This event has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Professor Sarah Hutton
University of York
Liberating the female mind. Arguments for equality by some Early Modern Women Philosophers
& Workshop
Please register for the event here.
When:
Workshop: Tuesday, October 14, 10:00-12:00
Lecture: Tuesday, October 14, 16:15-17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Lecture & Workshop: Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture and a workshop by Professor Sarah Hutton (University of York), entitled “Liberating the female mind. Arguments for equality by some Early Modern Women Philosophers“. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Professor Sarah Hutton: “My talk will introduce some of the women thinkers of the seventeenth century: Marie de Gournay, Anna Maria van Schurmann, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell—all of them women who were not afraid to express their ideas despite the social, cultural and educational disadvantages they faced as women. I shall focus on what they had to say about gender equality, and the education of women. I aim to show that their arguments for equality of men and women turn on the nature of human beings. In particular, I want to highlight how the enduring claim that rationality is the distinctive feature of human nature is central in their arguments. “
About the workshop
- Tuesday, October 14, 10:00-12:00 Raadzaal C2.07a
A philosopher abroad: Sir John Finch (1626-1682), anatomist, humanist, philosopher and diplomat.
Englishman, Sir John Finch, a man with wide-ranging interests and accomplishments Philosopher, anatomist, traveller, diplomat and art collector, Finch lived abroad for most of his adult life, in Italy and Turkey, and was well-connected with intellectual networks in England and Italy. Finch has been largely overlooked by historians of seventeenth-century ideas and culture, largely because the range of his interest doesn’t fit the standard disciplinary categories in the history of philosophy and science. Although he never published anything, Finch authored a substantial manuscript treatise which propounds a materialist philosophy and reflects all these aspects of his life and interests. The aim of this workshop will be to introduce Finch as a thinker embedded in the intellectual and cultural world of seventeenth-century Europe.
About Professor Sarah Hutton
Professor Sarah Hutton is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, having previously taught at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She has published extensively on early modern intellectual history, especially on the Cambridge Platonists, andwomen in early modern philosophy and science. Her publications include Anne Conway, a Woman Philosopher (CUP, 2004) and British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (OUP 2015). She co-edited Women, Science and Medicine with Lynette Hunter (Sutton 1996), and has published articles on Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Macaulay, Elizabeth Carter, Émilie du Chatelet and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 2022 she was awarded the Elisabeth of Bohemia Prize for her contribution to research on early modern women philosophers.
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC start-up grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
