris’s philosophy is steeped in Augustinian principles.15 ‘Virtue and Vice,’ Norris says, citing ‘St. Austin’ (as he calls him), ‘is nothing else but the Various Application and Modification of Love. By this a Good man is distinguish’d from a bad, and an Angel of Light from an Angel of Darkness.’16 Astell defends similar views in her letters to Norris in Letters Concerning the Love of God, and in her later work The Christian Religion. Astell’s emphasis upon an exclusive love of God makes it difficult for the modern reader to embrace her moral philosophy—not only because it is exceedingly religious, but also because it seems both practically impossible and morally undesirable. In her own day, several critics pointed out that this theory of love was impracticable because human beings will naturally and inevitably love their fellow creatures; try as they might, they will never be able to practice an exclusive love of God. In his Discourse of the Love of God (1697), Daniel Whitby praises Astell (‘this Incomparable Lady’) for her ‘great Beauty of Expression’ in the Letters, but he charges both Astell and Norris with taking the measures of divine love to an impracticable stretch. ‘Such Doctrines as these,’ he says, ‘tend plainly to perswade Men, that God requires what they find opposite to their very Constitution, and Being in this World; and so impossible for them to perform and live.’17 This can have the unfortunate effect of convincing some people that the love of God is ridiculous; while others might be driven to despair because they cannot avoid loving and desiring their fellow creatures. As we saw in Chapter 4, Damaris Masham raises these same points against Astell and Norris’s Letters in 12

13 Ibid. Ibid., I.22.21. St Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. R. W. Dyson, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), book 15, chapter 22, p. 680. For a good introduction to this topic, see Bonnie Kent, ‘Augustine’s Ethics’, in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 205–33. 15 John Muirhead insists that Norris should be known as ‘the English St. Augustine’. See John H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America (London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1931), 74. 16 Norris, Theory and Regulation, 4. 17 Daniel Whitby, A Discourse of the Love of God. Shewing, That it is well consistent with some Love or Desire of the Creature (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1697), 3, 5. 14

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her Discourse concerning the Love of God (1696). She declares that human beings can no more love and desire God alone than fishes can fly in the air like birds or ride on horses like men; it is simply not in their nature.18 A persistent critic might go further and point out that even if we were able to practice an exclusive love of God, Astell’s claim that we ought to love other human beings ‘for our good, but not as our good’ is still deeply problematic. One recent critic, John Passmore, has highlighted the disturbing coldness at the heart of Norris’s theory of love. Passmore dismisses Norris as someone who ‘was so concerned to leave nothing lovable in the world, nothing which could be a source of happiness to us, that he reduced it to a nonentity; it exists only as something to be shunned’.19 On his view, Norris fails to treat other persons with proper respect—to recognize their essential humanity and their shared capacity for reason and self-determination. ‘Substantially reversing Kant’s dictum,’ Passmore observes, Norris ‘argued that we should treat other human beings as means— occasions of happiness to us—and never as ends.’20 In the early modern period, some contemporary critics also found Norris’s instrumentalism rather unappealing. In her Discourse, against Norris Masham insists that the Bible enjoins us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.21 This means that we must perform not only the bare ‘outward Acts’ of our duty, but genuinely feel pleasure and delight in our neighbour’s well-being.22 To fail to desire our neighbours’ well-being, she says, is to fail to treat our neighbours as we would treat ourselves.23 So now, must we dismiss Astell’s moral philosophy as similarly unappealing? An answer to this question, I believe, can be found by examining Astell’s distinction between a love of desire (the love she reserves for God alone) and a love of benevolence or goodwill (the love that we owe to other creatures). In what follows, I argue that Astell’s advice about the love of desire appears impracticable

18 [Damaris Masham], Discourse concerning the Love of God (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1696), 82–3. On Masham’s critique of Norris and Astell’s theory of love, see Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 119–22; Jacqueline Broad, ‘Adversaries or Allies? Occasional Thoughts on the Masham– Astell Exchange’, Eighteenth-Century Thought, 1 (2003), 123–49; Catherine Wilson, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: The Masham–Astell Debate’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21/3 (2004), 281–98; and Catherine Wilson, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: The Masham-Astell Exchange’, in Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, eds., The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press, 2007), 125–39. 19 See John Passmore, ‘Norris, John’, in Paul Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols (New York: Macmillan, 1967), v, 522–4 (523). 20 Passmore, ‘Norris, John’, 523. The Kantian dictum states that we should never treat persons as means alone but rather as ends in themselves. 21 22 23 Masham, Discourse, 47. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 50.

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and morally unappealing only when it is taken out of context and considered separately from her advice about cultivating a charitable disposition toward others. To support this point, I propose to look carefully at what Astell says to her readers about acquiring the virtue of benevolence—including both friendship and common charity—and its implications for how society as a whole should treat women.

6.1 Love of Desire To understand Astell’s overall position, it is useful to consider her ideas against the backdrop of John Norris’s doctrine of love. In his Theory and Regulation of Love (1688), a work that Astell cites more than once,24 Norris follows Malebranche in defining love as a ‘motion of the Soul towards good’.25 More specifically, Norris claims that the soul is naturally and necessarily determined to gravitate toward the good in general, or to God himself, and that the soul cannot do anything but love this good. ‘We have no more Command over this love,’ he says, ‘than we have over the Circulation of our Blood or the Motion of our Pulse.’26 When it comes to particular goods, however, we are in a position to either give or withdraw our consent to loving them. In keeping with Malebranche’s philosophy of freedom, Norris asserts that the natural motion of the soul is not invincible (insurmountable or insuperable) in respect to particular goods.27 We are free to either love or not love them. The difficulty is that from the

24 In one letter to Norris, dated 1 May 1694, Astell explicitly refers to part I, section 5 of Norris’s Theory and Regulation, ‘Of the Second Great Branch of Love viz. Love of Benevolence, its division into Self-Love and Charity, where also ’tis enquired whether all Love be Self-Love’ (see Astell and Norris, Letters, 109). Then, in the Proposal, she quotes (without acknowledgement) his description of friendship as a kind of ‘Revenging ourselves on the Narrowness of our faculties’ (Astell, Proposal I, 98–9; Norris, Theory and Regulation, 125). Astell was not the only early modern woman to express an interest in Norris’s Theory and Regulation. Elizabeth Thomas (1675–1731) engaged in an exchange about Norris’s book with a friend, Richard Hemington, published as ‘The Debate Between The Stoic and Corinna. Occasioned By Mr. Norris’s Book, intitled, The Theory and Regulation of Love. In Five Letters’, in Elizabeth Thomas and Richard Gwinnett, The Honourable Lovers: Or, The Second and Last Volume Of Pylades and Corinna (London: Edmund Curll, 1732), 131–52. 25 Norris, Theory and Regulation, 10; Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. and ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 5, 267. 26 Norris, Theory and Regulation, 32. 27 Ibid., 35. For a discussion of freedom and love in Norris’s philosophy, see W. J. Mander, The Philosophy of John Norris (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 137–41. On Malebranche’s theory, see Tad Schmaltz, ‘Malebranche on Natural and Free Loves’, in Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, eds., The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press, 2007), 95–111.

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moment we are born, we are continually surrounded with particular goods. Because we live the life of ‘Plants and Beasts’ before we live the life of human beings, he says, we develop an inclination to love these particular goods, insofar as they partake in the universal good.28 But in our maturity, when we are fully rational and self-determining beings, we are capable of the proper exercise of free will. Though our inclinations to particular goods might feel natural and necessary, we are in fact at liberty to withdraw our desires from the creatures; more than this (as Norris argues in his later work), we are morally obliged to do so. In her own writings, Astell supports Norris’s view that the soul is necessarily inclined toward the good in general or to God, but that we nevertheless have free will when it comes to our love of particular goods.29 In The Christian Religion, her main complaint against her critic Masham is that she takes love out of the moral sphere altogether by making it an involuntary disposition of mind toward whatever pleases us.30 If we cannot exert our free will to choose the proper objects of our love, Astell says, then this means that the love of particular goods ‘is no more in our power than the motion of our pulse’.31 Against Masham, Astell affirms Norris’s distinction between two different kinds of love: the love of desire and the love of benevolence. While our love of desire for God is natural and unavoidable, our love of benevolence for other creatures is entirely up to us— it is in our power either to continue to desire other people or to cultivate goodwill toward them instead. In his Theory and Regulation, Norris highlights this same distinction (see Figure 6.1). In Norris’s view, love may be either a tendency toward good (a love of desire or concupiscence), or a willing of good or a ‘well-wishing’ to somebody or other (a love of benevolence or charity).32 The first species of love can be distinguished into a tendency toward spiritual goods (intellectual love) or a tendency toward carnal goods (sensual love). He reserves his most disapproving

28

Norris, Theory and Regulation, 68. In the Proposal, Astell says that our souls are naturally inclined ‘towards Good in general, or towards [God] himself, for he only is our True Good’, and that ‘there are certain Motions or Inclinations inseparable from the Will, which push us on to the use of that Power, and determine it to the Choice of such things as are most agreeable to them’ (Proposal II, 205). But when it comes to our love of particular objects, we are nevertheless at liberty to determine the motions of our minds ‘to This or That thing rather than to another’ (ibid., 205). On Astell’s indebtedness to Norris’s Malebranchean concept of freedom, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Impressions in the Brain: Malebranche on Women, and Women on Malebranche’, Intellectual History Review, 22/3 (2012), 373–89 (especially 383–5). 30 Masham follows Locke in defining love as ‘that disposition, or act of mind, we find in ourselves towards anything we are pleased with’ (Masham, Discourse, 18). See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), II.xx.4. 31 32 Astell, Christian Religion, }375. Norris, Theory and Regulation, 14. 29

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Love

Desire

Intellectual

Benevolence

Sensual

Self-love

Charity

Common Charity

Friendship

Figure 6.1. The branches of love in John Norris’s Theory and Regulation of Love (1688)

comments for the latter. In his view, sensual love arises when some aspect of sensible beauty stirs within us an inclination to have bodily contact with the beloved object. He observes that ‘this one Passion sets on fire the whole course of Nature, rages and spreads with an unlimited Contagion’, and that it is ‘a Passion that has made more slaves than the greatest Conquerours’.33 In common parlance, he complains, the word ‘love’ is almost wholly appropriated to this desire for physical union. By contrast, benevolence is a wish to promote the well-being of the beloved object; it is characterized by disinterested goodwill rather than selfish desire. In turn, benevolence may be distinguished into a willing of good to oneself (self-love), or to some other person (charity). And charity may be divided into wishing well for one or two people in our immediate circle (friendship), or wishing well to the community in general (common charity). In his Theory and Regulation, Norris regards the love of desire and the love of benevolence as ‘inseparable concomitants’ of every act of love;34 in his later writings, however, he sees them as distinct and different kinds of love. In his ‘Discourse Concerning the Measure of Divine Love’ in his Practical Discourses of 1693, Norris takes his theory of love to a moral-theological extreme: he argues that we are obliged to love God alone with a love of desire. In this essay, he ostensibly investigates the meaning of the biblical command ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind’ (Matthew 22:37). He concludes that this passage enjoins us to love no one but God, and to love him ‘with the whole Heart, Soul, and Mind, with the full weight 33

Ibid., 47, 46.

34

Ibid., 31.

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of our Desire, with all the Activity of our Love’.35 To support this claim, he appeals to the metaphysical doctrine of occasionalism, the theory that created beings are incapable of having a causal influence on our minds.36 Because other creatures are not the true and proper causes of our pleasurable sensations, Norris argues, then they are undeserving of our love of desire. Instead, he draws the Augustinian distinction between ‘that which is to be used’ and ‘that which is to be enjoyed’: we may seek other creatures and use them for our good, but we must not love them as our good.37 According to this theory of love, ‘the World is to be used not enjoyed’.38 In one letter to Norris, dated 31 October 1693, Astell observes that his suggestion ‘That we may seek Creatures for our Good, but not love them as our Good’ might be too strict for common practice. She confesses that sensible Beauty does too often press upon my Heart, whilst intelligible is disregarded. For having by Nature a strong Propensity to friendly Love, which I have all along encouraged as a good Disposition to Vertue, and do still think it so if it may be kept within the due Bounds of Good-will: But having likewise thought till you taught me better, that I need not cut off all Desire from the Creature, provided it were in Subordination to, and for the sake of the Creator: I have contracted such a Weakness, I will not say by Nature (for I believe Nature is often very unjustly blam’d for what is owing to Will and Custom) but by voluntary Habit, that it is a very difficult thing for me to love at all, without something of Desire.39

If we consider that Norris’s definition of sensual love is ‘the Desire of Corporal Contact occasion’d by the Aspect of sensible Beauty’,40 then it would appear that here Astell confesses a propensity toward sexual desire.41 She allows, however, 35 John Norris, ‘Discourse Concerning the Measure of Divine Love’, in Practical Discourses Upon several Divine Subjects. Vol III (London: S. Manship, 1693), 58. 36 On this topic, see Chapter 4 in this volume. 37 Norris, Practical Discourses, iii, 74. Norris refers to the Augustinian distinction between uti and frui in his response to Masham and Whitby’s criticisms, ‘An Admonition Concerning two late Books call’d Discourses of the Love of God’, appended to the fourth volume of his Practical Discourses Upon Several Divine Subjects (London: S. Manship and J. Jones, 1698), 420. On this distinction in Norris, see Richard Acworth, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1712) (New York: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim, 1979), 171. 38 39 Norris, Practical Discourses, iv, 420. Astell and Norris, Letters, 80. 40 Norris, Theory and Regulation, 49. 41 This might lend some credence to Bridget Hill’s suggestion that Astell’s aforementioned letter amounts to an implicit confession of passionate love for another woman. See Hill, Introduction in Mary Astell, The First English Feminist: ‘Reflections upon Marriage’ and Other Writings by Mary Astell, ed. and intro. Bridget Hill (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986), 8–9. But I am still inclined to think that Astell’s reference to ‘friendly Love’ renders her meaning ambiguous, and I agree with Derek Taylor that it is unclear why Astell would permit the publication of a letter that essentially ‘outed’ her as a lesbian. See E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Matter’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62/3 (2001), 509.

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that it is within the power of the will to change this habit of mind and, throughout the Letters, she explicitly endorses Norris’s view that human beings ought to ‘fix the whole weight of their Desire on their Maker’.42 Whatever our propensities, she says, the love of desire for God ought to be entire and exclusive of all other loves.43 While withdrawal of desire from the creatures might be difficult for most people, this should not preclude them from making the attempt. Tellingly, however, Astell does not explicitly draw on Norris’s occasionalist argument to support these claims.44 Rather, in the Letters, she presents a negative argument for why we should not love other people with a love of desire. Her argument proceeds in the following manner. To begin with, she suggests, it is a given that the end of the love of desire is to unite itself to its object, and that happiness consists in achieving this union.45 Next, she says, it is unreasonable to love anything that cannot answer the end of love (happiness). Yet the creatures cannot answer the end of love, because we can never be truly and eternally united with them. The creatures can never make us really happy, because they can never satisfy our desire for such union. Therefore it is unreasonable to love the creatures with a love of desire. By contrast, it is reasonable to love God with a love of desire. Reason assures us that an infinitely perfect being is capable of satisfying our every desire, and that we may ‘always asswage our Thirst at this Fountain, and feast our hungry Souls upon his never-failing Charms’.46 ‘And therefore unless Reason require us to place our Felicity in that which will certainly be our Vexation, it cannot be reasonable to love the Creature; and consequently if Love be not an unreasonable Passion, and if it be fit to love at all, ’tis highly reasonable to love GOD, and him only.’47 On these grounds, according to Astell, even if it turns out not to be the case that God is the true efficient cause

42

Astell and Norris, Letters, 76. On Astell’s theory of the love of God, see Sarah Ellenzweig, ‘The Love of God and the Radical Enlightenment: Mary Astell’s Brush with Spinoza’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64/3 (2003), 379–97; and William Kolbrener, ‘Love of God in the Age of the Philosophers: Mary Astell, Occasionalism, and the Metaphysicals’, in Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, eds., Tradition, Heterodoxy and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period (Beer Shiva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 421–35. 44 In a later letter, dated 14 August 1694, Astell raises objections to Norris’s occasionalism (see Astell and Norris, Letters, 131–2). These objections are discussed in full in Chapter 4 of this volume. 45 ‘The End of Love is to unite its self to its Object, every Motion it makes is in order to that End, and since Heterogeneous Substances, can never cordially unite, since without Similitude of Disposition there can be no Union, therefore Love does ever endeavour after Likeness’ (Astell and Norris, Letters, 111). 46 47 Ibid., 91. Ibid., 110. 43

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of all our pleasing sensations, we are nevertheless obliged to love him alone with a love of desire.48

6.2 Love of Benevolence These are the key points in Astell’s theoretical argument for why we must not love other people with a love of desire. What, then, of Astell’s suggestions for acquiring a love of benevolence? In the aforementioned letter (31 October 1693), Astell asks Norris to provide her with practical strategies for loving other people with a benevolent goodwill rather than sensual desire: ‘Be pleased therefore to oblige me,’ she says, ‘with a Remedy for this Disorder [that is, her love of desire], since what you have already writ has made a considerable Progress towards a Cure, but not quite perfected it.’49 His response is to recommend intense meditation upon the truth of occasionalism, the theory that God alone is the true cause of our sensations.50 Needless to say, for Astell, this strategy would not have sufficed. In her own writings, she appeals to reflection upon common experience instead. The typical consequences of loving other people with a love of desire, she says, are ‘Crosses and Disappointments’ and feelings of ‘Emptiness and Unsatisfactoriness’.51 She warns that ‘if we once permit our Desire to stray after the Creature, we open a Bank to all that Mischief, Malice and Uncharitableness that is in the World’.52 The problem is not just that finite creatures are mortal and therefore unable to provide satisfaction to an immortal soul, a further problem is that in society at large it is inevitable that multiple individuals will all desire the same thing. As a consequence, some people will necessarily clash in the pursuit of their desires, and this will have the effect of destroying ‘that Peace and mutual Benevolence which ought to be cherished among rational Beings’.53 These negative outcomes provide us with both personal and political motivation to extinguish our love of desire for the creatures. More than this, in Astell’s view, an exclusive love of desire for God actively promotes positive outcomes for both the individual and society. In one letter, dated 15 February 1694, she tells Norris, It were I confess a strong Prejudice against your Way of stating the Love of GOD, if it were in any Measure injurious to the right Understanding and due Performance of the Love we owe to our Neighbour. . . . [but] So far is your Account of the Love of GOD from being

48 Astell says that even ‘admitting that he [i.e., God] were not the efficient Cause of all our Good, of all our pleasing Sensations’, we must concede that our wills ought to move toward the general good alone (ibid., 116). 49 50 51 52 53 Ibid., 81. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 110–11. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 101.

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prejudicial to the Love of our Neighbour, that (if I think right) ’tis the only solid and sure Foundation it can rest upon.54

In Astell’s view, having a truly benevolent love of other people depends upon having an exclusive love of desire for God.55 By reserving our love of desire for God alone, we learn to cultivate a positive, unselfish, and non-possessive attitude toward others. This desire for the general good ‘cuts off all narrow and illiberal Thoughts, gives the most genteel and generous Temper to the Soul, it extinguishes all Jealousies and Suspicions, tormenting Cares and desponding Fears’.56 When we are free from the selfish desire to possess other people, we are free from vexatious passions, such as jealousy, suspicion, and fear. And ‘when we are free from selfish narrowness, [we are] humane and compassionate to all who need our help, and offensive to none’.57 In short, we might say that Astell regards the love of God as a kind of psychotherapeutic technique for learning to love other people with benevolence or charity. This is what Astell means when she says we must ‘tune our Love to the right Key’58—we must think on God and make our desires for him uppermost in our thoughts, in order to love other people as we should. Focusing all our attention on having an exclusive love of God is a useful way of purging our hearts of all irregular desire and coming to have a true and pure benevolence instead. Importantly, loving and desiring God alone leads to the cultivation of a generous disposition toward other people.59 ‘The Love of GOD,’ Astell says, ‘will inspire the Soul with the most generous Sentiments.’60 The charitable person will always err on the side of generosity: she will be unsuspicious and accommodating, she will view all happenings in the best light, and she will be reluctant to speak ill of someone else.61 More importantly, once we have acquired this disposition toward others, we are more inclined to ethical thinking, in the sense that we do not weigh up only our own desires or interests in any given situation, but rather consider impartially the desires and interests of all those affected by our actions. This has the effect of

54

Ibid., 100. In this respect, Richard Acworth observes, ‘Astell carried Norris’s principles further than he had done himself . . . when she pointed out that the first commandment of love was so far from contradicting the second that, on the contrary, it alone made the latter possible’ (Acworth, Philosophy of John Norris, 173). 56 57 Astell and Norris, Letters, 129. Astell, Christian Religion, }288. 58 Astell and Norris, Letters, 99. 59 On the virtue of generosity, see Chapter 5 of this volume. 60 61 Astell and Norris, Letters, 116. Astell, Christian Religion, }323. 55

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promoting not only the virtue of charity but also that of justice. Astell observes that I cannot forbear to reckon it an irregular Affection, and an Effect of vicious Self-love, to love any Person merely on account of his Relation to us. All other Motives being equal, this may be allowed to weigh down the Scale; but certainly no Man is the better in himself for being akin to me, and nothing but an overweaning Opinion of my self can induce me to think so.62

If we have a true disinterested benevolence, then we consider every member of God’s creation with impartiality. This is a view that is agreeable to both reason and religion, for my natural reason tells me ‘that mankind who are creatures of the same nature with myself, ought to be treated as myself, I should be as solicitous for their happiness as for my own’.63 In her Proposal and in The Christian Religion, Astell incorporates these ethical principles into her feminist arguments for the moral reformation of women in her own time. In particular, she highlights the importance of friendship in bringing about the moral development of individual women, and the importance of common charity in promoting the moral advancement of women as a social group.

6.3 Friendship In the fifth section of his Theory and Regulation of Love, titled ‘The Measures of Friendship’, Norris describes friendship as a special instance of the love of benevolence. In his view, friendship consists in the willing of good to another, for that person’s own sake, and not for our own selfish interests. The foundations of true friendship consist in feelings of mutual goodwill between two persons who are of a virtuous disposition and a similar humour and temperament.64 To maintain such friendship, he says, we must regard our friend as ‘another self, and treat him accordingly’.65 For Norris, regular self-love (and not morally corrupt self-love, such as vanity or pride) requires us to ‘truely and really love our selves’;66 that is to say, it requires us to love our immortal, immaterial souls and not our corrupt and perishable bodies. To treat our friend as ‘another self ’ requires taking this same approach: it requires prioritizing the good of the friend’s soul over and above his temporal or bodily interests.67 We must therefore take the liberty to admonish our friend, if he requires such admonition in order to improve in virtue.68 We must also overlook (or ‘wink at’) our friend’s smaller 62 64 67

63 Astell and Norris, Letters, 130. Astell, Christian Religion, }14. 65 66 Norris, Theory and Regulation, 128–30. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 114. 68 Ibid., 131. Ibid.

