Cavendish und Materialismus in der Frühen Neuzeit

Margaret Lucas Cavendish was probably the most prolific female philosopher of the European 17th century, the first woman to visit the British Royal Society and by all means an exceptional personality. Furthermore, she wrote philosophical works that established her as an independent mind with creative positions that directly confront thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes. A critical edition of her works is currently being prepared, parts of which are available
under http://digitalcavendish.org, including some digitally enhanced analysis.

This class investigates Margaret Cavendish’s work in the context of her contemporaries. Special focus rests on her double publication “Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy” / “The Blazing World” from 1666. The twin publication consists of a philosophy of nature on the one hand and a science fiction novel on the other hand. However, according to Cavendish, both are intricately connected – they are one and the same project. And really, much of the ‘novel’ consists of
conversations between empirical scientists and a philosophical interlocutor. In order to come to an adequate understanding of the complexity of this work, however, the seminar will move in three dimensions: Cavendish’s own text, Cavendish’s predecessor’s and reference points (namely Hobbes’ De Corpore, More’s Utopia and Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy) and contemporary secondary literature that helps enrich our understanding with systematic analyses and historical
detail. Students will achieve an understanding of debates in Early Modern methodologies and materialisms. We will also ask if Cavendish’s proposal can be read as an Early Modern feminist metaphysics.
Throughout the semester, each student will co-facilitate one session with me. That means: For that session, they will read all additional secondary materials and give an overview of the arguments presented there. Especially in the sessions on Descartes and Hobbes, we will thus be gently introduced to Cavendishian themes before the publications of 1666 through presentations on her Philosophical Letters (1664) and some of her earlier poems through secondary literature.
After getting to know Cavendish and her literary as well as philosophical practice in the first three weeks, we will start the class with a reading of Thomas More’s Utopia in comparison with Cavendish’s Blazing World. We will then move on to spend two weeks each on Hobbes’ and Descartes’ philosophies of nature, focusing on methodology, causation, perception and the essence of nature, followed by two weeks on Cavendish’s Observations, focusing on the same themes. In the last sections of the class, we will focus on Cavendish’s concept of Hermaphrodites in the Observations, framed by historical writings on the role and meaning of Hermaphroditism in Early Modern thought, culture and medicine.