On the inseparability of reasoning and virtue: Madame de Maintenon's Maison royale de Saint-Louis

Abstract

This paper engages with the curriculum at Madame de Maintenon's school for girls at Saint-Cyr to raise and address a set of questions: What is it to teach someone to reason? The curricular materials of Saint-Cyr suggest that learning to reason is a matter of practice. How is one to distinguish autonomous reason giving from habituation or automatic trained responses? How can practices in reason giving informed by social mores have objective validity? Moreover, if we think of the role of a philosopher as the cultivation of rational faculties and recognize that how this role is played is bound up with social norms, by what standards ought we to evaluate whether a philosophical educator is good or bad? Intertwined with the discussion is also a question about the limits of philosophy for the question.