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faults, if they do not ultimately affect his true happiness.69 In Norris’s view, this is the same benevolence or charity that we ought to show to everyone. Friendship comes about because, for reasons to do with our constitution, opportunities, and circumstances, we are simply incapable of devoting our attention to large numbers of human beings. Friendship is a kind of ‘Revenging our selves upon the Narrowness of our Faculties,’ he says, ‘by exemplifying that extraordinary Charity upon one or two which we [owe] . . . towards all.’70 In her own writings, Astell appropriates Norris’s normative concept of friendship for her own purposes. In the Letters, she describes friendship as ‘one of the brightest Vertues’,71 and observes that as ‘our blessed Lord has left us a Pattern of every Virtue, so he might especially recommend to us that most noble and comprehensive one Friendship’.72 For Astell, friendship becomes a virtue (an excellence of character) when it consists in having the right kind of loving disposition toward another person.73 Christ commands us, she says, to ‘love our Neighbour as our selves’, and because proper self-love is none other than a love of benevolence, a well-wishing to our souls, we must therefore wish well toward our neighbour’s soul.74 The design of friendship, in her view, is to promote the moral and intellectual improvement of our friend’s soul. If we do not alert our friend to her moral and intellectual infirmities, then we frustrate ‘the great Design of Friendship, which is to discover and correct the most minute Irregularity, and to purifie and perfect the Mind with the greatest Accuracy’.75 Astell goes further than Norris by regarding friendship as a useful tool in the moral reformation of early modern women.76 In the letter to Norris dated 31 October 1693, Astell says that by promoting the value of friendship, she proposes to rescue her sex

69

70 71 72 Ibid. Ibid., 125. Astell and Norris, Letters, 80. Ibid., 101. Rosalind Hursthouse notes that friendship is an ‘awkward exception’ to the fact that virtues are typically states of character. See Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11. In keeping with Astell’s approach, however, I think we can conceive of friendship as a state of character—as having a disposition of mind, that is, to love particular people with a disinterested benevolence. 74 75 Astell and Norris, Letters, 101. Ibid., 102. 76 On this topic, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Virtuous Friendship’, Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 26/2 (2009), 65–86. On Astell and friendship more generally, see Alessa Johns, ‘Mary Astell’s “Excited Needles”: Theorizing Feminist Utopia in Seventeenth-century England’, Utopian Studies, 7/1 (1996), 60–74; William Kolbrener, ‘Astell’s “Design of Friendship” in Letters and A Serious Proposal, Part I’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 49–64; and Penelope Anderson, Friendship’s Shadows: Women’s Friendship and the Politics of Betrayal in England, 1640–1705 (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 222–59. 73

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from that Meanness of Spirit into which the Generality of them are sunk, perswade them to pretend to some higher Excellency than a well-chosen Pettycoat, or a fashionable Commode; and not wholly to lay out their Time and Care in Adorning their Bodies, but to bestow a Part of it at least in the Embellishment of their Minds, since inward Beauty will last when outward is decayed.77

Here Astell obliquely refers to her Serious Proposal to the Ladies, which was published at the same time as the Letters. In the first part of her Proposal, Astell explains how female friendships might play an important role in bringing about transformations of character in young women of quality. She envisages her learned academy as an ‘Amicable Society’ in which true friendships, or ‘noble Vertuous and Disinteress’d’ friendships, will flourish among like-minded scholars of a similar age and social status.78 Such friendships will consist in young women being useful to each other, and in going out of their way to further the interests of their friends. In these environs, she says, friends will ‘watch over each other for Good, to advise, encourage and direct, and to observe the minutest fault in order to its amendment’.79 Above all, they will endeavour to help each other improve in virtue. Instead of censuring and scoffing, they will exercise a ‘Friendly Admonition’ out of love and goodwill toward the other person.80 In her Christian Religion, Astell repeats these sentiments. ‘I take friendship,’ she says, ‘to consist in advising, admonishing, and reproving as there is occasion, and in watching over each other’s souls for their mutual good.’81 Above all, we should serve our friend’s most important interests, do good to her soul, and promote her perfection as far as possible. This is, in fact, ‘the greatest of all charities’.82 In her first Proposal, Astell emphasizes that friends will not be disposed to be envious or uncharitable toward one another; rather they will adopt a ‘generous’ disposition.83 They will be ‘hearty well-wishers’ to one another’s success.84 Quoting Norris without explicit acknowledgement, Astell says: Friendship is nothing else but Charity contracted; it is (in the words of an admired Author) a kind of revenging our selves on the narrowness of our Faculties, by exemplifying that extraordinary charity on one or two, which we are willing but not able to exercise towards all. And therefore ’tis without doubt the best Instructor to teach us our duty to our Neighbour, and a most excellent Monitor to excite us to make payment as far as our power will reach. It has a special force to dilate our hearts, to deliver them from that

77

78 79 Astell and Norris, Letters, 80. Astell, Proposal I, 75. Ibid., 100. 81 82 Ibid., 87, 89. Astell, Christian Religion, }206. Ibid., }207. 83 ‘Envy and Uncharitableness are the Vices only of little and narrow hearts,’ Astell says, ‘and therefore ’tis supposed, they will not enter here amongst persons whose Dispositions as well as their Births are to be Generous’ (Proposal I, 87). 84 Ibid., 74. 80

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vicious selfishness and the rest of those sordid Passions which express a narrow illiberal temper, and are of such pernicious consequence to Mankind. That institution therefore must needs be highly beneficial, which both disposes us to be friends our selves, and helps to find them.85

The academy will provide a training ground for women’s relationships in the wider world, to enable women to take a generous and charitable approach to their fellow human beings. This will have positive consequences for society. ‘Probably one considerable cause of the degeneracy of the present Age,’ Astell says, ‘is the little true Friendship that is to be found in it.’86 If there were more friendships, or if people were more disposed to be charitable toward one another, then we would have a better world.87

6.4 Common Charity In Astell’s opinion, the love of benevolence ought to be extended to all human beings, not only to friends, family members, and neighbours, but also to enemies, strangers, and foreigners. In Norris’s schema, this kind of love is called ‘common charity’. In Astell’s writings on the topic, we find further arguments for why human beings are morally obliged to cultivate a love of benevolence toward others. These are not arguments that appeal to the happiness that results from desiring God alone, on the one hand, or the negative psychological effects of desiring other people, on the other. Rather, they are Christianized-Stoic arguments in favour of viewing all human beings as parts of one great whole.88 In an undated letter to her friend Ann Coventry, Astell quotes approvingly from an early eighteenth-century edition of Marcus (Antoninus) Aurelius’s Meditations.89 She notes that the Stoic philosopher frequently observes That we are all of one Nature and family; that our Minds are nearly related as being extracted from the Diety [sic], and since a greater than Antoninus allows us the Honor of being Members of His Own Body, one shou’d methinks be a mere Block, a gangreen’d part, if when the Heart or Eye, the Noblest and Dearest Part of that Body were indispos’d they cou’d remain Insensible.90

85

86 87 Ibid., 98–9. Ibid., 98. Ibid. For a recent discussion of this topic, see Joanne E. Myers, ‘Enthusiastic Improvement: Mary Astell and Damaris Masham on Sociability’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 28/3 (2013), 534–50. 89 Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor Marcus Antoninus His Conversation With Himself. . . . Translated into English from the Respective Originals. By Jeremy Collier, M.A. The Second Edition Corrected (London: Richard Sare, 1708). 90 Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, no date; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 373. 88

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Here Astell merges the Stoic philosophy that human beings are ‘of one Nature and family’ with the Christian view that we are all ‘members’ of ‘the body of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). On both accounts, we cannot remain insensible or indifferent to the well-being of our fellow rational creatures. According to the Stoics, all human beings are vital fragments of a living organic universe, and for this reason the individual’s happiness is inseparable from that of the whole: ‘that which is not good for the Bee-hive’, Marcus says, ‘cannot be good for the bee.’91 Astell echoes these sentiments in her own works. In her Proposal, she says that we should consider ourselves as ‘Parts of the same Whole’, and keep in mind that we are ‘by Nature so connected to each other, that whenever one part suffers the rest must suffer with it’.92 This means that we never do ourselves a service by injuring our neighbour. Likewise, in The Christian Religion, Astell declares that as ‘part of one great whole’, the individual’s happiness is intimately connected to the well-being of others. Even if we have never heard of Christianity, she says, we are obliged to love our neighbours with benevolence ‘because they partake of the same nature’.93 Our common interest in the welfare of the whole ought to teach us ‘to be humane, condescending, and courteous’ to all.94 As a general rule, we should ‘endeavor always to pursue that which in itself and absolutely speaking, is the most public, universal, and greatest good’.95 In addition, however, Christians have the benefit of knowing that they are ‘members of the body of Christ’.96 This biblical metaphor evokes the idea that Christians are all limbs or organs attached to a living body or organism. Just as the whole body suffers when one limb is diseased or corrupted, so does the Christian community suffer when one member is diseased or corrupted.97 We are intimately joined to one another and interdependent; we are not independent beings, created purely for our own sakes. This is why living as a member of Christ’s body requires extending charity to all members of that body. While there are one or two members of society who deserve a greater outward respect than others (such as political leaders and church authorities),98 the differences between human beings are really so small that, as a general rule, we ought to show the same respect to all human beings.99 Astell writes: Now allowing there is some difference, there can be no great one, since our neighbor is a member of Christ, and a child of God, as well as ourselves. God is no respecter of persons whatever we are; He made us all to be happy, and never intended that some should riot in

91 93 96 97

92 Marcus, Meditations, 125. Astell, Proposal II, 155, 211. 94 95 Astell, Christian Religion, }169. Ibid., }223. Ibid., }170. Ibid., }}49, 52, 141, 169, 172, 182, 198, 221, 223, 236, and 273. 98 99 Ibid., }169. Ibid., }199. Ibid., }143.

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luxury while others starve with want; that some should be sick even with ease and plenty, while others are overburdened with sorrow and care. But having made us rational and free, he would have us reduce this inequality, and supply the seeming defects that providence has left for the exercise of our virtue. So that those talents of any kind whereby we differ from our neighbor, and which we are apt to look on as great prerogatives and distinctions, are indeed only trusts, for which we are highly accountable if we misemploy them.100

This is why ‘standing upon our own right’, and permitting our selfish concerns to trump the concerns of others, is not strictly Christian.101 It is not difficult to see that Astell’s feminist principles are all apiece with these Christian-Stoic ideas. As a feminist, Astell wishes for, and endeavours to promote, the spiritual and intellectual improvement of women; she hopes to facilitate their happiness by doing good to their minds. In the Proposal, Astell argues that out of a principle of charity or disinterested benevolence women should be permitted the same educational benefits as men. Women, too, are parts of the whole and ought to be able to live according to nature. Above all, they ought to be permitted to cultivate their reason in order to become useful to themselves and to others. Because ‘we were not made for our selves,’ she says, ‘and to the intent, that every Vertue, and the highest degrees of every Vertue may be exercis’d and promoted the most that may be’, women deserve an education—to become productive members of society, and in order to live up to the dignity and perfection of their nature as free and rational beings.102 She advises her readers that By looking on our own Acquisitions as a general Treasure, in which the Whole have a Right, we shou’d Pretend to no more than a share; and considering our selves as Parts of the same Whole, we should expect to find our own account in th’ improvement of every part of it, which wou’d restrain us from being puft up with the Contemplation of our Own, and from repining at our Neighbours Excellencies. For let Reason shine forth where it may, as we can’t engross, so neither can we be excluded from sharing in the Benefit.103

In The Christian Religion, Astell likewise argues that we must ‘heartily espouse and vigorously promote every good work, since by this means we ourselves will be sharers in the benefit and honor’.104 This is why Astell calls once again for the ‘reasonable provision for the education of one half of mankind’, and describes her proposal for a female academy as one of those ‘generous designs for the glory of God and the good of mankind’.105 She points out that ‘our ill usage of our fellow mortals often proceeds from our looking down on these our brethren, as 100 103

101 102 Ibid., }221. Ibid., }198. Astell, Proposal I, 76. 104 Astell, Proposal II, 155–6. Astell, Christian Religion, }159.

105

Ibid., }379.

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creatures of a different species from ourselves, so much beneath us that it matters not how we treat them’.106 For too long women have been treated as less than fully human, or as inferior to men and of a low moral status more generally. In her works, Astell argues that it is time to show women due moral consideration as members of Christ’s body and as parts of one great whole, the human race. Masham and Whitby were surely right to claim that, short of taking themselves off to deserts and monasteries, it is practically impossible for healthy, feeling human beings to withdraw their desires completely from other people and created things, as Norris had urged. Yet, in my view, we need not dismiss Astell’s own theory of love as similarly impracticable or unappealing. Rather, we should view her exhortations to devote our attention to the love of God as part of a wider strategy to help her readers cultivate a love of benevolence or charity toward other human beings. While Masham and Whitby interpret Norris as saying that in order to love God alone, we must renounce the love of other people, Astell interprets him as saying that in order to truly wish well to other people, we must desire only God. It is desirable to strive toward a perfect love for God, because in doing so we cultivate a genuine goodwill toward others. A pure and disinterested benevolence, according to Astell, is ‘the most great and noble kind of Love’.107 Of course, we might never attain perfection in this respect. We are only human after all, and our bodily desires will inevitably lead us back to the creatures, perhaps for the purposes of self-preservation (as Descartes had argued). But it is important to strive toward this moral ideal, in Astell’s opinion, because in the process this brings about a reformation of character. The love of God helps us to cultivate a virtuous, loving disposition toward family and friends, strangers and enemies. I am inclined to agree with Astell that it is practically possible for human beings to acquire this benevolent disposition to some degree. We have also seen that, in Astell’s philosophy, the loves of friendship (wishing well to one or two people) and common charity (wishing well to the community at large) do not amount to the use of our neighbours in the sense of a detestable exploitation of their persons. Rather, we are encouraged to use our neighbour as an occasion or a means to exercise our charity and benevolence. In this respect, Astell follows in the footsteps of Augustine once again. In his De doctrina christiana, Augustine urges his readers to ‘use’ rather than ‘enjoy’ their neighbours, but it is never his intention to advocate a callous disregard toward others.108 Instead he proposes that human beings learn to love their neighbours 107 Ibid., }220. Astell and Norris, Letters, 102. On this point, see Helmut David Baer, ‘The Fruit of Charity: Using the Neighbor in De doctrina christiana’, The Journal of Religious Ethics, 24/1 (1996), 47–64. 106 108

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for the sake of God. For him, charity does not involve using our neighbours as means to our own private ends, but loving and respecting them as creatures of God. In the same spirit, Astell’s theory of love (and, to be fair, that of Norris himself) does not strictly advocate a reversal of the Kantian dictum, as Passmore suggests, since the injunction is never to use other people for narrow selfish purposes, but rather to wish well to them, or to will good to their minds, for their own sakes and for the sake of the Christian community more generally. This theory of love is consistent with Astell’s feminist calls for the recognition of women’s capacity for reason and free will, and for the good that they might do for society, were they properly educated. In these respects, while Astell’s extreme religiosity may not appeal to our modern secular sensibilities, her ethical theory—her concern for the cultivation of a disinterested benevolence, respect for free and rational moral agents, and consideration of the good of the whole— surely does. In this chapter, we have seen that Astell’s primary ethical goal was to bring about a change of character in her readers, such that they would develop a loving, charitable disposition of mind toward others. In the remaining chapters, I trace the implications of this theory of love for Astell’s political views by examining her thoughts about early modern marriage (Chapter 7) and the maintenance of peace and moderation in civil society (Chapter 8).

7 Marriage In the last chapter, we saw that for Astell all members of the community stand in a relationship of mutual interdependence to one another, as parts of one great whole. For this reason, members owe ‘Respect and Civil Usage, and all the offices of Humanity and Christian Charity to each other, to the meanest and most despicable’.1 Such humanity and charity, above all, consists in wishing and promoting the perfection of others, and especially the perfection of their minds or souls. Because women, too, are ‘members of Christ’s body’ according to Astell, they ought to be permitted to cultivate their minds in order to live up to the dignity of their nature. In early modern society, however, men are very far from wishing well toward women. On the contrary, she observes, at the hands of men, women are often oppressed, dominated, and degraded. They are treated as property, as if they have no souls, and they are denied the means to their moral and intellectual improvement.2 Nowhere is this ill treatment more evident than in the state of early modern marriage. In this period, when a woman married she experienced a significant change in legal status. A wife was no longer regarded as a separate individual but rather a feme covert (literally ‘a woman covered’), a woman under the authority and protection of her husband.3 In the eyes of the law, her husband was responsible for her well-being, her actions, and both her personal and real property. To all 1 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }171. 2 Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 200, 81. 3 On the legal status of married women in the early modern era, see Janelle Greenberg, ‘The Legal Status of the English Woman in Early Eighteenth-Century Common Law and Equity’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 4 (1974), 171–81; Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Gillian Skinner, ‘Women’s Status as Legal and Civic Subjects: “A Worse Condition than Slavery Itself?” ’, in Vivien Jones, ed., Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 91–110; and Tim Stretton, ‘Women, Property and Law’, in Anita Pacheco, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 41–76.

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intents and purposes, he became her legal guardian—she was not even at liberty to leave the marital home without his permission, and he was entitled to discipline her, if necessary. Upon marriage, all her property became her husband’s own: he gained control of her pin money (her money for clothing and personal expenses), her material possessions, her real estate, and her children. Technically speaking, a prospective wife could take measures to safeguard her property before entering into marriage. She could negotiate a prenuptial agreement or a marriage settlement, for example, which would ensure that her real property remained her own, to a certain degree, by being placed in the care of trustees. She could also contract with her husband to ensure that he paid her a sufficient sum of pin money for the duration of the marriage. In practice, however, these settlements were easily rendered worthless or ineffectual.4 A woman’s access to her property was utterly dependent on her husband’s good character and fair conduct. Divorce (in its present-day form) was not an option—marriage was a bond that could be severed only by the death of a spouse. In this chapter, I examine Astell’s popular 1700 work, Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Occasion’d by the Duke & Dutchess of Mazarine’s Case. In this text, Astell uses the famously unhappy case of her Chelsea neighbour, Hortense Mancini, the duchess of Mazarin (1646–99), as a pretext for analysing the state of marriage in her time. In a contemporary edition of the Church of England’s Book of Common-Prayer, marriage is described as ‘an honourable estate instituted of God’, for the sake of ‘mutual society, help and comfort’.5 In the same text, men are enjoined to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and, moreover, to ‘love their wives as their own bodies’.6 In her Reflections, Astell openly endorses the church’s stance on matrimony. She agrees that this institution is ordained by God for the ‘mutual Comfort and Assistance’ of men and women.7 Marriage, she says, ‘is the Institution of Heaven, the only Honourable way of continuing Mankind, and far be it from us to think there could have been a better than

4

See Staves, Separate Property, 135. Church of England, The Book of Common-Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use Of the Church of England; Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, Pointed as they are to be Sung or Said in Churches (London: Charles Bill and the Executrix of Thomas Newcomb, deceas’d; Printers to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, 1705), C4v. 6 Church of England, Book of Common-Prayer, C5r. 7 See Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage. With Additions (4th edn, London: [Samuel Richardson?], 1730; repr., New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 15–16. John Dussinger argues that Richardson himself might have had ‘possible involvement in the textual changes’ to this fourth edition. See John A. Dussinger, ‘Mary Astell’s Revisions of Some Reflections upon Marriage (1730)’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 107/1 (2013), 49–79 (51). 5

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infinite Wisdom has found out for us’.8 If we allow that an infinitely perfect God never creates anything in vain, then we must accept that marriage is designed to promote our good.9 How, then, do we explain the fact that there are so few happy marriages? In her Reflections, Astell’s main purpose is to answer this question: she proposes to see ‘from whence the mischief proceeds’ and to suggest some preventive measures.10 For Astell, the duchess of Mazarin’s marriage offers a pertinent case study. At the age of fifteen, Hortense’s wealthy and powerful uncle, the Cardinal Mazarin, married her off to an unstable Frenchman, the duke of Meilleraye. At his hands, the young woman suffered repeated psychological torment and physical maltreatment, until finally she escaped the marital home and fled to England.11 Reflecting on this well-publicized case, Astell observes that it is not surprising that so many marriages fail ‘considering how imprudently Men engage, the Motives they act by, and the very strange Conduct they observe throughout’.12 The reasons why marriages do not achieve their God-ordained purpose can be traced to a twin moral failure on the part of human beings: a failure in terms of their motivations for marrying, and a failure in terms of their conduct within marriage. Once again, as in the case of the problem of error,13 the blame does not lie with an infinitely perfect God, but rather with humanity’s abuse of free will. If human beings properly exercised their will in accordance with their reason, in order to cultivate a virtuous disposition of character, then marriage would be restored to its original blessed state. Some commentators have suggested that the Reflections has a double agenda: they propose that as well as offering a critique of marriage, the text also has an underlying political objective.14 Joan Kinnaird, for example, interprets the 8 Mary Astell, Reflections upon Marriage, in Astell: Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 36. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, my references are to this modern edition, based on the 1706 third edition. 9 10 Astell, Reflections, 36. Ibid. 11 For details, see Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 151–6; Hortense Mancini, duchess of Mazarin, The Memoires of the Dutchess Mazarine (London: R. Bentley, 1690); and Monsieur de St Evremont, The Arguments of Monsieur Herard, For Monsieur the Duke of Mazarin, Against Madam the Dutchess of Mazarin, His Spouse. And the Factum For Madam the Dutchess of Mazarin, Against Monsieur the Duke of Mazarin, Her Husband (London: C. Broom, 1699). 12 Astell, Reflections, 38. 13 On this topic, see Chapter 2 of this volume. 14 See Joan K. Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism’, The Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979), 53–75; John McCrystal, ‘Revolting Women: The Use of Revolutionary Discourse in Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Compared’, History of Political Thought, 14/2 (1993), 189–203; Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family, and Political

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Reflections in light of Astell’s conservative Anglican Tory political commitments. She notes that some of Astell’s feminist statements appear to be liberal or radical in nature, especially those that call for women’s freedom from male tyranny. But when read against Astell’s wider political theology, these statements must be seen ‘as ironic arguments designed to meet an opponent on his own grounds’.15 Kinnaird points out that Astell is a passionate advocate of ‘the sacred and inalienable rights of sovereigns’ and an ardent critic of ‘all theories of popular sovereignty and lawful resistance’.16 So when Astell laments that not even radical republicans, such as John Milton, would permit ‘poor Female Slaves’ to resist a private tyranny, we must interpret her as highlighting ‘a double standard’.17 With such remarks, Astell challenges her Whig opponents to extend the same authority to sovereigns in the state that they permit to husbands over their subordinates in the family. John McCrystal likewise points out that, in her Reflections, Astell exploits the fact that few advocates of resistance in her time were willing to extend their principles to the home.18 She uses revolutionary discourse strategically, he says, in order to show that ‘any threat to the justification of the husband’s authority over his wife carried through to shake the foundations of the whole realm’.19 Taking the same point even further, Patricia Springborg claims that Astell’s Reflections is predominantly an ironic critique of Whig contractarianism.20 Springborg claims that Astell was ‘far from being a proto-feminist who was highly critical of marriage as an institution’ and that ‘it is perhaps an ironic testimony to the triumph of the Whig version of history . . . that Astell’s Tory commitment to expose social contract theory as a Whig conspiracy has now dropped from sight’.21

Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 142–60; and Patricia Springborg, Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 113–42. 16 17 Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell’, 68. Ibid., 69. Ibid. 19 McCrystal, ‘Revolting Women’, 201. Ibid., 202. 20 Springborg says that ‘Mary Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage is a truly political work whose target is less the injustice of traditional Christian marriage than the absurdity of voluntarism on which social contract theory is predicated’ and ‘Her line of argument in Reflections upon Marriage is to show the absurdity of contractarian voluntarism when it is extended to the private realm’ (Springborg, introduction in Astell, Reflections, xxviii, xxix). This interpretive approach has been influential. Like Springborg, Joan Bennett claims that Astell’s Reflections ‘is more fundamentally about the political order than it is about domestic relationships’; see Joan S. Bennett, ‘Mary Astell, Lucy Hutchinson, John Milton, and Feminist Liberation Theology’, in Michael Lieb and Albert C. Labriola, eds., Milton in the Age of Fish: Essays on Authorship, Text, and Terrorism (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2006), 139–66 (142). 21 Patricia Springborg, ‘Mary Astell, Critic of the Marriage Contract/Social Contract Analogue’, in Anita Pacheco, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (London: Blackwell, 2002), 216–28 (226). See also Springborg, Mary Astell, 135. 15 18

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In the following discussion, in keeping with my approach throughout this work, I propose to interpret the Reflections from the standpoint of Astell’s moral theory. In the first part of this chapter, I provide an exegesis of the basic moral message of the work, read in terms of Astell’s theory of love and her commitment to promoting a love of disinterested benevolence. Following this, in the second part, I ask the question: if we interpret the Reflections in light of Astell’s moral commitments, what must the analogous political subtext be? I argue that, given the normative force of Astell’s text, the parallel political message of the work amounts to a critique of tyranny. That is to say, if we regard Astell’s work as a political allegory, then in light of its over-riding moral tone, it closely resembles common anti-tyranny discourse in her time.22 In the final part of the chapter, I discuss Astell’s proposals for the prevention of tyranny in both its domestic and political forms.

