Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:25:43.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Émilie Du Châtelet on Illusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

MARCY P. LASCANO
MARCY P. LASCANO*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In her Discourse on Happiness, Émilie du Châtelet argues susceptibility to illusion is one of the five ‘great machines of happiness,’ and that ‘we owe most of our pleasures to illusions’ (2009: 349). However, many who read the Discourse find this aspect of her view puzzling and in tension with her claims that we must always seek truth and obey reason. To understand better her claims in the Discourse on Happiness, this article explores Du Châtelet's discussions of illusions in her Foundations of Physics, On Liberty, and the Dissertation on the Nature and Propagation of Fire. I distinguish four types of illusions that Du Châtelet posits and clarify the ways in which these relate to her views on happiness and love in the Discourse and argue that she avoids deceptive or perpetual illusions of happiness through the use of the principle of sufficient reason.

Keywords

Émilie du Châteletillusionhappinessprinciple of sufficient reasonimagination
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 1 - 19
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am appreciative of the anonymous reviewers for this journal for the insightful comments and very helpful suggestions for improving this article. Earlier versions were presented as papers at ‘Émilie du Châtelet's Foundations of Physics: A Conference Celebrating the Complete English Translation’, at the University of Notre Dame, April 26–28, 2018, and ‘Tahoe Early Modern Workshop and Conference’, May 25–May 30, 2018. I thank the participants of both conferences for their helpful discussions. Finally, I am grateful to Tad Schmaltz for his encouragement and support of this work.

This article is the seventh in a special series of commissioned articles on women in the history of philosophy. The sixth article ‘Anne Conway as a Priority Monist: A Reply to Gordon-Roth’, by Emily Thomas, appeared in Volume 6, Issue 3, pp. 275–284.

References

Belkind, Ori. (2007) ‘Newton's Conceptual Arguments for Absolute Space’. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 3, 271–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bok, Sissela. (2010) Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Descartes, Rene. (1984) Meditations on First Philosophy. In Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, Murdoch, Dugald, and Kenny, Anthony (eds.), Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–62.Google Scholar
Detlefsen, Karen. (2014) ‘Émilie du Châtelet’. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/emilie-du-chatelet/.Google Scholar
Detlefsen, Karen. (2019) ‘Du Châtelet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural Philosophy’. In O'Neill, Eileen and Lascano, Marcy (eds.), Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women's Philosophical Thought (Dordrecht: Springer), 97–127.Google Scholar
Du Châtelet, Émilie. (1740) Institutions de Physique. Paris: Prault.Google Scholar
Du Châtelet, Émilie. (1796) ‘Réflexions sur le Bonheur.’ In Antoine Suard, Jean Baptiste and de Bourlet Vauxcelles, Simon-Jérôme (eds.), Opuscules Philosophiques et Littéraries, La plupart Posthumes ou inédites (Paris: De L'Imprimerie De Chevet), 1–40.Google Scholar
Du Châtelet, Émilie. (1989) ‘Sur la Liberté’. In Barber, W. H. (ed.), Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire. Vol. 14. Critical Edition of the Traité de métaphysique Appendix I (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation), 484–502.Google Scholar
Du Châtelet, Émilie. (2009) Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings. Edited by Zinsser, Judith P.. Translated by Bour, Isabelle and Zinsser, Judith P.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Châtelet, Émilie. (2017) ‘On Space’. In Foundations of Physics. Translated by Brading, Katherine. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/96f981_bccfdcebf5b14b5ea3853e276a9fb705.pdfGoogle Scholar
Garber, Daniel (1992). Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gorham, Geoffrey, and Edward Slowik, eds. (2012) ‘Absolute Space and Time’. Special issue. Intellectual History Review, 22.Google Scholar
Hagengruber, Ruth (2011) Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton. London: Springer.Google Scholar
Huggett, Nick, and Carl Hoefer. (2015) ‘Absolute and Relational Theories of Space and Motion’. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/spacetime-theories/.Google Scholar
Hume, David. (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature. Vol. 1. Edited by Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary J.. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hutton, Sarah. (2004) ‘Émilie Du Châtelet's Institutions de physique as a Document in the History of French Newtonianism’. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 35, 515–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutton, Sarah. (2011) ‘Between Newton and Leibniz: Émilie Du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke’. In Hagengruber, Ruth (ed.), Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton (London: Springer), 77–96.Google Scholar
Janiak, Andrew. (2008) Newton as Philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Mettrie, Julien Offray de. (1996) ‘Anti-Seneca or the Sovereign Good’. In Thomson, Ann (ed.), La Mettrie: Man and Machine and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 116–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (2000) Leibniz Clarke: Correspondence. Edited by Ariew, Roger. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Lin, Martin. (2016) ‘Leibniz on the Modal Status of Absolute Space and Time’. Nous, 50, 447–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Nidditch, John. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Malebranche, Nicolas. (1997) The Search after Truth: With Elucidations of the Search after Truth. Edited by Lennon, Thomas M. and Olscamp, Paul J.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mandeville, Bernard. (1988) The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. Vol. 1 Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/846.Google Scholar
Melamed, Yitzhak, and Lin, Martin. (2010) ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason’. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/sufficient-reason/.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de. (1987) ‘On the Power of the Imagination’. In Screech, M. A. (ed. and trans.), Michel De Montaigne: The Complete Essays (London: Penguin Books), 109–120.Google Scholar
Pascal, Blaise. (2006) Pensées. Project Gutenburg (accessed April 14, 2018). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm.Google Scholar
Sleigh, R.C. Jr. (1983) ‘Leibniz on the Two Great Principles of All Our Reasoning’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 8, 193–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, Barbara. (2006) ‘The Singularity of Mme Du Châtelet: An Analysis of the Discours sur le Bonheur’. In Zinsser, Judith P. and Hayes, Julie Candler (eds.), Emilie Du Châtelet: Rewriting Enlightenment Philosophy and Science (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation), 255–76.Google Scholar
Zinsser, Judith P. (2002). ‘Entrepreneur of the “Republic of Letters”: Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, and Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees’. French Historical Studies, 25, 596–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zinsser, Judith P. (2006) La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of the Marquise Du Châtelet. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Zinsser, Judith P. (2011) ‘Du Châtelet and the Rhetoric of Science’. In Hayden, Judy A. (ed.), The New Science and Women's Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 133–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar