Our Bodies, Our Selves: Problems of Embodiment in Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Mary Astell

FAIN: FEL-262659-19

Colin William Chamberlain
Temple University (Philadelphia, PA 19122-6003)

Preparation of three journal articles for publication on the notion of body and self in the works of three 17th century women philosophers: Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Anne Conway (1631-1679), and Mary Astell (1666–1731).

The human body is puzzling, because it does not fit comfortably on either side of the various dualisms that often structure our thought. The body can seem to be both psychological and physical, both person and thing, both subject and object, both inner and outer. This project examines three early modern female philosophers’ attempts to resist these dualisms and to do justice to the problems of embodiment. The philosophical accounts examined are: Margaret Cavendish’s (1623-1673) account of the way a person’s materiality shapes her perspective on the world, Anne Conway’s (1631-1679) phenomenological account of pain and suffering, and Mary Astell’s (1666–1731) ambivalent account of the embodied self.