Malebranche, taste, and sensibility: the origins of sensitive taste and a reconsideration of Cartesianism's feminist potential.
The difference which one remarks in the man and the woman, comes not only from education, but also from their nature. The fibers of the woman are ordinarily more slender, which makes the senses more fine, and the interior sentiment more delicate. This natural disposition makes them prefer perceptible objects to metaphysical realities, amiable qualities to essential qualities, the brilliant to the solid, luxury and ostentation to cleanliness and commodity. It's also what makes them sensitive to piety, inconstant and light, and often capricious. The trace which objects leave there not being profound enough, it is easily effaced by a new impression: in such a way that in their minds the present object often sweeps away that which is absent.
Hamerton
Katharine J
KJ
Columbia College, Chicago, USA.
D004954:Esthetics; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism / Q000266:history*; D005602:France; D049670:History, 17th Century; D006801:Humans; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history*; D012677:Sensation; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*