SOURCE: Squadrito, Kathleen M. “Mary Astell.” In A History of Women Philosophers, Volume III: Modern Women Philosophers, 1600-1900, edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, pp. 87-99. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

[In following essay, Squadrito offers a survey of Astell's life, career, and writings.]

I. BIOGRAPHY

Mary Astell, seventeenth-century English philosopher, was born in Newcastle on November 12, 1666. Although she was a well-known Platonist during her time, the facts about her life and works are relatively obscure. A short account of her life and influence is recorded by Ballard in his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752).¹ The only major biography was written by Florence Smith in 1916.² According to Smith, the material presented by Ballard is often based on rumor. Many of the conclusions which Smith draws in contradiction to Ballard are based solely upon single ambiguous statements made by Astell. The accuracy of information about Mary Astell's early education is therefore questionable.

Astell's family was prominent in commercial affairs. Her father, Peter Astell, was hostman of Newcastle and was assigned the duty of entertaining merchants and supervising their sales. Her uncle, Ralph Astell, curate of St. Nicholas in 1667, is credited with her early education. Since he died when Mary Astell was thirteen, it is assumed that a good deal of her education can be attributed to a wide range of reading. The Astell family maintained a strong tradition of loyalty to both the church and the King. They also upheld a tradition of loyalty to educational ideals.

Astell's father died in 1678 and her mother, Mary Errington, in 1684. After the breakup of her home Mary Astell left for London. According to a letter from Thomas Birch to Ballard, she settled with Lady Catherine Jones in Chelsea. Lady Catherine was prominent in court circles and introduced Mary Astell to a number of influential and well-educated women who shared an interest in changing the status of women. The traditional view that Mary Astell was a recluse was probably based on her later ill health. She took an intimate part in the life of Chelsea. As her reputation grew, her home took on the character of a salon. Discussions usually concerned philosophy, religious controversies and education for women. As Smith reports, the

‘great Mr. Locke’ she knew and respected, however much she might refuse to accept his opinions. She had dared to oppose Swift, Steele, Defoe, but she commented only on their political writings and activities.³

Among Astell's circle of friends was Elizabeth Elstob, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. A first edition of the Serious Proposal To The Ladies was autographed and presented to Lady Mary by Astell. Lady Anne Coventry of Smithfield, author of Meditations and Reflections Moral and Divine, was interested in Astell's plans for a woman's college.

II. WORKS

Mary Astell's first published work, A Serious Proposal To The Ladies For the Advancement of their True and greatest Interest (1694), was followed by part two in 1697. The work was well-received and went through several editions. In 1695, at the request of John Norris, Astell's correspondence with Norris was published as a text entitled Letters Concerning the Love of God. In 1700 she published Some Reflections Upon Marriage. From 1704 to 1705 several of Astell's pamphlets dealing with political and religious controversy appeared in print. In 1705 she published a summary of her religious and educational theories in The Christian Religion As Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England. In 1729 her health began to decline. Shortly before her death she refused to see friends and spent her days in religious meditation. Mary Astell died from cancer on May 11, 1731. She was buried in the churchyard at Chelsea on May 14.

The authorship of An Essay In Defence of the Female Sex (1696), a work generally attributed to Mary Astell until 1913, is still a subject of controversy. In 1913 Professor A.H. Upham contended that the subject matter of the essay was inconsistent with ideas expressed in Astell's other works. The essay appeared to be more consistent with a group of French pamphlets that were popular in England at the time. In the 1738 edition of Bayle's Dictionary, three pamphlets are listed as among Astell's “other works”; the Essay is not mentioned. According to Smith, even though the publication of one edition in Newcastle would tend toward the ascription to Mary Astell, a copy mentioned in a list of publications of E. Curll, a bookseller, ascribes the work to Mrs. Drake. The ascription is confirmed by a note in the British Museum copy “By Mrs. Drake.” However, since no relation between the Essay and any of the French pamphlets has been established, the work is still to be found listed among the writings of Mary Astell.

Given the disrespect with which women were held in the seventeenth century, Astell preferred to remain obscure. Her works were published anonymously. Ballard notes that “Notwithstanding her great care to conceal herself, her name was soon discovered and made known to several learned persons.”⁴ Her work was generally respected by most scholars. In his preface to the Letters, Norris comments:

… so great and noble is the subject, and so admirable both your thoughts and expressions upon it; such choiceness of matter, such weight of sense, such art and order of contrivance, such clearness and strength of reasoning, such beauty of language, such address of stile.