7.1 Critique of Marriage In her Reflections, Astell highlights the fact that men do not marry from goodwill toward women but rather from base motivations, such as ‘covetousness’ (strong and inordinate desire) and other excessive passions. First, she says, there are those men who marry out of ‘the Love of Beauty’, a carnal desire to possess an attractive woman all for themselves. Second, there are those who marry for the desire of money, in order to increase their wealth. And third, there are those who marry for the love of wit, a talent for humour or clever repartee (in her cynical terms, a ‘bitter and ill-natur’d Raillery’).23 In Astell’s eyes, the love of beauty, wealth, and wit could never be morally sound motives for getting married. To understand why, we must recall Astell’s earlier letters to Norris in which she highlights the feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction that result from loving other creatures with a love of desire.24 Finite creatures, she points out, can never fully satisfy an immortal, immaterial soul. Only an infinitely perfect being could provide such complete fulfilment, because only such a being could supply eternal happiness. The problem with the love of sensible beauty is that ‘Beauty with all the helps of Art is of no long date, the more it is help’d the sooner it decays, and he who only or chiefly chose for Beauty, will in a little time find the same reason for another Choice’.25 The problem with marrying for wealth is that money does

22 On the related topic of Astell’s critique of slavery, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Marriage and Lockean Slavery’, History of Political Thought, 35/4 (2014), 717–38. 23 24 25 Astell, Reflections, 41. See Chapter 6 in this volume. Astell, Reflections, 42.

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not guarantee happiness either and often leads to anxiety and insecurity concerning its potential loss.26 The problem with marrying for the love of wit is that even though a woman may continue to be witty, her wit may not continue to please: ‘it is not improbable that such a Husband may in a little time by ill usage provoke such a Wife to exercise her Wit, that is, her Spleen on him, and then it is not hard to guess how very agreeable it will be to him.’27 In her Reflections, then, Astell once again highlights the fact that a love of desire for other people cannot lead to long-lasting satisfaction. To avoid unhappiness, moral agents must learn to use their will to regulate their excessive passions, such as pride, desire, and vanity, in accordance with their reason. Marriage would lead to happiness, she says, if only human beings were ‘guided by Reason, and not by Humour or brutish Passion’.28 Happiness can be attained only through virtue, by developing the right disposition of character. As we have seen, this is a disposition of mind in which generosity (being above the world) and charity (wishing well toward others) are the chief character traits. For these reasons, Astell says, it is difficult to feel sorry for men who make imprudent decisions and live to regret their choice of marriage partner. Their unhappiness is entirely the result of their own moral failure—a failure to regulate their wills and govern their passions in accordance with reason. Unlike women, men have all the advantages of power and education to help them make prudent decisions. It is thus difficult to see why marriage itself should be blamed for a man’s dissatisfaction: ‘Let every Man bear his own Burden: If through inordinate Passions, Rashness, Humour, Pride, Covetousness, or any the like Folly, a Man makes an Imprudent Choice, Why shou’d Marriage be exclaim’d against?’29 It is not marriage, but rather a man’s ‘Covetous or Prodigal Temper’ that has caused his unhappiness.30 So what motives should men marry from? Not surprisingly, Astell’s answer is that men should marry from motives of benevolence or loving goodwill toward others. In an ideal world, a man would make ‘Friendship the chief inducement to his Choice, and prefer it before any other consideration’.31 For Astell, as we have seen, friendship consists in the willing of good to another person for that individual’s own sake and not for selfish motives.32 She follows Norris in affirming that the maintenance of such friendship requires us to regard our friend as ‘another self ’; and because the self is essentially the soul, this requires us to do good to the friend’s soul—to promote our friend’s moral and intellectual

26 31

Ibid., 38. Ibid., 37.

27 32

28 29 30 Ibid., 42–3. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 38. For Astell’s views on friendship, see Chapter 6 in this volume.

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advancement above all things.33 In Astell’s view, if a prospective husband does not make friendship his primary motivation—if he does not choose a marriage partner according to benevolent motives—then he does not ‘deserve a good Wife, and therefore should not complain if he goes without one’.34 In turn, in Astell’s view, a woman’s decision to marry should also be guided by virtuous motives. ‘As Men have little reason to expect Happiness when they Marry only for the Love of Money, Wit or Beauty,’ she says, ‘so much less can a Woman expect a tolerable Life, when she goes upon these Considerations.’35 Though an early modern woman cannot really be said to choose her marriage partner, she can however accept or reject an offer, depending upon its merits.36 To avoid making a mistake, a woman must shun those men who exhibit an excessive self-interestedness, those who ‘doat too much on themselves to have any great passion for another’, those who are their ‘own Centres’, and view every subject ‘in respect and reference to themselves’.37 She should accept only a man who has ‘a Mind that is above this World . . . a Mind that is not full of it self, nor contracted to little private Interests, but which . . . diffuses it self to its utmost capacity in doing Good’.38 She should make sure that the man ‘has the Government of his own Passions, and has duly regulated his own desires’.39 In short, she must look for a benevolent and generous disposition of character in the man she agrees to take for her life partner. A woman, too, must look for those traits she would wish to find in a friend. What then is to be done? How must a Man chuse, and what Qualities must encline a Woman to accept, that so our Marry’d couple may be as happy as that State can make them? This is no hard Question; let the Soul be principally consider’d, and regard had in the first Place to a good Understanding, a Vertuous Mind, and in all other respects let there be as much equality as may be.40

Of course, the motivations of prospective husbands and wives are not the only causes of unhappy marriages. In Astell’s view, the conduct and behaviour of men in the married state is also reprehensible. Husbands do not treat their wives with benevolence or goodwill; instead, they dominate them and use them for their own selfish purposes. In The Christian Religion, as we have seen, Astell claims that ‘our ill usage of our fellow mortals often proceeds from our looking down on these our 33 John Norris, The Theory and Regulation of Love. A Moral Essay. In Two Parts. To which are added Letters Philosophical and Moral between the Author and Dr Henry More (Oxford: Printed at the Theatre for Hen. Clements, 1688), 130; Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 101; Astell, Christian Religion, }14. 34 35 36 37 Astell, Reflections, 37. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 45. 38 39 40 Ibid., 49. Ibid. Ibid., 53.

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brethren, as creatures of a different species from ourselves, so much beneath us that it matters not how we treat them’.41 Along similar lines, in the Reflections, Astell observes that a man’s ill usage of his wife often proceeds from having a contemptuous opinion of the female sex as a whole. In the course of his upbringing, a man learns that countless generations of men have already practised a ‘Superiority over the weaker Sex’, and so he assumes without question that ‘Women are by Nature inferior to Men’, especially in terms of their understanding.42 In a man’s opinion, a woman requires his governance and direction, much as a child or an idiot requires protection and guardianship. ‘No Woman, much less a Woman of Fortune,’ Astell wryly observes, ‘is ever fit to be her own Mistress.’43 For a man, the law of nature dictates that a woman should obey him, and so a man treats his wife as if she were made for his sake and service alone.44 Astell asks, how can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex? When from his own Elevation he looks down on them as void of Understanding, and full of Ignorance and Passion, so that Folly and a Woman are equivalent Terms with him? Can he think there is any Gratitude due to her whose utmost services he exacts as a strict Duty? Because she was made to be a Slave to his Will, and has no higher end than to Serve and Obey him!45

Astell warns her female readers about the treatment they might expect from such proud, superior creatures once they are married. ‘She must be Fool with a witness,’ she says, ‘who can believe a Man, Proud and Vain as he is, will lay his boasted Authority, the Dignity and Prerogative of his Sex, one Moment at her Feet, but in Prospect of taking it up again to more Advantage; he may call himself her Slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his Life.’46 When a woman accepts a man’s marriage proposal, she warns, she elects ‘a Monarch for Life’ and gives him ‘an Authority she cannot recall however he misapply it’, she ‘puts her Fortune and Person entirely in his Powers’.47 In turn, when a man takes a wife, he knows full well she ‘must be his for Life, and therefore cannot quit his Service let him treat her how he will’.48 Astell’s warnings here must be read in light of the seventeenth-century laws pertaining to the status of married women. As noted earlier, once a woman became a wife, she was rendered entirely dependent on her husband’s goodwill for continuing access to her personal and real property for the duration of her marriage. According to Astell, despite any prenuptial agreement between a man

41 44

Astell, Christian Religion, }220. 45 Ibid., 12, 66. Ibid., 57.

42 46

43 Astell, Reflections, 29. Ibid., 67. 47 48 Ibid., 44. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 51.

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and woman, in the marital state the husband is ‘absolute Master’, and the wife ‘and all the Grants he makes her are in his Power’. As a result, she says, there have been but too many instances of Husbands that by wheedling or threatning their Wives, by seeming Kindness or cruel Usage, have perswaded or forc’d them out of what has been settled on them. So that the Woman has in truth no security but the Man’s Honour and Good-nature, a Security that in this present Age no wise Person would venture much upon. A Man enters into Articles very readily before Marriage, and so he may, for he performs no more of them afterwards than he thinks fit. A Wife must never dispute with her Husband . . . 49

A husband, Astell observes, has many ways in which to humble his wife and gain his will.50 If a wife is unfairly treated, there are few legal avenues in which she can seek redress.51 Though, technically speaking, a feme covert could appeal to the courts of equity—she could petition the Lord Chancellor for justice, for example—by taking this course of action she was likely to invite public contempt and perhaps even further abuse.52 As Astell observes, he ‘who has Sovereign Power does not value the Provocations of a Rebellious Subject, but knows how to subdue him with ease, and will make himself obey’d’.53 Divorce was not an alternative, and so an injured woman was often compelled to return to the marital home. For an early modern wife, then, these variables—a man’s inordinate desires, his poor opinion of her sex, his excessive pride and vanity (his convictions about the superiority of his own sex), the legal constraints of marriage itself, and the nontemporary nature of the institution—come together in a dangerously precarious mix. Despite any prenuptial assurances, Astell cautions, a woman cannot be certain that she will be treated with benevolence throughout her marriage. Given the self-interestedness of men, as well as their lowly opinions about women, and certain male-biased legal constraints, a woman would do well to be extremely suspicious and mistrustful of her suitor’s intentions: For under many sounding Compliments, Words that have nothing in them, this is his true meaning: he wants one to manage his Family, an House-keeper, a necessary Evil, one whose Interest it will be not to wrong him, and in whom therefore he can put greater confidence than in any he can hire for Money. One who may breed his Children, taking all the care and trouble of their Education, to preserve his Name and Family. One whose Beauty, Wit, or good Humour and agreeable Conversation, will entertain him at Home when he has been contradicted and disappointed abroad; who will do him that Justice the ill-natur’d World denies him; that is, in any one’s Language but his own, sooth his Pride 49 52 53

50 51 Ibid. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 46. See Greenberg, ‘Legal Status’, 176; Skinner, ‘Women’s Status’, 98. Astell, Reflections, 46.

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and Flatter his Vanity, by having always so much good Sense as to be on his side, to conclude him in the right, when others are so Ignorant, or so rude as to deny it. Who will not be Blind to his Merit nor contradict his Will and Pleasure, but make it her Business, her very Ambition to content him.54

If a woman’s husband turns out to be a ‘Haughty, Imperious and Self-conceited’ man, then she is destined to be miserable.55 Even worse, if ‘the Husband be full of himself, obstinately bent on his own way with or without Reason, if he be one who must be always Admir’d, always Humour’d, and yet scarce knows what will please him’, then a woman ‘must follow all his Paces, and tread in all his unreasonable steps, or there is no Peace, no Quiet for her’.56 In short, for the sake of her sanity, she must learn not to regulate her will in accordance with reason, and she must come to ignore the reproaches of her own mind. It is not too difficult to see why Astell would regard this state of affairs as morally wrong. There are two main reasons: the first can be traced to Astell’s convictions about the natural equality of women with men; the second pertains to her views about how women can attain moral perfection and live up to the dignity of their natures as free and rational beings. As for the first, in the preface to the 1706 third edition of her Reflections, Astell devotes a number of paragraphs to challenging those authors who think that, in certain key biblical passages, St Paul affirms women’s natural inferiority to men.57 She argues that, on the basis of Paul’s scriptural remarks,58 we have no more reason to suppose that women’s subjection to men is natural than we have to suppose that the subjection of the Christians to the Romans (also mentioned by St Paul) is a natural state of affairs. In both cases, Paul simply describes a state of subjection that happens to obtain in his time. If every man were naturally superior to every woman, she points out, then the greatest queen would be compelled to obey the commands of her footman in order to avoid a breach of the law of nature. But this is patently absurd. If the customs or laws of a country permit women to have supreme authority, she says, then ‘it is no Usurpation, nor do they Act contrary to Holy Scripture, nor consequently to the Law of Nature’.59 She thus declares herself ‘ignorant of the Natural Inferiority of our Sex, which our

54

55 56 Ibid., 50–1. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 47. Here Astell specifically targets John Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians (published posthumously in 1706). On this topic, see Mark Goldie, ‘Mary Astell and John Locke’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 65–85. 58 See 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:11–12, in which St Paul declares that women are forbidden to speak in church. 59 Astell, Reflections, 26. 57

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Masters lay down as a Self-Evident and Fundamental Truth’ and sees ‘nothing in the Reason of Things, to make this either a Principle or a Conclusion, but much to the contrary’.60 In sum, Astell denies that a woman’s subjection to a man is natural or justifiable on paternalist grounds. It follows that, in her opinion, men are not warranted in treating women as their subordinates or natural slaves. There is no just or reasonable cause why women should be ‘subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men’.61 The belief in the superiority of the male sex is not founded on reason. This is why Astell impugns men for exhibiting the passions of pride and vanity:62 in her view, they do not have wellfounded esteem for their sex. When a man expects an intellectual equal, a free and rational being, to submit to his humours and to suppose him always in the right, he does not behave like a reasonable creature. A man of this disposition is ‘scarce fit for Society, but ought to be turn’d out of the Herd to live by himself ’.63 For Astell, a husband’s ill treatment of his wife is also wrong in terms of the pernicious consequences that his behaviour has for her moral development. To see why, we need only consider the negative effect that a husband’s imperious conduct has on his wife’s moral character. As a result of her subordination, a wife is taught to desire the good opinion of her husband in a self-interested way. To avoid marital discord and possible injury to herself and her property, she must ‘court and fawn’ to her husband,64 she must ‘espouse his Interests and follow his Fortune’, and she must make it ‘her Business and Duty to please him’.65 She must never dispute with her husband’s commands, she must ‘give up the Cause when she is in the Right’, and learn to ‘submit her enlightend Reason, to the Imperious Dictates of a blind Will, and wild Imagination, even when she clearly perceives the ill Consequences of it, the Imprudence, nay Folly and Madness of such a Conduct’.66 In Astell’s opinion, this blind submission to superiors is a ‘certain Rout to Destruction’ for the female sex.67 It leads women away from conformity 60

Ibid., 9. Ibid., 18. Astell’s italics indicate quotations from Locke’s chapter ‘Of Slavery’ in his Two Treatises. See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II.22. On Astell and the Lockean concept of slavery, see Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Marriage’. 62 Astell highlights men’s ‘Pride and Self-conceit’ (Astell, Reflections, 48), their ‘Pride and Vanity . . . Vanity and Pride’ (ibid., 54), their ‘Contempt . . . Pride . . . Scorn and Disdain’ toward women (ibid., 57–8), and their ‘Pride and Vanity and Self-love’ (ibid., 61). 63 Ibid., 37. In the 1730 fourth edition of Reflections, Astell adds that such a man ‘ought to be turn’d out of the Herd as an unreasonable Creature’ (Astell, Reflections . . . With Additions, 19; my italics). 64 65 66 Astell, Reflections . . . With Additions, 8. Astell, Reflections, 55. Ibid., 50. 67 Ibid., 13. 61

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to the will of God, the law of reason, and it does not promote the cultivation of a virtuous disposition, in which women look beyond their own selfish desires to the general good. For a married woman, it is almost impossible to be generous in nature, to be ‘above the world’, because being married involves ‘in the very literal Sense a caring for the Things of the World’.68 In sum, Astell’s basic moral message is that the domineering behaviour of early modern men toward their wives is intrinsically wrong because they do not treat women as free and rational creatures, or accord them the dignity and respect that is due to all human beings. Men treat women as if they were members of a different species, ‘so much beneath them that it matters not how they treat them’.69 Their behaviour is also instrumentally wrong because it leads to women cultivating a slavish, servile disposition of character in which they come to ignore the law of reason, and act in terms of worldly self-interest rather than generosity or benevolence. I now use this account of the normative thesis of Astell’s Reflections to suggest that there is an analogous critique of political tyranny in the text.

7.2 Critique of Tyranny Let me begin by examining one contemporaneous critique of tyranny in Astell’s lifetime—that of John Locke in his classic work of political theory, the Two Treatises of Government (1689). In chapter 18 of the Second Treatise, Locke defines tyranny as ‘the exercise of Power beyond Right’ and the ‘making use of the Power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate Advantage’.70 A tyrant is a person in a position of political authority who rules purely from motives of self-interest rather than the public good. A tyrant’s ‘Commands and Actions are not directed to the preservation of the Properties of his People, but the satisfaction of his own Ambition, Revenge, Covetousness, or any other irregular Passion’.71 In support of this definition, Locke quotes from a 1603 speech of James I, king of England, on the distinction between a rightful king and a usurping tyrant.72 The crucial point of difference, James notes, is that the tyrant regards his people as ‘only ordained 69 Ibid., 53. Astell, Christian Religion, }220. Locke, Two Treatises, II.199. For a recent analysis of Locke’s views on tyranny, see chapter 10 in Mary Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule: Slavery, Tyranny, and the Power of Life and Death (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 326–61. 71 Locke, Two Treatises, II.199. 72 Ibid., II.200. Laslett notes that Locke’s possible source is James I, king of England, Vox Regis: Or, The Difference Betwixt a King Ruling by Law, And A Tyrant By His Own Will (London: Francis Smith, 1681). See Locke, Two Treatises, 399 n. 68 70

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for satisfaction of his Desires and unreasonable Appetites’.73 By contrast, the rightful king recognizes that he is ordained to protect the ‘Property’ of his people.74 Following James, Locke defines the difference between a king and a tyrant as the difference between a ruler who ‘makes the Laws the Bounds of his Power, and the Good of the Publick, the end of his Government’, and a ruler who makes his will and appetite the law by which he governs.75 This is why Locke proclaims that ‘Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins’.76 Whenever rulers transgress the moral law of reason, for the sake of satisfying their own passions and selfish interests, they become tyrants. To understand why Locke regards tyranny as wrong, we must turn to his account of the natural condition of human beings. In a state of nature, according to Locke, all human beings enjoy a state of perfect freedom in the sense that they are free ‘to order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other Man’.77 Crucially, for Locke, the state of nature does not give individuals a licence to do whatever they please; in this state of freedom, individuals are still bound by the law of nature: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; All the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his order and about his business, they are his Property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure. And being furnished with like Faculties, sharing all in one Community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such Subordination among us, that may Authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one anothers uses, as the inferior ranks of Creatures are for ours.78

In the state of nature, then, no one is permitted to have an absolute, arbitrary, or unlimited power over another person; no one is permitted to force another to submit to his unjust or unreasonable will. In turn, everyone possesses the right to punish those who would transgress the law of nature or who would attempt to destroy them or another member of the species. Every single human being ‘hath a Right to punish the Offender, and be Executioner of the Law of Nature’.79 Human beings have this right by virtue of being God’s workmanship and because the law

73

Locke, Two Treatises, II.200. Ibid. Locke takes a liberty in making this point. In his original speech, James says that a rightful king ensures the ‘Prosperity’ and not the ‘Property’ of his people (see James, Vox Regis, 1, and Locke, Two Treatises, 399 n.). 75 76 77 Locke, Two Treatises, II.200. Ibid., II.202. Ibid., II.4. 78 79 Ibid., II.6. Ibid., II.8. 74

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of reason bids them to preserve what an omnipotent and infinitely wise being has bestowed upon them—their ‘property’, that is, in Locke’s broad sense of this term as their ‘Lives, Liberties, and Fortunes’.80 Why, then, do human beings choose to leave the state of nature and enter into civil society? The reason is that even though the state of nature can be a ‘State of Peace, Good Will, Mutual Assistance, and Preservation’, there is always the danger that it might descend into a state of war, a state of ‘Enmity, Malice, Violence, and Mutual Destruction’.81 In such circumstances, there is no higher power to which to appeal for arbitration; we can make only ‘an appeal to Heaven’.82 This is a problem because it means that a state of war could be continued indefinitely. To avoid such a nightmarish scenario, human beings consent to leave the state of nature and set up a supreme power among themselves, so that they might have ‘an Authority, a Power on Earth, from which relief can be had by appeal’.83 This common power is set up to protect them from an indefinite state of war and to ensure the preservation of their property. By contracting into civil society, according to Locke, human beings cannot reasonably be supposed to give themselves up to the arbitrary rule of a tyrant. If human beings did surrender themselves to ‘the absolute Arbitrary Power and will of a Legislator . . . to make a prey of them when he pleases’, then they would be making themselves worse off than they would be in the state of nature. It is ‘a much worse condition’ to be exposed ‘to the Arbitrary Power of one Man, who has the Command of 100,000’ in civil society, he says, than it is to be exposed ‘to the Arbitrary Power of 100,000 single Men’ in the state of nature. At least in a state of nature, human beings have ‘a Liberty to defend their Right against the Injuries of others’—they have the right to punish transgressors against the law of reason.84 Locke emphasizes that the ends of civil society are to protect the public good and to preserve that which belongs to human beings by virtue of the fact they are God’s workmanship. This is why we contract into civil society, to help further the preservation of humankind and to protect God’s property. A just political power, therefore, is one with the right of making laws ‘only for the Publick Good’;85 by definition, tyranny does not constitute just political power. According to Locke, tyrants do not act like free and rational human beings, but rather like predatory beasts or monsters. In his chapter on the state of nature, he insists that we are permitted to destroy those aggressors who have forsaken reason and ‘declared War against all Mankind’.86 We might justifiably treat them ‘as a Lyon or a Tyger, one of those wild Savage Beasts, with whom Men 80 84

Ibid., II.137. Ibid., II.137.

81 85

82 83 Ibid., II.19. Ibid., II.20. Ibid., II.21. 86 Ibid., II.4; my italics. Ibid., II.11.

