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2004
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Huguette Krief, « Pensée sceptique et correspondance féminine : Marie Du Deffand et Isabelle de Charrière », Dix-Huitième Siècle, ID : 10.3406/dhs.2004.2612
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According to Demahis's article entitled "Femme" in the Encyclopédie, women are less capable than men of abstract thought. The aim of the present article is to re-evaluate this cliché by looking at the correspondences of Marie du Deffand and Isabelle de Charrière, two women of the Enlightenment. Their intense epistolary activity constitutes an interesting domain for the study of scepticism and the transgression which it introduced into 18th-century society. These women doubted particularly whether Christian religion was the best way to provide knowledge concerning human nature and the creation of the world. The numerous letters which Marie du Deffand exchanged with Voltaire show that she assumed a radical empiricism, while Isabelle de Charrière, in search of social ethics, was certainly close to Voltaire's deism. Nevertheless, their common interest in naturalist philosophy and their opposition to dogmatism reveals the extension of scepti¬ cism and enlightened ideas to women's writings.