Norris shared the opinion of many other theologians and philosophers that

… the learned authoress hath with great dexterity and success retorted Mr. Locke's metaphysical artillery against himself, confuted his Whimsical Idea of Thinking matter, and given him a genteel foil.⁵

Astell was usually referred to as the “Philosophical Lady.” But in spite of her philosophical reputation, her suggestion for a woman's college made her the subject of the leading satirists of the day.

Astell's reputation in philosophy did not survive the particular metaphysical and religious controversies of the seventeenth century. Historically, she has been recognized for her educational and feminist theory. The first reference to her work is found in John Evelyn's Numismata, 1697. A subsequent biographical reference appears in one of the supplemental volumes to Bayle's Historical Dictionary. The 1738 reference appears in a note to a discussion of John Norris. Given Ballard's difficulty in obtaining material for his biography of 1752, it is reasonable to conclude that Astell's reputation had died out. Although Ballard found a widespread lack of interest in his Memoirs, his text did revive some interest in the writings of women. By 1766 Mary Astell's name appeared regularly in biographies that were devoted to the works of women. Her reputation continued to grow as the feminist movement developed in the nineteenth century.

III. RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY AND WOMEN

1. CONDITION OF WOMEN

According to Smith, “it may not be entirely unfair to lay claim to Mary Astell, with Ballard, as the first defender of ‘the rights and privileges of her sex.’”⁶ Although she fully supported the New Testament and defended the Christian religion, she argued for the conn of Ciaitical and educational rights of women. In the Christian Religion she complains,

… the sphere alloted to us women, who are subjects, allows us no room to serve our country either with our Council or our lives. We have no authority to Preach vertue or to Punish vice, as we have not the guilt of Establishing Iniquity by Law, neither can we execute Judgment and Justice.⁷

Astell attributes this oppressive condition to male arrogance and pride. In order to combat oppression and to be true Christians, women need to be educated and instructed in proper methods of reasoning. A Christian woman, she says,

… must not be a Child in Understanding; she must serve GOD with Understanding as well as with Affection.⁸

Contrary to the popular opinion that women should not question religious propositions, Astell asserts:

If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain.⁹

She points out that she is a Christian and member of the Church of England not because of custom or conformity to her parents' ideology, but because she has examined the doctrines of Christianity. Astell urges women to avoid being overly concerned with matters relating to the body. The good of the mind, she contends, is

infinitly preferable to the good of the body; Spiritual Advantages to Temporal; and Temporal are to be valued among themselves in proportion as they contribute to Spiritual and Eternal.¹⁰

Astell shared Lady Mary's opinion that in no part of the world were women treated with so much contempt as in England. In the seventeenth century schools for women were limited in number and the curriculum confined to music, dancing, embroidery and singing. Women were encouraged to exhibit obedience to authority, to keep silent in church and to study only the art of household management. The tradition of denying educational opportunities to women and of stifling their intelligence prompted Mary Astell to write A Serious Proposal To The Ladies. In the first part of this work Astell argues that women are just as capable of education as men. Her proposal was to erect a monastery, a religious retirement for women. “For here,” says Astell, “those who are sick of the vanity of the world and its impertinencies, may find more substantial and satisfying entertainments and need not be confin'd to what they justly loath.” Astell's proposed school would have given women a curriculum similar to that offered to men, viz., the study of science, philosophy, religion and languages. She points out that one great end of this institution would be “to influence the rest of the Sex, that Women may no longer pass for those little useless and impertinent animals,” to

expel that cloud of ignorance which custom has involv'd us in, to furnish our minds with a stock of solid and useful knowledge.¹¹

Astell complains that most women quit the substance for the shadow, reality for appearance, and embrace those things which if understood they should hate. They become less than human simply because they desire to be admired by men. According to Astell, women should seek virtue and seek the admiration of God rather than that of humans.

