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Gabrielle Suchon’s ‘Neutralist’
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This chapter examines French thinker Gabrielle Suchon’s concept of ‘the neutralist’, a person who commits herself entirely to a life of celibacy and shuns the institutional commitments of marriage and the convent. It is argued that through this concept Suchon (1632–1703) makes a decisive step towards the Kantian notion of autonomy. According to Suchon, the neutralist’s freedom is very different from that of the libertine who simply follows her inclinations at her will and pleasure. The neutralist is free in the sense that she is at liberty to follow her inner rational law of nature, rather than the dictates of external institutions. To follow this internal law requires not only self-mastery—control over the wayward passions, as Descartes had suggested—but also something like autonomy in Kant’s sense of determining for oneself the rules and principles by which one will act.
Title: Gabrielle Suchon’s ‘Neutralist’
Description:
This chapter examines French thinker Gabrielle Suchon’s concept of ‘the neutralist’, a person who commits herself entirely to a life of celibacy and shuns the institutional commitments of marriage and the convent.
It is argued that through this concept Suchon (1632–1703) makes a decisive step towards the Kantian notion of autonomy.
According to Suchon, the neutralist’s freedom is very different from that of the libertine who simply follows her inclinations at her will and pleasure.
The neutralist is free in the sense that she is at liberty to follow her inner rational law of nature, rather than the dictates of external institutions.
To follow this internal law requires not only self-mastery—control over the wayward passions, as Descartes had suggested—but also something like autonomy in Kant’s sense of determining for oneself the rules and principles by which one will act.
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