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can have no Society nor Security’.87 We might kill them for the same reason we might kill ‘a Wolf or a Lyon; because such Men are not under the ties of the Common Law of Reason, have no other Rule, but that of Force and Violence, and so may be treated as Beasts of Prey, those dangerous and noxious Creatures, that will be sure to destroy him, whenever he falls into their Power’.88 A significant consequence of Locke’s analysis of tyranny is that a tyrant might legitimately be opposed with force.89 Because a tyrant ceases to act as a human being, he forfeits his right to preservation, and so we are morally permitted to resist him, with lethal force if need be. We might annihilate him as we would any other dangerous bloodthirsty animal. In her Reflections, Astell frequently draws on the rhetoric of tyranny to make an argumentative point about the wrongful treatment of husbands toward their wives. She observes that ‘the Tyranny . . . or the superior Force of Men, keeps Women from Acting in the World, or doing any thing considerable’.90 She describes the misery of being ‘yok’d for Life to a disagreeable Person and Temper’ and having ‘Folly and Ignorance tyrannize over Wit and Sense’.91 She observes that ‘how much soever Arbitrary Power may be dislik’d on a Throne, not Milton himself wou’d cry up Liberty to poor Female Slaves, or plead for the Lawfulness of Resisting a Private Tyranny’.92 In the preface to the 1706 third edition of the text, she adds that ‘if Arbitrary Power is evil in itself, and an improper Method of Governing Rational and Free Agents it ought not to be Practis’d any where; Nor is it less, but rather more mischievous in Families than in Kingdoms, by how much 100000 Tyrants are worse than one’.93 She says that without Queen Anne’s help ‘to do Justice to her Sex’, we must say goodbye to the liberties of the ‘Moiety of Mankind’ (one half of humanity), to those great things that women might do, and ‘to those Halcyon, or if you will Millennium Days, in which the Wolf and the Lamb shall feed together, and a Tyrannous Domination which Nature never meant, shall no longer render useless if not hurtful, the Industry and Understandings of half Mankind!’94

87 Ibid., II.11. In another paragraph, Locke says that the aggressor ‘having quitted Reason . . . he renders himself liable to be destroied by the injur’d person, and the rest of mankind, that will joyn with him in the execution of Justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute with whom Mankind can have neither Society nor Security’ (ibid., II.172). 88 89 90 Ibid., II.16. Ibid., II.202. Astell, Reflections, 23; my italics. 91 92 Ibid., 33; my italics. Ibid., 46–7; my added italics. 93 Ibid., 17. Astell’s comment that ‘100000 tyrants are worse than one’ might be a direct response to Locke’s claim that one tyrant with supreme power in civil society is worse than 100,000 tyrants in the state of nature. Ruth Perry makes this point in her ‘Mary Astell and the Feminist Critique of Possessive Individualism’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 23 (1990), 444–57 (456). 94 Astell, Reflections, 31; my added italics.

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Now we might ask: what is Astell’s implied stance on political tyranny per se? If we read the political subtext of the Reflections alongside Astell’s moral judgments about the tyranny of husbands, what is her position on tyranny? First, I think it is clear that Astell uses the term tyranny in the same sense as Locke in his Two Treatises, a work that Astell cites in both The Christian Religion and her 1706 third edition of the Reflections.95 Though she was likely unfamiliar with the work before 1704, when Locke’s authorship became publicly known, their usage of the term has several features in common. Like Locke, Astell regards a tyrant as someone who acts from excessive, unregulated passion, and not the law of reason; a tyrant is particularly prone to the passion of covetousness, or strong and inordinate desire; a tyrant governs for selfish advantage and not the general good of others; a tyrant controls the property of others (their lives, liberties, and fortunes) for his own sake, and not for their benefit; a tyrant fails to respect the equal freedom and rationality of other members of the species; and a tyrant degrades or dishonours his subjects by treating them as natural slaves, made for his sake alone. By using the term ‘tyrant’ in this way, both Locke and Astell were drawing on a long tradition of anti-tyranny discourse in English political thought.96 Second, I think it is clear that Astell regards tyranny as wrong for the same reasons as Locke. Above all, like Locke, Astell emphasizes that a tyrant’s rule is arbitrary, it is not based on just or reasonable grounds. She claims that it is unjust and unreasonable to make one’s passions, and not the law of reason, the rule of one’s governance of others. It is also morally reprehensible to govern according to selfish interests, and not the general good. These judgments are based on similar premises to those of Locke in his Two Treatises. In the Reflections, Astell observes: Superiors indeed are too apt to forget the common Privileges of Mankind; that their Inferiors share with them the greatest Benefits, and are as capable as themselves of enjoying the supreme Good; . . . Nor will it ever be well either with those who Rule or those in Subjection, even from the Throne to every Private Family, till those in Authority look on themselves as plac’d in that Station for the good and improvement of their Subjects, and not for their own sakes. . . . as the Representatives of God whom they ought to imitate in the Justice and Equity of their Laws, in doing good and communicating Blessings to all beneath them: By which, and not by following the imperious Dictates of their own will, they become truly Great and Illustrious and Worthily fill their Place.97

95 96 97

See Astell, Christian Religion, }}274, 372, 383; Astell, Reflections, 17–19. On anti-tyranny ideology in England, see Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule. Astell, Reflections, 56.

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Like Locke, Astell agrees that the ends of government are to uphold the public good. Of course, in support of this claim, she does not appeal to the natural condition of human beings, or to a contractarian theory about the origins of civil society.98 But elsewhere Astell does affirm that we are all the workmanship of one God,99 and that we are obliged to live in conformity to the will of God, which is the law of reason.100 By virtue of being God’s creatures and living in community with one another, as ‘members of Christ’s body’, she says, we are bound to show respect and civil usage to one another.101 This requires us to subdue our passions, to use our free will to regulate our desires according to reason, and to submit our will to those of others, for the sake of mutual peace and harmony. For the sake of political order, she says, we must learn to submit our wills to the wills of our superiors. In The Christian Religion, she adds that because order and government must be maintained, which could not be, considering the corruption and partiality of mankind, were everyone left to be judge in this matter, therefore we must submit to him, who by the laws and usages of the place, or by prescription when there is not a better title, has a claim to superiority, even though he be not really better than his neighbors. However the superior ought to consider, that though for order sake his will must take place in all cases wherein God, and under God his proper superior if he has any, have not determined; yet since this is only upon supposition that his will is most agreeable to right reason, that is, to God’s will, in conformity to which our true excellency consists, if the will of an inferior be more reasonable than the will of his superior, then according to the reason of things, that is preferable to this.102

Truly excellent rulers will govern in conformity with God’s will, the law of reason. Those who are fit to govern will never make use of their ‘Superiority but to do them [their inferiors] Good’.103 By implication, then, tyrants are not fit to govern. In sum, Astell’s implied political message is that tyranny is a morally unacceptable form of governance in civil society.104 98 In another work, Astell wryly dismisses the idea of a state of nature as fantastical and absurd, a mere ‘figment of Hobbs’s Brain’. See Mary Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated: Or, A Review of a Late Pamphlet, Entitul’d, Moderation a Vertue. With a Prefatory Discourse to Dr. D’Aveanant, Concerning His late Essays on Peace and War (London: J. L. for Rich. Wilkin, 1704), xxxv. 99 In the second part of the Proposal, Astell explicitly uses this Ephesians phrase: a woman, she says, ‘is GOD’s Workmanship, endow’d by him with many excellent Qualities, and made capable of Knowing and Enjoying the Sovereign and Only Good’ (Astell, Proposal II, 233). 100 101 102 Astell, Christian Religion, }23. Ibid., }171. Ibid., }174. 103 Astell, Reflections, 55. 104 At this point, the question naturally arises: whose political tyranny does Astell condemn? In the absence of explicit references, any response to this question must be merely speculative. But given the original historical context of Some Reflections (first published in 1700), the most likely answer is that of William III. As a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, William the prince of Orange had acceded to the English throne alongside his wife Mary, the Protestant daughter of James

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7.3 Prevention of Tyranny What conclusions might we draw by taking this interpretive approach to the text? I think that if we read the Reflections in light of Astell’s core moral commitments, her arguments concerning marriage cannot all be dismissed as ‘ironic arguments designed to meet an opponent on his own grounds’, as Kinnaird suggests.105 Nor does this text appear to be ‘more fundamentally about the political order than . . . domestic relationships’.106 Rather, from the point of view of Astell’s moral theory, there can be no doubt that she seriously condemns male tyranny over women in marriage. Her moral theory commits her to affirming the intrinsic wrongness of both domestic and political tyranny, on the grounds that both kinds of tyranny are violations of the moral law—the law of God and reason. In her view, all human beings are obliged to cultivate a habitual disposition to follow this law. They ought actively to acquire the virtues of benevolence and generosity, and they ought wilfully to avoid cultivating the vices of carnal desire, pride, vanity, and greed. If they regulate their wills in accordance with reason, and direct their passions toward the right ends, then they will eventually attain the happiness that accompanies virtue. But if they insist on following their irregular passions, and treating their fellow human beings as slaves and chattels, then they will fail to live in conformity with God’s will. It follows that Astell does sincerely criticize the institution of marriage as one in which men (and, to some extent, women) fail to act as virtuous agents, and so her text cannot be dismissed as simply an ironic critique of Whig political theory. In saying this, I do not wish to deny that at several points in her text Astell criticizes the pretensions of Whig contract theorists.107 In particular, I think this critique comes most to the fore in her discussions of appropriate or permissible responses to tyranny. Against her Whig contemporaries, Astell denies that subjects are ever justified in engaging in active, violent resistance to those authorities who have failed to act out of goodwill toward their inferiors. Just as it would be II. Upon Mary’s death in December 1694, William reigned as sole monarch till his own death in 1702. In her Impartial Enquiry (1704), written in the early reign of Queen Anne, Astell is more forthcoming with her criticism of the late Dutch king. She suggests that William carried out certain ‘Illegal acts’ and wielded an ‘Arbitrary Power’ during his reign. See [Mary Astell], An Impartial Enquiry Into The Causes Of Rebellion and Civil War In This Kingdom: In an Examination of Dr. Kennett’s Sermon, Jan. 31, 1703/4. And Vindication of the Royal Martyr (London: E. P. for R. Wilkin, 1704); republished in Astell: Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 194. In a preceding footnote, Springborg identifies William III as Astell’s target in this passage (see Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 193 n. 142). 106 Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell’, 68. Bennett, ‘Mary Astell’, 142. For the most pertinent passages, see the preface to the 1706 third edition of her work (Astell, Reflections, 7–31). 105 107

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absurd to suggest that wives are entitled to overthrow tyrannical husbands, she says, so too would it be absurd to suggest that citizens are justified in deposing political tyrants. In both cases, we are bound to observe the doctrine of passive obedience, the Anglican doctrine that subjects are obliged ‘to render active obedience to just authority, in all instances that are not contrary to God’s commands, and to submit quietly to the penalty where they cannot actually obey’.108 This political theology derives from certain biblical injunctions, such as the command for ‘every soul to be subject to the higher powers’ (Romans 13:1), and the edict to submit ‘not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward’ (1 Peter 2:18). According to these precepts, divine law does not condone the active overthrow of political authorities, even if they wield a tyrannical, arbitrary power. In keeping with this religious doctrine, in her Reflections, Astell refuses to blow ‘the Trumpet of Rebellion’ to the female half of humankind.109 Her work is not a clarion call to arms for women, or a justification for them to react with force to their husbands’ maltreatment. She does not ‘in any manner prompt them to Resist, or to Abdicate the Perjur’d Spouse’, the husband who has betrayed his marriage vows.110 A woman who ‘does not practise Passive Obedience to the utmost,’ she says, ‘will never be acceptable to such an absolute Sovereign as a Husband.’111 Patience and submission are ‘the only Comforts left to a poor People, who groan under Tyranny’.112 Her implication here is that male citizens ought to practice the same obedience in the state that they exact from their domestic subordinates in the home—they ought to practice passive obedience. Upon closer inspection of the Reflections, however, Astell does in fact propose an active strategy to combat tyranny—not one of violent resistance but rather one of active prevention. ‘Let us see then from whence the mischief proceeds,’ she says at the start of her Reflections, ‘and try if it can be prevented.’113 With respect to unhappy marriages, she has the following recommendation to make: that women be educated to retain their moral freedom and resist developing a slavish

108 See Astell, Christian Religion, }149; see also }}28, 332. In this work, Astell’s main arguments concerning ‘non-resistance’ are directed against the anonymous author of The Principle of the Protestant Reformation Explained In A Letter of Resolution Concerning Church-Communion (London: n.p., 1704). This work has been attributed to the Whig pamphleteer and Anglican clergyman, William Stephens (1647–1718). See John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1965), 240. In 1709, The Principle of the Protestant Reformation appeared in a collection of Stephens’s works, titled An Account of the Growth of Deism in England. With other Tracts of the Same author (London: n.p., 1709). 109 110 111 Astell, Reflections, 8. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 61. 112 113 Ibid., 46. Ibid., 36.

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disposition of character.114 Reflections thus contains yet another call for the education of women. In this text, once again, Astell’s emphasis is on helping women to cultivate a certain strength of character, one that will enable them either to withstand or avoid the ravages of fortune. The problem, according to Astell, is that as a result of their poor education women are ‘destin’d to Folly and Impertinence, to say no worse’.115 The ‘unhappy Shipwrack’ of the duchess of Mazarin’s marriage is a famous case in point, one that aptly illustrates ‘the dangers of an ill Education’.116 If the duchess had had the benefit of a thorough education in reason and religion, Astell suggests, her husband’s ill treatment might not have led to her moral degeneration.117 In the Proposals and The Christian Religion, we have seen, Astell recommends a moral education for women: one that will instil them with an enduring disposition to virtue, that will create good habits of mind that will enable moral agents to regulate their wills in accordance with reason, and to cultivate a loving, generous temper of mind toward other people. In her Reflections, Astell likewise recommends an education that consists in ‘affecting the Soul with a lively Sense of what is truly its Perfection, and exciting the most ardent Desires after it’.118 In a heavily ironic passage, she says that she will not attempt the improvement of those women ‘who find themselves born for Slavery and are so sensible of their own Meanness as to conclude it impossible to attain to any thing excellent’.119 She will leave them to enjoy ‘the great Honor and Felicity of their Tame, Submissive and Depending Temper’.120 No doubt, she says, the men will greatly applaud their humility. No doubt, these women will enjoy playing at housewife, wearing pretty dresses, and entertaining their visitors. No doubt, they will also obediently attend church and say their prayers, because they have been taught to do so. ‘Let them not by any means aspire at being Women of Understanding,’ she says, ‘because no Man can endure a Woman of Superior Sense, or wou’d treat a reasonable Woman civilly.’121 But Astell’s serious underlying message is that ‘a Tame, Submissive and Depending Temper’ is something to be avoided—at all costs. A reasonable woman would never blindly submit to the authority of any man. ‘A Blind Obedience,’ she says, ‘is what a Rational Creature shou’d never Pay . . . For Human Actions are no otherwise valuable than as they are conformable to 114 On this point, see Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Marriage’. Also on the topic of education and freedom in the Reflections, see Karen Detlefsen, ‘Custom, Freedom and Equality: Mary Astell on Marriage and Women’s Education’, in Alice Sowaal and Penny A. Weiss, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, Re-reading the Canon (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming). I am extremely grateful to Professor Detlefsen for providing me with an early draft of her paper. 115 116 117 118 Astell, Reflections, 65. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 65. 119 120 121 Ibid., 30. Ibid. Ibid.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 6/6/2015, SPi

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Reason, but a blind Obedience is an Obeying without Reason, for ought we know against it.’122 An adequate education would teach a woman to understand the rational principles governing her faith. It would enable her to retain her freedom of will, her capacity for reason, and her independence of judgment, regardless of oppressive external circumstances. In short, as Astell says in The Christian Religion, it would enable her to retain true liberty, ‘which consists not in a power to do what we will, but in making a right use of our reason, in preserving our judgments free, and our integrity unspotted, which sets us out of the reach of the most absolute tyrant’.123 A woman who had this liberty would not be slavishly dependent on another’s judgment about matters concerning her salvation. She would be capable of resisting the commands of others if they happened to affront the law of reason. Against her oppressors, she would be capable of proposing ‘what is Just and Fit’ through strong arguments.124 Astell also recommends an education in ‘the State of the World’, so that a woman will not be tricked into subjection in the first place.125 Ideally, a woman would receive an education that promotes a realistic rather than a rosy idea of the institution as ‘the Sum-total of her Endeavours, the completion of all her hopes, that which must settle and make her Happy in this World’.126 She would be warned of the prejudices that men have toward the female sex. She would no longer regard the word ‘husband’ as such ‘a Wonder-working Name’, or be dazzled by the ‘Glitter and Pomp’ of a wedding.127 She would see a designing man’s compliments in their true light, as nothing more than traps and snares to get her into his absolute power.128 She would realise that ‘she has no reason to be fond of being a Wife, or to reckon it a Piece of Preferment when she is taken to be a Man’s Upper-Servant’.129 With such an education, She wou’d then duly examine and weigh all the Circumstance, the Good and Evil of a Married State, and not be surpriz’d with unforeseen Inconveniences, and either never consent to be a Wife, or make a good one when she does. This would shew her what Human Nature is, as well as what it ought to be, and teach her not only what she may

123 124 Ibid., 75. Astell, Christian Religion, }249. Astell, Reflections, 79. Ibid., 64. On Astell’s indebtedness to Locke’s Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693) in these passages, see Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Marriage’. Bridget Hill notes that ‘Surprisingly, she [Astell] seems to have been unaware of Locke’s Thoughts concerning Education’, in her introduction in The First English Feminist: ‘Reflections on Marriage’ and Other Writings by Mary Astell, ed. and intro. Bridget Hill (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986), 50. But Astell actually quotes verbatim from section 94 of that work. See Astell, Reflections, 64; and John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), }94. 126 127 128 129 Astell, Reflections, 60. Ibid., 66, 60. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 78. 122 125

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justly expect, but what she must be Content with; would enable her to cure some Faults, and patiently to suffer what she cannot cure.130

Perhaps, Astell wryly observes, if these educated women took the time to weigh and consider the true nature of marriage, ‘they seldom wou’d Marry’.131 On this basis, Andrew Lister has concluded that Astell’s main purpose in her Reflections was to get women seriously to consider not marrying at all, if they did not have to.132 If we carry through on this idea, to the parallel political message of the text, what is Astell’s implied strategy for combatting political tyranny? It would appear that Astell suggests that, with a proper moral and intellectual education, political subjects, too, might be able to resist developing a slavish disposition of character and to assert their freedom. Equipped with such an education, these subjects will show due obedience where they can, but be ready and willing to resist those commands that breach the divine law. They will recognize, as Astell says in The Christian Religion, that ‘if the will of an inferior be more reasonable than the will of his superior, then according to the reason of things, that is preferable to this’.133 In making such claims, Astell does not betray her commitment to passive obedience, the doctrine that we must submit patiently to the penalty for our disobedience to unjust authority. This is because the doctrine already carries within it an implicit justification of passive resistance. The doctrine permits disobedience, so long as it is kept within the bounds of non-violent protest, such as ‘prayers and tears’, ‘strong arguments’, and reasoned proposals about ‘what is Just and Fit’.134 In her Reflections, Astell affirms that the principles of right reason can always be called upon to justify passive resistance to the unjust and unreasonable commands of a tyrant. From the perspective of her wider moral commitments, then, it must be conceded that Astell approaches male tyranny within marriage as a serious topic of moral concern in its own right. In this historical period, tyranny was regarded as a flagrant breach of the moral law, a disposition to treat other people as natural slaves, and to live according to unregulated passions rather than reason. Tyrants acted out of unbridled vanity, pride, and covetousness, they did not act out of loving kindness or goodwill toward others. In her Reflections, Astell offers a strong moral condemnation of tyrants, as well as suggestions about how to combat tyranny without resorting to violence or armed rebellion. Her response 130

131 Ibid., 74–5. Ibid., 78. Andrew Lister, ‘Marriage and Misogyny: The Place of Mary Astell in the History of Political Thought’, History of Political Thought, 25/1 (2004), 44–72. 133 134 Astell, Christian Religion, }174. Ibid., }210; Astell, Reflections, 79. 132

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to tyranny in this work is continuous with the core moral message of her other writings, her Letters to Norris, her Proposals, and The Christian Religion. Here once again, she places a high value on agents cultivating a love of benevolence (including both charity and friendship) toward other human beings, rather than a narrow selfish love of desire. And here again, her suggestions for change amount to proposals for educational reform that focus on character development and on women living up to their dignity as free and rational creatures. In the next chapter, I follow through on this discussion of the nexus between ethics and politics in Astell’s writings with an examination of her concept of moderation.

8 Moderation In this chapter, we see Astell in her guise as a practical philosopher or as someone who applied her moral theory to topical public issues of her day. In 1704, Astell published three anonymous pamphlets on the political and religious controversy now known as the ‘occasional conformity’ debate.1 Occasional conformity was the practice of some Protestant dissenters—such as Presbyterians, Independents, and Quakers—who would occasionally take the sacrament in Anglican churches in order to meet the eligibility requirements for public office.2 In the early reign of Queen Anne, from 1702 until 1704, the Tory political party actively campaigned to have this practice outlawed, much to the consternation of dissenters and their political allies, the Whig party and Low-Church Anglicans (or ‘latitudinarians’). With their proposed Act for preventing Occasional Conformity,3 the Tories hoped to stem the tide of dissent at both national and local political levels. In response, the dissenters and their supporters published several pamphlets calling for ‘Moderation’ and an end to religious persecution; while the Tories and HighChurch Anglicans retorted with cries of ‘No Moderation’ and arguments for even 1 [Mary Astell], Moderation truly Stated: Or, A Review of a Late Pamphlet, Entitul’d, Moderation a Vertue. With a Prefatory Discourse to Dr. D’Aveanant, Concerning His late Essays on Peace and War (London: J. L. for Rich. Wilkin, 1704); [Mary Astell], An Impartial Enquiry Into The Causes Of Rebellion and Civil War In This Kingdom: In an Examination of Dr. Kennett’s Sermon, Jan. 31, 1703/ 4. And Vindication of the Royal Martyr (London: E. P. for R. Wilkin, 1704); republished in Astell: Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 129–97; and [Mary Astell], A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons (London: E. P. for R. Wilkin, 1704), also republished in Astell: Political Writings, 81–127. There is no modern edition of Moderation truly Stated. The Term Catalogues record that Astell’s Moderation truly Stated was first published anonymously in February 1704, while An Impartial Enquiry and A Fair Way were both published in May 1704. See Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues, 1668–1709 A.D.; with a Number for Easter Term, 1711 A.D., 3 vols (London: Professor Edward Arber, 1903–6), iii, 390, 401. 2 For a clear overview, see John Flaningam, ‘The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697–1711’, Journal of British Studies, 17/1 (1977), 38–62. Flaningam briefly highlights Astell’s part in formulating key philosophical objections to occasional communion (45–6, 52). 3 The occasional bill was first presented to the House of Lords in December 1702 and subsequently defeated. Astell writes in the intervening period between the second unsuccessful bill of December 1703 and the third of November 1704. The fourth bill passed into law in 1711.

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harsher penalties. Not surprisingly, when Astell weighed in on this debate (firmly on the High-Church side), her first pamphlet was devoted to the subject of virtue—more specifically, the virtue of moderation. In Moderation truly Stated (1704), Astell responds to a pro-dissenter piece titled Moderation a Virtue (1703), by the Presbyterian minister James Owen (1654–1706).4 In his pamphlet, Owen argues that because occasional conformists are typically men of moderation and piety, they will be more beneficial to church and state than men of unbridled zeal and loose moral principles.5 According to Astell, Owen’s arguments are poison in need of an antidote.6 In response, she proposes to examine the true meaning of moderation and to show that the occasional conformists are profoundly lacking in virtue. Those dissenters who are willing to become hypocrites for the sake of political advantage, she says, do not exhibit moderation; rather, they exhibit the unregulated passions of pride, self-conceit, covetousness, and avarice—and they should not be given positions of trust in civil life. Arguing in favour of the occasional bill, Astell declares that True Policy . . . requires nothing of us that is unreasonable or unjust, or contrary to Religion and its Interests. For right Reason is Uniform, all of a piece, and if it is our Guide in Politicks, it won’t lead us into measures inconsistent with its Dictates in other Cases. So that if Occasional Conformity is an Immoral Action, or prejudicial to Religion, consequently it is impolitick to allow it.7

Astell continues this argument in two further pamphlets of May 1704, An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War and A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons. In the first, she responds to Bishop White Kennett’s Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the Civil War (1704), a sermon preached upon the anniversary of Charles I’s death. In the second, she writes against Daniel Defoe’s anonymous pro-dissenter polemic, More ShortWays with the Dissenters (1704), and includes a last-minute postscript in response to Owen’s second pamphlet, Moderation still a Virtue: In Answer To Several Bitter Pamphlets (1704). In his rejoinder, Owen singles out Astell as the ‘verbose and virulent’ author of Moderation truly Stated, but fails to engage with

4 Astell’s work also includes a long prefatory discourse on Charles Davenant’s Essays upon Peace at Home, and War Abroad (1704). For details on her response to Davenant, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell’s Machiavellian Moment? Politics and Feminism in Moderation Truly Stated’, in Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman, eds., Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 9–23. 5 [James Owen], Moderation a Virtue: Or, The Occasional Conformist Justify’d From the Imputation of Hypocrisy (2nd edn, London: A. Baldwin, 1703), 26. 6 7 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 1. Ibid., 28.

