RESEARCH
Upcoming Talks:
Love as an Epistemic Emotion
Astell’s Platonism: Beauty and the Dacier Connection
Dissertation Abstract
Mind and Prejudice: Cognitive Improvement in the Philosophies of
René Descartes and Mary Astell
This dissertation sheds new light on the philosophies of René Descartes and Mary Astell by answering the question: what makes cognitive improvement possible? Both Astell and Descartes acknowledge prejudice as a significant barrier to such improvement. For Descartes, part of what explains this barrier also explains the possibility of improvement: humans are susceptible to habituation. In chapter one, I argue that Descartes should be read as appropriating a scholastic notion of habitus in accounting for the will’s potential for reform. Yet, merely being susceptible to habituation cannot fully explain cognitive improvement. In chapter two, I argue that another significant feature of Descartes’s account is what I call rational self-confidence: a subject’s confidence in their ability to use and improve their cognitive capacities. Still, recognizing the importance of such confidence suggests another barrier: not all subjects are so confident. In chapter three, I argue that Astell recognizes how a peculiar prejudice can undermine the rational self-confidence of women especially – those subjects that most concern Astell. I call this the Women’s Defective Will Prejudice [WDWP]. Significantly, this prejudice leads to what I call the Astellian Circle: the apparent truth of the WDWP stands to undermine a subject’s rational self-confidence and inhibit her from pursuing activities that would cultivate her cognitive capacities, thus further reinforcing the apparent truth of the WDWP and so on in circulo. Chapter four argues that Astell’s account of cognitive improvement addresses precisely this circle. In particular, in contrast to Descartes’s relatively individualistic solutions, I contend that Astell’s social solutions in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, particularly her vision of education and friendship, function to promote a subject’s rational self-confidence, thereby supporting her engagement in projects of cognitive improvement.
Michaela Manson 