from Hypatia Volume 17, Number 3The Encounter between Wonder and Generosity
Marguerite La Caze
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In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics.
In a suggestive reading of Descartes's The Passions of the Soul (1989) in her book The Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993a), Irigaray argues that Descartes is right to place wonder as the first of all the passions and that wonder can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference. However, Descartes himself is not thinking of sexual difference and believes that a different passion, generosity, is the proper basis for ethics. In this paper, I will discuss this meeting between Irigaray and Descartes and what I see as the implications of the encounter. I argue that we should respond to other differences, beyond sexual difference, with wonder; that the passions of wonder and generosity need to be brought together to ground an ethics; and that wonder and generosity must be understood as attitudes that we can cultivate in ourselves.
THE PASSION OF WONDER
Irigaray argues that wonder can be the basis for an ethics of sexual difference. She says: "To arrive at the constitution of an ethics of sexual difference, we must at least return to what is for Descartes the first passion: wonder" (1991a, 171).1 Of course, she believes that other passions such as desire and love are important, but wonder plays a distinctive founding role in her thought concerning sexual difference. Wonder is surprise at the extraordinary, and Irigaray believes that it is the ideal way to regard others because it is prior to judgment and thus free of hierarchical relations. Wonder involves recognizing others as different from ourselves. Generosity, by contrast, involves regarding others as essentially similar to ourselves, as we shall see. To understand the force of Irigaray's claim, we need to examine what Descartes means by wonder.
Descartes believes that all passions are based on wonder and five other primary passions—desire, hate, love, sadness, and joy. All other (secondary) passions are composed of some combination of these six. These passions of the soul, or emotions as we call them, are a subset of the full range of passions, which includes perceptions and sensations, or passions of the body (1989, 56, 32–34). Wonder is the first of all passions since:
When the first encounter with some object surprises us, and we judge it to be new, or very different from what we knew in the past or what we supposed it was going to be, this makes us wonder and be astonished at it. And since this can happen before we know in the least whether this object is suitable to us or not, it seems to me that Wonder is the first of all the passions. It has no opposite, because if the object presented has nothing in it that surprises us, we are not in the least moved by it and we regard it without passion. (Descartes, 1989, 52)2
According to Descartes, wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul (or mind) that is related only to impressions in the brain, which represents some things as rare. A particular object seems so worthy of attention that we are transfixed by it, without making a judgment about whether it is good or evil. It is only later, when we decide whether it is good and pleasing or bad and painful, that we feel love or hate toward it. So wonder is the first or primary passion for several reasons: First, wonder is primary because unlike the other emotions, it is prior to judgment and comparison—we experience it without knowing whether the object is good or evil, whether it is useful or not, or even what kind of a thing it is. Second, it is the first of all passions because it has no opposite.3 Third, wonder is united to most other passions because they involve surprise—otherwise we would not be moved by the object (Descartes, 1989, 52–53, 103). For example, indignation involves wonder because we are surprised by things not being done in the way we believe they ought to be.
Wonder may appear to be a rather intellectual passion, a view Descartes seems to accept because he says that it affects only the brain, rather than the heart and the blood (1989, 57–58). Nevertheless, he argues that wonder still has great power to move us because of the surprise it involves.4 Descartes argues that wonder is a useful passion, because it leads us to learn and remember things. We wonder at the rare and extraordinary. Things seem to be rare and extraordinary if they are unfamiliar or unexpected (1989, 59). In the case of wonder, the question might be asked: If we have made no judgment about the object, how can we recognize it as rare or extraordinary? In the Meditations, Descartes argues that a judgment is when the will either affirms or denies some perception of the understanding or intellect. All the passions dispose the soul to will whatever actions for which the passions have prepared the body (1989, 39, 40). For example, the feeling of fear inclines us to will the body to run away from what we fear. Judgments also influence the soul to will particular actions, and ideally, our passions will reinforce accurate judgments.
My view of how we can understand the response of wonder to an object before we have formed a judgment about it is that objects worthy of wonder stand out against the undifferentiated background of those everyday and familiar things that we can easily categorize. We can perceive that something is different or unfamiliar without making a judgment or assenting to anything particular about it. Wonder influences us in certain ways, and is a useful passion, on Descartes's account, because we do not necessarily remember unfamiliar things that appear again, unless the original idea is strengthened by wonder (or through greater understanding). Only wonder makes us notice those things that are rare; other passions make us notice things that seem good or evil to us. Once we have recognized the rarity of the object, we can go on to investigate and understand its nature (1989, 59, 61).
