Mary Astell on self-government and custom

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source without validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself.KEYWORDS: Astellself-governmentcustomfree willliberty AcknowledgementsThanks to Allauren Forbes and Sean Greenberg for detailed comments on an earlier version of the paper, as well as Michaela Manson, Donald Ainslie, Marcy Lascano, Lisa Shapiro, and audience members at the Pacific Northwest – Western Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy and the UCSD Modern Philosophy Graduate Workshop for helpful discussions of earlier versions of the material. Thanks also to anonymous reviewers for this journal for their detailed and constructive suggestions and references to the secondary literature. This paper was supported by funding from The Office of Research and Economic Development at California State University, Long Beach.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The notion of self-government is often referred to as ‘autonomy’ in the present-day literature. Commentators distinguish between various notions of autonomy employed in moral and political philosophy; the target concept of this paper is often referred to as ‘personal autonomy’ or ‘individual autonomy’. I use the term ‘self-government' because we find related notions in Astell's works and to forestall expectations of continuity with the Kantian conception of autonomy.2 I use the following abbreviations of Astell’s works: SP I = A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part 1; SP II = A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II; and CR = The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England. References to SP I and SP II are to page numbers, and references to CR are to section numbers. Unless otherwise noted, emphases in quoted texts are Astell’s own. I present references to Locke’s Essay by book, chapter, and section.3 In so doing, this project complements and builds on other recent discussions of freedom, individual autonomy, and relational autonomy in Astell by Jacqueline Broad (Mary Astell; “Selfhood”; “Merger of Wills”), Karen Detlefsen (“Custom”; “Liberty and Feminism”), and Allauren Forbes (“Relational Autonomy”). See Section 5.2 for how my interpretation diverges from those who conceive of her view of self-government primarily in terms of relational autonomy.4 Astell here echoes Descartes’ distinction between mechanism and reason. She seems to endorse Descartes’ view that what distinguishes humans from machines (including animals) is the distinctively human ability to reason. See SP II, 129 for Astell’s contrast between the “Life of a Rational Creature” and that of “an Animal” and Descartes, Philosophical Writings Vol. 1, 139–41, for his statement about the difference between animals and humans from the Discourse. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for discussion of this point.5 Astell also characterises a “mechanical way of living” as an “unthinking” one (SP I, 94).6 See Descartes’s Fourth Meditation, where he identifies the faculty of will with freedom of decision (arbitrii libertas) (Philosophical Writings Vol. 2, 40), and Locke’s discussion of liberty as a power (e.g. Essay, II.xxi.15). Locke objects to understanding powers as “faculties” (Essay, II.xxi.17), but his divergences from the faculty tradition and his specific objections lie beyond the scope of this paper.7 For Locke, the understanding is the power of perception, where “perception” includes the perception of ideas in our mind and the perception of “the agreement or disagreement” between our ideas (Essay, IV.i.2). The will is the power of the mind “to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice versa, in any particular instance” (Essay, II.xxi.5). Descartes and Malebranche, well-noted influences on Astell, also employ the dual faculty model of the mind, but Astell’s characterizations more closely resemble Locke’s. Descartes and Malebranche also conceive of the intellect as the faculty that perceives, or receives, ideas, but they do not attribute to the intellect a power of comparing ideas (Descartes, Philosophical Writings Vol. 2, 39; Malebranche, Search, 2). Descartes and Malebranche diverge from them even more substantially on the will: Descartes defines the will in part as “our ability to do or not do something (that is, to affirm or deny, to pursue or avoid)” (Descartes, Philosophical Writings Vol. 2, 40), whereas Malebranche says that the will is the faculty “of receiving inclinations” (Malebranche, Search, 