Abstract
Marie de Gournay, in a central argument in the pamphlet Égalité des hommes et des femmes [The Equality of Women and Men], offers an interpretation of an argument for equality that she attributes to ‘the School.’ I argue that Gournay is drawing on Aristotle’s Metaphysics to formulate an argument for the equality of women; that she does not temper that argument with claims for the superiority of women, which makes her unique for some time; and that her alleged misrepresentation of her authorities – Aristotle in particular – is itself an interesting and suggestive phenomenon. Moreover, while some of her contemporaries would have agreed that the soul of a person has no sex, Gournay was unusual in arguing that the social implication of this was intellectual equality for women and men, just so long as education should be provided to women as well as men.
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Notes
- 1.
Eileen O’Neill offers the most persuasive, and succinct, explanation for the usual neglect of Gournay in general histories of philosophy: ‘If we utilize the method of historiography known as “historical reconstruction” we will take as central those issues deemed by the philosophers of the past to be the central ones; and we will count past figures to be philosophers just in case they were so deemed by their contemporaries. Notice that given this method, it is not likely that the history of philosophy will include Gournay, since she is mainly important for her contribution to the “quarrel about women.” And those deemed to be philosophers by their contemporaries in the seventeenth century did not, for the most part, take this “woman question” to be a serious philosophical issue.’ (‘Justifying the Inclusion of Women in our Histories of Philosophy: the Case of Marie de Gournay’ in The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, ed. Linda M. Alcoff and Eva F. Kittay (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 20.) Part of what I aim to demonstrate here is that Gournay’s contribution to the querelle was philosophical in the terms of the philosophers of the day, and that this distinguished it from most other contributions to the debate.
- 2.
Certainly there were feminists before and after Gournay who shared elements of her view. Christine de Pisan, writing 200 years before Gournay, had argued that women possess reason, and that it should be cultivated by education: ‘if it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons…just as women have more delicate bodies than men, weaker and less able to perform many tasks, so do they have minds that are freer and sharper whenever they apply themselves’ (The Book of the City of Ladies, rev. ed., trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York: Persea Books, 1998), I.27.1, 63). She goes on to argue that education, rather than having a deleterious effect on the morals of women, can only improve moral character so long as it does not include those ‘fields of learning which are forbidden’ (e.g. divination) (ibid., II.36.1, 153). Pisan does not argue for the equality that is so important to Gournay – she allows that women are inferior to men in certain physical respects (‘weaker and less able’), while insisting that they are intellectually superior (‘freer and sharper’). And, tellingly, she does not explicitly offer the metaphysical basis that Gournay does for that equality: through a species soul that is the same. That is, had Pisan argued for women on the basis that they share the same rational soul with men, she could not at the same time argue for the intellectual superiority of women.
Writing 30 years after Gournay, Anna Maria van Schurman argued that women are made in the image of God, just as are men, and also argued that women should be educated. But her argument reflects the influence of Plato’s argument in the Republic (Republic V, 456a), an argument rejected by Aristotle. She allows that while women are the same in kind as men, they are different in degree, and concedes that women in general are less intellectually able than men: ‘To the minor [premise, i.e. that the mind of a woman is weaker] I respond that it is not absolutely true, but only compared to the masculine sex. For even if women are not able to compare in mental ability to the more excellent men (who are as eagles in the clouds) nevertheless the argument itself states that not a few such women are found who may be admitted to studies with some benefit.’ (Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from her Intellectual Circle, ed. and trans. Joyce Irwin (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 34). Gournay does not concede that there may be differences in the degree of reason apportioned to men and women. So Gournay is original in arguing for equality.
- 3.
‘Raisonable’ appears in the definitive text of 1641, reproduced in the Oeuvres completes (see footnote 4). The ‘Humaine’ appears in the texts of 1622, and those of 1626–1634. It is not clear that there is a different sense intended, although we may see here a difference in emphasis.
- 4.