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her arguments in any detail.8 In response, Astell repeats her accusation that the occasional conformists exhibit fatal character flaws. In the following discussion, I examine Astell’s moral arguments against occasional conformity in her three political pamphlets. A number of recent scholars have examined these works in detail.9 I propose to build on this scholarship by interpreting Astell’s political stance against occasional conformity as an expression of her theory of virtue and of her views concerning ‘what sorts of persons’ we should be. I argue that far from constituting a significant departure from her earlier feminist works, as one scholar has claimed,10 these pamphlets are a continuation of Astell’s earlier moral critique of tyranny.11 As we will see, one of Astell’s key objections to the occasional conformists is that they might rise to positions of authority and come to wield an arbitrary power over English society. In her view, the occasional conformists exhibit all the same character traits as those rebellious subjects who ‘brought a Royal-Head to the Block’ in the civil war era.12 The toleration of these dissenters’ immoral practices is thus tantamount to ‘putting a Sword in a Mad-man’s Hand’.13 If we persist in giving power to such men, she warns, then England is in danger of turning into a bloodbath once more. We must therefore bar the occasional conformists from office in order to ensure the future peace and security of the nation. I conclude this chapter by spelling out the implicit lessons for women in these pamphlets. In the texts themselves, Astell neither directly addresses women nor explicitly advertises her gender (though her female authorship seems to have

8 [James Owen], Moderation still a Virtue: In Answer To Several Bitter Pamphlets (London: J. Taylor, 1704), ii. 9 See Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 182–221; Patricia Springborg, introduction in Astell: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xi–xxix; Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family, and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 142–60; William Kolbrener, ‘ “Forc’d into an Interest”: High Church Politics and Feminine Agency in the Works of Mary Astell’, 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 10 (2004), 3–31; Patricia Springborg, Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 164–81; Mark Goldie, ‘Mary Astell and John Locke’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 65–85; Hilda L. Smith, ‘ “Cry up Liberty”: The Political Context for Mary Astell’s Feminism’, in William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson, eds., Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 193–204; Erin Murphy, Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (Lanham, MD: University of Delaware Press; Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), 211–37, 276–81; and Melinda S. Zook, Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660–1714 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 160–96. 10 Kolbrener, ‘Forc’d into an Interest’, 24. 11 On this topic, see Chapter 7 on ‘Marriage’ in this volume. 12 13 Astell, Fair Way, 125. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 57.

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been widely known).14 In one part of Moderation truly Stated, however, she describes the typical characteristics of female dissenters, on the one hand, and women on the High-Church side, on the other. Using these descriptions, I propose to show that these pamphlets offer lessons about the kinds of disposition politically-involved women ought to cultivate—and the kinds of character they ought to avoid.

8.1 Concept of Moderation At the height of the occasional conformity controversy, the term ‘moderation’ became a popular catchword, but with different meanings on each side of the debate.15 In numerous pamphlets from 1702 to 1705, the dissenters called on the Church of England to exhibit the Christian virtue of moderation by taking a mild or tolerant approach toward occasional conformity. They repeatedly urged this policy as a way of uniting the church, healing the nation’s breaches, and ensuring the future peace and security of English society. On their understanding, the meaning of moderation was similar to our present-day sense of the word as ‘avoidance of excess or extremes in behaviour’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In Moderation truly Stated, however, Astell draws on a normative concept of moderation that harkens back to the Aristotelian ‘doctrine of the mean’.16 Paula Gottlieb points out that for Aristotle the mean is relative to us: ‘one must do and 14 In The Mask of Moderation Pull’d off the Foul Face of Occasional Conformity (1704), the Nonjuror Samuel Grascome highlights Astell’s gender while praising her fair-minded approach to the topic in A Fair Way, observing that: ‘But tho’ an Innudation of Faction, Libertinism, and Wickedness be broke in upon us, yet there do appear some few Generous Spirits, who endeavour to Stem the Tide, and express their Fear of God, and Sense of Religion. And truly I cannot forbear to take Notice of one, both for the singularity of the Person, and the Undertaking: It is a Heroine, if I am rightly inform’d, Mrs. A—l, who would Cure them of the Evil by Stroaking them with a Soft and Gentle Hand. The Treatise truly Answers the Title, viz., A Fair Way with the Dissenters . . . . They who please to read it, will find it to be no Paradox, and that she hath maintain’d her Position not only with the Air of a Disputant, but the Spirit of a Christian.’ See [Samuel Grascome], The Mask of Moderation Pull’d off the Foul Face of Occasional Conformity (London: G. Sawbridge, 1704), 59. In a letter of the same year, George Hickes assures his correspondent Arthur Charlett ‘that Mrs. Astell is the author of that other book against Occasional Communion, which we justly admired so much’; George Hickes to Arthur Charlett, 9 December 1704; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ballard MS 62, fol. 85; quoted in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 195–6. 15 Flaningam, ‘Occasional Conformity Controversy’, 54 n. 58. See the following titles, for example: James Owen, Moderation a Virtue (1703) and Moderation Still a Virtue (1704); Astell, Moderation truly Stated (1704); Thomas Wagstaffe, The Case of Moderation and Occasional Communion (1705); Samuel Grascome, The Mask of Moderation Pull’d Off the Foul Face of Occasional Conformity (1704) and Moderation in Fashion (1705); and the anonymous Moderation Maintain’d (1704) and Moderation Pursued (1704). 16 In his study of moderation in early modern England, Ethan Shagan notes that this variable concept owed its origins to ‘a cluster of Aristotelian ethical ideals’ concerning the ‘golden mean’ and

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feel the right things, at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reasons’, depending on one’s particular circumstances.17 It follows from this that the virtuous person does not have to feel ‘moderately’ (in the modern OED sense) at all times. On some occasions, according to Aristotle, in order to be angry in the right way, and for the right reasons, a person might have to be violently angry.18 The right thing to do cannot be worked out in advance like a ‘mathematical algorithm’.19 Rather, it will depend on the individual’s specific circumstances, as well as her knowledge of those circumstances, and the extent of her own selfknowledge.20 The person who knows her own worth and abilities, Gottlieb notes, will tend to get things right, morally speaking. Along similar lines, Astell defines moderation as ‘proportioning our Esteem and Value of every thing to its Real Worth’.21 By this, she means that in any given situation, the moderate person determines the most appropriate or proportionate response to her circumstances. She does not bestow too much esteem on objects that are unworthy of her regard, or too little esteem on objects that are worthy. Her emotional response appropriately reflects her judgment about what does or does not merit her value and esteem. Other Tory supporters adopt a similar usage. The High-Church pamphleteer Thomas Wagstaffe defines moderation as ‘a just and equal Estimate, not over-rating, not unduly prizing Men and their Possessions above what they desire [deserve?]’, but rather proportioning ‘our Regards and Inclinations, more or less according to the respective Merits’.22 For Astell and Wagstaffe, moderation is a disposition to feel or to act in a certain way—to be angry, indignant, zealous, or greedy—in accordance with the worth of an object, and no more or no less. Astell claims that this concept of moderation helps us to reconcile both St Paul’s plea for Christian moderation (Philippians 4:5) and his assurance that

the ‘middle way’. See Ethan H. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion, and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3. 17 Paula Gottlieb, The Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 21. 18 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. Ingram Bywater, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), IV 5 1125b31–1126a11. 19 20 Gottlieb, Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics, 37. Ibid., 35. 21 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 6; Astell, Fair Way, 116. 22 [Thomas Wagstaffe] The Case of Moderation and Occasional Communion Represented by way of Caution to the True Sons of the Church of England (London: R. Wilkin, 1705), 22. The Term Catalogues report that Wagstaffe’s Case of Moderation actually appeared in print in November 1704 (see Arber, Term Catalogues, iii, 421). This work is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Astell. See, for example, Aneilya Hancock-Barnes, ‘Mary Astell’, Eighteenth-Century British Historians, ed. Ellen J. Jenkins, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 336 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2007), 9–14 (9).

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‘it is good to be Zealously affected always in a good thing’ (Galatians 4:18).23 True moderation does not equate to mildness, lukewarmness, or avoidance of extremes; in some cases, the proper exercise of moderation might in fact require an excess of passion on our part. Zeal, for example, is a passion or ‘an Emotion of the Mind arising from the highest Esteem and Warmest Love, whereby we are excited to pursue to the utmost the Interest and Service of what we thus Esteem and Love’.24 In the service of attaining worldly power, destroying peace, and exercising tyranny, zeal is not a virtue, in the same way that ‘Constancy and Firmness are not Vertues . . . in an evil and unjust Affair’.25 In the service of religion, peace, and security, however, zeal is a virtue. ‘Zeal according to Knowledge,’ Astell says, is ‘the true Mean and Temper.’26 Generally speaking, the moderate person has the right knowledge of what is and is not valuable. To illustrate her point, Astell distinguishes between two kinds of patriot—the truly noble patriot, exemplified by the Roman hero, and the false or feigned patriot, exemplified by the occasional conformist. In the closing pages of Moderation truly Stated, she ridicules those men who champion the Roman concept of liberty as freedom from arbitrary power but then fail to exhibit the Roman republican virtue of public-spiritedness. To act for the sake of the public good in a disinterested way, she says, a statesman must have ‘Simplicity of Manners, a Love and Veneration of Honest and Magnanimous Poverty, and a Generous Contempt of Riches’.27 She observes that When a Man can leave his Plough, which is his All, to defend his Country, and after a Glorious Victory, without pretending to any advantages, quietly go home again to boil his Turneps; when he disdains a Royal Bribe, nay even a Victory, when obtain’d by unhandsome ways; when he Sacrifices his Life, and what is dearer to him, his Reputation for the Common Welfare, when he freely gives himself up to torture rather than break his Faith, or advise his Country to its prejudice, as Cincinnatus, Curius Dentatus, Fabricius, Decius, Fabius, Regulus, and other Roman Heroes did, he gives undeniable Demonstration of his Love to the Publick.28

Astell’s examples of Roman heroes are possibly taken from Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses upon the First Decade of Titus Livius (first published in 1531), a work that she explicitly cites in the prefatory discourse to Moderation truly Stated.29 In

23

24 25 26 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 3. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 5. 28 Ibid., 107. Ibid., 108–9. 29 Astell cites a contemporary edition, Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses of Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence, Upon the First Decade of Titus Livius, in The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel, Citizen and Secretary of Florence. Written Originally in Italian, And from thence newly and faithfully Translated into English (London: R. Clavel, C. Harper, J. Amery, J. Robinson, and A. and J. Churchill, 1685). For Astell’s numerous references to this work, see Astell, prefatory 27

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his text, Machiavelli notes that Cincinnatus left his plough to serve Rome in a time of need, only to attain glory and promptly return to his farm.30 Fabricius was an exemplar of virtue and excellence of character, who refused to take a bribe.31 Decius sacrificed himself in battle for the sake of the Roman legions.32 Fabius endured accusations of cowardice in order to save the Roman state.33 And Regulus, who gallantly faced torture at the hands of the Carthaginians, was yet another man whose ‘rare and virtuous example’ changed the course of Roman history.34 These men, according to Machiavelli, exhibited a generous courage and great magnanimity of spirit. In Astell’s view, these men also exemplified true moderation. ‘When we are warm and assiduous about such things as deserve our Solicitude,’ she says, ‘and indifferent to that which is not worth our Application and Care, we are then Moderate.’35 The Roman heroes did not value worldly advantages or material possessions; they were content to live in virtuous poverty, and were indifferent to making their fortune. These men demonstrated that ‘true Greatness of Mind’ or generosity, which enables human beings to bear ‘the Insults of Adversity’.36 They were above the world, and consequently the world could not hurt them, corrupt them, or tempt them. ‘For he who has many wants, is liable to many Temptations, he who seeks Pleasures out of himself, is not his own Master.’37 The things that the Romans valued and esteemed were entirely in their own power—they were ‘Good Sense, Courage and Conduct, Just and Vertuous Actions’.38 The excellent character traits of the Roman heroes enabled them to become great defenders of their country’s liberties and to act with disinterested goodwill toward their fellow human beings. By contrast, the ‘modern patriots’39 are very far from the Roman ideal of virtue. If we examine them by their words and deeds, Astell says, they fall discourse in Moderation truly Stated, iii, vii, xiii, xviii, xxiv, xxviii, xxxix, xlii; and Moderation truly Stated, 29–30. 30

31 32 Machiavelli, Discourses, III.25. Ibid., III.1. Ibid., II.26, III.45. Ibid., I.53, III.10, 45, 47. 34 Ibid., III.1. In the dedication to her final work, Bart’lemy Fair, Astell revisits this same theme: once again, she refers to a Roman ‘who knew no better than to return to his Plough from the Head of a Triumphant Army, to dine upon Turneps, dress’d by his own victorious Hands; and who like a very Rustic, chose to eat in Earthen Dishes rather than have a Service of Plate’; see Mary Astell, Bart’lemy Fair: Or, An Enquiry after Wit; In which due Respect is had to a Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, To my LORD *** (London: Richard Wilkin, 1709), 9. Here Astell appears to be conflating the stories of Curius Dentatus and Cincinnatus. On Astell’s Bart’lemy Fair, see Van C. Hartmann,‘Tory Feminism in Mary Astell’s Bart’lemy Fair’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, 28/3 (1998), 243–65. 35 36 37 38 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 6. Ibid., 108. Ibid. Ibid. 39 Like Astell, I use this term as a shorthand for occasional conformists, dissenters, Whigs, Low Churchmen, and those ‘patriots of the good old cause’, the republican cause in civil war England. It should be noted, however, that Astell is careful to target ‘Dissenters in Faction’ and not ‘Dissenters in 33

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dramatically short of Roman heroism. Above all, the occasional conformists exhibit hypocrisy by professing loyalty to one church, the dissenting church, and then taking the sacrament in another, the Church of England. ‘Hypocrisie to be sure is as great an Immorality as any can be,’ she says, ‘’tis a Complication of Vice and Impiety.’40 The problem with such hypocritical behaviour is that it amounts to a kind of duplicity, dissembling, or cheating of others. The occasional conformist puts on a show of piety in Anglican churches merely for the sake of appearances and in order ‘to serve a turn’ or to compass his own purpose—to attain political power and influence. He imposes on other people by seeming to be other than what he is. He pretends to act for religious motives, when he really acts for secular advantage.41 To support this last claim, Astell highlights the fact that a truly religious person would not quibble at being deprived of public office for the sake of conscience. The lessons of the Bible, she reminds us, are that ‘you will never do any thing to purpose and as good Christians ought, unless you are got above this World, and can despise both its Terrors and Allurements.’42 The occasional conformist should not complain if he is prevented from taking a government post, since this disengages him from the concerns of this world and leaves him free to pursue the next.43 If he is a truly moderate man, then he will embrace this shift in fortune without complaint. If he proportions his esteem for worldly goods in accordance with their true value, then he will realise that ‘a Place, a Title, an Estate, or Power to Act his Passions, are not a Man’s true Interest’.44 In Moderation a Virtue, Owen cites the biblical example of Nehemiah, a dissenter from the Persian religion, who offers a noble precedent for the practice of occasional conformity.45 Astell, too, points to the example of Nehemiah, an ‘honest well-meaning’ dissenter, but with different intent.46 She suggests that because he was a virtuous man, he was capable of determining the correct emotional response in his particular circumstances, and of achieving moderation in a true sense. Nehemiah achieved a perfect balance of temperance, courage, prudence, and justice, she says, which enabled him to be perfectly disinterested and indifferent to fortune. For Temper without Courage is a poor sneaking faint-heartedness, that every body will trample upon: And Courage without Temper, or rather Prudence, which gives it the Right

Conscience’, for whom she has some sympathy (Moderation truly Stated, 93; Fair Way, 116). See Weil, Political Passions, 146. 40 43 46

41 42 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 32. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 9. 44 45 Ibid., 35. Ibid., 119. Owen, Moderation a Virtue, 37–8. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 21–4.

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Temper, is but a brutal Fierceness. Nor will Prudence stand a Man in stead, if he is not Resolv’d and Firm in his Resolutions, knowing how to act Courageously as well as to deliberate Wisely. Nehemiah seems to be possess’d of them all, the Result of which was a Generous Steadiness and Bravery of Mind that carried him thro’ all Difficulties.47

Nehemiah exemplifies moderation in the sense of equilibrium. Because he has all the virtues, he has a balanced disposition that enables him to do the right thing. The modern dissenters, by contrast, are sorely lacking in Nehemiah’s virtue. Let us now turn to Astell’s arguments for the view that the toleration of occasional conformity will inevitably lead to rebellion, civil war, and tyranny.

8.2 Implications for Peace According to Astell, the natural outcome of a lack of moderation in a political statesman is a tyrannical disposition of character. In her view, the occasional conformists and their allies are clearly motivated by unregulated passions, such as vanity, avarice, ambition, revenge, and envy. For this reason, they can never be completely satisfied in this earthly life, and so they will not rest contented until they have attained the greatest power possible. ‘There is no good indeed to be done by complying with the Avarice and Ambition of Mankind,’ she says, ‘for these are never satisfy’d.’48 These men will be just only so long as they encounter no temptations to be unjust, and they will be prudent only so long as prudence advances their worldly interests.49 Far from uniting the church, healing its breaches, and ensuring civil peace, the practice of occasional conformity threatens to take England back to the brink of civil war. The modern patriots might challenge the constitution at any opportunity, she says, Either out of Vanity to shew their Politicks, and the reach of their Genius, and to put their fine Models in Practice; or else to fill their Pockets and raise themselves to Posts of Honour; or it may be to satiate their Revenge against such as they think have offended them, or their Envy at others who over-top them. It matters not therefore what the Prince is, if he have faults, or be any way obnoxious, so much the better, their work is shorter. But if he be ever so Good and so Just, they will either find Faults or make them . . . 50

47

48 Ibid., 23–4. Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated, xxvii. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 108. 50 Ibid., 78. For a similar argument, see Astell, Impartial Enquiry: ‘It may often happen to be necessary for a Man’s Affairs,’ she observes in this work, ‘to bring about a Revolution, either to piece his broken Fortunes, or to gratify his Ambition or Revenge, or to restore himself to the Posts he formerly enjoy’d, or for which he thinks himself best qualified’ (147). 49

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Factious men will find whatever ‘Hobbesian’ pretext they can to topple the government.51 If they so much as ‘smell out’ designs against the constitution, she observes, then ‘whoop the Government is almost shatter’d to pieces, and we’re within a hair’s breadth of being once more in a State of Nature’.52 On any pretext, the modern patriot will reassume ‘a Fundamental Right, a Privilege of which no Man can divest himself, and so soon as he can get more Men of his Mind to make his Party strong enough, declares the Contract broken’.53 Astell singles out ‘self-preservation’ as a common pretext for rebellion. The modern patriot appeals to self-preservation as a fundamental law of nature, she says, and claims that he resists the sovereign only in order to preserve that which belongs to him—his life, liberty, and fortune. But he does not have correct selfknowledge or correct self-love. He takes ‘the self ’ to mean ‘the Body, this Present Life, or any of its Dependencies’, instead of the soul.54 And so he does not really act from concern for his true self or for the true selves (the souls) of his fellow subjects; he does not have their best interests at heart. The modern patriot preaches resistance to political authority ‘under the specious name of Liberty’, only in order to enslave the populace to ‘a few Seditious Demagogues, and Popular Haranguers’.55 He preaches up liberty of the subject in order to deprive subjects of their liberty. ‘And for what End and Purpose is all this ado?’ Astell asks, For what do they Rent the Church of Christ, and tear the Bowels of their Country by intestine Broils? For what but to advance themselves, to gratify their Passions and their Vices! The People never get by Divisions and Revolutions, they lose their Peace and Quiet, their Money is exhausted in Taxes, and their Blood in War, only to raise a few New Men, and that the cunning Folks who manage all, may make their Markets. So that all their In her Fair Way, Astell associates Hobbesian thought with a ‘chain of consequences’ in which the rebellion of subjects against their rulers is sometimes justified (97). According to this logic, if rulers do not keep up their end of the contract to arbitrate justice for the sake of peace, then the people retain their right to defend themselves (i.e., their right of self-preservation) by force. Astell’s comments are reflective of a popular conception of Hobbesian politics in her time. But in his own writings, it must be noted, Hobbes emphasizes that rebellion against one’s rulers is contrary to right reason. For a comparison of Astell and Hobbes, see Penny A. Weiss, ‘Mary Astell: Including Women’s Voices in Political Theory’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 19/3 (2004), 63–84; and Penny A. Weiss, Canon Fodder: Historical Women Political Thinkers (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 140–61. 52 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 13. 53 Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated, xxxvi. 54 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 24. For a similar argument, see Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 141–2. On Astell and self-preservation more generally, see Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 273–5. See also Chapter 4 on ‘Soul and Body’, this volume. 55 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 93. For similar points, see Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated, xxxvii–xxxviii; and Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 179. 51

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goodly Pretences of Redress of Grievances, and their bustle about Liberty and Property, have no other meaning, no other Conclusion, but their Own Advancement.56

In short, these men pursue their own selfish interests, not the public good. They are loath to be shut out of positions of political influence because they have hopes of ‘mounting into the Saddle’ themselves.57 To bolster this last claim, Astell points to the former tendencies of Protestant sectaries in the civil war and the interregnum—and especially their tendencies toward tyranny. In the last chapter, we saw that she has a concept of tyranny as a base violation of the moral law, a disposition to treat other people as natural slaves, and to live according to passion or appetite rather than reason. The tyrant acts out of rampant pride, vanity, and selfinterest; he does not act for the good of others. With reference to Henry Burton’s Conformitie’s Deformity (1646), Astell observes that Presbyterians in this earlier period aimed ‘at two main things (yet both reduc’d to one head, to wit Tyranny.) The one Tyranny over our Bodies, Estates, Free-holds, Liberties, Laws, and Birth-rights of all English Free-born Subjects: The other, Tyranny over our Souls and Consciences.’58 She draws on numerous examples to show that when the dissenters ‘obtain’d the Power, they gave a fatal Demonstration that they wanted not the Will to destroy the Church and State’.59 In A Fair Way and An Impartial Enquiry, Astell also self-consciously turns the dissenters’ own rhetoric of tyranny against them. 60 She points out that ‘as for the State, every Government, and all even the mildest Administration is, in their Gibberish, Tyranny, if it does not pass through their hands, and is not managed according to their Humours’. 61 Yet history shows that when they obtained power, the result was ‘a bloody Civil War, the Destruction of all Laws and Rights, and of the whole Constitution Ecclesiastical and Civil; Anarchy and Confusion, Tyranny and Oppression alternately’. 62 The encouragement they gave to sedition and rebellion merely exposed the people to ‘the Oppression of a multitude of Tyrants’.63

56

57 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 93. Ibid., 38. Henry Burton, Conformitie’s Deformity. In a Dialogue between Conformity, and Conscience (London: Giles Calvert, 1646), [A3r]; quoted in Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 43. 59 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 66. Astell draws her evidence from Edward Hyde, the earl of Clarendon’s recently published History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars (1702). 60 On Astell’s appropriation of the Whig-dissenter vocabulary more generally, see Kolbrener, ‘Forc’d into an Interest’. 61 62 63 Astell, Fair Way, 99. Astell, Fair Way, 112. Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 197. 58

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Despite Astell’s disapproval of tyranny, however, she once again denies that tyrants may be lawfully deposed.64 She explicitly rejects the view that if a king ‘turns to the Wolf ’,65 then he forfeits his status as lawful sovereign, and subjects may legitimately withdraw their obedience. She rejects the logic of those authors who hold that the king’s office requires him to bring about ‘the good of the People, not his own; and if he do otherwise, he is not a King but a Tyrant, and so may be depos’d’.66 This is because, according to Astell, the Bible enjoins our obedience to ‘the powers that be’, regardless of whether those powers are just or unjust. An infinitely perfect God has designed the institution of government, like that of marriage, for the sake of promoting the general good of humanity. ‘Government is necessary, it is from GOD,’ Astell says, ‘and therefore there can be no Necessity of doing an Immoral thing to Conduct and maintain it; unless we will charge GOD foolishly, and make Him the Author of our own Wickedness.’67 If this institution fails to live up to its purpose, in Astell’s opinion, then this is not God’s fault—human beings have only themselves to blame. The defects in this institution arise from human moral failings, such as unregulated passions and desires, and a failure to exercise moderation more generally. ‘It dos not therefore become the gross of Mankind to set up for that which is best in their own conceit,’ she says, ‘but humbly to observe where GOD has Delegated his Power, and submit to it, as unto the Lord and not to Man.’68 In these political pamphlets, however, Astell’s message is not all about passive martyrdom and humble submission in the face of tyranny. William Kolbrener points out that, in certain key passages, she demands a decisive politics of action. He notes that, Despite Astell’s insistent condemnation of political action and party interests, linked in her works to the inauthentic strategies of deceit that emerged in the culture of the regicides, in the 1704 tract on moderation, Astell calls upon her Jacobite colleagues to abandon the passive languages of providential history, for a more pragmatic politics of action. . . . Traditional Jacobite passivity and the reliance upon the mechanisms of providential history are simply insufficient—or deemed now inappropriate—to oppose the arts of “Dissenters and Men of their Faction.”69

The political language of Moderation truly Stated, according to Kolbrener, represents an ‘extraordinary departure from established languages of Jacobite passivity, indeed from her own arguments of the earlier decade’, and her stance

64 66 68

65 See Chapter 7, Section 7.3, in this volume. Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 159. 67 Ibid., 157. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 26–7. 69 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 59–60. Kolbrener, ‘Forc’d into an Interest’, 23.