2). See Broad, “Impressions in the Brain”, 383–5, for discussion of the similarity between Astell’s and Malebranche’s conceptions of the will and freedom.8 The secondary literature on this issue reflects the lack of clarity in the primary texts: some do not discuss Astell’s stance on this aspect of free will (e.g. Springborg, Serious Proposal, 28–9), others interpret her as a compatibilist (Broad, Mary Astell, 184), and still others suggest that she is an incompatibilist (Detlefsen, “Custom”, 85).9 Sarah Hutton holds that the liberty Astell is discussing in the cited passage is a conception of free will (“Liberty of Mind”, 135–6). I depart from Hutton in holding that the contrast between necessity and freedom is illuminated not by the concepts of determinism and free will but, instead, by the notion of self-government. See Section 2 on this.10 See note 43 on the relation between our perception of the good and God’s determination of the good.11 Jacqueline Broad highlights a different conception of free will that Astell possesses, what she argues is the Malebranchean conception of freedom as the power to suspend our assent to particular goods. See her “Impressions in the Brain”, for her comparisons between Astell and Malebranche and the argument that the Malebranchean conception is central to Astell’s feminist project of liberating women from male tyranny.12 Astell has two senses of “right reason”: using reason in the right way, that is, according to the Cartesian-inspired principles of the sort she outlines in Part 2 of A Serious Proposal (e.g. SP II, 166ff), and also a particular conception of “reason”, which she elsewhere calls “right Reason” (e.g. SP II, 211; CR, 249; and Reflections, 1706 Preface, 15). Sarah Apetrei shows that Astell’s conception of reason may have been informed by the Cambridge Platonist conception of recta ratio, through which human beings bear God’s image and allows the possibility of union with God and attendant perfection (both moral perfection and perfection in understanding), although she disagrees with the association some Platonists make between right reason and masculinity. See Women, Feminism, and Religion, 96–113. Thanks to anonymous reviewers for clarification on this point and the reference to Apetrei.13 Astell makes a similar point in Reflections: “the Mind is free, nothing but Reason can oblige it, ’tis out of the reach of the most absolute Tyrant” (Reflections, 56). This conception of true liberty as limited to the mind’s freedom (and not freedom of action) limits the prospects of her view for feminist ends. See Detlefsen, “Custom”, 83–5, for a helpful discussion of this point.14 See Sowaal (“Astell on Liberty”) for discussion of a different aspect of “true liberty”: how “true liberty” understood as what Sowaal calls “internal liberty” mitigates the force of external constraints.15 The question might arise about what counts for Astell as a “foreign” cause or a cause outside oneself. In my view, this question is tied to the question of what makes motives one’s own for Astell, which I address in Section 3.1. See, also, Section 5.1. on how Astell conceives of an agent’s being self-governing as compatible with following God’s commands.16 For Astell, there are two main candidate ‘wills’ a women might substitute for her own: God’s will and her husband’s. But, as I will discuss, Astell holds that an agent aligning her will with another’s is not giving up her self-government as long as what she does is supported by her own understanding of the reasons for her choices and actions. See Sections 3.1. and 5.1 on the relation between self-government and God’s will and Section 4 for ways in which marriage might undercut a woman’s ability to be self-governing.17 See Buss and Westlund (“Personal Autonomy”, Section 2), for a general characterization of what they call ‘responsiveness-to-reasoning’ accounts, and Christman, “Autonomy and Personal History”, for an example of such a view.18 In her discussion of the aspects of relational autonomy we find in Astell’s conception of friendship, Allauren Forbes notes that self-governance for Astell requires authenticity in the sense I describe, but she does not specify what Astell thinks makes motives our own (“Relational Autonomy”, 497).19 The account I develop in this section is concordant with the account of freedom Jacqueline Broad attributes to Astell in “Merger of Wills”: “a woman is free to the extent that she is a rational creature capable of exercising her will in accordance with reason, and of raising objections or passing critical judgments on the unreasonable commands of others” (“Merger of Wills”, 75). I extend Broad’s discussion in arguing that the “mind’s freedom” in the cited passage (Reflections, 56) is a central element of Astell’s account of self-government and by specifying the relevant capacities.20 I have in mind discussions on personal autonomy, moral motivation and in the philosophy of action. See Buss and Westlund, “Personal Autonomy”, Rosati, “Moral Motivation”, and Piñeros Glasscock and Tenenbaum, “Action”, for general overviews.21 See note 12, above, on Astell’s conception of ‘right reason'.22 Astell’s conception of the passions, or emotions, is similar to Descartes’s understanding of the passions of the soul. States of the mind that we possess in virtue of being embodied creatures, the passions are useful for our preservation, but if not moderated by reason, disruptive, and worse, the cause of “the most grievous and ignominious” of all slaveries (CR, 249). See Broad, Mary Astell, 84–106, on Astell’s views on the passions and their relation to virtue.23 I take the “Natural Liberty” Astell mentions in this passage to be what she refers to later in The Christian Religion as “true liberty” (CR, 249), which, as I discussed in Section 1, is neither free will nor freedom of action, but enables freedom of judgement, which allows us to govern ourselves.24 In fact, God always provides the reasons underlying his commands. In contrast with men, who sometimes require a “blind Obedience”, “an Obeying without Reason”, God always provides reasons for our obedience: “he lays before us the goodness and reasonableness of his Laws” (Reflections, 75). Even if there is something we do not understand, ultimately, God’s nature provides “this clear and sufficient Reason on which to found our Obedience, that nothing but what’s Just and Fit, can be enjoyed by a Just, a Wise and gracious God, but this is a Reason will never hold in respect of Men’s Commands, unless they can prove themselves infallible and consequently Impeccable too” (Reflections, 75). See, also, the related discussion in Section 5.1.25 Similarly in The Christian Religion, Astell calls those who are “without any rule or judgement of our own, carried on by what our company, or any assuming person has the assurance to impose” “mere properties” (CR, 288).26 In her discussions of reasoning well and acting properly (which she thinks follows from reasoning well), Astell also emphasises the capacities involved in prudential reasoning, which include those of attention (SP II, 161–3, 169), means-end reasoning, properly weighing the value of our options, and examining the consequences of our choices (SP I, 64). Though our proper use of these capacities is necessary for acting rightly, I do not take them to be essential to her understanding of what it is to be a self-governing agent.27 Self-deception and hubris are other causes: see SP II, 207–8.28 See Sowaal (“Astell’s Serious Proposal”) for a detailed account of Astell’s conception of the faculties and her philosophy of mind in general.29 Astell’s rules for thinking include acquainting ourselves with the “State of the Question” (SP II, 176), having a distinct notion of the subject and the terms we use in inquiry; reasoning only with clear ideas; conducting our thoughts in order, beginning with the simplest objects; examining all parts of the subject; and so on (SP II, 176–9). They are clearly influenced by Descartes’s discussions from the Discourse and the Rules as well as Antoine Arnauld’s Logic, or the Art of Thinking. See Broad for discussion of the Cartesian and neo-Platonic influences on Astell’s formulation of the rules (Mary Astell, 31–6) and ways in which Astell’s method departs from Descartes’s (“Cartesian Ethics”, 171–2).30 Patricia Springborg notes that “Astell’s project … was aimed at rescuing the upper classes from their frivolous morals and mores and not at bettering the condition of the poor” (Astell, A Serious Proposal, 103, note 1). On the question of whether Astell intended the educational institutions to be for all women or only ‘ladies', see Sowaal, “Astell’s Serious Proposal”, 240–1, note 14.31 See the ‘competency approach’ Diana Meyers develops for a twentieth-century account of personal autonomy that addresses a very similar concern to Astell’s: to explore how traditional feminine socialization can undermine personal autonomy (“Personal Autonomy”).32 Custom is also a significant obstacle for acquiring virtue, which I cannot discuss in this paper. See note 26, above, on the capacities that are necessary for acting rightly, and Broad, “Cartesian Ethics”, 168–72, on how custom affects one’s moral judgements and Astell’s prescriptions for overcoming its influence.33 Karen Detlefsen points out that Astell distinguishes between ‘good customs’, which are aligned with our God-given nature as rational creatures, and ‘bad customs’, which are not. I focus in this paper on bad custom and follow Detlefsen’s usage of the term. See Detlefsen (“Custom”, 78) for the distinction, and Forbes (“Bad Custom”) for a discussion of how bad custom leads to a kind of epistemic injustice.34 See Sowaal (“Astell’s Serious Proposal”, 231) for a detailed discussion of this example of bad custom, which she calls the “Women’s Defective Nature Prejudice”.35 It is clear that Astell does not conceive of the hierarchical structure of marriage as an instance of bad custom, because it is authorized by God. There are interesting interpretive issues about which aspects of marriage Astell might conceive of as customary, which I cannot take up here. See Detlefsen, “Custom”, for the view that Astell does not hold that the hierarchical marriage relation is customary because it is instituted by God, but that the particular ways husbands and wives choose to conduct themselves within the institution are (“Custom”, 81–85). Astell advocates passive obedience to political authority not only in the context of civil government (of subjects to their sovereigns) but also in marriage (of wives to their husbands). This raises questions, which I cannot address here, about Astell’s purposes in comparing the condition of women in marriage to slavery. See Broad, “Marriage”, on this issue.36 Broad points out that in this passage, Astell is quoting verbatim from John Sprint’s pamphlet “The Bride-Woman’s Counsellor”, and so might have him in mind as one of her targets in Reflections (“Merger of Wills”, 74–5).37 Broad and Detlefsen emphasize the importance of education in enabling women to retain their freedom of judgement even in marriage – to avoid “the condition of mental slavery within the matrimonial state” (Broad, “Marriage”, 736; see Detlefsen, “Custom”, 84).38 Astell describes, as an example of this, the notorious case of Hortense Mancini, duchess of Mazarin, whose separation from her mentally unstable husband and ultimate escape by becoming a courtesan of King Charles II was widely discussed (Reflections, 32–5).39 See note 26, above.40 Whether Astell’s conception of the self aligns more with Descartes’s conception or with Malebranche’s is the focus of recent debate. The issues on which this debate hangs, however, are beyond the scope of this paper. On this, see Broad, “Malebranchean Concept”.41 That is not to say that everyone’s intellectual capacities can be developed in the same way. Astell rightly notes the variability in the intellectual capacities that actual human beings possess which she takes to be fitted to their particular circumstances and interests (SP II, 153–4).42 In The Christian Religion, Astell says there is no opposition between reason and revelation and describes reason and revelation as on a continuum: “There being a difference between reason and revelation such as is between the less and the more, but no sort of opposition in any respect” (CR, 22).43 Astell also holds that the will tends toward the good, and that our preferences and evaluative judgements, when generated properly, align with God’s will because God’s infinite wisdom and goodness leads to a match between our perception of the good and God’s determination of the good (SP II, 205). Our misuse of our rational capacities, as discussed earlier in the paper, is largely responsible for our not acting toward the good (SP II, 206). See section 3.2, above, on this issue.44 The view thus modified would not be Astell’s own view, and a different justification for the nature of the true self would have to be provided.45 See Detlefsen (“Custom”) and Forbes (“Relational Autonomy”) on how Astell’s remarks suggest an early conception of relational autonomy, and the latter for development of the idea that friendship is a significant aspect of Astell’s understanding of autonomy.46 See note 29 for discussion of the rules for thinking that Astell provides as part of the method.47 Thanks to Allauren Forbes for encouraging me to clarify my understanding of the role of social relations in the interpretation of self-government I attribute to Astell.48 Astell has one, of course: she holds that God is the source of the good. See note 43, above, on this issue.