Damaris Cudworth, Lady Marsham

Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham (1658-1708). Obres publicades anònimament. Correspondencia abundant i convivència d'anys amb Locke. També amb Leibniz

Discurs sobre l'amor de Déu (1696)

Pensaments sobre la vida virtuosa (1705)

Regan Penaluna, autora de How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind (2023) escriu a Aeon Magazine un extens article que resumeix part del seu llibre. De la mateixa autora és també un article sobre Cudworth a Philosophy Now:

"As Lady Masham, she was in charge of supervising servants, managing household supplies, and raising stepchildren. Six months after her wedding, she wrote to Locke: ‘Household Affaires are the Opium of the Soul.’ Then her son was born, and her husband, who was often in London, was not much help or company. She grew lonely and bored. She wrote to Locke: ‘For All my quarrel with you I cannot help telling you that there is scarse any thing I would not give to see you Here in my Closet where I am now writeing to You.’

Text complet en anglès

She believed that women were as smart as men but had a greater capacity for empathy, making them better suited to raise children. This insistence on women’s superior capacity for care bothers me, as it further entrenches patriarchal views. But it also has a few radical implications. It’s why Masham thought that women ought to be the arbiters of parental decisions in the domestic sphere. And here once more she breaks from Locke, who insisted that fathers should be the ultimate judge in any domestic dispute. Her heightened respect for home life anticipated modern feminist laws that support the rights of mothers and attempt to curb domestic violence."

'Though men might ‘pretend to be their Masters’, women are not made to serve them.'

castedat:

'but a Peccadillo in a Young Man, altho’ a far less Criminal Offence against this Duty in a Maid shall in the Opinion of the same Persons brand her with perpetual Infamy.