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on ‘feminine passivity’.70 In these tracts, Astell argues that the authorities need to take firm, vigorous, and active measures in order to quash the rebellious spirit of modern patriots. She does not advocate resignation, meek submission, or withdrawal to prayer as appropriate strategies in the face of political aggression. Kolbrener is certainly right to note that Astell advocates a policy of action in her work on moderation and occasional conformity. But I do not think that, in order to take this approach, Astell is forced to qualify her earlier stance on feminine passivity. To defend this claim, let me now turn to the topic of what lessons, if any, women might take from these pamphlets.

8.3 Lessons for Women In theory, Astell asserts in The Christian Religion, the women of her day are not supposed to be concerned with political affairs.71 They are not employed in either civil or military posts, and they are not eligible for public office. In practice, however, women were deeply involved in early modern politics: they were ‘as grand politicians, and every whit as intriguing as any patriot of the good old cause’ (the republican cause, that is, in civil war England).72 In this public arena, Astell observes, uneducated women are easy prey to unscrupulous men. Some political agitators make women the instruments of their designs ‘because the gentleness of their temper makes them fitter to insinuate and gain proselytes’; while others use women because by ‘being less suspected they may be apter to get and to convey intelligence’.73 For these reasons, women should be on their guard. They must be alert and wary lest they become ‘the tools of crafty and designing demagogues’.74 On the subject of women and politics, then, Astell reiterates the key moral message of The Christian Religion. In this work, she advises her readers ‘to receive no man’s opinion on his bare word, nor to swallow his arguments without examining them’.75 Women must be sure to ‘“call no man master upon earth”; that is, follow no man’s judgment or authority any further than as he brings his credentials from the great master who is in heaven’.76 Women must avoid being led astray by their earthly superiors, whether those superiors be their husbands and fathers in the domestic sphere, pastors and spiritual directors in the religious domain, or popular demagogues in the political arena. If the dictates of these men contravene the moral law, then women must have the courage to resist their oppressors and steadfastly pursue the virtuous path instead. 70 74

Ibid., 24, 4. Ibid.

75

71 Astell, Christian Religion, }150. 76 Ibid., }404. Ibid., }3.

72

Ibid.

73

Ibid.

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In a 1705 letter to an unknown woman, Astell likewise declares that ‘it is our Lord’s command to call no man Master upon earth, to be concluded by no authority but that of our master who is in heaven. I would have women as well as men to see with their own eyes as far as they will reach, and to judge according to the best of their own understandings’.77 In the 1706 third edition of her Reflections, she once again insists upon this ‘Natural Right of judging for herself ’ because she would have everyone ‘see with their own eyes, and Judge according to the best of their own Understandings’.78 For Astell, it is crucial that women retain their independence of judgment, because if they make poor moral choices, then they are the ones who will answer for them. If they make good choices, however, then they will come to acquire virtue and happiness—the most important attainments in this lifetime. In Moderation truly Stated, Astell begins with her familiar refrain. She urges her reader not to believe her upon her ‘bare word’ and to take nothing upon Trust, but to see with his own Eyes, and to judge according to his own Understanding; to be of no Party, no Opinion, because this Relation, or that great Man are of it; because it is popular or plausible, because it will serve a present Turn, or make a Fortune, or even because one has been of this Opinion formerly.79

In An Impartial Enquiry, Astell also repeats the injunction to call ‘no Man Master upon Earth’, and advises her readers not to follow blindly the popular speakers and leaders of political parties.80 Though she does not directly address a female audience in these works, the concerns of women do not go unremarked. In one passage of Moderation truly Stated, Astell reflects on the character traits of women on opposite sides of the occasional conformity debate. In a dialogue between two men, a High-Churchman named Nokes and a latitudinarian called Styles, Astell draws a comparison between those ‘noisy Women’, ‘the Young and the Handsom, the Witty and the Gay, the Intriguing and Politick Ladies’ on the side of the dissenters (the ‘Factious Side’), on the one hand, and ‘the Old and the Ugly, the Praying and the Women of Thought’, on the other.81 In light of her other works—namely, her Proposal, her Reflections, and The Christian Religion— George Hickes and Mary Astell, ‘The Controversy betwixt Dr. Hickes & Mrs. Mary Astell’, in Thomas Bedford, ed., The Genuine Remains of the late Pious and Learned George Hickes D. D. and Suffragen Bishop of Thetford, Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 3171, fol. 197. I have modernized the spelling and punctuation in Astell’s letter. Sarah Apetrei recently discovered this hitherto unknown correspondence. For an in-depth analysis of these letters, see Sarah Apetrei, ‘ “Call No Man Master Upon Earth”: Mary Astell’s Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41/4 (2008), 507–23. 78 79 Astell, Reflections, 10. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 2–3. 80 Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 177. 81 Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated, li. 77

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Astell’s personal bias is clearly in favour of the ‘Women of Thought’. Mark Goldie notes that ‘For Astell, the female Dissenter was a type of the flighty, vain, unthinking, fashion-conscious woman whom she so constantly condemned’.82 If women must be political creatures, according to Astell, then they should be on the side of reason. In the political domain, they must once again use their capacity for sound judgment to overcome the unsettling influence of their bodies on their minds. They must sincerely ‘lay aside . . . Prejudices, Passions, and every little pitiful Worldly Interest, and attentively and diligently search it [the truth] out’.83 They should take care that their independence of judgment is not compromised by their passions, and that they do not shut their eyes to the truth for the sake of achieving some petty, selfish design. In any given situation they should make their choices according to the best of their judgments. They should feel and act in accordance with right reason, with the right intentions, toward the right goals. If they do so, then they will be moderate in the true sense of the word. At one point in Moderation truly Stated, a ‘Lady in the Company’ intervenes in the imagined dispute between Nokes and Styles. This lady speaks as a woman of thought with ‘Reason on her Side’.84 She tells the men that Queen Anne does not require their advice and is perfectly capable of determining ‘what [it] is fit for Her to do’.85 These men should support the sovereign and the national church, she says, they should not be ‘Medling, Advising, Trimming, and Perplexing the Case’.86 They should trust to the superior judgment, integrity, good sense, generosity, courage, and magnanimity of their female sovereign. ‘We Women know very well,’ the female speaker says, ‘that England is not now to chuse what shall Be the Constitution, but honestly and vigorously to Maintain that which is so.’87 ‘We Women’, Astell suggests, should follow a policy of reverence and submission to political authority—a policy of obedience. In her analysis of Astell’s approach to political obedience, Rachel Weil remarks that the ‘religious and political ideal presented in Moderation truly stated is closely related to that of the passive-obedient wife presented in Reflections on marriage’.88 In Weil’s opinion, Astell generally divides the world into two kinds of people: the egotistical and the pious.89 While the egotist expects everyone to bend to his or her will, the pious person governs his or her impulses according to

82 Goldie, ‘Mary Astell and John Locke’, 84. Melinda Zook likewise observes that ‘Feminist though she was, Mary Astell abhorred women like Elizabeth Burnet and the Duchess of Marlborough, who occupied themselves with Whig politics. Worst still were Dissenting women’ (Zook, Protestantism, Politics, and Women, 189). 83 Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 49. 84 85 Astell, prefatory discourse in Moderation truly Stated, lv. Ibid., liii. 86 87 88 89 Ibid., liv. Ibid., liii. Weil, Political Passions, 151–2. Ibid., 146.

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the moral law. The only pious response to adversity and hardship, according to Astell, is that of passive acceptance and non-resistance. This is one of the unmistakable lessons of the Reflections, according to Weil. The wife who practises passive obedience to a tyrant husband is an ideal exemplar of the political subject. On my interpretation of Moderation truly Stated, Astell’s moral categories are much broader than those of Weil. The morally relevant divide is between that of the moderate and immoderate, rather than the egotistical and the pious. In the case of the honest dissenter Nehemiah, his moderation takes in all the virtues, not just piety—he is prudent, just, courageous, temperate, and so on, in the right measure, on the right occasions, and for the right reasons. The immoderate dissenter fails to get the balance right, not just when it comes to his self-love and self-esteem (his egotism) but when it comes to his other emotions as well, such as his zeal and anger. Because he does not know where his true interests lie, he fails to have the appropriate emotional responses to his circumstances, and so he does not act virtuously. Nevertheless, Weil’s analysis helpfully highlights Astell’s concern with moral character in this text. Astell’s preoccupation with virtue or excellence of character helps us to see why passive obedience is her preferred political stance in the face of tyranny. For the sake of attaining peace and happiness—in both marriage and civil society, Astell says—all subjects should acquire a disposition of benevolence and generosity toward their fellow human beings. Because quarrels and rebellions arise from our ‘appetites’ and ‘eager desires’ after worldly goods, to obtain peace we must learn to be above this world.90 Virtuous agents are not of a vindictive or vengeful nature;91 they ‘overcome the pride of human nature’ and ‘submit to anything for the sake of charity and peace’.92 They are ‘Generous Spirits’, capable of showing compassion, understanding, and forgiveness towards others’ foibles.93 The Bible ‘enjoyns us to follow Peace with all Men, to Love our Neighbours as our selves, to Love our very Enemys, to return Good for Evil, to suffer the greatest Injuries rather than do the least, and by no means to Revenge our selves’.94 ‘Love is all the retaliation our religion allows us,’ she says.95 In response to injustice, Christians can offer only ‘Prayers and Tears’,96 or ‘prayers and tears, strong arguments, holy and peaceable lives, the strictest obedience to God, and to all who are in authority under Him’.97 In short, Astell says, ‘the peace of the world is promoted by nothing so much as by the meek, forgiving, and if one dare say it,

90 93 95 97

Astell, Christian Religion, }382. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 2. Astell, Christian Religion, }213. Astell, Christian Religion, }210.

91

92 Ibid., }212. Ibid., }217. Astell, Bart’lemy Fair, 158. Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 169.

94 96

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the “passive” doctrines’ of the Christian religion.98 To obtain peace and happiness, subjects must recognize that they are never justified in engaging in active resistance to unjust authority. In this respect, Astell’s political pamphlets are entirely continuous with her works on marriage. In Reflections, she says that women are commanded to obey for the sake of ‘their Quiet and Security, as well as for the exercise of their Vertue’.99 What, then, of Kolbrener’s view that Astell changes tack in Moderation truly Stated and urges a philosophy of action rather than passivity? How do we reconcile her calls for action with her general stance on passive obedience? The answer lies in Astell’s view that in order to avoid the miseries of tyranny— in both marriage and government—the best policy is one of active prevention. In Moderation truly Stated and her subsequent political pamphlets, Astell’s core message is that the dissenters are not to be trusted. ‘There is but one sure Defence against Treachery that I know of,’ she says, ‘and that is Not to Trust.’100 The government ‘cannot be too much upon its Guard’ to avoid the same ‘terrible Rebellion’ happening again;101 especially given that ‘we have as much Vanity, as much Covetousness, as much Envy and Revenge as any of our Fore-fathers’.102 A wise and prudent sovereign should not give those men who ‘violate all the Laws of GOD and of Man’ the power to hurt or destroy him.103 In her Reflections, Astell uses this same line of reasoning against entering into the marriage state. The best way to guard against enslavement in marriage, she says, is not to trust those men who exhibit excessive pride, vanity, and self-interestedness; or, in short, to be extremely suspicious of those men who exhibit a lack of moderation. All things considered, a woman should either marry a virtuous man who offers friendship—or else not marry at all.104 If she so much as suspects a man’s motives, then she should not put it in his power to hurt her. ‘Can a woman,’ Astell asks, ‘be too much upon her Guard?’105 In sum, if we interpret Astell in terms of her principal concern with virtue, then we can see why she condemns both bad husbands and occasional conformists alike. In both cases, her point is that these unscrupulous men—vile, vicious, voluptuous men who exhibit the key character traits of tyrants—should never be

99 100 Ibid., }374. Astell, Reflections, 15. Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 37. 102 Ibid., 84. Ibid., 88. 103 Astell, Impartial Enquiry, 139; Astell, Moderation truly Stated, 83. 104 See Andrew Lister, ‘Marriage and Misogyny: The Place of Mary Astell in the History of Political Thought’, History of Political Thought, 25/1 (2004), 44–72. 105 Astell, Reflections, 66. 98

101

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given the power to hurt us. We should be firm, vigorous, and active in rejecting their advances. Astell’s recommendations in her political pamphlets are thus perfectly consistent with her recommendations in her earlier feminist works. In all her writings, Astell insistently advocates a strict policy of refusal and resistance toward anyone who fails to exhibit a disposition to follow the moral law.

9 Conclusion In this volume, I have presented an account of Astell’s philosophical ideas and arguments in light of her primary goal to help the female sex attain lasting happiness. We have seen that, in order to achieve that goal, she encourages her fellow women to acquire a standing disposition to follow the moral law, the law of God and reason. This disposition (or ‘inclination’, ‘temper’, or ‘habit of mind’) consists in feeling, choosing, or acting for the right ends, in the right measure, in accordance with right reason—it consists in virtue. Virtue, Astell says, lies ‘in governing Animal Impressions, in directing our Passions to such Objects, and keeping ’em in such a pitch, as right Reason requires’.1 To attain virtue, the moral agent must first acquire a certain amount of wisdom or knowledge by following the right rules for thinking, by purifying her mind, and by contemplating the divine. She must gain knowledge of the right ends and principles on which to base her choices and actions, and she must also gain proper self-knowledge, or an understanding of the dignity and excellence of her nature. This is why, in her first and second Proposals, Astell calls for the moral and intellectual education of women. In her view, in order to attain excellence, women must first turn their attention to the existence and nature of an infinitely perfect God. They must recognize that all their actions should be performed in accordance with the will of this supremely wise and benevolent being. They must also gain some knowledge about the existence and nature of their immortal and immaterial souls. They must recognize that material goods could never improve their spiritual natures, and that temporal creatures could never render their immortal souls truly happy. They must learn about how to regulate the bodily passions in accordance with reason, or how to have the correct emotional responses, in the right measure, toward the right ends, in any given situation. They must be generous when confronted with the moral failings of others, courageous in the face of ridicule and criticism, benevolent and kind toward their fellow human beings, and loving 1 Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 214.

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CONCLUSION

and forgiving in response to injuries. They must not behave like tyrants by selfishly pursuing their own unbridled passions, or by taking others’ property at their arbitrary will and pleasure. Rather, they must be moderate, or they must value worldly goods and esteem other people in proportion to their true worth, and feel and act accordingly. There is no denying the extreme religiosity of this philosophical vision. Astell’s arguments place supreme importance on the fact that God has endowed every woman with an immortal soul and the capacity to use her reason in accordance with the divine will. ‘If God had not intended that women should use their reason,’ she says in The Christian Religion, ‘He would not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain. If they are to use their reason, certainly it ought to be employed about the noblest objects, and in business of the greatest consequence, therefore in religion.’2 By cultivating a virtuous disposition to follow the divine law, according to Astell, the moral agent comes to fulfil her Christian duty to God, to herself, and to other people. We might think that this excessively religious focus is the reason why Astell has been ‘lost to sight’, as Eileen O’Neill would say, in the history of philosophy.3 In the post-enlightenment era, the ‘purification’ of philosophy from theology saw whole philosophical schools excised from the canon. As a result, according to O’Neill, ‘many of the broader frameworks in which women’s philosophical views had a place, and some of the major motivations for their philosophical arguments, were relegated to the status of non-philosophy by the nineteenth century’.4 While Astell might once have been known as a philosopher—as someone who could turn ‘Mr. Locke’s metaphysical artillery’ against him, for example5— 2 Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, ed. Jacqueline Broad, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto Series (Toronto, ON: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013), }5. 3 Eileen O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History’, in Janet A. Kourany, ed., Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 17–62 (20). No doubt there are many other reasons for Astell’s exclusion from the history of philosophy, such as her choices of genre (she chose to write letters, feminist tracts, and political pamphlets—not standard philosophical treatises), and the ‘oxymoron’ problem or the seeming contradiction of being both a woman and a philosopher in past historical periods. For a nice summary of possible reasons for the erasure of women in philosophy, see O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink’, 32–9. See also Eileen O’Neill, ‘Women Cartesians, “Feminine Philosophy”, and Historical Exclusion’, in Susan Bordo, ed., Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, Re-reading the Canon Series (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 232–57. 4 O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink’, 20. 5 William Parry to George Ballard, 12 February 1743; quoted in George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences), intro. and ed. Ruth Perry (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 389.

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she rarely receives that honorific title today. For many philosophers, her primary religious focus is just too far removed from present-day philosophical concerns and interests. In this somewhat unorthodox conclusion, my purpose is not to reflect on why Astell has been excised from the annals of philosophy, but rather to explore the implications of writing her back in. In doing so, I am following the historiographical approach that O’Neill herself recommends for incorporating women into the history of philosophy—the method that Richard Rorty has labelled geistesgeschichte.6 This is the practice of doing history of philosophy with a commitment to accurate historical contextualism, on the one hand, and the goal of drawing out philosophical issues of present-day significance, on the other. This twin approach, Rorty suggests, can help us to draw lessons about whether ‘we have, or have not, been on the right track in raising the philosophical questions we have recently been raising’.7 It can help us to construct a historical rationale (a ‘self-justificatory’ narrative, as it were) for why we should, or should not, be interested in certain philosophical topics. I have thus far presented Astell’s ideas and arguments in terms of the historical questions and problems that preoccupied Astell herself throughout her career. I have taken seriously her contention that, above all, we must be concerned with ‘the art of well living’, and I have aimed to present her moral philosophy in its own terms. It is now time to examine the implications of her thought for philosophy as we conceive of it today. I think there are at least two significant implications. First, I think that Astell’s writings reveal that recent feminist philosophizing about moral freedom has a strong historical precedent in the early modern period. More generally, she shows that feminist ethics has long been a topic of genuine philosophical interest in the history of human thought. Second, her ideas show that when we incorporate a woman’s thought into the intellectual history of this period, that history need not be seen as a narrative of male-biased concepts and theories. Feminist ethicist Marilyn Friedman recently observed that Women’s voices have been virtually absent from western ethics until this century [that is, the twentieth century], as they have been from every field of intellectual endeavour. The absence of female voices has meant that the moral concerns of men have preoccupied

6 See O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink’, 41–3; and Richard Rorty, ‘The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres’, in Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner, eds., Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 49–75 (56–61). 7 Rorty, ‘Historiography of Philosophy’, 59.

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CONCLUSION

traditional western ethics, the moral perspectives of men have shaped its methods and concepts, and male biases against women have gone virtually unchallenged within it.8

When we incorporate women’s philosophy back into the narrative, however, we can see that the moral concerns of women do get an airing and the biases of men do get challenged. To support these claims, in the following discussion, I highlight certain core elements of Astell’s moral theory—her method of judgment, her concept of the self, her philosophy of the passions, her concepts of generosity and friendship, and her critique of marriage and tyranny—in order to draw out Astell’s feminist theory of freedom, and to outline the challenges that she presents to stereotypically masculine concepts and theories.

9.1 A Feminist Theory of Freedom My claim that Astell has a ‘feminist theory of freedom’ might come as something of a surprise. The consensus opinion tends to be that, in keeping with her conservative religious and political values, Astell is not a feminist in the sense of someone who advocates the social and political rights of women—she does not believe that a woman’s competence as a moral agent gives her the same right to freedom as a man in the socio-political domain. Florence Smith observes that ‘Astell’s idea of freedom was the breaking away from convention only as it hampered the development of the religious ideal’.9 Patricia Springborg describes Astell as a ‘theorist of freedom from domination’, but emphasizes that Astell regards freedom as a purely spiritual attainment that has ‘no political corollary in freedom from domination as freedom from a worldly master’.10 Liberty is ‘the power to erect a principle of action and follow it’;11 a woman’s liberation principally takes place inside her own head, not the outside world. Ruth Perry concludes that ‘to the present action-oriented age, Astell’s decision to contemplate abstract Truth rather than to try to change the material conditions of women’s lives seems both passive and effete’.12 Perhaps for this reason, some commentators have described Astell as a ‘protofeminist’, meaning someone who

8 Marilyn Friedman, ‘Feminism in Ethics: Conceptions of Autonomy’, in Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby, eds., Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 205. 9 Florence M. Smith, Mary Astell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916), 165. 10 Patricia Springborg, Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 99, 217. 11 Springborg, Mary Astell, 5. 12 Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 97.

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exhibits an early or underdeveloped form of feminism, and not a full-fledged feminist.13 Nevertheless, I think that Astell’s writings prompt us to think differently about what counts as feminist thought in bygone eras. Her credentials as a feminist are problematic only if we conceive of feminism in rather narrow political terms, and ignore the many different kinds of feminist thought that have developed out of the metaphysical, religious, and moral issues of previous historical epochs. In particular, as indicated, I think that Astell’s writings are useful for demonstrating that feminist ethics—and especially feminist thinking about moral freedom—has a much longer history than most scholars have acknowledged. In Astell’s view, the exercise of freedom is a necessary prerequisite for the cultivation of virtue and the attainment of happiness. To grasp this concept of freedom, it is necessary to recall her advice concerning method and the art of thinking. In the second chapter on ‘Knowledge’, we saw that a woman’s moral transformation depends upon the inculcation of good habits of mind through proper education and training. Toward this end, in her first Proposal, Astell calls for the establishment of a female academy, a place where women might divest themselves of the prejudices of their childhood and learn to think for themselves. The beauty of this academic retreat, according to Astell, is that it takes the moral agent out of the hurry and noise of civil society, and provides the ideal conditions to acquire an attentive frame of mind. In the second Proposal, it is made clear that the freedom of the mind relies, to some extent, on its capacity to bestow attention on some objects rather than others. In this work, Astell advises her fellow women to practise a method of thinking not unlike the methods of Descartes, Arnauld, Nicole, Malebranche, and Norris. Her readers are told to begin by carefully defining the terms of their inquiry and then to put aside anything that is irrelevant to the subject at hand. They must reason only about simple and clear ideas, she says, and then proceed in a careful order to more complicated, compound ideas. They must not declare anything to be true that is not clearly known to be so. They must suspend their judgments, or withhold their assent to propositions, till they have attained clarity of perception. Above all, this recommended method requires a certain voluntary effort or exertion of the will. Following Descartes, Astell defines the mental faculty of the will as the ‘Power

13 Joan Kinnaird is one of the first to use the term in relation to Astell. See Joan K. Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism’, The Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979), 54. To be fair to Springborg, when she raises the ‘feminist or protofeminist’ question with regards to Astell, she affirms that we ought to see her as a feminist, albeit one that does not fit our modern preconceptions (see Springborg, Mary Astell, 3–6).

