Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-22T02:22:54.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Logic of Chastity: Women, Sex, and the History of Philosophy in the Early Modern Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

Before women could become visible as philosophers, they had first to become visible as rational autonomous thinkers. A social and ethical position holding that chastity was the most important virtue for women, and that rationality and chastity were incompatible, was a significant impediment to accepting women's capacity for philosophical thought. Thus one of the first tasks for women was to confront this belief and argue for their rationality in the face of a self-referential dilemma.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

d'Aragona, Tullia. 1997. Dialogue on the infinity of love. Trans. and ed. Russell, Rinaldina and Merry, Bruce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arenal, Electa. 1991. Where woman is creator of the wor(ld)d. In Feminists perspectives on Sor Juana, ed. Merrim, Stephanie. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State Press.Google Scholar
Arenal, Electa., and Powell, Amanda. 1994. Introduction. The answer/La respuesta: Including a selection of poems. Trans. and ed. Arenal, Electa and Powell, Amanda. New York: The Feminist Press at City University of New York.Google Scholar
Bénassy‐Berling, Marie‐Cécile. 1982. Humanisme et religion chez Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: La femme et la culture au XVIle siècle. Editions Hispaniques (Association pour l'encouragement aux études hispaniques). Série “Recherches” no. 38. Série Historie Moderne, no. 17. Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Binns, J. W. 1990. Intellectual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin writings of the age. Leeds: Francis Cairns.Google Scholar
Brown, Stuart. 1993. Renaissance philosophy outside Italy. In The Renaissance and seventeenth‐Century rationalism. Vol. 4 of Routledge history of philosophy, ed. Parkinson, G. H. R.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clark, Andrew ed. 1887. Register of the University of Oxford, (1571–1622). Vol. 2, Pt. 1. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society at the Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Colie, Rosalie L. 1966. Paradoxia epidemica: The Renaissance tradition of paradox. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cornificius rhetor. 1993. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Bologna: Patron.Google Scholar
Curtis‐Wendlandt, Lisa. 2004. Conversing on love: Text and subtext in Tullia d'Aragona's Dialogo delle Infinita d'Amore. Hypatia 19 (4): 7799.Google Scholar
Gibson, Joan, and Ruan, Felipe. “Doña Latina: Latinate women in early modern Iberia,” unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Kelly, Joan. 1984. Did women have a Renaissance? In Women, history, and theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lennon, Thomas M. 1992. Lady Oracle: Changing conceptions of authority and reason in seventeenth‐century philosophy. In Women and reason, ed. Harvey, Elizabeth D. and Okruhlik, Kathleen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Montross, Constance. 1981. Virtue or vice? Sor Juana's use of Thomistic thought. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America.Google Scholar
Noreña, Carlos G. 1989. Juan Luis Vives and the emotions. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Eileen. 1998. Disappearing ink: Early modern women philosophers and their fate in history. In Philosophy in a feminist voice: Critiques and reconstructions, ed. Kournany, Janet A., Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Parkinson, G. H. R. 1993. Introduction. In The Renaissance and seventeenth‐century rationalism. Vol. 4 of Routledge history of philosophy, ed. Parkinson, G. H. R.London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paz, Octavio. 1989. Sor Juana: or, The traps of faith. Trans. Peden, Margaret Sayers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, Rinaldina. 1997. Introduction. In Dialogue on the infinity of love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sánchez, Magdalena S. 1998. The empress, the queen, and the nun: Women and power at the court of Philip III of Spain. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Sigea, Luisa. 1970. Duarum virginum colloquium de vita aulica et privata. Dialogue de deux jeunes filles: Sur la vie de cour et la vie de retraite (1552), Series Fondation Calouste Gulbendian: Publications du Center Culturel Portugais. Presenté, traduit et annoté par Odette Sauvage. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Smarr, Janet L. 1998. A dialogue of dialogues: Tullia d'Aragona and Sperone Speroni. Modern Language Notes 113 (1): 204–12.Google Scholar
Juana, Sor. 1988. A Sor Juana anthology. Trans. Trueblood, Alan S.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Juana, Sor. 1994. The answer/La respuesta: Including a selection of poems. Trans. and critical ed. Arenal, Electa and Powell, Amanda. New York: The Feminist Press at City University of New York.Google Scholar
Juana, Sor. 1997. The house of trials: A translation of los empeños de una casa. Trans. and commentary David Pasta. Iberica 21. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Trueblood, Alan. 1988. Introduction. In A Sor Juana anthology. Trans. Trueblood, Alan S.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. 1998. The institutional setting. In The Cambridge history of seventeenth‐century philosophy, ed. Garber, Daniel and Ayers, Michael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vasoli, Caesar. 1988. The Renaissance concept of philosophy. In The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy, ed. Schmit, C. B. and Skinner, Q.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar