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ABSTRACT
This paper aims to explore the reflections on gender equality expressed in one of the most comprehensive and radical clandestine manuscripts, Theophrastus redivivus, dated 1659. First, I will try to reconstruct the theory of the state of nature and natural law that the anonymous author sets against the civil state, considered to constitute a break with original liberty and equality. Then, I will show that the intellectual protest against the injustice provoked by this break goes as far as to invoke the abolition of laws and the return to natural equality. In this context, the author notes that the institution of legal marriages was unfair to women and that sexual desire that should be free and equal for both sexes was confined within very narrow limits for women. Theophrastus redivivus bases equality on reason alone and on a materialistic conception of the law of nature. Therefore, I will first compare the text to Hobbes and then contrast it with Renaissance and early modern feminist writers, such as Fonte, Tarabotti, Suchon, Gournay, and De la Barre. This clandestine manuscript is shown to be the first to assert the right to sexual satisfaction, free and equal for both genders, as a pillar of an independent personhood.
Notes on contributor
Gianni Paganini is Full Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Piedmont (Vercelli, Italy) and fellow of the Research Centre of the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome, Italy). His main areas of expertise are Early Modern Philosophy and Enlightenment. His books include: a) critical editions (the first atheist clandestine manuscript : Theophrastus redivivus (1659), co-edited with Guido Canziani (2 vols., Florence 1981-2); b) monographs (e.g., Skepsis. Le Débat des modernes sur le scepticisme, Paris, Vrin, 2008, awarded by the Académie Française); c) edited volumes (the latest: Clandestine Philosophy, co-edited with M.C. Jacob and J.C. Laursen, Los Angeles-Toronto, 2020). In 2010 he received the prize for his work in history of philosophy from the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome). His current research regards 17th century philosophy (Gassendi, Hobbes, and clandestine philosophy) and the Enlightenment (Emilie Du Châtelet, Hume, and Diderot).
Notes
1 Anonymous, Theophrastus redivivus (hereafter TR). The text exists in four manuscript copies (none of which is an autograph) and has an internal dating of 1659, which is derived from the author's calculation of the age of the world, already made by Joseph Justus Scaliger: “ad nostra usque tempora 1659” “until our times” (TR, 317). For this date and the affinity with the French context see ibid., Introduction, liii–lxxiii. For an in-depth study of this work and bibliography, see Paganini, “The First Philosophical Atheistic Treatise”. For the history of clandestine philosophy, see Paganini, “Haupttendenzen”; Paganini, Les Philosophies Clandestines.
2 Paganini, “Pietro Giannone”.
3 Despite all these obvious traits, it is surprising that TR has not taken its proper place in the history of philosophical atheism, except for in Schröder, Ursprünge, 404–8; Mori, L’ateismo dei moderni, 18.
4 Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment.
5 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 11. The category itself has been amply debated by recent historiography. See Ducheyne, Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment; Hessayon and Finnegan, Varieties of Radicalism; Grunert, Concepts of (Radical) Enlightenment.
6 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 481.
7 See Paganini, “Wie aus Gesetzgebern Betrüger werden”.
8 For a discussion of this historical category in connection to the philosophical manuscripts, cf. Paganini, “Aux origines des Lumières”.
9 For more details, see Paganini, “Hobbes and French Libertine Discourse”.
10 TR, 841–8.
11 Ibid., 11–23.
12 Ibid., 901–2.
13 Ibid., 268–302.
14 For a comparison, see Paganini, “How Far Can a Radical Philosopher Go”, and the critical literature mentioned therein. The ambiguities of Hobbes' position concerning gender equality are discussed at length in Hirschmann and Wright, Feminist Interpretations; see also Hirschmann, Gender, 29–78.
15 TR, 891–6.
16 See TR, esp. Tract. VI, Cap. II (TR 805–39):
In which it is stated that men are no different from other animals except by species, nor superior for their qualities and faculties, nor more powerful for their reason, and have no right over them; on the contrary, there is equality and sharing among them.
17 Ibid., 785.
18 Ibid., 810–14.
19 See TR, esp. Tract. VI, Cap. III. Title (TR 840–80):
In which it is stated that there is by nature equality and communion among all living beings and that men abolished them with their laws, crafts, and sciences. By the same token men deprived themselves of natural liberty. They did all that in order to rise above the animals, but that does not hinder the fact that they must be brought back to the same condition of animals, from which they are not at all different.
20 Ibid., 866–80.
21 Ibid., 863; cf. 881.
22 Ibid., 841–8.
23 Ibid., 854–5.
24 Ibid., 850.
25 Ibid., 840.
26 Hobbes, De Cive, I, vii, 94. I have assumed here as a term of reference with Hobbes the text of De Cive, because it was published in Latin (and not in English like Leviathan) before the composition of TR.
