Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Damaris Masham has been described as the first woman philosopher of her Age. Her best known works, published anonymously, were 'A Discourse Concerning the Love of God', 1696, and 'Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life', 1705. To some scholars her ideas, radical for her time, are the ideas of an early feminist. Her correspondents besides Locke, included Leibniz. Damaris was 23 years old and Locke 49 when they first met in 1681.
This eighth Conversation between the 17thcentury philosopher John Locke and Terence Moore raises questions of influence. Initially, as one might expect, Locke's influence on Damaris' work. But more surprisingly, Locke turns the tables and reflects on Damaris' influence on his own ideas. Recall however that the last decade of his life was spent in her company in her family home at Oates, and that this last decade was for him immensely productive. He remained at Oates until his death on 26thOctober, 1704. Pierre Coste reports Damaris was by his side, reading to him from the Psalms when he died. As well as exploring their influence on each others' work the Conversation attempts to probe the nature of their relationship. In the early days, before Damaris Cudworth married a widower with eight children, Sir Francis Masham, the links seem clearly romantic. Pastoral poems and discreet love letters have come down to us in the eight volumes of Beer's monumental work, 'The Correspondence of John Locke'. Later, living together at Oates, their attachment to each other appears to have grown and deepened.
MOORE:
I want to talk to you this evening about influence, specifically yours on Damaris Masham.
LOCKE:
(sighs) Damaris! The light and love of my life!
MOORE:
(smiles) I've always imagined that might be the case. But let's start with how much you influenced her work. She was after all, some say, the first woman philosopher of her time.
LOCKE:
And a brilliant thinker. To be honest I'm not at all sure how much influence I actually had. I certainly encouraged her to publish her writings, but remember she was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, author of 'The True Intellectual System of the Universe'. It was really from her...