Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

One should include especially those sciences or arts which are most closely connected

with sacred theology and moral virtues....wethink that the following are included

in this class: grammar, logic, rhetoric...physics, metaphysics, history, etc. and also

languages, especially a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, all of which can lead us to

a fuller and better understanding of Sacred Scripture. Others, such as mathematics

(which also includes music), poetry, and painting, and other liberal arts...

VanSchurman can be read as adopting, for rhetorical purposes, the

extremely negative view of women that she learned from Voetius, and

then showing that women have a correspondingly greater need to be edu-

cated than men. ‘Whoever is most in danger of vanity, because of imbecility

and fickleness of natural temperament’ is most in need of education. Like-

wise, whoever has a weaker intelligence has a greater need for education.

But, according to common opinion, women are vain, foolish, fickle, and

so on.There is no reason to think that Van Schurman endorsed these

negative assumptions about women. However, she wished to show that,

according to the logic of misogynists, women needed education much more

than men. Her own view was that the natural abilities of men and women

differ from one person to another, and that nothing else is required for

study apart from what Descartes had called ‘common sense’. This reads

very much like a sympathetic expression of the Cartesian view that native

intelligence, rather than familiarity with Aristotle, is the only prerequi-

site for study. In spite of their shared opinion, however, Descartes was

unequivocally and consistently critical of Van Schurman’s contributions

to contemporary debates.

Descartes must have known about Van Schurman when he lived on the

outskirts of Utrecht in–, because she lived in a prominent location

in the shadow of the Dom Cathedral, in Cathedral Place. He evidently

knew about Van Schurman’s attendance at the theology lectures given by

Voetius, because he refers to her concealed attendance in a letter to Regius

in.Since Descartes had already begun to target Voetius as a critic of

Regius, it is most likely that his intense dislike of Voetius was transferred,

to some extent, to one of his most devoted followers.By November

,Voetius had contacted Mersenne directly in the hope of gathering

evidence to show that Descartes’ theological views were unorthodox, even

bythe standards of Roman Catholics in France. As one might expect

of Mersenne, who was always willing to facilitate controversies, he told

Descartes immediately about the request. Descartes replied by referring to

Voetius as the ‘most arrant pedant on earth’ and then added the following