2. WOMEN, EPISTEMOLOGY AND REASON

The second part of the Serious Proposal addresses the philosophical methodology necessary for achieving intellectual goals. Astell employs Platonic and Cartesian theory in addition to Locke's view of simple ideas and judgment. She contends that the most noble pleasure is the search for truth. The method of seeking truth is Cartesian:

not to judge of anything which we don't Apprehend; to suspend our assent till we see just Cause to gie it, and to determine nothing till the Strength and Clearness of the Evidence oblige us to it. To withdraw our selves as much as may be from Corporeal things, that pure Reason may be heard the better; to make use of our Senses for which they are designed and fitted, the preservation of the body, but not to depend on their Testimony in our Enquiries after Truth.¹²

According to Astell, all truth is “Antient, as being from Eternity in the Divine Ideas” and is only new with respect to our discoveries.¹³ Athough she was greatly influenced by Locke, she nonetheless argued for the existence of innate ideas as well as the equal capacity of men and women to understand such ideas. Like Descartes and Locke, she argues that intuition is the best source of her knowledge. She finds that the difference in reasoning ability between one person and another lies in the accumulation or the number of simple ideas and the disposition of such ideas in terms of order. Among the rules Astell suggests that women follow in the search for knowledge is to begin with simple ideas and simple objects and to ascend by degrees to knowledge of more complex things. Like Locke, she also insists that we judge no further than we perceive and not accept anything as true which is not evidently known to be so.¹⁴ In some cases it is proper to be content with probability rather than certainty. She contends that ideas may be considered wrong or false when they have no conformity to the real nature of things. Properly speaking, it is not the idea but the judgment that is false. Astell does not bother to address arguments concerning the epistemological or ontological status of ideas. She tells us simply that by the term ‘idea’ “we sometimes understand in general all that which is the immediate Object of the Mind, whatever it Perceives; and in this large Sense it may take in all thought, all that we are any ways capable of Discerning.”¹⁵ She holds a representative theory of knowledge in which the term ‘idea’ is “more strictly taken for that which represents to the Mind some Object distinct from it, whether Clearly or Confusedly.”¹⁶

Astell cautions women to regulate the will and govern the passions. She contends that the true and proper pleasure of human nature consists in exercising dominion over the body and governing passion according to right reason. The principal cause of error is judgement prior to obtaining clear and distinct ideas: “The First and Principal thing therefore to be observed in all Operations of the Mind is, That we determine nothing about those things of which we have not a Clear Idea, and as Distinct as the Nature of the Subject will permit, for we cannot properly be said to Know any thing which does not Clearly and Evidently appear to us.”¹⁷ Astell accepts Descartes' definition of clarity and distinctness.¹⁸ Given this definition she argues that we have a clear, but not a distinct, idea of God and of our own souls. She agrees with Locke that not all truths are equally evident because of the limitations of the human mind.

3. MARRIAGE AND SUBJECTION OF WOMEN

Astell's proposal was intended to provide women with a viable option to marriage. In Some Reflections Upon Marriage she contends that if better care were taken than usual in women's education,

… marriage might recover the Dignity and Felicity of its original Institution; and Men be very happy in a married State.¹⁹

Marriage fails because most men do not seek the proper qualifications in a spouse. She points out that it makes no difference if a man marries for money or for the love of beauty. In either case, the man does not act according to reason, but is governed by irregular appetites. Women should not marry because they think that it is their duty, nor should they marry to please friends or to escape the hardships of life. A woman must distinguish between truth and appearance, between solid and apparent good. If she does so she

… has found out the Instability of all earthly Things, and won't any more be deceived by relying on them; can discern who are the Flatterers of her Fortune, and who the Admirers and Encouragers of her Vertue; accounting it no little Blessing to be rid of those Leeches, who hung upon her only for their own Advantage.²⁰

Men must choose qualities in a woman that relate to the soul and spiritual values. Astell appeals for as much equality in marriage as possible. She finds subjection to have no end or purpose other than to enhance the pride and vanity of those who have power. If all men are born free, how is it, she says,

… that all Women are born Slaves? As they must be, if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery?