In Descartes's view, it is good to be born with some capacity for wonder, which inclines us to learning more, and we should cultivate an ideal or appropriate propensity to wonder (1989, 60–61). On the one hand, given that wonder is thus connected with intelligence and curiosity, those who have little capacity to wonder are unlikely to be knowledgeable.5 On the other hand, he warns against having too much wonder, claiming that an excess of wonder and wondering about things that are beneath our consideration is always bad. Wondering at everything could be said to be akin to wondering at nothing because there is no distinction between what is worthy of wonder and what is not. Descartes thinks that those who lack confidence in their own judgment will wonder to excess because they wonder at things of no importance and cannot pass beyond wonder to the stage of reflection. This excess of wonder can develop into a habit if we do not correct it and gain a more extensive knowledge of things. Furthermore, wondering too much can stall or distort the use of our reason because then there is no discrimination between what is rare and what is commonplace. Descartes argues that it is easy to counteract the danger of wondering to excess by gaining more knowledge and thinking about things that seem most rare and strange (1989, 61). Wonder usually decreases over time, because the more we encounter rare things about which we wonder, the more we become used to them and find that the things that we encounter later are common and familiar. Wonder's relation to education is quite clear from Descartes's account, but understanding how wonder can form the basis of an ethics of sexual difference requires attention to Irigaray's appropriation of wonder. Irigaray finds a connection between Descartes's account of the passions and psychoanalysis, saying, "Situating the passions at the junction of the physical and the psychological, he [Descartes] constructs a theory of the ego's affects which is close to Freud's theory of the drives" (1993a, 80). However, Descartes is not thinking about sexual difference, as Freud does not think of wonder, "the passion that Freud forgot?" (1993a, 80). Irigaray is thinking about both in order to situate an ethics of sexual difference.
WONDER AND THE ETHICS OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
The idea of an ethics of sexual difference is distinctive because traditional ethical theories have rarely acknowledged the existence of two sexes. Previous ethics have either assimilated women to men, seen women only in relation to men, or claimed that there is one neutral subject for whom ethical principles will always be the same. For example, utilitarianism concerns the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings; ethical rules or principles are supposed to apply to everyone regardless of sex; and John Rawls's theory of justice sets sex and gender aside as irrelevant to moral deliberation (1975, 537). Of course, sexual difference has been recognized in misogynist ways, as in Aristotle's politics (1984, 1259b1–1260a31). However, this approach to sexual difference is not what Irigaray has in mind. What Irigaray is proposing is a nonhierarchical recognition of sexual difference, where each sex is thought of as autonomous and self-defined, so women are not understood through a male model of humanity (1993a, 5–19). If the idea that women and men are different is taken seriously, then it is clear that more than one set of interests, values, and perspectives in culture must exist. Feminists have pointed out that some moral and social issues are of particular concern to women, such as reproductive freedom, maternity leave, child-care and work, and rape, for example. Women may reason differently about ethical problems—for example, Carol Gilligan argues that women tend to rely on an ethic of care rather than justice in trying to resolve moral dilemmas (1993). Most importantly, it cannot be taken for granted that men can represent women's interests or make decisions on their behalf. Irigaray's idea of an ethics based on wonder challenges the view that ethical subjects of different sexes can be substituted for each other.
In Irigaray's view, wonder provides the model for the way in which the sexes should respond to each other. Her conception is that the other, male or female, should surprise us, and appear very different from what we expected (1993a, 74). We should not assume that we know everything about the other. As Irigaray puts it, "Wonder might allow them [the sexes] to retain an autonomy based on their difference, and give them a space of freedom or attraction, a possibility of separation or alliance" (1991a, 172).6 The advantage of wonder is that it goes beyond what is or is not suitable for us. If the other "suited us" completely, in the sense of being enough like us not to surprise, we would have reduced the other to ourselves, and would understand and respond to them only on our own terms. In regarding the other with wonder, their existence resists assimilation or reduction to sameness or self and we are able to accept differences in them. Irigaray describes the response of wonder: "In order for it to affect us, it is necessary and sufficient for it to surprise, to be new, not yet assimilated or disassimilated as known" (1993a, 75). Something is "disassimilated as known" if it is not absorbed or incorporated into the subject. The object of wonder cannot be circumscribed or defined (1993a, 81).
Irigaray argues that then wonder awakens our passion, our attraction to what is not known, and curiosity toward what we have not encountered or made ours (1993a, 75). Irigaray's understanding of the nature of wonder is consonant with that of other philosophers, such as R.W. Hepburn, who in his well-known essay on wonder puts the point aptly: "I give myself to wonder in ways not too fancifully analogous to how I give myself in a friendship, entrusting myself to another in an open and therefore vulnerable way" (1984, 134). Wonder is a way of responding directly to the other, rather than imposing or projecting our own views or self-understanding on them. With the other passions, the subject's judgment affirms an object as having a particular nature—lovable, hateful, or beautiful. But wonder is a direct response to the object.7 Irigaray says that wonder involves a realization that the self is not alone. Furthermore, she thinks that this realization that one is not the only (type of) being in the world involves a loss of (perceived) power, a kind of mourning, because the existence and independence of the other has to be recognized. It involves a recognition that the other cannot be possessed (1993a, 13, 75).