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CONCLUSION

of Preferring any Thought or Motion, of Directing them to This or That thing’.14 An agent’s will is free when the motions of her mind are in her own power: she has the ability to determine them ‘this way or that’, according to her pleasure.15 For Astell, however, the agent’s freedom does not consist simply in this freedom of the will; it also consists in an exercise of the will in accordance with reason. We might wonder why reason or rationality is so important for Astell. The answer can be found in her conception of the self. In the fourth chapter, ‘Soul and Body’, we saw that she espouses a Cartesian idea of the self as essentially a thinking thing and not a physical substance. The self or the mind, she argues in The Christian Religion, is ‘something that is not body’.16 In this same work, she says that a ‘necessary agent . . . does not determine itself, has no command over its own motions, but is absolutely governed by a foreign cause’.17 Strictly speaking, on Astell’s view of the self, the body constitutes just such a foreign cause. To be truly self-determining, then, I must be determined by the mind and its faculty of pure reason, and not the body and the bodily influences of the sensations and passions. In fact, subjection to our passions can constitute a ‘most grievous and ignominious’ kind of slavery.18 When the body and its accompanying passions wholly determine my mind, then I am not the one in control, I allow myself to become the plaything of external forces. In turn, Astell says, ‘He and he only is a freeman who acts according to right reason’.19 An agent is therefore free when she has the power or capacity to direct her will ‘this way or that’ in accordance with reason. There is one further crucial condition of liberty for Astell. In a key passage of the first edition of her The Christian Religion, Astell declares that liberty is not the mere license to do whatever we will: ‘true Liberty . . . consists in making a right use of our Reason, in preserving our Judgments free, and our Integrity unspotted . . . not in a bare power to do what we Will.’20 Her point is that freedom of the will is a necessary condition for the freedom of the moral agent: it must be satisfied in order for freedom to obtain. But freedom of the will is not a sufficient condition in itself: if satisfied, it does not guarantee that the agent herself is free. A free agent must also have the capacity for reason and independence of judgment. This last capacity is an especially crucial condition for the agent’s responsibility and

15 16 Astell, Proposal II, 205. Astell, Christian Religion, }78. Ibid., }230. 18 19 Ibid., }78. Ibid., }249. Ibid. 20 Astell, Christian Religion [1st edn], }287. In the second edition, the wording is slightly different: this sentence reads ‘true liberty . . . consists not in a power to do what we will, but in making a right use of our reason, in preserving our judgments free, and our integrity unspotted, which sets us out of the reach of the most absolute tyrant’ (Astell, Christian Religion, }249). It is possible that the omission of the word ‘bare’ comes from a typesetter and not Astell herself. 14 17

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accountability for her choices and actions. Independence of judgment must be present in order for the agent to qualify for praise or blame, or reward or punishment, for her moral decisions. ‘We must judge finally for ourselves,’ Astell emphasizes more than once, ‘because if we determine amiss we must answer for it.’21 To be truly responsible for our actions, we must identify with our choices and actions as our own, and not blindly follow those that others have imposed on us. Such ownership requires that a woman is capable of critically reflecting on— and then either affirming or rejecting—her long-held beliefs and desires. On behalf of women, then, Astell calls for that ‘most valuable privilege, and indefeasible right, of judging for ourselves’ and of ‘abounding in our own sense’.22 In the aforementioned respects, Astell’s concept of liberty anticipates some present-day feminist concepts of autonomy. In Marilyn Friedman’s view, for example, an autonomous person is someone who ‘behaves and lives her life in accordance with values and commitments that are, in some important sense, her own’.23 To be truly autonomous, according to Friedman, a person must be capable of making choices and engaging in actions that align ‘with deeper wants and values that the acting person has self-reflectively reaffirmed’.24 To count toward self-determination, this reaffirmation must be self-reflective in two senses: first, it must consist in an attentive consideration of the reflecting person’s wants and values;25 and second, the reaffirmation must correspond to ‘deeper’ aspects of that person’s character, or in some sense reflect who that person is.26 Self-reflection thus gives a crucial ‘imprimatur’ to a person’s choices and actions—it endorses or authorizes them as her own.27 A person’s behaviour counts as autonomous, in Friedman’s view, when it is motivated or determined (at least, to some degree) by this self-reflection, in the face of at least minimal opposition from others. Astell would agree with Friedman that true liberty is a matter of living life in accordance with the deeper interests of the true self—interests that have been Ibid.; see also }46. Ibid., }}256, 3. In a section headed ‘Everyone must judge for themselves’, Astell refers to the ‘just and natural’ right of individuals to ‘abound in their own sense’ (}3). She allows that ‘there are certain rights belonging to mankind in general’ (}140), and that ‘everyone has a just claim to certain rights’ (}176), but these are fundamentally moral and not political rights. On this topic, she is typical of many Protestant thinkers of her time. For further discussion, see Sarah Apetrei, ‘ “Call No Man Master Upon Earth”: Mary Astell’s Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence’, EighteenthCentury Studies, 41/4 (2008), 507–23; and Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 23 Friedman, ‘Feminism in Ethics’, 212. 24 Marilyn Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, Studies in Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 28. 25 26 27 Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 5. 21 22

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CONCLUSION

carefully considered through a process of proper self-reflection. This is why, in her view, it is important to remove young women from the most common sources of their oppression—their families, their church pastors, their suitors, and so on—and get them to think critically on what they have been socialized to love and care about. In her academy, women have the time and the space for an attentive reflection on their true wants and desires. For once, they are prompted to ask: what is my true self? What are my true interests? Do I love or desire particular goods because they are really valuable, or simply because I have grown accustomed to thinking of them as valuable? Astell’s rules for thinking and for the purification of the mind are intended to prompt women to think about something other than their bodies, the latest fashions, and winning the attention of men. Like Friedman, she urges women to embrace their capacity for selfdetermination in order to overcome oppressive gender practices of their time. At this point, it might be objected that a number of present-day theorists would hesitate to accept Astell’s Cartesian concept of the self. Taken in the abstract, her commitment to the Cartesian ego might seem problematic in at least two respects. First, in upholding this view, Astell appears to ignore the fact that, as human beings, we inhabit a body that is often subject to excessive and unruly passions—emotions that strongly motivate our choices and actions, and prevent us from taking a dispassionate, impartial point of view in many practical situations. For human beings, we might think, detachment from their bodies and the bodily passions is simply an unattainable ideal. Second, Astell’s concept of the self is also highly individualistic. On this view, the self is apparently capable of extracting itself from all social ties and reinventing itself on its own terms, or ‘pulling itself up by its bootstraps’, so to speak. This view is decidedly at odds with recent thinking about the self as an entity that is in fact constituted by kinship ties and communal attachments. From a communitarian point of view, for example, it is humanly impossible for the self to ever completely escape the causal influence of other people.28 Along similar lines, in developing her own feminist theory of freedom, Nancy Hirschmann rejects the view that there is one true ‘natural self ’, and opts for a social constructivist position instead.29 She points to the ways in which subjects are constructed by particular social contexts (‘outer forces and

28 On this topic, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (2nd edn, South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984); and Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). On the limits of communitarian thinking for feminism, see Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, 12. 29 See Nancy J. Hirschmann, Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Nancy J. Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003).

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social structures, such as sexism’) that shape and inform their preferences, desires, and choices.30 From these present-day perspectives, we might think that ‘preserving our judgments free’ from the influence of others—from our family, friends, neighbours, and teachers—is yet another unattainable ideal in Astell’s moral philosophy. These objections, however, are based on a rather simplistic understanding (or a crude parody, one might say) of the Cartesian notion of the self. Recent historians assert that it is a mistake to think that Descartes himself observes a sharp distinction between mental states and bodily activity, or that he completely neglects the affective dimensions of thought.31 In his writings on the passions, his views are far more complicated than the received wisdom allows: far from privileging the intellect over the emotions, in his theorizing about ‘the passionate mind’ he affirms that the passions can be rational, and reason can be emotive.32 For some revisionists, then, Descartes is a congenial figure for feminist philosophers: not the demonized patriarch of recent feminist critiques, but rather a thinker who anticipates present-day feminist approaches to morality and the emotions.33 In the same spirit, in Chapter 5 on ‘Virtue and the Passions’, we saw that Astell has a more sophisticated account of the self than the one derided above. Like Descartes himself, she acknowledges that the self or the mind is intimately united with a body and deeply affected by its human embodiment. While the mind might be immaterial and immortal by nature, she allows that in this earthly life it is incapable of completely separating itself from the causal influence of the body. For this reason, I think that Astell would allow that liberty or self-determination is a matter of degree—a woman can have it more or less, depending on her bodily and social circumstances. Her crucial point is that the mind can always gain a greater degree of self-determination, by exerting its free will and using its intellect to regulate the undue influence of the bodily passions and direct them toward their proper objects. This exercise of the will and the intellect is, in fact, what 30

Hirschmann, Subject of Liberty, x. See, for example, Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 17–20; Amy M. Schmitter, ‘The Passionate Intellect: Reading the (Non-)Opposition of Intellect and Emotion in Descartes’, in Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams, eds., Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 48–82; and Lisa Shapiro, ‘Mind and Body: Descartes’ Mixed Relation to Feminist Thought’, in Neil Robertson, Gordon McOuat, and Tom Vinci, eds., Descartes and the Modern (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 235–53. 32 See Schmitter, ‘Passionate Intellect’. 33 For further references on Descartes and the passions, see my notes to the introduction of Chapter 5, ‘Virtue and the Passions’. 31

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CONCLUSION

constitutes virtue.34 As we have seen, virtue consists in the mind’s capacity to govern the emotions, to direct them at the right ends, and keep them at the ‘right pitch’, in accordance with right reason. The loss or diminishment of selfdetermination becomes a problem, in Astell’s view, whenever that loss or diminishment is so great that it threatens or endangers the attainment of virtue and happiness. At this point, the agent must have the courage to step in and exert her natural power of self-determination. To achieve this end, Astell does not recommend completely extirpating all the passions, or attempting to repress the body and its disturbing influences. Rather, she recommends exercising one’s freedom to transform the passions into virtues, and to distinguish them from vices ‘by the intention, the reason, and the end of the action’.35 In particular, she recommends the cultivation of a virtuous disposition toward generosity or ‘greatness of soul’. Generosity is the self-esteem that comes from having absolute control over the exercise of our free will. Like all the passions, the passion of esteem assists in the preservation of the human being by motivating us to take action against external threats or injuries. Generosity, or justified self-esteem, involves recognizing that our moral worth consists in exercising our will alone, as well as a feeling of firm resolution always to do our best—to make a ‘due use of our liberty’—in the face of moral danger.36 In Chapter 6 on ‘Love’, we saw that we also have freedom of the will when it comes to what we love. Like her contemporary Norris, Astell gives the emotion of love a central place in her moral philosophy. While love can be a source of moral danger, in her view this does not have to be the case—this passion can also be turned to good. The passion of love can become a virtue provided that we use our will and our reason and come to an informed judgment about how we should love other people. If we do so, then we will see that we should love other people not with a petty, selfish desire to possess them, but rather with a love of benevolence, a wishing well toward their souls. Importantly, this virtue of love is an other-directed virtue, it is an excellence of character cultivated in relation to other people, in the course of our social interactions with them. By exalting this virtue, Astell avoids advocating a highly individualist concept of the moral agent in favour of a relational one instead. In sum, then, Astell claims that freedom consists in freedom of the will, the exercise of reason, and independence of judgment. This kind of freedom is a crucial prerequisite for the attainment of virtue. Only by using our free will, our reason, and our independence of judgment can we bring about a virtuous frame of mind, a generous and benevolent disposition of character. Only in this 34

Astell, Proposal II, 214.

35

Astell, Christian Religion, }303.

36

Ibid., }254.

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way, in other words, can we regulate our passions and attain happiness and tranquillity of mind.

9.2 Challenge to Male Biases Recent feminist philosophers have observed that the mind’s ability to gain control over the body and its passions has typically been marked as masculine.37 ‘Rational knowledge,’ Genevieve Lloyd observes, ‘has been construed as a transcending, transformation or control of natural forces; and the feminine has been associated with what rational knowledge transcends, dominates or simply leaves behind.’38 While Descartes himself never makes these associations, his immediate successors render the Cartesian project in distinctly gendered terms: they see the senses and the passions as feminine or ‘effeminate’ defects, and they urge the Cartesian ‘Man of Reason’ to overcome these defects in order to attain truth and certainty—and manliness. Along these lines, in his Discourse concerning Generosity, John Somers observes that Cartesian generosity consists in a firmness of mind that is sorely lacking in women and people of ‘effeminate’ spirits.39 These feeble types, he says, suffer from ‘continual fluctuation of Mind’, they lack constancy, and so they allow themselves to ‘be carried away by uncertain and fortuitous Impressions, in so much that they act as it were by chance, without being able in many things, to give a tolerable reason for what they do’.40 By contrast, the virtue of generosity is characterized by a certain manliness or masculinity. The moral agent who possesses generosity possesses a ‘Masculine Firmness of Mind’, ‘Masculine Resolution’, and a ‘fortitude or manliness of Spirit’.41 Somers thus makes a normative distinction that is all too common in the history of western philosophy: he figuratively associates a privileged philosophical category with maleness and masculinity, while he devalues its opposite and symbolically associates it with femaleness and femininity. In short, Somers shows how Cartesian philosophy can be put to the service of sexism and misogyny. By contrast, Astell demonstrates how this same philosophy might be put to the service of feminism and female emancipation. This is because she valorizes the Cartesian virtue of generosity as a species of well-founded self-esteem for women. 37 For classic statements of this position, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984); and Susan Bordo, ‘The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 11/3 (1986), 439–56. 38 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 2. 39 [Somers], A Discourse concerning Generosity (London: H. Clark for James Adamson, 1693), 60. 40 41 Discourse concerning Generosity, 59, 60. Discourse concerning Generosity, 77, 80, 104.

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Of Cartesian generosity more generally, Lisa Shapiro notes that ‘The first step in acquiring generosity is to recognize that we are freely willing, and I have been suggesting that this recognition comes principally with a critical reflection on what we find ourselves taking for granted’.42 To engage in such reflection, moral agents must adopt a questioning stance toward those norms and beliefs that they have accepted as customary or authoritative. Generosity also consists in a feeling of being in control of ourselves—in the feeling that it is up to us how we lead our lives, and that we do not have to ‘follow the herd’, as it were. Astell appropriates this virtue as part of her feminist programme of reform by encouraging women to see that they have the means to their liberation within themselves. Every woman, she says, with the help of a ‘Generous Resolution’, might resolve to throw off the shackles of education, authority, and custom.43 ‘Generosity’, she says, is one of those principles God has furnished us with to help us overcome the ‘Inconveniences’ of this earthly life, and to withstand the censure and disapproval of others, especially when we have taken an unconventional path.44 It enables us to esteem ourselves according to our inward, intrinsic worth and not the outward standards of society.45 Importantly, female friendships can also help women to cultivate this generous attitude of ‘critical reflection on what we find ourselves taking for granted’, and to sustain unconventional norms and values. With her stance on friendship, Astell once again appropriates a so-called ‘masculine’ virtue for feminist ends. In the sixteenth century, in his essay ‘Of Friendship’, Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) denies that women have the moral and intellectual capacity for ‘full and perfect’ friendships.46 He implies, that is, that they do not have a capacity for friendships based upon mutual recognition of the other’s virtue or excellence of character (the Aristotelian ideal).47 Married women do not have the psychological traits or the ‘Constancy of Mind’ needed to sustain friendships with their husbands. ‘The ordinary Talent of Women,’ he says, ‘is not such, as is sufficient to maintain the Conference and Communication required, to the support of this Conjugal Tie; nor do they appear to be endu’d with Constancy of Mind, to endure the pinch of Lisa Shapiro, ‘Cartesian Generosity’, in Norms and Modes of Thinking in Descartes, ed. Tuomo Aho and Mikko Yrjonsuuri, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 64 (1999), 257–8. 43 44 Astell, Proposal II, 140. Ibid., 141. 45 Mary Astell to Ann Coventry, 26 July 1714; appendix C in Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, 370. 46 Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michael Seigneur De Montaigne. In Three Books. With Marginal Notes and Quotations of the cited Authors. And an Account of the Author’s Life, trans. Charles Cotton (London: M. Gilliflower, W. Hensman, R. Bentley, and J. Hindmarsh, 1693), 290. 47 For Aristotle, friendship can be grounded in pleasure, utility, or the good—only the last constitutes ‘perfect’ friendship. See John M. Cooper, ‘Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship’, Review of Metaphysics, 30/4 (1977), 619–48. 42

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so hard and durable a Knot.’48 Following Montaigne, the English moral theologian Jeremy Taylor also denies ‘that Women are capable of all those excellencies by which Men can oblige the World’.49 In his Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship (1657), he concedes that some virtuous women can be partners in ‘noble friendships’ with men, but the best female friends will never be on a par with the best male friends. A woman might be an adequate friend in our days of joy, but a ‘man is the best friend in trouble’, he says. Though female friends are ‘useful to some purposes’ (they ‘can adde so many moments to the felicity of our lives’), their usefulness does not extend as far as that of male friends.50 In sum, in the eyes of these early modern thinkers, Montaigne and Taylor, friendship is a valued character trait—a worthy disposition of mind toward other people—principally possessed by men and not by women. By contrast, Astell allows that women are perfectly capable of cultivating virtuous friendships, especially with each other. More than this, she promotes the power of female friends to counter the customs and preconceptions of early modern society, especially those that obstruct a woman’s moral and intellectual advancement. For her, friendship is yet another means to bring about female liberation. In Chapter 6 on ‘Love,’ we saw that for Astell friendship is a species of the love of benevolence; it consists in the willing of good to another, for that person’s own sake, and not for selfish purposes. The value of female friendship, according to this model, lies in advancing the good of a woman’s soul over and above her bodily interests. In Astell’s first Proposal, ‘noble Vertuous and Disinteress’d’ friendships are shown to promote values that will enable women to overcome the prejudices of their upbringing and find true happiness.51 One way in which friendships promote this moral advancement is through the practice of admonition among friends. In The Christian Religion, Astell explains that there are two duties of a virtuous friend: a duty to give admonition and a duty to receive it. Of the first, she says, ‘I take friendship to consist in advising, admonishing, and reproving as there is occasion, and in watching over each other’s souls for their mutual good’.52 Accordingly, a true friend will never engage in flattery. The practice of flattery keeps us from obtaining improvement ‘by falsely soothing’ us into a complacency with our present state; while admonition urges us on to

48

Montaigne, Essays, 290. Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship, With Rules of conducting it. Written in answer to a Letter from the most ingenious and vertuous M.K.P. (London: R. Royston, 1657), 88. 50 51 52 Ibid., 89, 90. Astell, Proposal I, 75. Astell, Christian Religion, }206. 49

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CONCLUSION

acquire greater perfection or excellence.53 The friend who admonishes us for our defects inspires us toward improvement and therefore does us good. Of the second duty, Astell recommends that friendly admonition ought to be taken and received ‘upon the same motives that make all of us so fond of flattery’.54 These motives are those of valuing ourselves upon our good qualities, and esteeming ourselves upon our virtues. We should therefore aspire not to be one of those people who will never be informed of her faults; rather, if we truly desire the perfection of our nature, we will be glad ‘of any sort of help, though not always the best, in order to it’.55 It is not too difficult to conceive how this ‘friendly admonition’ might lead to a general consciousness-raising among female friends. Virtuous friends would urge one another to value themselves on their minds and not their bodies; to think beyond the goals of pleasing and serving men, and to look toward doing what is right and good; and to withstand the censure and disapproval of wider patriarchal society. They would encourage each other to be the best they could possibly be. By their example, moreover, other women would be prompted to see that ‘GOD has given Women as well as Men intelligent Souls’, and they too would come to value themselves accordingly.56 Here again, Astell’s ethical approach has something in common with that of Friedman.57 In What are Friends For?, Friedman argues that close female friendships can provide women with a moral vantage point from which to identify, and then challenge, social norms and practices that compromise their well-being.58 She argues that friends can help us to reorient our moral thinking and reflect critically on our moral starting points, such as our families, churches, schools, and neighbourhoods. A lone individual, after all, does not always have the inner strength and the mental resources to break free from the moral community into which she was born and raised. Typically speaking, true moral advancement can occur only ‘when we learn to grasp our experiences in a new light or in radically different terms’; and such advancement ‘involves a shift in moral paradigms, in the basic values, rules, or principles which shape moral thought and behaviour’.59 54 55 56 Ibid., }203. Ibid. Ibid., }205. Astell, Proposal I, 80. I draw this same comparison in Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell on Virtuous Friendship’, Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 26/2 (2009), 65–86 (especially 80–5). 58 Marilyn Friedman, What are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). For a nice summary of her position, see also Marilyn Friedman, ‘Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community’, in Neera Kapur Badhwar, ed., Friendship: A Philosophical Reader (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 285–302. 59 Friedman, What are Friends For?, 196. 53 57

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To gain this shift in thinking, we often require the support of other people, and especially those people who are interested in furthering our well-being. This is where friendship can become a significant force for social and political change. For Friedman, friendships can lead us to challenge the subjection of women in our communities of origin, and thus initiate socio-political reform. Astell takes a similar stance when she declares that by promoting the virtue of friendship, she aims to rescue her sex ‘from that Meanness of Spirit into which the Generality of them are sunk, perswade them to pretend to some higher Excellency than a well-chosen Pettycoat, or a fashionable Commode; and not wholly to lay out their Time and Care in Adorning their Bodies, but to bestow a Part of it at least in the Embellishment of their Minds’.60 She conceives of friendly love, in other words, as a state of character that might lead women to reflect critically on gender attitudes in their families, neighbourhoods, and church communities, and help them to overturn customary ways of thinking about themselves and their interests. She, too, holds the view that female friendships can bring about a transformation in social attitudes, norms, and practices toward women.

9.3 Astell and Freedom (Revisited) In her recent feminist theory of freedom, Friedman highlights the importance of non-oppressive interpersonal relationships, or those relationships that provide enabling conditions for personal autonomy, by contrast with those relationships that suppress women’s ‘options for living in ways that accord with what deeply matters to them’.61 In this concluding section, I demonstrate that Astell, too, recognizes the importance of intimate personal relationships for either realizing or thwarting the personal freedom of women. My intention is to show that, contrary to scholarly opinion, Astell does conceive of freedom from domination as freedom from ‘a worldly master’. Here again she sets a historical precedent for recent feminist ethics. In Chapter 6 on ‘Love’, we saw that virtuous friendships facilitate our selfdetermination by encouraging us to live up to the dignity of our nature, and to make choices in accordance with our rationality. In Chapter 7 on ‘Marriage’, however, we saw that most early modern marriages tend to inhibit the social conditions that are causally necessary for a woman’s liberty to flourish. In 60 Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 80. 61 Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, 18.