According to Astell, men practice the type of arbitrary dominion in their families which they abhor and exclaim against in the state. If arbitrary power is an improper method of governing people it “ought not to be practis'd any where.”²¹

Astell construes the biblical curse on women as a prediction rather than a command from God. With regard to Paul's argument for women's subjection from the reason of things (1 Tim. 2:13), Astell retorts:

… it must be confess'd, that this (according to the vulgar Interpretation) is a very obscure Place, and I should be glad to see a Natural, and not a Forc'd Interpretation given of it by those who take it Literally: Whereas if it be taken allegorically, with respect to the Mystical Union between Christ and his Church … the Difficulties vanish. For the Earthly Adam's being form'd before Eve, seems as little to prove her Natural Subjection to him, as the living Creatures, Fishes, Birds, Beasts being form'd before them both, proves that Mankind must be subject to these Animals.²²

She goes on to point out that female prophets and strong women are often mentioned and admired in scripture.

IV. EPISTEMOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

1. REASON AND REVELATION

In The Christian Religion, Astell presents versions of the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. She argues that since God is the most perfect being it would be contradictory to assume that He does not exist. Self-existence, she contends, “is such a Perfection as necessarily includes all other Perfections.”²³ She goes on to address questions concerning the mysteries of Christianity. Astell agrees with those who claim that the Bible contains many mysteries, but concludes that the Christian religion is very “far from being Dark and affectedly Mysterious; its revelations are as clear and as plain as the sublimity of the matter will admit.”²⁴ She points out that no one would suggest that mathematics is an obscure and mysterious science, yet some of its theorems appear as abstruse and mysterious as some doctrines in the Gospel. According to Astell, the reasonableness of Christianity consists in two “great truths,” (1) that there is not anything so reasonable as to believe all that God has revealed and to practice his commandments, (2) that God has given such proofs and evidences as are sufficient to satisfy any reasonable person that the Christian religion is a divine revelation.²⁵

2. WHETHER MATTER CAN THINK

Although Astell seems to think that Locke aligned himself with the Socinians, she prefers not to accuse him of this, but rather, to refute his claims that appear to support Socinianism. She criticizes his lack of interest in supporting the doctrine of the Trinity, a truth, she says, “which is absolutely requir'd to be believed to make any one a Christian.”²⁶ Locke's claim that God could give matter the power of thinking was subject to ridicule by many seventeenth-century theologians and philosophers. A good deal of the Christian Religion is devoted to showing that Locke's claim involves logical inconsistencies.

Astell claims that given the incongruity between thought and extension, it is evident that body cannot think. The ideas of thought and extension, she argues, are two completely different ideas and have different properties and affections. They may be considered without any relation to, or dependence, on each other. To be distinct from a thing, she says,

… is all one as not to be this Thing, so that since Thought and Extension are Distinct and Different in their own Natures, as we have seen, 'tis evident that a Thinking Being can't be Extended, and that an Extended Being does not, cannot Think any more than a Circle can have the Properties of a Triangle, or a Triangle those of a Circle.²⁷

According to Astell, there cannot be anything in a being that is not contained in the idea of this being. Since thought is not contained in the idea of body, she concludes that matter cannot think.

Astell cites certain passages from Locke's Essay and his letters to Bishop Stillingfleet as being inconsistent with his contention that it is not impossible for God to give parcels of matter the power of thinking. “This Judicious Writer,” she says, “tells us ‘That in some of our Ideas there are certain Relations, Habitudes, and Connexions so visibly included in the nature of the Ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them, by any power whatsoever.” She takes Locke's example of a triangle as analogous to the case of thinking matter. According to Locke, the idea of a triangle necessarily includes an equality of its angles to two right ones. Astell asserts:

But now shou'd I with weak Reason and Strong Imagination affirm, That God may give to this Triangle the Property of including no Space, or of being equal to a Square; say, that He may according to the good Pleasure of His Omnipotency, give it a speaking, a walking, or a dancing Faculty, and make it able to Eat and Drink; shou'd I tell our Ingenious Author That to deny God's Power in this case, only because he can't Conceive the manner how, is no less than an Insolent Absurdity; and a limiting the Power of the Omnipotent Creator.²⁸

She concludes that to say that a square is a triangle, or that an extended Substance is a Thinking substance, is as contradictory as to say that motion is rest.

If Locke had considered the essence of body to be extension and the essence of mind to be thought, Astell's criticisms would have been valid. However, Locke regards thinking and extension as modes of substance and not their defining properties. Given Locke's view, matter and thought are not incompatible. Astell apparently holds a Cartesian view of thought and extension as defining properties or the essence of substance. On that view, which Astell does not question, the two are incompatible.

