Malebranche, Taste, and Sensibility: The Origins of Sensitive Taste and a Reconsideration of Cartesianism’s Feminist Potential

Hamerton, Katharine J.

doi:10.1353/jhi.0.0017

jhi

2008

DOI: 10.1353/jhi.0.0017

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Malebranche, Taste, and Sensibility: The Origins of Sensitive Taste and a Reconsideration of Cartesianism’s Feminist Potential

Katharine J. Hamerton¹

Abstract: This essay argues that Malebranche originated the model of sensitive taste in French thought, several decades before Du Bos. It examines the highly gendered, negative physiological model of taste and of the female mind which Malebranche developed within the Cartesian framework and as a witness to Parisian salon society in which women’s taste had great cultural influence, and strongly questions the common assumption that Cartesian substance dualism necessarily contained feminist potential. The essay argues for … Show more

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Cited by 3 publications

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The Papal Bull Unigenitus and the Forging of Enlightened Catholicism, 1713–1764

Burson

2014

History Compass

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This article discusses the relationship between the papal Bull Unigenitus (1713) and the Catholic Enlightenment. The circumstances under which this controversial bull was received in the 18th century in Europe, and particularly in France, partially occasioned the construction of factions in many dynastic states-factions either pro-Unigenitus or pro-Augustinian (including but not limited to Jansenists). These factions, in turn, tailored their particular varieties of Catholic Enlightenment in the process of elaborating their respective positions concerning Unigenitus. This article synthesizes general trends in the present scholarship in order to underscore the importance of Unigenitus to the response of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment. Because the fractures introduced into Catholic Europe by the bull were most acute during the early 18th century in France and the most formative and contentious factionalism is often presumed to have occurred before the suppression of the bull's most stalwart defenders-the Jesuits-between 1759 and 1773, this article focuses chiefly on the formative years of Catholic Enlightenment factionalism in the middle third of the 18th century before the suppression of the Jesuits.

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The Papal Bull Unigenitus and the Forging of Enlightened Catholicism, 1713–1764

Burson

2014

History Compass

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Nicolas Malebranche and the Physiocrats' Corporeal Critique of Commerce in 1760s France

Bryan¹

2022

French Historical Studies

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In the eighteenth century the burgeoning field of political economy incorporated an array of economic, social, moral, and historical themes. This article argues that the Physiocrats' application of Nicolas Malebranche's work reveals a critical corporeal component of political economy. The Physiocrats and Malebranche both feared the corrosive effects on the human body of unmitigated commerce and overconsumption. François Quesnay and his Physiocratic acolytes reproduced and expanded on Malebranche's argument that the cognitive faculty of the imagination could stymie epistemological processes and thus the ability to perceive what the Physiocrats understood to be the natural foundations of political economy. The expanse of Atlantic trade, the subsequent “consumer revolution,” and the growth of new social practices transformed French life and brought individual bodies into novel forms of contact. In reaction, the Physiocrats and political economists prioritized relationships between physical bodies and consumer goods. Au XVIIIe siècle, le domaine naissant de l’économie politique a incorporé un éventail de thèmes économiques, sociaux, moraux et historiques. Cet article fera valoir que l'application par les physiocrates de l’œuvre de Nicolas Malebranche révèle une dimension corporelle de l’économie politique qui s'avère essentielle. Les physiocrates et Malebranche craignaient les effets corrosifs sur le corps humain du commerce et de la surconsommation. Quesnay et ses acolytes physiocratiques ont reproduit et élargi l'argument de Malebranche selon lequel la faculté cognitive de l'imagination pouvait entraver les processus épistémologiques et donc la capacité de percevoir ce que les physiocrates considéraient comme les fondements naturels de l’économie politique. L’étendue du commerce atlantique, la « révolution des consommateurs » qui s'en est suivie et la croissance de nouvelles pratiques sociales ont transformé la vie des Français et facilité de nouvelles formes de contact corporel. En réponse, les physiocrates et les économistes politiques ont donné la priorité aux relations entre les corps physiques et les biens de consommation.

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Fashion on the Brain

Hamerton¹

2022

French Historical Studies

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This article explores Nicolas Malebranche's approach to fashion: an inescapable postlapsarian consequence of God's sociable design of the human mind and body as manifested in the imagination. A problematic side effect of the general laws established by God governing the soul-body relationship, fashion wreaked havoc on individuals' thinking and potential for redemption yet pointed to a larger providential plan for social benefit. These ideas led Malebranche to a distinctive nonpolitical approach to fashion—both “Enlightenment project” and theodicy—in which he sought to promote, toward human liberation and salvation, an enlightened understanding of the processes that created fashion and a charitable approach to managing it. Ultimately, however, his brain-based analysis ended up limiting individual freedoms (imaginative, cognitive, and behavioral), notably for those endowed with certain kinds of minds, in ways that had long-lasting effect. It also helped lay foundations for the Enlightenment's conflicted views about fashion as individual folly and beneficial social phenomenon. Cet article montre que, pour Nicolas Malebranche, la mode constitua une conséquence inévitable de la Chute et du dessin sociable et providentiel de l'esprit et du corps, manifesté dans l'imagination. Effet secondaire et problématique des lois générales établies par Dieu pour gouverner les relations entre l'esprit et le corps, la mode entrave la réflexion et l'accès au salut tout en dessinant un plan providentiel, au bénéfice de tous. A la fois projet des Lumières et théodicée, cette approche apolitique s'efforce, dans une visée mêlant libération, salut et charité, de saisir les processus qui créent la mode afin de s'en accommoder. Parce qu'elle met l'accent sur le cerveau, cette approche tend pourtant à restreindre, de manière durable, les libertés individuelles (imagination, cognition, comportement), surtout pour certains types d'esprit. Et elle montre comment, pour les Lumières, la mode peut être à la fois une folie individuelle et un phénomène à multiples vertus sociales.

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Malebranche, Taste, and Sensibility: The Origins of Sensitive Taste and a Reconsideration of Cartesianism’s Feminist Potential

Cited by 3 publications

References 15 publications

The Papal Bull Unigenitus and the Forging of Enlightened Catholicism, 1713–1764

The Papal Bull Unigenitus and the Forging of Enlightened Catholicism, 1713–1764

Nicolas Malebranche and the Physiocrats' Corporeal Critique of Commerce in 1760s France

Fashion on the Brain

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