ABSTRACT
It has long been established that Cartesian philosophy contributed to late seventeenth-century vindications of gender equality, which in turn informed notions of equality in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment. Through an analysis of the different publics imagined by Aristotelian and Cartesian popularisers, the aim of this chapter is to draw attention to an unrecognised component of Cartesian egalitarianism, one that, albeit not explicitly concerned with the equality of men and women, implies a polity in which individuals of either sex are assumed to be equal. The Aristotelian Louis de Lesclache, in his fashionable engraved tables of philosophy, affirmed a hierarchical, finite public in which women figure only as consumers. In contrast, Cartesians posited an ever-expanding association of equal particuliers (or individuals), culminating in Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s levelling of the traditional res publica in De la pluralité des mondes (1686). Highly reminiscent of the provincial literary public he cultivated for the Mercure galant, the public of Cartesian philosophy is reconfigured by Fontenelle as a polity in which women were welcome to participate. Thus, Cartesian philosophy not only provided arguments for the equality of men and women; it also invented a public that posited the equality of individuals.