When quoting Gournay, I cite the page numbers from the Oeuvres complètes (Marie de Gournay: Oeuvres complètes (2 volumes), Eds. J.-C. Arnould, E. Berriot, C. Blum, A.L. Franchetti, M.-C. Thomine, V. Worth-Stylianou. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002). Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are my own: Au surplus, l’animal humain n’est homme ny femme, à le bien prendre, les sexes estants faicts non simplement, mais secundum quid, comme parle l’Eschole, c’est à dire pour la seule propagation. L’unique forme et difference de cet animal ne consiste qu’en l’ame humaine [raisonable] Et s’il est permis de rire en passant, le quolibet ne sera pas hors de saison, nous apprenant qu’il n’est rien plus semblable au chat sur une fenestre que la chatte. L’homme et la femme sont tellement uns, que si l’homme est plus que la femme, la femme est plus que l’homme.
- 5.
‘Car veu les exemples, authoritez et raisons nottées en ce discours, par où l’égalité des graces et des faveurs de Dieu vers les deux sexes, est prouvée, disons leur unité mesme….’
- 6.
‘Rangeons ces glorieux tesmoins en teste: et reservons Dieu, puis les Saincts Peres de son Eglise, au fond, comme le tresor.’
- 7.
‘La plupart de ceux qui prennent la cause des femmes contre cette orgueilleuse preferance que les hommes s’attribuent, leur rendent la change entire, r’envoyans la preferance vers elles. Moy qui fuys toutes extremitez, je me contente de les esgaler aux hommes, la nature s’opposant pour ce regard autant à la superiorité qu’à l’inferiorité.’
- 8.
One indication that Gournay herself understood this difference is one of the variations in the text of the final passage of the Égalité (see note 4). In the editions of 1622, 1626 and 1627 the line reads, ‘des faveurs de Dieu vers les deux especes ou sexes.’ In the final and authoritative text in the Advis of 1641 it has been emended to ‘des faveurs de Dieu vers les deux sexes.’ So ‘two species or sexes’ has changed to ‘two sexes’, which suggests that by 1641 Gournay wants to insist that the sexes are not like species of a genus, but are distinguished by a difference with less metaphysical substance.
- 9.
See Devincenzo, Marie de Gournay, 239–244; Berriot-Salvadore, ‘Une femme qui écrit,’ vol. I, 83–89.
- 10.
Devincenzo, Un cas littéraire, 241.
- 11.
Berriot-Salvadore, ‘Une femme qui écrit,’ 84.
- 12.
Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles Singleton (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959), 214.
- 13.
See Aristotle, Categories, 5 3b34-4a2.
- 14.
Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, ed. and trans. Albert Rabil (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 43. In the Antonioli edition the passage reads: ‘quorum quidem sexuum discretio non nisi situ partium corporis differente constat, in quibus vsus generandi diuersitatem necessariam requirebat, Eandem vero et masculo et foeminae, ac omnino indifferentem animae formam tribuit, inter quas nulla prorsus sexus est distantia, Eandem ipsa mulier cum viro sortita est mentem, rationem atque sermonem, ad eundem tendit beatitudinis finem, vbi sexus nulla eri exceptio’ (De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus, ed. R. Antonioli and trans. O. Sauvage (Genève: Librairie Droz, S.A., 1990), 49). This passage appears to take as its sources Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.
- 15.
Agrippa, Antonioli edition, 59.
- 16.
Agrippa, Antonioli edition, 59.
- 17.
Agrippa, Rabil translation, 50. In the Antonioli edition, the passage reads: ‘Nam quum pulchritude ipsa nihil est aliud quam divini vultus atque luminis splendor rebus insitus, per corpora formosa relucens: is certe mulieres prae viris habitare ac replere abundantissime elegit’ (55).
- 18.
Agrippa, Rabil translation, 54. In the Antonioli edition, the passage reads: ‘Haec etiam si fusius e sacris bibliis ubi toties de pulchritudine facta mentio idque ipsissimis pene verbis ideo recensui, quo plane intelligamus mulierum pulchritudinen non apud homines solum, sed et apud Deum cohonestatam esse et honore cumulatam’ (59).
- 19.
See, for example, Poullain de La Barre, De l’Égalité des deux sexes, published later in the seventeenth century than Gournay’s work and often held up as making the same argument in a more forceful and persuasive way; he moves between arguing for equality and arguing for the superiority of women.
- 20.
‘Je dis que les masles et femelles sont jettez en mesme moule: sauf l’institution et l’usage, la difference n’y est pas grande. Platon appelle indifferemment les uns et les autres à la société de tous estudes, exercices, charges, vacations guerrieres et paisibles, en sa republique; et le philosophe Antisthenes ostoit toute distinction entre leur vertu et la nostre.’ (Essai, édition conforme au texte de l’exemplaire de Bordeaux par Pierre Villey, sous la direction et avec une préface de V.-L. Saulnier, augmentée d’une préface et d’un supplément de Marcel Conche (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaire de France, 2004), 896).
Devincenzo, Un cas littéraire, 255, assumes that this is the source of Gournay’s claim.
- 21.
‘Si je daignois prendre la peine de proteger les dames, j’aurois bien tost recouvré mes seconds en Socrates, Platon, Plutarque, Seneque, Anthistenes, ou encore, Sainct Basile, Sainct Hierosme, et tells esprits, ausquels ces docteurs donnent si librement le dementy et le soufflet, quand ils font difference, sur tout difference universelle, aux merites et facultez des deux sexes. Mais outré qu’ils sont asses punis de montrer leur bestise inconsidereée, condamnans le particulier par le general (accordé qu’en general la suffisance des femmes fust inferieure), leur bestise aussi, par l’audace de mespriser le jugement de si grands personages que ceux-là, sans parler des modernes, et le decret eternal de Dieu mesme, qui ne faict qu’une seul creation des deux sexes, et de plus honnore les femmes en son histoire saincte de tous les dons et faveurs q’il depart aux hommes, ainsi que j’ay representé plus amplement en l’Égalité d’eux et d’elles…’
- 22.
‘Quant au philosophe Aristote, puisque remuant ciel et terre, il n’a point contredit en gros, que je scache, l’opinion qui favorise les dames, il l’a confirmé, s’en rapportant sans doubte aux sentences de son pere et grand pere spirituals, Socrates et Platon, comme a chose constante et fixe soubs le credit de tells personages, par la bouche desquels il faut advouer que le genre humain tout entiere, et la raison mesme, ont prononcé leur arrest.’
- 23.
It is likely that Gournay read Plato, since two translations of his works were in her library at the time of her death (Michèle Fogel, Marie de Gournay: itinéraires d’une femme savante (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 192, citing Inv. 1645, folio 102–104). We cannot know that Gournay had read Aristotle, since none of his works were found in her library, as evidenced by the ‘acte de donation’ (document of donation) to the Augustin order in the rue de la Seine, by the inheritor of her library, Nicole Jamin (Archives Nationales, Quatrevingtz dix neufviesme volume des Insinuations du Chastelet de Paris, Archives nationales Y 184, folio 118). It would not be surprising, given the habits of the time, if her claims were based not on direct knowledge of the Aristotelian corpus, but on some secondary source.
- 24.
Eva Sartori, ‘Of the Equality of Men and Women,’ Allegorica: Texts and Documents for the Study of Medieval and Renaissance Literature 9 (Winter 1987/Summer 1988): 135–163, 149.
- 25.
The passage that explains this distinction in senses of ‘as-such’ or essential features is at Posterior Analytics I 4 73a34-b7. While Aristotle recognizes that some animal kinds are not sexually differentiated, and hence that it is not true to say that sexual difference is necessary to any given animal kind, he also asserts that animal is essential to sexual difference – that is, that in order to explain what male or female is, one must appeal to the conception of animal (he treats sexual differentiation in plants as an analogous rather than an identical phenomenon).
