Damaris Cudworth Masham
Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham (18 January 1659 – 20 April 1708) was an English writer, philosopher, theologian, and advocate for women's education who is often characterized as a proto-feminist.
She overcame some weakness of eyesight and lack of access to formal higher education to win high regard among eminent thinkers of her time.
He became a leading figure of the Cambridge Platonist School,[2] and poured immense erudition and originality into his great work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (only the first very substantial part of which came to readiness by 1671, with publication in 1678).
[3] Overtly a refutation of atheistic determinism, his work evolved in critique of aspects of Calvinist theology, in the light of his near-contemporary René Descartes, and in opposition to Thomas Hobbes.
[16] Although her early life has left no record of formal schooling, the unusual collegiate context of her family environment (and her acquaintance with her father's Platonist circle) gave her advantages and insights in an age when higher education was not normally accessible to women.
[1] The claims that she was taught by her father,[17] or owed the development of her thought especially to John Norris (an early associate with whom she came to differ), are to some extent superfluous: she was an intelligent young woman in a brilliant household of academics embedded in the collegiate life.
[32] Constant companions, they exchanged ideas and theories and entertained many other theologians and philosophers (including Sir Isaac Newton and Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont).
[29] Both were published anonymously, to avoid prejudice or irrelevant courtesy towards a woman scholar: Pierre Bayle (who easily ascertained her authorship) hastened to amend one of his previous (careless) observations, concerning her father's work, with an elaborate (and probably) sincere compliment upon her Savoir and other perfections.
[35] Near the end of her life Masham, suffering from intense pain due to gallstones, traveled to Bath hoping to improve her condition.
[39] In her Occasional Thoughts in reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705), Damaris Cudworth Masham makes two important points regarding the inferior education given to women.
[40] She writes, “The improvements of Reason, however requisite to Ladies for their Accomplishment, as rational Creatures; and however needful to them for the well Educating of their Children, and to their being useful in their Families, yet are rarely any recommendation of them to Men; who foolishly thinking, that Money will answer to all things, do, for the most part, regard nothing else in the Woman they would Marry … Girls, betwixt silly Fathers and ignorant Mothers, are generally so brought up, that traditionary Opinions are to them, all their lives long, instead of Reason.
In revising the section "Of Power", Locke seems to adopt many of Ralph Cudworth's ideas (and especially those contained in his unpublished manuscripts, which are considered the second and third parts to his The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678)).
"[47] Thereby indicating that her father was likely to have passed-on many of his ideas, regarding free will and the rejection of determinism, to Damaris (either directly through the reading of his manuscripts or indirectly from her education in philosophical discourse).
