Dangerous liaisons: René Descartes and learned women

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to present a historical description of the attitude towards the reader that appeared in René Descartes’ “Discours de la méthode” (1637). In his famous writing, Descartes appealed to learned women together with the doctors of Sorbonne and other intellectuals. Following the method of the «history of ideas», which assumes a particular attention to the cultural context of the studied period, the author reveals the connections that existed between Descartes and a number of literary institutions of the first half of the 17^th century – from the French Academy, whose duty was to regulate the «noble use» of the French language, to various literary salons, which established the canons of a «proper taste». We note that Descartes indulged the well-known weaknesses of the fair sex, namely a developed taste for fine arts and liberal arts, which became widespread in the so-called salon culture, préciosité literature and the gallant literary life of the 18^th century France. The paper argues that the female orientation constitutes a pragmatic aspect of this writing of Descartes’ and echoes the doctrine of gallantry of the Great century, a sort of existential and aesthetic credo, which predetermined the poetry of the French classicism. It is the attention that the author of “Discours de la méthode” paid to the reading audience in general and to learned women in particular that places him among the arbiters of the literary canon of his age. This attention is also a confirmation that «to write to be liked» was one of the goals that Descartes, like many other authors of the 18^th century, tried to achieve. In exploring Descartes’ circle of learned women, the author puts special emphasis on his correspondence, which presents a peculiar example of the epistolary genre, widespread during the era and characterized by the gallant language and the use of original linguistic tools to present his ideas more freely than he did in philosophical treatises created under religious and scholastic censorship. The author thus shows that the letters written by Descartes form a precious corpus of biographical and historical material, crucial for the interpretation of his main œuvres. These letters are presented as an essential literary tool that Descartes used in his philosophical thinking.