3. WHETHER GOD IS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF PAIN AND PLEASURE

Astell tends to be critical of any philosophy such as Locke's that does not recognize the Ideal. Although she praises Norris, her Letters are primarily critical and address the specific issue of efficient causality. Astell agrees with Norris that God is the only efficient cause of all our sensations and that God is the sole object of our love. However, she contends that unacceptable conclusions follow from his principles. If God is the object of love because He is the only efficient cause of our pleasure, as Norris contends, it will follow, she says,

… either that the being the Cause of our Pleasure is not the true and proper Reason why that Cause should be the Object of our Love, (for the Author of our Pain has as good a Title to our Love as the Author of our Pleasure;) or else, if nothing be the Object of our Love but what does us Good, then something else does us Good, besides what causes Pleasure.²⁹

Norris replies that pain is an effect of God, “yet it is not after the same manner the Effect of God as Pleasure is. Pleasure is the natural, genuine and direct Effect of God, but Pain comes from him only indirectly and by Accident.” According to Norris, God wills our pleasure as we are “Creatures, and our Pain only as we are Sinners.”³⁰ Astell considers this reply a resolution to the difficulty. She goes on to explain her philosophy of sensation to Norris. When the understanding and will deviates from the order and perfection of their nature and are “destitute of their proper good,” mental pain results.

According to Astell, mental pain is the only proper evil of a person,

… both because the Mind being the Man, nothing is truly and properly his Good or Evil, but as it respects his Mind; as also because so long as he is under it, ‘tis impossible for him to enjoy any degree of real Happiness.’

God is not regarded as the author of this pain. It is due to human folly. Astell goes on to distinguish the inferior part of the soul from the superior part, explaining that disagreeable modifications (pain) exist in the inferior part, “that which is exercis'd about objects of sense” and not in the superior part, “the Understanding and Will.”³¹ Given this distinction, pain is not considered to be a real evil to that which is properly the person.

V. CONCLUSIONS

Since Astell was unable to arouse a wide enough interest in her proposal for a woman's college, she attempted to establish a charity school for girls in Chelsea. The school was established in 1729 by Lady Catherine Jones and other friends. Astell's ultimate educational goal was to train women to have logical grounds for religious belief and practice. She was critical of custom only insofar as it stood in the way of this goal.

As Smith points out, it is difficult to determine Astell's influence on the next generation, since the influence was not exactly that of one individual, but of the developing ideology of an age. Astell most certainly contributed to the goal of women's intellectual and economic independence. Her philosophical works are an important part of seventeenth-century debate.

Notes

1. George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (printed by W. Jackson), 1752.

2. Florence M. Smith, Mary Astell (New York: Columbia University Press), 1916.

3. Smith, p. 164.

4. Ballard, p. 447.

5. Ibid., p. 456

6. Smith, p. 164.

7. Ibid.

8. Mary Astell, The Christian Religion As Profess'd by a Daughter Of The Church of England (London), 1705, p. 6.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., p. 100.

11. Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest (London: Fourth Edition), 1694, p. 17.

12. Ibid., p. 95.

13. Ibid., p. 71.

14. Ibid., p. 107.

15. Ibid., p. 18.

16. Ibid., p. 98.

17. Ibid., p. 102.

18. That may be said to be “Clear which is Present and Manifest to an attentive Mind; so as we say we see Objects Clearly, when being present to our Eyes they sufficiently Act on 'em, and our Eyes are dispos'd to regard 'em. And that Distinct, which is so Clear, Particular, and Different from all other things, that it contains not any thing in it self which appears not manifestly to him who considers it as ought” (Part I, par. 45).

19. Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage (London: Fourth Edition), 1700, p. 15.

20. Ibid., p. 24.

21. Ibid., p. 107.

22. Ibid., pp. 110-111.

23. Astell, The Christian Religion, p. 8.

24. Ibid., p. 49.

25. Ibid., p. 65.

26. Ibid., p. 75.

27. Ibid., p. 250.

28. Ibid., pp. 253-255.

29. Mary Astell, Letters Concerning the Love of God (London: Norris), 1695, p. 4.

30. Ibid., p. 12.

31. Ibid., p. 30.