Damaris Cudworth Masham: A Seventeenth Century Feminist Philosopher

Hypatia ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois Frankel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Feminist Literature ◽  
Male Experience ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Female Experience

The daughter of Ralph Cudworth, and friend of John Locke, Damaris Masham was also a philosopher in her own right. She published two, philosophical books, A Discourse Concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts In Reference to a Virtuous and Christian Life. Her primary purpose was to refute John Norris’ Malebranchian doctrine that we ought to love only God because only God can give us pleasure, and his criticism of Locke. In addition, she argues for greater educational opportunities for women, and an end to the double standard in sexual morality. Recent feminist literature has suggested that women and men may take different ethical and epistemological stands based on differences between the ‘female experience’, and the ‘male experience’. While leaving aside questions pertaining to the accuracy of these suggestions, this paper discusses some aspects of Mash’ am's thought which might be considered representative of the ‘female experience.’

scholarly journals Filozoficzne i teologiczne podstawy argumentacji na rzecz edukacji kobiet w Occasional Thoughts Damaris Masham

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Joanna Usakiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Women's Education ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Reflection ◽  
Ralph Cudworth

In 1705, the book titled Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life was edited. Damaris Masham (1659–1708), the author of this writing, the daughter of Ralph Cudworth and the friend of John Locke presents in the work her view on women’s education. This article examines the elements of rational reflection upon the world and the concept of a human being, which has led Masham to a radical for her contemporaries conclusion that the proper women’s education should be necessary. Masham’s arguments refer to the equality of people as rational creatures of God, their desire for salvation, defence of faith, and conveying religious teachings, but also they appeal to the significance of women’s social roles as a wife and a mother.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy F. Baumeister ◽  
Jean M. Twenge
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Limited Resource ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Sexual Deception ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Suppression ◽  
Female Genital

Four theories about cultural suppression of female sexuality are evaluated. Data are reviewed on cross-cultural differences in power and sex ratios, reactions to the sexual revolution, direct restraining influences on adolescent and adult female sexuality, double standard patterns of sexual morality, female genital surgery, legal and religious restrictions on sex, prostitution and pornography, and sexual deception. The view that men suppress female sexuality received hardly any support and is flatly contradicted by some findings. Instead, the evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle each other's sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage.

Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Central Belief

The Quakers were by far the most successful of the radical religious groups to emerge from the turbulence of the mid-seventeenth century—and their survival into the present day was largely facilitated by the transformation of the movement during its first fifty years. What began as a loose network of charismatic travelling preachers was, by the start of the eighteenth century, a well-organized and international religious machine. This shift is usually explained in terms of a desire to avoid persecution, but Quakers, Christ and the Enlightenment argues instead for the importance of theological factors as the major impetus for change. In the first sustained account of the theological motivations guiding the development of seventeenth-century Quakerism, the volume explores the Quakers’ positive intellectual engagement with those outside the movement to offer a significant reassessment of the causal factors determining the development of early Quakerism. Tracing the Quakers’ engagement with such luminaries as Baruch Spinoza, Henry More, John Locke, and John Norris, the volume unveils the Quakers’ concerted attempts to bolster their theological reputation through the refinement of their central belief in the ‘inward Christ’, or ‘the Light within’. In doing so, the study challenges persistent stereotypes of early modern radicalism as anti-intellectual and ill-educated—and indeed, as defined either by ‘rationalist’ or ‘spiritualist’ excess. Rather, the theological concerns of the Quakers and their interlocutors point to a crisis of Christology weaving through the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century, which has long been underestimated as significant fuel for the emerging Enlightenment

scholarly journals The Place of Theological Education in the Preparation of Men and Women for the British Baptist Ministry then and Now

Perichoresis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony R. Cross
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Biblical Languages ◽  
Academically Gifted

Abstract Using principally, though not exclusively, the learning of the biblical languages, this paper seeks to demonstrate four things. Firstly, from their beginnings in the early seventeenth century the majority of British Baptists have believed that the study of theology is essential for their ministers, and that the provision of such an education through their colleges is necessary for the well-being of the churches. Secondly, and contrary to misconceptions among Baptists and those of other traditions, Baptists have always had ministers who have been highly trained theologically, and that this has enriched their service as pastors. Thirdly, it reveals that Baptists today have a wealth of both academically-gifted and theologically-astute pastortheologians and pastor-scholars. Finally, it argues that theology has always played its part in the renewal of Christian life and witness for which so many Christians today are praying.

