How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna

Author:Regan Penaluna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2023-03-01T21:21:25+00:00

Here’s an old trick philosophers use when doubtful: invoke a demon. Descartes famously used this technique when he wasn’t sure whether he could trust anything he’d learned in school or from books and wanted to find one certain thing. As he sat alone in a small room with a quill in his hand, warmed by a fire, he wrote in his Meditations that he was unresolved about his ideas—including the existence of God. He noted that it was possible an evil demon had tricked his mind into believing there was an all-good God. Yet even the existence of the demon couldn’t make Descartes doubt that he himself was thinking, an insight that formed the cornerstone of his thought and earned him the title of father of modern philosophy.

What is little known today, and what Descartes himself did not acknowledge, is that he likely got this idea from a philosopher whose book Interior Castle—an early modern international bestseller—he’d read in school. It was written by Teresa of Ávila, a sixteenth-century Roman Catholic nun and philosopher.368 To Teresa’s horror, demons rather enjoyed visiting her. In her autobiography, she described a moment praying alone in an oratory when a small demon appeared on her left side. He had an ugly mouth and flames shooting from his body, which cast no shadow. Not to be daunted by this and the many other visitations she received, Teresa argued that despite the demon’s ability to make her doubt the substance of her thoughts, he could not make her question the act of thinking itself.369

It’s not surprising that the philosopher who introduced the idea of radical doubt was a woman, since women learn to question themselves from a young age. Contemporary philosopher and artist Adrian Piper noticed this too. She says that women are especially adept at philosophical doubt because “their judgment, credibility and authority start to come under attack during puberty, as part of the process of gender socialization. They are made to feel uncertain about themselves, their place in society and their right to their own opinions.”370 Descartes’s demon was only a prop, and he could walk away from it when he grew tired of his meditations. Teresa, on the other hand, believed her demon was a representation of the devil and labored to find a way to escape the existential nightmare it introduced into her life.

I didn’t believe in demons, although I was familiar with self-doubt. For years I’d operated as if a hot-mouthed shadowless beast were on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. I engaged with it—the power of its words difficult to dismiss—hoping to discover something that would ultimately liberate me from it.

Our interactions went something like this:

A few months before I married Alex, I was on a train to London hours after learning I’d failed one of the three days of the comprehensive exams, which graduate students must pass before they start their dissertation.

DEMON: not off to a good start

My best friend from college, who’d moved to England right after graduation, was with me, and we were on our way to see an indie rock band.

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