Poulain de la Barre, Francois

François Poulain (or Poullain) de la Barre (b. 1648–d. 1723) was born in Paris to wealthy Catholic parents. He earned his bachelor’s degree in theology at Sorbonne in 1666, but left university to explore a secular career as a writer. He returned to theology and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1679, after which he served as a curate in Picardy, an area with a large Protestant population. Poulain underwent two major conversions during his lifetime: from the Scholasticism of Sorbonne to Cartesian philosophy in the 1660s and from Catholicism to Protestantism in the 1680s. The latter conversion made him resettle in Geneva, where he had a family and a teaching career. Poulain is best known for his three treatises on women and equality, On the Equality of the Two Sexes (1673), On the Education of Ladies (1674), and On the Excellence of Men (1675), but it is fair to say that all his writings were guided by some practical aim. He wanted to bring about equality between the sexes, but also to advocate a new Cartesian approach to philosophy, to give advice on language use, and to defend rational theology in the tense times of religious persecution and upheaval created by rivalling denominations of Christianity. Poulain’s thought was deeply influenced by Descartes’ methods of doubt and scientific reasoning, by his criticism of prejudice and Scholastic science, and by his distinction between mind and body and his mechanistic concept of body. Still, like many Cartesians, Poulain was an undogmatic follower of Descartes, and he considerably extended the realm of Cartesian philosophy by applying Descartes’ methodological insights to social and political issues such as the subjugation of women. Poulain also revised Descartes’ philosophical method by advocating a turn from solitary meditation toward joint conversations. Scholarship on Poulain has focused on him as a Cartesian philosopher and early defender of the equality of the sexes. Many studies combine these topics and examine his writings as articulations of early modern Cartesian feminism. There is also a small but vital number of scholars publishing mostly in French on Poulain’s writings about language and theology. Though writing before the times of explicit demands for women’s political rights and well before the coinage of the term feminism, Poulain deserves the title of feminist in the sense that he developed a detailed analysis of many different aspects of the subjugation of women by male power.