Luzes femininas: A felicidade segundo Madame du Châtelet

Abstract

The French Enlightenment distinguished by a certain history has been undoubtedly male, as reveals the almost exclusive presence of Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot in the researchesand works about that time. The aim of this study is to investigate the period, mainly approaching the ethical issue of happiness, but not through the looks of those celebrated male philosophers, but of a person in skirts and corselets: Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749). Little known by the Brazilian readers, and little studied by the local experts on the 1800s, Madame du Châtelet, born a Marquise, wrote, around 1746, a Discourse on happiness. The examination of some of the thesis and ethical proposals contained in that opuscule is an instigating opportunity to understand better not only the French Enlightenment, but also the sensibility and anxieties of the vanguard women in the pre-revolutionary France. © 2012 by Revista Estudos Feministas.