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CONCLUSION

particular, in Astell’s view, the conditions of early modern marriage are such that they facilitate domestic tyranny. Men are encouraged to regard women as inferior beings, to treat their wives as slaves to their wills, and to dispose of their personal and real property at their arbitrary discretion. As a result, the marital relationship tends to diminish a woman’s self-determination, or the exercise of her free will, her reason, and independence of judgment. A husband-tyrant will be ‘obstinately bent on his own way with or without Reason’, and will expect his wife to slavishly follow ‘in all his unreasonable steps’.62 To attain peace and quiet, a married woman must make it her very ambition to please her husband, and never dispute his commands but rather ‘conclude him in the right’ and ‘give up the Cause [even] when she is in the right’.63 She must learn to ignore the reproaches of her own rational mind, and make her judgments conform to those of her husband instead. She must ‘submit her enlightned Reason, to the Imperious Dictates of a blind Will, and wild Imagination, even when she clearly perceives the ill Consequences of it’.64 These observations anticipate those of recent feminists concerning the moral dangers of intimate relationships, such as those of romantic love between men and women. Sandra Lee Bartky observes that, even in this day and age, the heterosexual love relationship can be disempowering for women.65 A woman’s disempowerment arises from the fact that, as a result of certain customary roles and expectations, she typically gives greater emotional nurturance to her man than she receives in return. This asymmetry in the ‘feeding of egos’ and ‘nursing of wounds’ can have a deleterious effect on a woman’s sense of self. It can result in an internalized affirmation of the male’s importance, and an assimilation of his values and commitments, to the detriment of her own. As a result, according to Bartky, a woman can start to lose sight of ‘the world according to her’: she takes on his perspective, his moral standpoint, and evaluates the world on his terms.66 Friedman, too, highlights the moral damage that such a ‘merger of selves’ can do to women’s autonomy. ‘We live . . . in a social context,’ she says, ‘that still features lively traditional ideals pressuring women to a greater extent than men to sacrifice their own distinctive, separate interests for the sake of preserving love relationships.’67 This sacrifice reaches an extreme pitch in abusive relationships, 62 Mary Astell, Reflections upon Marriage, in Astell: Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 47. 63 64 Ibid., 51, 50. Ibid., 50. 65 Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 102. 66 Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 112. 67 Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, 132.

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in which the threat posed by violence compels a woman to direct all her attention to anticipating the wants and desires of her partner.68 As a result, it is tremendously difficult for an abused woman to be guided by her own self-defined concerns, or to pursue her own wants and desires in the face of her partner’s opposition. In abusive heterosexual relationships, in other words, a woman’s capacity for autonomy is significantly diminished. In non-abusive relationships, Friedman observes, a loss of autonomy can also occur when a woman abandons those values and commitments of her own that fail to conform to those of her lover. Along similar lines, in her Reflections, Astell suggests that the early modern marital relationship inhibits women from listening to their reason, from realizing their own goals, and from making their own choices. For women to live up to the dignity of their nature—to achieve greater self-determination in their moral choices and actions—they do in fact require freedom from a worldly master, in Astell’s view, or freedom from domestic tyrants, at least. This is why she recommends educating women to form robust judgments, and why she encourages them not to marry, if they don’t have to. This is why in her Proposal she emphasizes the importance of acquiring virtuous female friendships, or relationships that do enhance a woman’s capacity for self-governance in accordance with reason. And significantly, this is why she stipulates that men ought to marry women out of a love of friendship—a disinterested, loving kindness towards them.69 To summarize, then, in Astell’s view a moral agent suffers from a loss of liberty to the extent that she is governed or determined by a foreign cause, such that she cannot regulate her will in accordance with her reason and her own independent judgment. On this view, the crucial conditions for freedom imply both freedom from a worldly master and the freedom for the individual to become her own master. Of course, there are still many objections that present-day theorists might raise against these ideas concerning freedom. We might think, for example, that Astell’s core moral concepts—such as the idea of having an ‘indefeasible right to judge for ourselves’—are not separable or conceivable apart from their religious foundations. Why, for example, do we have this indefeasible right to judge for ourselves, apart from the fact that we are ‘God’s workmanship’, and if we abuse God’s handiwork, we must be answerable to him for it? We might also think that Astell’s emancipatory theory can have only limited application, given the little awareness she exhibits of women’s lives outside of her sphere of 68

Ibid., 142.

69

Astell, Reflections, 37.

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CONCLUSION

privileged English ‘ladies of quality’. And in the end, we might not agree with her rational compatibilist conception of freedom, or her view that an agent is free provided that her choices and actions are largely determined by her reason and rationality, and not her bodily impulses or other external causes. Nevertheless, we can affirm that, by providing women with guidelines on how to live the good life, Astell did envisage a recognizably feminist ideal of freedom for women. In her view, a woman’s exercise of freedom is vital for her moral growth and development: it is a necessary prerequisite for the cultivation of virtue and the attainment of happiness. In pointing to the possibility that women might reinvent themselves—through proper education, through friendships with other women, through single lives without men—she was also pointing to the possibility of liberation for women as a social group from the domination of men as a social group. Mary Astell once expressed a concern that there was ‘too much of the woman’ in her writings. But ‘by speaking truths which no man would say,’ she added, ‘they will appear to be genuine, and no man will be blamed for their imperfections.’70 In her writings, she denied that the female sex was naturally morally incompetent, she identified both external and internal constraints on women’s moral choices and actions, and she envisaged conditions under which women might achieve a certain emancipation from custom. Her philosophy did have a woman-centred focus, and it did voice truths that few men would dare to speak in her lifetime. It was about how ‘the Moiety of Mankind’—the female half of the human race—happened to live and think and feel, and more importantly it was about how they should come to live and think and feel in order to attain wisdom, virtue, and happiness. In all these respects, she provides present-day feminists with a truly admirable philosophical forebear.

70

Astell, Christian Religion, }350.

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Weiss, Penny A., Canon Fodder: Historical Women Political Thinkers (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). Wesley, John, The Works of John Wesley, xxv: Letters I, 1721–1739, ed. Frank Baker, Oxford Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Whitby, Daniel, A Discourse of the Love of God. Shewing, That it is well consistent with some Love or Desire of the Creature (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1697). Williston, Byron, ‘Descartes on Love and/as Error’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 58/3 (1997), 429–44. Williston, Byron, ‘Akrasia and the Passions in Descartes’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7/1 (1999), 33–55. Williston, Byron and André Gombay, eds., Passion and Virtue in Descartes (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003). Wilson, Catherine, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: The Masham-Astell Debate’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21/3 (2004), 281–98. Wilson, Catherine, ‘Love of God and Love of Creatures: the Masham-Astell Exchange’, in Gábor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, eds., The Concept of Love in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press, 2007), 125–39. Wilson, Margaret Dauler, Descartes (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). Woolf, Virginia, Three Guineas (London: The Hogarth Press, 1947). Woolley, Hannah, The Gentlewomans Companion; Or, A Guide to the Female Sex: Containing Directions of Behaviour, in all Places, Companies, Relations, and Conditions, from their Childhood down to Old Age (London: A. Maxwell for Dorman Newman, 1673). Yolton, John, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). Zook, Melinda S., Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660–1714 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Index academy for women 3, 83, 123–4 and friendship 120–1 and purification 34–6, 43, 171, 174 Acworth, Richard 72, 117 admonition 71, 120, 179–80 anger 8, 88, 94–5, 103–4 Anglicanism 4, 16, 144, 149 animal spirits 77–8, 85 Anne, queen of England 15, 140, 149, 163 Apetrei, Sarah 162 n. 77 Aristotle and Aristotelianism 7, 94, 152–3, 178 Arnauld, Antoine 9, 32 Astell, Mary: her biographical details 12–17 her exclusion from philosophy 168–9 historical legacy of 17–23 influences on 8–12 atheists and atheism 16–17, 53, 59, 83 Atherton, Margaret 35 n. 73 atomism 9, 55, 56 attention 36, 74 n. 66, 91–2, 171 Augustine, St 10, 37, 89, 108–9, 114, 124–5 autonomy 173, 181 Bacon, Francis 31 n. 36 Ballard, George 20, 21 Bartky, Sandra Lee 182 Bart’lemy Fair 16, 19 n. 69, 155 n. 34 cosmological argument in 44, 45, 53, 54–6 on self-satisfaction 86, 102–3 wager argument in 59 Bayle, François 32 n. 50 Bayle, Pierre 57 n. 51 benevolence 14, 112–13, 116–25, 131–2, 176 Bennett, Joan 129 n. 20, 143 n. 106 Berkeley, George 18–19, 64 n. 7 Bible 56–60, 156, 160, 164 Acts 94 Colossians 88 1 Corinthians 89, 122, 135–6 Ephesians 142 n. 99 Galatians 154 Matthew 113 Romans 144 1 Peter 144 Philippians 153 1 Timothy 135–6 body: its distinction from soul 64–70, 84

as extended thing 63, 75 its interaction with soul 72–83, 84 Boyle, Deborah 28 n. 16, 47 n. 12 Bryson, Cynthia 84 Buickerood, James 82 n. 101 Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury 36 n. 76 Burnet, Thomas 17 n. 61 Burton, Henry 159 Cambridge Platonists 14 n. 53, 39 Cudworth, Ralph 51 n. 28, 80 More, Henry 49 n. 23, 76–7, 86 n. 9, 93 n. 57, 107 n. 1 Cartesians and Cartesianism: on animal spirits 77–8 on clear and distinct ideas 27, 28–30, 35, 47, 64–5, 66, 69 on the cogito 29 and feminism 12, 97, 175, 177 on generosity 95–7, 177 on God 46–9 on matter 55, 63, 75 on method 27–8, 171–3 on the passions 85–7, 90–1, 93, 95–7, 101, 103 on the self 172, 174, 175 on soul-body distinction 64–70 on soul-body interaction 64, 72–83 Caterus, Johannes 47 n. 10 causal principle(s) 51, 54, 55, 73, 75 causation 51, 54, 55, 63, 72–83 certainty, moral 57 Chapone, Sarah 20–1 charity 14, 104, 112–13, 119, 120, 121–5 Christ, members of 15, 70, 122–4 Christian Religion, as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church 4, 16, 47, 102, 122–3, 142, 161 cosmological argument in 52–3 on friendship 71, 120–1, 179 on God and truth 40 on judgment 42, 161 on liberty 146, 172 ontological argument in 48–9 on the passions 86, 88, 92–4, 103 on practical theism 56–60 on soul-body distinction 64–70, 172 on soul-body interaction 77–83 wager argument in 58–60 Chudleigh, Mary 19–20 circularity, problem(s) of 34 n. 62, 49, 91–2

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INDEX

civil war, English 150, 151, 157, 159 Clarke, Samuel 50–1, 54 clear and distinct ideas 10, 27, 28–30, 35, 47, 64–5, 66, 69 contractarianism 129, 142, 143, 158 cosmological argument(s) 49–56 courage 16, 86, 99, 155, 156 Coventry, Ann 57, 97, 99, 121 Cudworth, Ralph 51 n. 28, 80 custom 3, 31, 41, 71, 99 Davenant, Charles 150 n. 4 decision theory 58 Defoe, Daniel 150 Descartes, René 9, 41, 175 his Discourse on the Method 27, 32, 46 his Meditations on First Philosophy 29, 46–7, 54, 66, 79 his Passions of the Soul 85–7, 90, 93, 96, 101, 107 n. 1 his Principles of Philosophy 29–30, 46 see also Cartesians and Cartesianism desire: love of 14, 70 n. 42, 81, 108, 111–16, 130–1 remedy for 90–1, 101 Detlefsen, Karen 145 n. 114 dissenters 15, 149–52, 155 n. 39, 156–7, 159, 162–3 doubt, method of 27–8 Drake, Judith 23 n. 93 dualism 64–70 Duran, Jane 27 n. 11 Dussinger, John 127 n. 7 duty and duties 6, 61, 70–2 education 11–12, 34–6, 43, 83, 123, 144–7 Ellenzweig, Sarah 39, 72 Elstob, Elizabeth 20, 36 n. 76 empiricism 27 enthusiasm 16, 83 Epicureanism 8–9, 102 equality and inequality, sexual 133, 135–6 error 28–31, 41 eternal truth(s) 37, 38 Eugenia 20 Evelyn, Mary 19 extension: intelligible 40 of body and matter 55, 63, 66–7, 75 Fair Way with the Dissenters 150, 158 n. 51, 159 feminist theory: early modern 10–12 of freedom 42, 170–7, 181–4 of friendship 119–21, 178–82 and proto-feminism 170–1

flattery 71, 179–80 freedom 72–4, 100, 138, 146 feminist theory of 42, 170–7, 181–4 of will 41–2, 84, 89, 90, 95, 96, 111–12 Friedman, Marilyn 169–70, 173, 180–1 friendship 71, 113, 118–19 and feminism 119–21, 178–82 and marriage 131–2, 183 geistesgeschichte 169 generosity 95–105, 117, 120, 164 and Christianity 100–1 and feminism 99–100, 177–8 God: as causal agent 64, 72–80, 82, 114, 115, 116 cosmological argument(s) for 49–56 intellectualist concept of 60, 76 love of 81, 108, 111–16 nature of 46–9, 60–2, 69, 76 ontological argument(s) for 44–9 self-existence of 48, 49–56 vision in 19, 37–43 His will 60, 61, 73, 76 Goldie, Mark 163 Gottlieb, Paula 152–3 Granville, Ann 21 n. 82 Grascome, Samuel 152 n. 14 gravity 54–6 Greer, Germaine 22–3 habits 26, 74, 96, 105, 115 happiness 6, 8–9, 61–2, 70–1, 115 and self-satisfaction 101–3 and virtue 60, 101–6 Harol, Corrinne 84 hatred 88, 93, 94–5, 104, 105 Hays, Mary 21 Hickes, George 5, 152 n. 14, 162 Hickman, Charles 88, 94–5 Hierocles 34 Hill, Bridget 114 n. 41 Hirschmann, Nancy 174–5 Hobbes, Thomas 142 n. 98, 158 humility 103–4 Hursthouse, Rosalind 6 n. 29, 119 n. 73 Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon 159 n. 59 idealism 64 n. 7 ideas: clear and distinct 10, 27, 28–30, 35, 47, 64–5, 66, 69 complete 67–8 infinite and finite 29, 47 innate 37, 39, 40 illuminationist epistemology 10, 37 immortality 64, 69–70

INDEX



Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion 142–3 n. 104, 150, 157 n. 50, 159, 162 indivisibility 64, 70 infinite and finite ideas 29, 47 infinite regress 52 innate ideas 37, 39, 40 intellectualism 60, 76

love: of benevolence 14, 112–13, 116–25, 131–2, 176 definition(s) of 107, 111, 112 n. 30 of desire 14, 70 n. 42, 81, 108, 111–16, 130–1 as friendship 118–21, 131–2, 178–82, 183 of God 81, 108, 111–16 as self-love 31, 63, 71, 98, 113, 118, 119, 158

James I, king of England 137–8 James, Susan 87 n. 21 Jones, Catherine 82–3 judgment: and error 30 method of 27, 171–3 and women’s liberation 42, 146–7, 161–2, 163, 171–3 justice 118

McCrystal, John 129 Machiavelli, Niccolò 154–5 machines and mechanisms 31, 71 McIlquham, Harriett 22 Makin, Bathsua 11 male bias 97, 169, 177–81 Malebranche, Nicolas 29 n. 19 on freedom 41, 72–4, 111–12 on intelligible extension 40 his occasionalism 72–4 on the passions 89, 111–12 his Search After Truth 9, 37, 41–2 n. 110, 72–3, 89 on self-knowledge 65 on vision in God 19, 37 Mancini, Hortense, duchess of Mazarin 127, 128, 145 Marcus Aurelius 8, 56, 121–2 marriage: critique of 130–7, 140–2 laws governing 126–7, 133–4 motivations for 130–2 and tyranny 137–48, 181–2 and virtue 136–7, 143, 182 Masham, Damaris 18, 39 n. 98, 80–3, 109–10, 112 matter and material substance 55, 63, 64–70, 75 mean, doctrine of the 152–3 method 27–8, 171–3 Milton, John 129 mind, see soul (mind) moderation 16 concept(s) of 152–5, 164 lack of, and tyranny 157–61 and occasional conformity 149–50, 152, 155–7 Moderation truly Stated 142 n. 98 on occasional conformity 16, 150–61 on women and politics 161–6 Montagu, Mary Wortley 20, 57 n. 51 Montaigne, Michel de 178–9 More, Henry 49 n. 23, 76–7, 86 n. 9, 93 n. 57, 107 n. 1

Kant and Kantianism 110, 125 Kennett, White 150 Kinnaird, Joan 128–9, 143, 171 n. 13 knowledge: definition of 28 and error 29–31 and God 10, 37–41 and purification 33–6, 43, 91 rules for attaining 31–3, 48 and virtue 33–4, 72, 91–2 Kolbrener, William 160–1, 165 Ladies Library 18–19, 21 Lascano, Marcy 45 n. 5, 49 n. 22 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 17 lesbianism 114 n. 41 Letters concerning the Love of God 14, 17, 18, 31, 33 on friendship 119–20, 181 on love 109, 114–18, 130 on occasionalism 73, 75–7, 78 on self-knowledge 64 libertines and libertinism 16–17, 53, 59, 103 liberty, definition(s) of 146, 172; see also freedom Lister, Andrew 147 Lloyd, Genevieve 177 Locke, John 17–18, 135 his Essay Concerning Human Understanding 50, 56 n. 46, 65, 112 n. 30 on God 50–1, 65 on knowledge 66 on thinking matter 65 his Thoughts Concerning Education 54 n. 43, 146 n. 125 his Two Treatises 136 n. 61, 137–40 on tyranny 137–40

nature, state of 138–9, 142 n. 98, 158 Nehemiah 156–7, 164 Neoplatonism 33–4, 91

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INDEX

Newtonian science 54–6 Nicole, Pierre 9, 32 Norris, John 9, 14 on friendship 118–19 on love 108–9, 111–14, 118–19 his occasionalism 73, 75–7, 116 his Practical Discourses 75–6, 113–14 his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life 32, 81 his rules for thinking 32–3 on soul-body distinction 67–8 his Theory and Regulation of Love 81, 108–9, 111–14, 118–19 his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World 40, 65, 67–8, 78–9 on truth and virtue 33–4 on vision in God 38, 40 nunnery, see academy for women obedience: blind 60, 145–6 passive 143–4, 147, 160, 163–5 and resistance 143, 144, 147, 164–6 occasional conformity 15 and hypocrisy 156 and moderation 149–50, 152, 155–7, 164 and tyranny 151, 157–61 occasionalism 64, 72–80, 82, 114, 115, 116 O’Neill, Eileen 72, 77–9, 168–9 ontological argument(s) 44–9 Owen, James 150–1, 156 Pascal, Blaise 57, 58–60 passions: and Christianity 92–3 definition of 84–5 extirpation of 89, 94 remedy for 87, 91–4, 96, 101–5, 117 taxonomy of 86, 93 and virtue 85–106, 176 passive obedience 143–4, 147, 160, 163–5 Passmore, John 110 patriotism 154–6 Paul, St 135, 153–4 Perry, Ruth 23, 27, 28 n. 15, 140 n. 93, 170 Plato 7, 31; see also Cambridge Platonists; Neoplatonism poetry, Astell’s 13 Poulain de la Barre, François 12, 97 preservation: of human body 27, 79, 86–7, 140, 158, 176 of property 139, 158 of soul 158 pride 88, 94, 98–9, 103–4, 134, 136 property 126–7, 133–4, 139, 158 prudence 59, 94, 156–7

purity and purification 33–6, 43, 50, 91, 101, 174 querelle des femmes 11 Rapin, René 7 n. 31 rationalism 27 reason 27, 61, 172, 184 Reflections upon Marriage 162 on domestic tyranny 132–7, 140, 182–3 on love 15, 130–2 on passive obedience 143–7, 163–4, 165 political sub-text of 128–9, 141–3, 147, 163–4 religious retirement, see academy for women republicanism 154, 155 n. 39, 161 resistance 143, 144, 147, 164–6 revelation 37, 56–60, 61; see also Bible Richardson, Samuel 21, 127 n. 7 rights 170, 173 n. 22, 183 Roman heroes 154–6 Rorty, Richard 169 rules for thinking 31–3, 48, 171 scepticism 27–8 Schurman, Anna Maria van 11 science 28 n. 16 Scott, Sarah 21 self: Cartesian concept of 172, 174, 175 self-determination 172–3, 175 self-esteem 63, 95–105 self-existence 48, 49–56 self-love 31, 63, 71, 98, 113, 118, 119, 158 self-satisfaction 63, 101–3 see also soul (mind) sensation(s) 27, 72–83 sensible congruity 76–7, 78–9 Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II 14–15, 18–19, 65, 71, 102, 122 on academy for women 34–6, 43, 83, 120–1, 123–4, 171, 174 cosmological argument in 49–52, 54 on friendship 120–1, 179, 183 on generosity 98–9, 100 ontological argument in 44, 46–8, 49 on the passions 86, 91, 93 on purity 33–6 on rules for thinking 31–3, 171 on soul-body interaction 77–8 on truth 28–31, 38–9 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of 16 Shagan, Ethan 152 n. 16 Shapiro, Lisa 178 slavery 133, 136, 141, 144, 145, 172

INDEX

Smith, Florence 22, 170 Smith, Hilda L. 28 n. 15 Somers, John 97, 177 sorrow 88, 94–5, 104, 105 soul (mind): its distinction from body 64–70, 172 immateriality of 63 immortality of 64, 69–70 its interaction with body 72–83 knowledge of 64–5, 67, 71 its union with body 84, 106 see also self Sowaal, Alice 28 n. 17 Springborg, Patricia 129, 170 state of nature 138, 139, 142 n. 98, 158 Steele, Richard 18–19 Stephens, William 144 n. 108 Stimpson, Catharine R. 84 Stoics and Stoicism 14 on good of the whole 121–3 on happiness 8, 101 Marcus Aurelius 8, 121–2 on the passions 87, 94, 103 n. 115, 105 substance, Lockean concept of 65, 66 suffragist movement 22 Taylor, E. Derek 67 n. 26, 72, 78–9, 114 n. 41 Taylor, Jeremy 179 Taylor, Richard 53–4 teleological argument(s) 44, 55–6 testimony 56–60 theism: practical 56–60 theoretical 44–56 theodicy 41 thinking matter 65 Thomas Aquinas, St 50, 52 Thomas, Elizabeth 19, 111 n. 24 Tories and Toryism 4, 16, 97 n. 75, 129, 149–50, 153 tranquillity of mind 8, 63, 101–2, 104–5 truth: eternal 37, 38 and God 37–43 and virtue 33–4, 72, 91–2

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tyranny: in marriage 137–48, 181–2 and occasional conformity 151, 157–61 political 137–42 prevention of 143–8, 165–6 understanding 28–9, 41 vanity 96, 98–9, 118 virtue: of benevolence 14, 112–13, 116–25, 131–2, 176 definition of 93, 167 ethics 6 n. 29, 7 of generosity 95–105, 117, 120, 164, 176, 177–8 and happiness 60, 101–5 and marriage 136–7, 143 of moderation 16, 152–4 and the passions 85–106, 176 theory, outline of 6–8 and truth 33–4, 72, 91–2 vision in God 19, 37–43 wager: Astell’s 45, 56–60 Pascal’s 57–8 Wagstaffe, Thomas 153 Weil, Rachel 163–4 Wesley, John 20–1 Whigs and Whiggism 4, 16, 97 n. 75, 129, 143, 149–50 Whitby, Daniel 109 whole, good of the 118, 121–5 will: freedom of 41–2, 84, 89, 90, 95, 96, 111–12 and judgment 30, 146, 171–3 problem of free 72–4, 83 and the understanding 28–9, 41 William III, king of England 142 n. 104 Woolf, Virginia 22 Woolley, Hannah 11 zeal 153–4 Zook, Melinda 163 n. 82