The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France

Renaissance Quarterly, Fall, 2004 by Edith J. Benkov

John J. Conley. The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France.

Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002. xi 222 pp. index. bibl. $39.95. ISBN: 0-8014-4020-3.

The canon of seventeenth-century philosophy has only recently been expanded to include women's voices. John Conley points out that this expansion privileges those women, such as Elizabeth of Bohemia or Christina of Sweden, who were most closely associated with male philosophers recognized by the university. Indeed, it is the university that Conley cites as the established locus for serious philosophical discussion. Thus, he notes, the interest shown in Anna Maria van Schurman, the first woman admitted to university lectures, reflects this bias. Conley's investigation repositions the study of women philosophers by shifting the focus of philosophical inquiry away from "the male bastion of the early modern university" to the world of the salon.

Conley treats five writers, Madame de Sable, Madame Deshoulieres, Madame de la Sabliere, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, and Madame de Maintenon, whose works have been marginalized as "decorative rather than substantive enterprises" (159). The moral philosophy of the salonnieres, Conley maintains, suffers from neglect for a number of reasons. Beyond the fact that the salon itself is located outside the arena of the academy, the salonnieres wrote in genres other than that of the philosophical treatise. They are more closely associated with the moralistes, and the religious nature of some of their writings places them outside secular philosophy. Moreover, Conley stresses that the writings of these women were often overshadowed because of their relationships with important men: for example, Sable is known as the editor of La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Maintenon was Louis XIV's wife, and Mademoiselle de La Valliere was his mistress. Finally, Conley underlines the existence of a long-standing misogynist tradition that ridiculed the savantes of the salons. As a focal point for his study, Conley concentrates on the virtue theory of each author and, more importantly, the "suspicion of virtue" evidenced in his or her writings. Conley analyzes how the philosophical category of virtue is deconstructed by these authors, who, like their contemporary male counterparts, treat virtue as problematic.

Madame de Sable led a Jansenist salon in her apartment at Port-Royal. Nonetheless, she espoused a moderate form of Jansenism and was one of the principle negotiators in the Jansenist crisis of the 1660s. Through her Maximes, Sable articulated a critique of the vices of the aristocratic milieu. Virtue here becomes suspect as it may be frequently feigned or results from pride, rather than humility. Further, she distinguishes between an aristocracy stemming from birth and a true aristocracy, the spiritual possessors of true virtue. Unlike the overarching pessimism of La Rochefoucauld, Sable's tempered views offer an alternative that allows for a true virtue, disconnected from pride.

For Conley, the originality of the works of Madame Deshoulieres resides in her materialist revision of the virtue theory. The wide scope of genres--lyric poems, idylls, "reflexions" modeled on maxims--all evidence her adherence to a strict naturalist creed. While building on Lucretius's De rerum natura and Epicurean metaphysics, she locates the virtue of humility and the vice of pride in the realm of the physical environment: the latter constitutes human arrogance in destroying nature while the former becomes a new cardinal virtue based on reverence for that environment.

In her Christian Maxims and Christian Thoughts, Madame de la Sabliere follows in the Augustinian tradition of moral philosophy. She reduces justice, courage, and prudence to manifestations of human pride. Through her subordination of moral virtues to theological ones, grounding her ethics in the redemptive grace of Christ, Sabliere stresses the need to retire from society, site of moral corruption.

Mademoiselle de LaValliere's Reflections on the Grace of God, a meditation on God's compassion, examines the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity in contrast to the illusory moral virtues, most particularly prudence. The female-voice of the text speaks through repentant biblical women, including Mary Magdalene. Although the text is somewhat problematic in that it is founded on a subjective spiritual experience and replete with mystical rhetoric, it does develop a significant moral philosophy grounded in the theological virtues. La Valliere differs from Sabliere in that she presents a more temperate form of Augustianism. Moreover, her discussion of virtue and vice is informed by a gendered story of sin and redemption.

As founder of the Saint-Cyr academy for women, Madame de Maintenon formulated an educational theory that encompassed a moral philosophy, grounded in pragmatism, in which virtue played a central role. Despite some important weaknesses, including limiting women's education to one befitting their social role, and its reduction of moral virtues to a focus on politeness that facilitates movement with strictly constructed social hierarchies, Maintenon's gender and class-based moral philosophy is unique. Her focus on gender elevates the virtues of piety and temperance, placing them in the center of her ethical system.