27 TR, 786.
28 Ibid. III, xxvi, 118: “Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris”.
29 Ibid., 787.
30 Ibid., 854.
31 Hobbes, De Cive, 73.
32 Even if the author of TR could not read English, it is possible that he saw the title page of Leviathan (1651), in which the Commonwealth is depicted as a conflation of the multitude of people that compose it, culminating in the looming face of the sovereign, who is provided with the attributes of both powers, civil and ecclesiastical. It is well known that Hobbes did not think this conflation to be either “monstrous” or negative. On the contrary, he conceived absolute sovereignty to be the necessary condition of a peaceful society, resulting from the transfer of rights and powers of each individual. The picture, however, could be interpreted in the same way as TR, as happened in the long tradition of “tyrannical” readings of Leviathan. See Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes. Der Leviathan. Hobbes’ books and ideas circulated widely in the circles of the so-called libertins érudits with whom the philosopher had tight connections. See Skinner, “Hobbes and His Disciples”; Paganini, “Hobbes and French Libertine Discourse”.
33 TR, 857–8.
34 Ibid., 863.
35 It is only after presenting the natural state, natural right and the natural law on the basis of pure reason (De Cive, I-III, 89–121) that Hobbes explains that the law of nature can also be considered a divine law (ibid., IV, 77–84).
36 TR, 792–5.
37 Ibid., 796–800.
38 Ibid., 891–2.
39 See Laursen, “Cynicism”, 53–4, which quotes from TR, 892–3, 891–2.
40 TR, 892.
41 Ibid.
42 TR, 893.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 894.
45 Ibid., 895–6.
46 Laursen, “Cynicism”. See also Paganini, Les philosophies, 21.
47 TR, 898.
48 Laursen, “Cynicism”, 56.
49 TR 890:
But they will say: if we neglect public affairs and occupations and dedicate ourselves to private life [otium], who will govern the state? This is not the voice of the wise, nor is it in accordance with the law of nature, according to which the wise must look only to himself. What does it matter to the wise whether the affairs of the people are managed well or badly, whose greatest concern is devoting themselves to errors and foolishness, things completely opposed to nature? What does it matter if the state succumbs defeated by the most powerful or resists victorious? In both cases the sage will have unbearable masters; in both cases he will be hostile to the people, from which he must keep away; he will not follow either the winners’ party or the losers’ party; both are repugnant to nature, to which only the wise is subjected.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 863.
52 Ibid., 901.
53 Ibid., 902.
54 Ibid., 902–13.
55 Laursen, “The Human Right to Sexual Satisfaction”.
56 A couple of decades after TR, Denis Veiras published in London (1657) the first part of The History of Sevarites, in which it is written that, “for the preservation and happy being of every living Creature, and the propagation of its Species”, nature “appointed that every Male should be united to a Female” and that is ordered also by “the Eternal Laws of God in Nature” (41). With the re-evaluation of pleasure, however, all this results in polygyny and not in polyandry; what is worse, the author explains that, for the benefit of travelers, in every city “a number of women Slaves [are] appointed for their use” (42). I thank Professor Laursen for this information.
57 Malcolm, “Hobbes and Sexual Desire”, 77.
58 Hobbes, De Cive XIV, ix, 209–10. Hobbes adopts, however, the traditional manner of discussing marriage “in terms of men's quasi-ownership of women”, as Malcolm put it (Malcolm, “Hobbes and Sexual Desire”, 87). For a strong affirmation of “community and equality” in the state of nature, according to TR, 795 (quoting Diogenes: “omnia in omnibus et per omnia esse dicit”); ibid. 840: “aequalitatem haud dubie et communitatem inter illos [animantes] esse eam [naturam] iussisse manifestum est”.
59 See Malcolm, “Hobbes and Sexual Desire”, 89-90.
60 For further details on Hobbes' ambiguous position, see Paganini, “How Far Can a Radical Philosopher Go”.
61 See Malcolm, “Hobbes and Sexual Desire”, 87–88.
62 TR, 892.
63 Malcom, “Hobbes and Sexual Desire”, 100–1. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, ii, 572, 226.
64 Although not available in French or Latin in the 1650s, Leviathan was already popular in France by that time (see Skinner, “Hobbes and His Disciples”).
65 TR, 911–26.
66 Broad and Greene, A History, 6; cf. ibid., 291.
67 Ibid., 161. On these Italian feminist writers (Arcangela Tarabotti, Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella), see ibid., 115–24.
68 On Tarabotti, see the article by Ebbersmeyer in this issue.
69 Fonte, Worth of Women, quoted by Broad and Greene, A History, 121.
70 Ibid., 117.
71 Remarking the “eclectic method” used by Suchon, O’Neill (“The Equality”, 460) comments: “she also makes use of natural law and natural rights that are grounded not in human nature or reason, but in divine decrees”.
72 Ibid.
73 Broad and Green, A History, 137.
74 O’Neill, “The Equality”, 450–1.
75 See Broad and Green, A History, 134–7. Cf. 134: “Gournay, although she remained single, does not explicitly criticize marriage”. “Gournay insists on women's spiritual equality with men, but she does not make any clear demand for social change.”
76 For a survey of Poulain de la Barre’s doctrines, see O’Neill, “The Equality”, 453–9; Clarke, The Equality, 36–48.
77 Montaigne, Essais, III, xiii, 1072. This formula is taken up again by some sceptical and libertine French authors such as Charron and La Mothe Le Vayer. For the relations between the French sceptics and Hobbes' political philosophy, see Paganini, “Hobbes and the French Skeptics”.
78 Clarke, The Equality of Sexes, 53.
79 I would like to thank the two anonymous referees: their remarks and suggestions helped me to improve and refine the contents of this article.