How the Stoics Became Atheists

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Philosophical Framework

This chapter explores the wider and largely Continental story of how the Stoics became atheists. The Neostoicisms of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century had been explicitly intended as supplements to mainstream varieties of Christianity. Indeed, even Lipsius remained consistent with his argument that Stoicism, with respect to both its ethics and its physics, provided an appropriate philosophical framework for a well-lived Christian life. Though a number of factors during the seventeenth century had contributed to the Stoics' atheistic turn, as this chapter shows, this shift within Stoicism is credited to Benedict Spinoza and his detailed examinations on the nature of God.

Philosophy

Unfelt ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-68
Author(s):  
James Noggle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Eliza Haywood ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
David Hartley ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Contents

This chapter examines how the late seventeenth-century British philosophy of sensation, feeling, and selfhood responded to the challenges of mechanism with the idiom of the insensible. It shows how this idiom carries forward from John Locke and Robert Boyle to philosophers of the mid-eighteenth century, the age of sensibility, who use it to address a variety of problems. The consistent, Lockean element in these usages by David Hartley, Étienne Bonnet de Condillac and David Hume, Eliza Haywood and Adam Smith, is that they do not refer to mental contents. One does not hear of “insensible perceptions.” There are no “unconscious thoughts” or “unfelt sensations” in the British tradition surveyed here. Writers in this tradition rather describe insensible powers that affect the mind without themselves being mental. They are nonconscious, not unconscious. This is an implication carried by the idiom into articulations of quite a wide variety of other ideas. All of them indicate the persistent usefulness in philosophies of feeling of a stylistic gesture toward something beyond the reach of both feeling and philosophy.

Human Life as a State of Mediocrity in John Locke

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Giuliana Di Biase
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Perfect Knowledge ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Church

This chapter investigates the genesis and evolution of Locke’s idea of human life as a “state of mediocrity”. While this idea had ancient roots going back to the early Church fathers, it remained current in the seventeenth century where mediocrity was generally equated with a condition of partial ignorance and imperfection. Locke’s account of it is original; while life is a time of mediocrity, death opens the way to the extremes of eternal misery or eternal happiness. Initially, inspired by the Church fathers, Locke conceived of human life as a condition of intellectual mediocrity. Subsequently, and arguably prompted by his reading of the pessimistic outlooks of Nicole and Pascal, he redefined the state of mediocrity in more optimistic terms: humans are naturally suited to their mediocre state. A further development of his conception of mediocrity, again involving a partial rethinking of the human condition, can be found in the Essay, where Locke represents mediocrity as an imperfect state of insatiable desire. It is redeemed, however, by the ability of living human beings to attain perfect knowledge of morality.

scholarly journals THE NORMATIVITY OF NATURE IN PUFENDORF AND LOCKE

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
HANNAH DAWSON
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Push And Pull

abstractAt the beginning of De jure naturae et gentium (1672), Samuel von Pufendorf proposed a radical dichotomy between nature and morality. He was followed down this arid path by his great admirer John Locke. This article begins by exploring their descriptions of this dichotomy, examining the ways in which human animals were supposed to haul themselves out of the push and pull of the mechanistic world in order to become free moral agents. The article then argues that bubbling up from within this principal account of morality is an alternative account according to which virtue seems to infuse nature, thereby blurring the lines between obligation and motivation, and refiguring the character of moral and political agency. In uncovering this refiguration, I highlight the importance of Aristotelianism and Stoicism for Pufendorf and Locke, suggest continuities rather than breaks between the natural lawyers of the seventeenth century and the theorists of moral sentiment of the next, and gesture towards a hitherto underappreciated discourse in early modern thought: the normativity of nature.

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