Irigaray states that wonder is the passion that inaugurates love and art and thought (1993a, 82). Amélie Oksenberg Rorty notes, "It is the emotions, and particularly the emotion of wonder, that energize science and give it directions" (1992, 386). The passions in general provide us with some sense of what is important to us, and wonder does this without evaluating the object. On Descartes's account, we will not know whether something is really important until we have investigated it. However, Irigaray claims that in wonder, the subject welcomes as desirable what it does not know or what is foreign to it, and so sexual difference can be understood in these terms and an ethics can be developed (1993a, 79). The idea of desirability being connected to wonder in this way seems to be a significant shift from Descartes's view, because he believes that wonder does not entail a particular view about whether the object is desirable or not (1989, 52). Irigaray takes him to be saying that "difference attracts" (1993a, 79) and that wonder involves a kind of attraction and curiosity toward what we do not fully understand. What Descartes says is that in wonder the object seems worthy of consideration and attention because of its rarity, which does not necessarily imply desirability, though it implies some impetus toward further understanding (1989, 59). Whether this is sufficient for Irigaray's ethics is a question that we need to look into further.
In Irigaray's view, the relation between those who differ, especially sexually, has to be reworked through the notion of wonder (1993a, 12, 74). She claims that sexual difference is ontological, and thus fundamental to ordering society.8 Her claims about wonder have to be understood as normative rather than descriptive as it cannot be said that women and men do respond to each other with wonder. Rather, women and men should respond to each other with wonder. It is not quite clear what it means to regard the other sex with wonder, particularly on the basis of Descartes's account of wonder. We are supposed to wonder at something rare to us, yet how can the other sex be rare? It could mean that in each encounter with the opposite sex we should regard them with wonder; that we should always have the attitude of wonder; or that we should approach special relationships with wonder; or that when we think about sexual difference, we should think about it with wonder, in terms of something extraordinary, because it is the difference that makes it extraordinary. Most plausibly, it must refer to each encounter with the other as taking place in wonder. And this seems to be Irigaray's view: "Thus man and woman, woman and man are always meeting as though for the first time because they cannot be substituted one for the other" (1993a, 12–13). Thus, the attitude of wonder permeates every encounter. Wonder, on this account, does not mean simply curiosity; rather, it leads to an appreciation of the other's qualities. Hepburn argues that there is an appreciative-contemplative aspect to wonder (1984, 134–35), and that in this sense, wonder recognizes and affirms the value of the other.
As Irigaray argues, sexual difference is not quantitative (1993a, 76), even though it is traditionally measured by such standards, notoriously in the case of Sigmund Freud's notion of penis envy (Freud, 1989, 670–78), which Irigaray has criticized to great effect in Speculum of the Other Woman (1985a) and elsewhere. Nor is sexual difference a question of better or worse, Irigaray states, as both adoration and contempt toward the other sex are inappropriate (1993a, 13). Wonder is the passion that can express this relation because it does not involve judgment and comparison. Then it can be accepted that the other has different experiences and that different ethical considerations may be relevant. Because wonder takes the object as it is, the other is prior in a way that s/he is not in other emotions.9 We should encounter the other with wonder and recognize his/her uniqueness, not just as a difference from ourselves, and accept his/her independence from us. Then the other will strike us as new, unfamiliar, and original like the stars, a great work of art, or the universe. The other is accepted in his/her irreducible alterity, in terms of his/her priority for the subject. Irigaray argues that in wonder, there is an acceptance and respect of both sexual specificities (1993a, 13, 74). Wonder seems to be ideal to express the kind of openness to otherness that so holds Irigaray's interest. However, the concept of wonder alone may not be rich enough to incorporate or generate the notion of respect and acceptance of others that also concerns Irigaray, and this is an issue I will return to later in the paper. For now, I will set it aside to focus on the importance of wonder.
According to Irigaray, any meeting between the sexes always results in effects or products, although this fecundity has not been understood or developed (1993a, 14). Men and women must always leave a remainder not reducible to their relation, which explains the attractions of the encounter. The products of the couple are not only children, although one of Irigaray's important points is that this particular form of creativity should be valued in a way it traditionally has not been (1993a, 11, 14). The nature of these new products will only emerge as the ethics of sexual difference become a reality, though they would clearly include artistic and theoretical products. The two sexes must create their own ideals, which are different. She claims that "man and woman is the most mysterious and creative couple" (1995a, 112). Her view makes for a fascinating comparison with Freud's view of the mother-son relation as the most satisfying one (1964, 133) and Plato's view of male homosexuals as forming the most creative couples (1961, 208e–209d). Irigaray believes that the ethics of sexual difference can generate a different relation between subjects, the subject and the world, and between the subject and God (1993a, 8). An acceptance of sexual difference requires a revolution in all spheres of existence: not just ethics, but also aesthetics, language, science, and our understanding of history and religion. In her more recent work, Irigaray argues that such an ethics of sexual difference can only exist in a context where sexual difference is recognized in law: "We have to rethink the whole of the law in such a way that it is just to two genres different in their needs, their desires and their properties" (1991a, 201). She believes that specific rights for women and men must be defined and enshrined in law—how she sees this as a change in "the mode of relationship between one and the other, between man and woman on the civil and affective plane" (1995a, 111). While these are clearly important considerations, and I believe that Irigaray is right to connect personal ethics with legal and political institutions, a discussion of the relation between law and ethics would take me far beyond the concerns of this paper. More central here is the question of whether the ethics based on wonder should apply only to sexual difference.
WONDER AND OTHER DIFFERENCES
The focus on sexual difference in Irigaray's view of ethics raises the question of whether her view can and should be extended to other kinds of differences between people. Tina Chanter, in The Ethics of Eros, claims that Irigaray's attempt to think about difference in a nonhierarchical way "extends to a rethinking of all our relations, not only with other people, but with nature" (1995, 143). Mary K. Bloodsworth argues that because Irigaray is concerned with rethinking dualisms, her work can be used to disrupt racial dualisms (1999, 77). Still, Irigaray's view is a little more complicated than that, insofar as she sees sexual difference as fundamental. For example, she says that sexism is "the most unconscious form of racism"(1993b, 120). Racism can be understood here to mean discrimination in general. She also says that "sexual difference is the most radical difference and the one most necessary to the life and culture of the human species" (1992, 3). It seems that there could be a bias toward heterosexuality in Irigaray's view, particularly in her claim that it is the most productive of encounters. Moreover, she has recently become more emphatic on this point, stating in an interview that homosexuality is an earlier stage of development than heterosexuality (1998, 19). Such a stance raises problems for the formulation of an ethics. Elizabeth Grosz notes that gay and lesbian theorists are right to be concerned about this aspect of Irigaray's views (1994a, 348), which institute a new hierarchy that is simply a reversal of the Platonic view, the kind of reversal Irigaray believes is involved in a complete rejection of heterosexuality and warns against in This Sex Which Is Not One (1985b, 33). These comments suggest that Irigaray accepts a hierarchy in types of differences, an anomaly in a supposedly nonhierarchical ethics.
However, in her book Intersecting Voices, Iris Marion Young argues that Irigaray's view of wonder "can easily be extended . . . to any structured social difference, whether of sex, class, race, or religion" (1997, 45).10 Young's development of this idea involves the way in which she believes people should regard each other as "irreversible," or not mirrors of each other (1997, 46–47). Instead, each should accept the differences of the other, and not attempt to adopt the other's standpoint or speak on the other's behalf, thus adopting a stance of "moral humility"(1997, 49) and accepting that our relations with others are asymmetrically reciprocal. I believe Young is right that wonder, as openness to difference, can and should be extended beyond the realm of sexual difference. A more adequate feminist ethics is one that takes into account a range of ethically relevant differences. A range of differences between human beings appears worthy of wonder, such as ethnic differences, generational differences, and differences in sexuality. The response of wonder cannot be confined to the relation between the sexes but should be extended to all our relations with others. Although sexual difference is extremely important, it should not overshadow and obscure other differences. A range of different groups can have issues that are of special concern to them, a special concern that others should accept. For example, land rights affect indigenous groups in ways that they do not affect other people, and disabled people are aware of needs that people who are not disabled are not. These kinds of differences should be taken into account when formulating an ethics and when reasoning about specific issues, and members of these groups should be recognized as having distinct points of view that only they can articulate.
Relations across and within these differences will also have their own remainder or products. Irigaray's insight that the oppression of women has obscured women's creative potential and that this potential will only be realized when women are recognized as subjects holds true for other oppressed groups as well. In relation to the couple, the different world Irigaray envisages will ensure that homosexual couples, for example, will also be fruitful in ways not yet experienced.
One of the central assumptions of many ethical theories is a belief in the power of the individual to imagine himself/herself in the place of others and to make judgments on the behalf of others on that basis. Although it is important to develop our capacity to respond sympathetically to the experience of others through the imagination, limits to this ability ought to be recognized and understood. Where the experience of others is different than our own, we may not be able to imagine what it feels like, or we may be apt to project our own experience onto theirs. Extending the notion of wonder beyond sexual difference involves an acceptance of the differences of others and the limits on our ability to understand their experiences. Wonder is an ideal notion to encapsulate this acceptance, yet it too has its limitations.
THE LIMITS OF WONDER
Irigaray's focus on wonder concerns relations between the sexes, and even when generalized in the way I believe it should be, the focus remains on people's relations with others, rather than people's self-concern. Having a sense of one's own value is extremely important, particularly for women in a sexist society.11 We cannot understand ourselves as simply a reflection of other's views of us. Such an approach would reintroduce the notion of "mirroring" or symmetry of which Young is rightly so critical, into our ethical relations. While the mirroring Young is concerned with is the mirroring that occurs when we project our own self-understanding onto others, the mirroring involved in incorporating others' views of us is also important.
Furthermore, Irigaray's account of wonder, while extremely appealing, seems to stretch the concept of wonder beyond its scope in order to include the concepts needed to develop an ethics. Wonder, in my view, cannot both be prior to judgment and involve an attraction to and respect for the other. I believe that the idea of our response to others involving wonder is very important—but that alone it cannot yield respect, acceptance of autonomy, and so on. Irigaray notes in an interview that the relation between men and women she has in mind is one of reciprocal respect, autonomy, and also reciprocal affection (1995a, 111; 1995b, 7), which indicates that wonder has to be combined with other appropriate emotions and attitudes to bring about the kind of changes envisaged.
Young has pointed out some of the problems with Irigaray's account of wonder: "This concept of wonder is dangerous. It would not be difficult to use it to imagine the other person as exotic. One can interpret wonder as a kind of distant awe before the Other that turns their transcendence into a human inscrutability. Or wonder can become a kind of prurient curiosity. I can recognize my ignorance about the other person's experience and perspective and adopt a probing, investigative mode toward her. Both stances convert the openness of wonder into a dominative desire to know and master the other person" (1997, 56). Young's solution is that we need a respectful stance of wonder, yet this is to suggest that wonder must be combined with respect. Irigaray herself is aware of this problem. In another essay in An Ethics of Sexual Difference, "Love of Same, Love of Other," she notes, "The Other can only exist if it can draw on the well of sameness for its matter. . . . If this were not so, that Other would be so other that we could in no way conceive it" (1993a, 97–98). She notes in relation to the issue of love between women that there is "no love of other without love of same" (1993a, 104). She also points to the need for common goals: "These two subjects [the sexes] share the common goal of preserving the human species and developing its culture, while granting respect to the differences" (1995b, 12).
The ethics Irigaray suggests can only be developed if it is clear how we can move beyond wonder to esteem and respect rather than arrogance or contempt. Once we have passed beyond our surprise, something must prevent us from moving to an inappropriate attitude toward the strangeness of the other. Clearly, Irigaray understands wonder as comprising a set of appropriate attitudes, yet it seems that wonder, while a very rich concept, needs to be linked to other emotions and attitudes to provide a basis for a respect for difference. Wonder, at least as Descartes conceives it, is a more neutral term, and its very neutrality is what commends it to us as an initial response to difference. Irigaray is not alone in envisaging a greater role for wonder in our ethical lives. Hepburn argues that a range of moral attitudes have an affinity to wonder, such as respect, compassion, gentleness, and humility, because they are only a "short step" away from wonder and follow from its other-regarding aspect (1984, 145–46). Yet we need an account of how these correlates can be developed from wonder in order to make a genuine feminist ethics possible.
GENEROSITY AND ETHICS
Descartes's account of how the passions should be cultivated and restrained provides some means for understanding how a genuine feminist ethics could be done. He argues that "all the good and evil of this life depend on them [the passions] alone" (1989, 134). Because of the passions, Descartes believes, we desire things that are useful for us and are repelled by what is harmful (1989, 51–52). The mind has a practical concern with self-preservation, and the emotions can help us to avoid pain and to pursue pleasure. In giving an account of the usefulness of the passions, Descartes attempts to explain how we move beyond wonder and live ethically.
The emotions that follow wonder, according to Descartes, are either esteem or disdain and scorn. They are united with wonder depending on whether it is the greatness or the meanness of an object that we wonder at. Once an object is esteemed or disdained for its worth or lack of worth, wonder is no longer pure in the sense of being nonjudgmental; it becomes part of the realm of opposites, as do most emotions. In Descartes's view, esteem and disdain or scorn are species of wonder—when we do not wonder at the greatness or meanness of an object, we do not make more or less of it than reason tells us—so we then esteem or disdain it without passion. Once comparisons are made between ourselves and others, ideally magnanimity or generosité will follow, or otherwise wonder could be followed by pride or vicious humility (1989, 102–103).
The key to leading a good life, for Descartes, comes through cultivating the passion of generosité or generosity, which has a very special meaning in his work, quite different from its current use in English. Generosity is a species of wonder combined with love, which involves having proper pride or rightful self-regard (1989, 103). Generosity is esteem for ourselves, an appropriate judgment about our worth that should be developed as a habit. It has the following features: (1) knowing that nothing is really ours except the freedom to control our willing, and that we should only be praised and blamed for using that freedom well or badly; and (2) feeling within ourselves a strong constant resolution to use our free will well—to always have the will to carry out what we think is the best course of action (1989, 103, 121–22). For Descartes, this is what it would be to pursue virtue in a perfect manner. What we esteem in ourselves is a virtuous will. Generosity is the key to all the virtues and a way of overcoming the disruptions of the passions, giving us control over them. It is similar to "nobility" or Aristotelian "great-souledness" or "pride," although it is more egalitarian because Aristotle believed that very large differences exist between what people are worth and that only great people should think they are great (1984, 1123b1–15).12 In Descartes's case, people of generosity are "easily convinced" that others also have the same capacity to exercise free will for good or evil ends. If we have generosity, we will not prefer ourselves to others (1989, 105). Descartes accepts that it is possible to lose the basis for self-regard through laziness or cowardice and that people may have an improper pride because of such things as wealth and title, or even for no reason at all (1989, 105–106). Nevertheless, we should esteem ourselves and others for the possession of free will and the resolve to use it well.
This self-esteem is thought by Descartes to make it possible to have the right kind of regard for others: If we value ourselves appropriately, then we will respond to others appropriately (1989, 104). Descartes is rather insightful on this point. For example, a contemporary feminist philosopher, Robin S. Dillon, argues that for the person lacking in basic self-respect, the "all-consuming project is to find some value for herself; other things, other people, matter only in relation to her worthlessness. But to be blessed with secure basal self-respect is to be able [to] move through life oblivious to issues of self-worth—for these issues have already been resolved—to be free to attend to the independent value of other people and things" (1997, 242). We can understand the esteem Descartes refers to as a basic form of respect. In generosity, we recognize the worth of others, so that respect, veneration, and magnanimity follow wonder. In Descartes's view, having rightful self-esteem protects us from dependence on what others think of us and prevents jealousy and envy, because what we think worth pursuing depends only on ourselves (1989, 105).
Furthermore, generosity strengthens a healthier form of regard for others, and prevents hatred, because we regard them as equally capable of a virtuous will (1989, 104). The vices that the virtue of generosity can be contrasted with are pride and vicious humility (1989, 105–107). Descartes is optimistic that everyone can attain the virtuous will, no matter how weak they are, though ignorance is the greatest obstacle. Generous or noble-minded people find it important to do good to others and disdain their own interests: "They are always perfectly courteous, affable, and of service to everyone" and "entirely masters of their Passions" (1989, 105). If we have generosity, we respect people appropriately, and have no remorse, because we know that we have done our best. At one point Descartes notes that he prefers the term "generosity" to the term "magnanimity" because "the Schools" do not understand this virtue (1989, 109). Moreover, we have little cowardice or fear—we are self-assured because of our confidence in our own virtue (1989, 105). This explains why Descartes thinks generosity is the key to the virtuous life.
An issue that arises in relation to acceptance of our will and a resolution to carry out the morally best course of action is that it may not be enough: Some people may be in a better position to judge what is the best alternative, say, by having a better education, or by having more experience of the world. Descartes expresses this point, acknowledging that "there are some people who possess far sharper intellectual vision than others" (1985, 191).13 Descartes believes that everyone can act virtuously, though the best way for some to act virtuously is to learn about what is moral from those possessed of a sharper intellectual vision (1989, 49). Nevertheless, on his account, it is still generosity that is the key virtue even when we are being guided by others.
In formulating what is central to generosity, Descartes's reliance on the notion of free will, particularly understood as a capacity that we all possess equally, may give some reason for hesitation in accepting generosity as a useful passion. However, although this understanding of free will is central to his account, I do not think that one must be committed to this specific characterization of the basis of similarity or to the idea that we must have the same capacities to find generosity important for developing an ethics of the passions. My use of Descartes here may seem surprising, but Irigaray is not the only feminist philosopher to find Descartes's work promising in certain respects. For example, in her paper "On Some Philosophical Pacts," Michèle Le Dúuff notes that "I do know, it is true, of a philosophy of the subject which does not include the idea of a social possession of women in its text, and this is the Cartesian theory" (1993, 405). Her view that "Universality demands that I respect humanity in others and in myself, while justice relates to the idea that people's relations between themselves and with things can be impersonally defined and that that definition includes me" (1991, 279), seems close in spirit to the notion of generosity without being dependent on the notion of free will. In a paper on Le Dúuff's and Irigaray's rereadings of Descartes, Anthony David states that Descartes is "in short, an unwitting feminist" (1997, 370). While this statement is probably an exaggeration and its meaning is not entirely clear, it points to the potential usefulness of Descartes's work for feminist purposes.
WONDER AND GENEROSITY MEET
Generosity appears to be the converse of wonder, in the sense that it is regarding others as like ourselves and looking for similarity whereas wonder involves regarding others as very different from ourselves in their needs, desires, and interests. My argument here is that generosity and wonder are both needed in the development of an ethics of respect for difference. Generosity and wonder balance each other. First, generosity can both provide the basis for respect and the kind of limit wonder needs. The notion of generosity provides a way to conceptualize the similarity between human beings within the context of the passions.
Thus, we should accept the importance of wonder, yet also realize that it cannot replace a respect for what we share with others. Similarities and commonalities form the background against which we can perceive differences, just as familiarity forms the background against which we can respond to objects of wonder. This contrast between familiarity and unfamiliarity can exist either between objects or within an object of wonder. As Young writes: "People who are different in such social positionings are not so totally other that they can see no similarities and overlaps in their lives, and they often stand in multivalent relations with one another" (1997, 45).
Second, based on Descartes's point that we should not wonder at everything, a note of caution can be applied to our attitude toward the other. This caution applies to Irigaray's views on sexual difference in general, and also to attempts to expand the ethics of wonder beyond sexual difference. As Young noted, we should beware of overemphasizing difference because it can lead to regarding the other as exotic or alien. Generosity can provide the limit that prevents wonder from falling over into exoticizing, crass curiosity, or contempt because generosity is an acceptance of a fundamental sense in which we are all of worth, regardless of the differences that may exist. Generosity involves a proper judgment that needs to follow wonder.14
Conversely, wonder can prevent the presumption that others will think and act as we do and desire the same kinds of things as we do such that we could make decisions and judgments on their behalf. It helps us to recognize the limitations on our own power. Wonder also allows for openness to difference and change in the other. The two passions of wonder and generosity have to work together in a complex way to provide the basis of an ethics of respect for difference.
Finally, it is important to consider how emotions like wonder and generosity can become attitudes, because if they were only momentary reactions they could hardly form the basis for an ethics. One way of describing them as attitudes is the idea that when we reflect on questions concerning ethical relations, it should be in terms of wonder and generosity. Another, closer to the spirit of both Descartes and Irigaray, is that we can cultivate wonder so that it becomes our response to others whenever we encounter them.
Descartes makes an important distinction between a habit or inclination and a passion (1989, 108–109). Virtuous habits bring together our bodily and mental being because emotional responses are associated with appropriate objects. True generosity is a habit that disposes us to have certain types of thoughts, and also a virtue because it is based on and generates wise moral judgments, and it is in this form that it can serve as the basis for an ethical life. We can cultivate generosity so that we have proper self-respect and respect for others. Similarly, this distinction suggests how Irigaray's ideas about wonder could be extended by cultivating wonder and how it can be understood as a virtue. Kant's distinction between astonishment, which decreases with the familiarity of the object, and wonder, which is stable—an "astonishment that does not cease when the novelty disappears"—helps us to see how wonder could be continuous or longstanding in that sense (1974, 113). Descartes's and Irigaray's use of the French term "admiration" expresses this sense well. Descartes believes that astonishment is an excess of wonder that prevents us finding out more about the object of wonder because we are "frozen" with astonishment. However, Descartes characterizes generosity as continuous, and notes that when we consider the marvels of free will being present in such limited subjects, "they always give off a new Wonder" (1989, 108). This point deepens the initial idea of wonder as simply surprise at something rare, and has more of a sense of how wonder is an accepting, nonjudgmental response to that which we have not fully understood. This is the sense that Irigaray focuses on with insight in Descartes's work, the sense that she calls "a wonder that lasts" that we would need to develop (1993a, 80).15 In order to cultivate wonder as an attitude we need to cultivate generosity as well, so that people respond with esteem to the differences between each other and do not immediately move to fear or dread.
A question suggested by this discussion of wonder and generosity is whether emotions in general can provide the basis for an ethics. Some would say that ethics should be based on principles or virtues, and that any system based on passion is too private and individual. Certainly, how we can deal with moral conflict, treat others justly, and should organize society cannot simply follow from an acceptance of the value of wonder. Nevertheless, combined with generosity, wonder should be a central feature or basis for an ethics in conjunction with consideration of these other important questions. Generosity gives us the basis for a general respect, and wonder gives us the basis for an acceptance of the limitations of ethical generalizations.
These two views about the kind of passions that we should cultivate relate directly to questions about imagination in ethics. Responding to others in terms of generosity is to imagine others as like ourselves. Responding in terms of wonder is to accept the limits of our imagination and accept difference. In my view, we must understand the passions and our relation to others through both of these ways. Contemporary ethical thinkers such as utilitarians and contractarians still tend to focus on the way we project our lives onto others and finding others like ourselves rather than recognizing their difference. Irigaray's suggestion that we regard others with wonder can be implemented as an important counterpart to the prevailing views. In wonder we do not project ourselves onto the object but appreciate it in its otherness. Generosity and wonder combined also speak to the issue of the two sides of ethical relations: attitudes to others and attitudes to ourselves. Wonder is a response to others that accepts their differences and could be reflected back in an appreciation of oneself. Generosity involves a basic esteem or respect for oneself that is also extended to others.
