The Gender of the Cartesian Mind, Body, and Mind-Body Union

Abstract

The chapter examines what we can know about gender from the perspective of the three primary notions introduced by Descartes in his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. The first section discusses how the primitive notion of the mind strengthens the idea that “the mind has no sex”, an idea that was further developed by the Cartesian and early feminist François Poulain de la Barre. The next section focuses on the notion of the body and analyses what Descartes has to say about gender in his anatomical writings. The little known posthumously published notes Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium receive particular attention. Here Descartes assumes a difference between the native intelligence of men and women, which seems to contradict his claim that reason is equal in all humans, but it is argued that Descartes’ views are in fact reconcilable when we distinguish those modes of thought that depend on the mind alone from those that depend on the body. The final section examines what we can know about gender through the notion of the mind-body union. It is argued that when conceived as part of the union, the experience of gender is a hybrid of mind and body, which is irreducible to either the non-gendered mind or the body and its anatomical features. It is pointed out that it is particularly the irreducibility of the three primitive notions which contributes to the complexity of our understanding of what it is to be a gendered being.