- 26.
‘L’homme fut creé masle et femelle, dit l’Escriture, ne comptant ces deux que pour un.’
- 27.
For Adam as an androgynous figure, see Fogel, Itinéraires d’une femme savante, 194.
- 28.
‘Et si je juge bien, soit de la dignité, soit de la capacité des dames, je ne pretends pas à cette heure de le prouver par raisons, puisque les opiniastres les pourroient debattre, ny par exemples, d’autant qu’ils sont trop communs, ains seulement par l’authorité de Dieu mesme, des arcboutans de son Eglise et de ces grands homes qui ont servy de lumiere à l’univers. Rengeons ces glorieux tesmoins en teste, et reservons Dieu, puis les saincts Peres de son Eglise, au fonds, comme le tresor.’
- 29.
See Lewis, ‘Engendering of Equality,’ 53–76.
- 30.
O’Neill, ‘The Case of Marie de Gournay,’ 24–25.
- 31.
The skeptical interpretation of this argument is more persuasive if one takes the point and the conclusion of the argument to be, as O’Neill does, that women like men are made in the image of God.
- 32.
Mary Rowan, while recognizing the selectiveness Gournay practises with her sources as a common technique in the period, nonetheless thinks that it vitiates her argument. See her ‘17th-Century French Feminism,’ 273–91, 276.
- 33.
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, cited in Lloyd, The Man of Reason, 48. Lloyd, commenting on this passage, writes ‘Arduous as the grasp of the metaphysical basis of Descartes’ method may be, the method itself was supposed to be accessible to all. And within the terms of the system there is, in all this, no differentiation between male and female minds. Both must be seen as equally intellectual substances, endowed with good sense or Reason’ (ibid.).
- 34.
‘Si donc les Dames arrivent moins souvent que les hommes, aux degrez de l’excellence; c’est merveille que ce deffaut de bonne education, et mesmes l’affluence de la mauvaise expresse et professoire, ne face pis, et qu’elle ne les garde d’y pouvoir arriver du tout. S’il le faut prouver: se trouve-t’il plus de difference des hommes à elles, que d’elles à elles-mesmes: selon l’institution qu’elles ont receue, selon qu’elles sont eslevées en Ville ou village, ou selon les Nations? Et consequemment, pourquoy leur institution aux affaires et aux Lettres à l’égal des hommes, ne rempliroit-elle la distance vuide, qui paroist d’ordinaire entre les testes d’eux et d’elles? veu mesmement, que l’instruction est de telle importance, qu’un de ses membres seul, c’est à dire le commerce du monde, abondant au Françoises et aux Angloises, et manquant aux Italiennes; celles-cy sont de gros en gros de si loin surpassées par celles-là? Je le dis de gros en gros, car en détail les Dames d’Italie triomphent par fois: et nous en avons tiré des Reynes et des Princesses qui ne manquoient pas d’esprit. Pourquoy vrayement la bonne façon de les nourrir, ne pourroit-elle arriver à remplir l’intervalle qui se trouve entre les entendements des hommes et les leurs; veu qu’en l’exemple que je viens d’alleguer, les pires naissances surmontent les meilleures, par l’assistance seule et simple, de ce commerce et de cette conversation du monde?’
- 35.
I agree with O’Neill that this argument, rather than making explicitly a positive claim, is intended ‘to challenge her interlocutors’ inference from the empirical observation – that men typically outstrip women in intellectual performance – to the conclusion that this is best explained by the fact that women have a distinct, and intellectually inferior nature to men’s (‘The Case of Marie de Gournay,’ 27).
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Deslauriers, M. (2019). Marie de Gournay and Aristotle on the Unity of the Sexes. In: O’Neill, E., Lascano, M.P. (eds) Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18118-5_13
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