CONCLUSTION
We need both generosity and wonder: we need to regard others as both like ourselves and different; and we need self-respect as well as acceptance and appreciation of others. The passion of wonder should be cultivated and extended to differences beyond sexual difference. The range of differences between human beings should be recognized and accepted. While wonder and generosity are essential to ethics, by themselves they do not provide a comprehensive ethics. Judgments have to be combined with passions and we need to understand the role of all the passions, not just wonder and generosity. Furthermore, neither the ethics of wonder nor generosity explains how we can deal with moral conflicts and dilemmas. Nevertheless, by combining the two different ways that we can respond—by acknowledging the way in which others are like us and the way in which they are different, we can obtain a more complex understanding of passions and ethics, and learn how we can be open to new experiences. Against the background of an enormous neglect of otherness and difference, it is important to emphasize attitudes like wonder. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the way in which difference can only be appreciated in the context of a recognition of similarity and commonality.
I would like to thank colleagues at the University of Tasmania, the Australasian Continental Philosophy conference, the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, three anonymous reviewers for Hypatia, Damian Cox, and Max Deutscher for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1. Luce Irigaray is also interested in the way René Descartes's view in The Passions of the Soul (1989) moves beyond the rigid dualism of his earlier work. As Naomi Schor puts it: "In Irigaray, Descartes functions both as the philosopher who irrevocably sunders body from soul and the one who most brilliantly re-unites them" (1995, 58).
2. Elizabeth of Bohemia asked Descartes to clarify the role of the passions in our everyday life and to answer the question of how they can help us to lead a good life. The Passions of the Soul (1989) provides Descartes's answers to these questions.
3. It should be noted that desire has no opposite either, in Descartes's view (1989, 66).
4. This strength depends on two things—the novelty of the object and the fact that the movement that it causes has its whole strength from the start of the experience. Descartes thinks that wonder affects unusual parts of the brain, which are tender (because they are not used often), and this increases the effects of the movements of the animal spirits in the body (1989, 58).
5. Both Plato and Aristotle say that philosophy begins in wonder. See Aristotle, (1984, 982b12–27, 1371a31–b10). Plato, in "Theatetus," says, "This wonder is the mark of a philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin" (1961, 155d).
6. Anne Caldwell notes that Irigaray posits a reciprocity that does not "collapse the difference" between self and other (1997, 49).
7. One can take as an example the problem of other minds that Descartes discusses in the Meditations (1984). This problem makes little sense if we consider that in wonder the other strikes us first.
8. Irigaray calls it "ontico-ontological difference" in Speculum of the Other Woman, (1985a, 145). She believes that the two sexes are different in kind, or genre. In Why Different, she says, "For lack of words, it would be better to maintain that human nature is two: each gender having its own characteristics that are irreducible to one nature" (2000, 95) Stella Sandford describes Irigaray's idea of ontological sexual difference as "the difference between incommensurable masculine and feminine beings" (2001, 12). Simone de Beauvoir rejects this view, stating that we can imagine a sexless society (presumably Irigaray could not). Nevertheless, Beauvoir argues that sexual differentiation is part of any realistic definition of being (1983, 39). Elizabeth Grosz argues that sexual difference is pre-ontological (1994b, 209). It is not quite clear what she means here. I believe it is enough to say that sexual differences are important enough to take seriously in any ethics without making a claim about their ontological status.
9. Irigaray's view of ethics is influenced by Emmanuel Lévinas's conception of ethics as an attempt to respond to the alterity of the other who is prior to the subject. See her readings of Lévinas: "The Fecundity of the Caress" (1993a) and "Questions to Emmanuel Lévinas" (1991a).
10. Iris Marion Young gives three telling examples of nonsymmetrical differences: between disabled and nondisabled people, between Native and non–Native Americans, and between African Americans and non-African Americans (1997).
11. See Robin S. Dillon for an illuminating discussion of the ways in which women's basal self-respect is often damaged (1997, 226–49). Irigaray is very much aware of this problem.
12. Aristotle thought that only those who have physical and moral excellence can be considered great (1984, 1123b28–1124a5).
13. See Vance G. Morgan for an interesting discussion of this issue (1994, 207–210).
14. The point of not wondering at everything is also relevant in a different way—that we should come to understand the world enough to know what is "worthy" of wonder and what is not. Descartes argues that generosity prevents an excess of anger at wrongs or injuries at which we should rather feel indignation (1989, 129, 124). However, I believe that cases exist where our feelings would be very different from both wonder and generosity. For example, we may encounter human beings that we should not wonder at, whose difference we may properly find threatening and frightening, such as the psychopath or serial killer.
15. See Sara Heinämaa (1999) for a very interesting reading of Irigaray's work on wonder as the development of the notion of self-criticism.
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