Cartesian Individualism
The broader implications of Poullain de la Barre's, "On the Equality of the Two Sexes."
Poullain de la Barre penned the first treatise of the early modern epoch advocating for the radical equality between the sexes, “On the Equality of the Two Sexes” (1673). How was Poullain able to articulate such a powerful argument after so many centuries of prejudicial beliefs about the (supposedly) inherent differences between men and women? Neither I nor Poullain would argue that men and women assume markedly different physical forms. Such an observation is trivial. Trivial, and unrelated to whether men and women are essentially equal.
What do I mean by “essentially” here? Poullain predicates his argument on the basis of Descartes’ distinction between an individual’s essential, primary substance—the mind—and one’s contingent, extended substance—the body. To briefly summarize this argument, you can imagine losing all of your body parts and still being you, because your digits, appendages, extremities, entrails, etc., etc., do not make you, you. Your mind does that. Consequently, if you were to lose your brain, i.e., that component of your extended substance upon which the mind depends (except to casuistic metaphysicians), you would essentially cease to exist. Anybody who has endured the tragedy of losing a loved one to neurological deterioration can testify to this.
Poullain takes this essential, non-essential distinction and makes the obvious yet revolutionary point (for the time) that every human being’s mind is of fundamentally the same nature. Specifically, all those attributes of the body, e.g., skin pigmentation, sexual geno- and phenotype, hair color, height, [insert immutable characteristic here], can have no bearing on the quality of the essential, immaterial, infinite substance of the mind. Poullain is a much more eloquent writer than I, so I kindly direct the reader to consider the following quotes from the man himself:
This natural right to the same knowledge results from the fact that we all have the same need for it. There is no one who does not search for happiness, which is the objective towards which all our actions are directed… Since the two sexes are capable of the same happiness, they have the same right to everything that may be used to acquire it… Study is just as necessary for women as happiness and virtue because, without it, it is impossible to have either of the latter perfectly.
I direct the reader to Poullain’s persuasive polemic on page 153-180 of The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century by Desmond M. Clarke.1
Shout-out to Prof. Aaron Spink of Dartmouth’s Philosophy Department for assigning this reading to my Early Modern Philosophy course.