Margaret Cavendish was a writer of poetry, philosophy, polemics, histories, plays, and utopian fiction. She employed many different genres as a way to overcome access barriers for women and build an audience for her subversive philosophical ideas. So, what was so radical about Cavendish's views? Why did she think all matter, even rocks, was at least partially rational? And how did she anticipate the term "epistemic injustice" 400 years before it was coined? Josh and Ray explore the life and thought of Margaret Cavendish with Karen Detlefsen from the University of Pennsylvania, co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy.
Part of our series Wise Women, generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Josh and Ray begin the show by discussing equality in relation to other animals and entities in the world. Josh contrasts Margaret Cavendish with René Descartes who held that the soul is a completely different kind of thing from the body; Ray explained that for Cavendish there was just one kind of thing, matter. Then the hosts pivot to the inequality between men and women present in Cavendish’s writings, both in philosophy and literature, with Ray reminding listeners that Cavendish had a lot to tell her male contemporaries about how to be nicer to women.
Karen Detlefsen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Women in Early Modern European Philosophy, joins the Show. She shares her perspective on questions about women's freedom during her time, and her choice of experimental thinking and genre to face this challenge. Karen also articulates an interpretation of Cavendish’s views on a kind of panpsychism (that all matter is rational, sensitive and inanimate), and offers as metaphor the interlocking process of how a building is built. Josh and Ray probe Karen more on this, including a question about Atomism (the world is just atoms) and Cavendish’s own Plenism (the world is just a chunk of matter and contains no vacuum).
After a short break, the hosts and their guest continue the discussion about how human beings relate to the nonhuman world according to Cavendish. Karen points to a poem where the Duchess extols the virtues of vegetarianism, suggesting a kind of equity between humans and the rest of nature; Ray wonders if there is some possible eco-feminist inspiration here. Josh asks Karen about Cavendish’s Monarchical views, and she answers that some interpretations accept a public aspect, but find inclinations towards Republicanism in her work as well, and even if she was indeed personally committed to the Royalist cause.
Roving Philosophical Report (Seek to 5:19) → Holly McDede talks to Danielle Dutton who wrote a novel about Cavendish called Margaret the First: A Novel, and which draws from Cavendish’s real life.
Sixty-Second Philosopher (Seek to 46:36) → Ian Shoales notices the extraordinaire life and times of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, including joining the Queen in exile, where she met and married widower William Cavendish the first Duke of Newcastle, and wrote thirteen books—poetry, plays, philosophy, natural science—and visited the Royal Society of London.
Josh Landy
What would it mean to believe in radical equality?
Ray Briggs
Did Margaret Cavendish really think we're no better than ants, trees, and rocks?
Josh Landy
And what about the equality of men and women?
