ARTICLE

Reasoning from the Uterus: Casanova, Women’s
Agency, and the Philosophy of Birth

Stella Villarmea

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG,
United Kingdom; Faculty of Philosophy, Complutense University of Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria,
Madrid 28040, Spain
Corresponding author. stella.villarmea@philosophy.ox.ac.uk; svillarm@ucm.es

(Received 8 November 2019; revised 12 June 2020; accepted 19 June 2020)

Abstract

The emerging area of philosophy of birth is invaluable, first, to diagnose fallacious assump-
tions about the relation between the womb and reason, and, ultimately, to challenge poten-
tially damaging narratives with major impact on birth care. With its analysis of eighteenth-
century epistemic and medical discussions about the role of the uterus in women’s reason-
ing (or lack of reasoning), this article supports two arguments: first, that women’s “flawed
thinking” was a premise drawn by many modern intellectual men, one that was presented as
based upon empirical evidence; and second, that the pervasive construction of the uterus as
an element that renders women wild, uncontrollable, and irrational continues to influence
contemporary obstetrics (and maybe even to nurture obstetric violence), even as today’s
medicine and science consider themselves to be free of any such prejudices.

This article shows the role that Giacomo Casanova played in debunking these preju-
dices and presents his short manuscript on the issue as an important contribution to
the literature of the Enlightenment, with its argument against women’s supposed “natural”
inferiority and for the idea that differences in education (rather than anatomical differ-
ences) were to blame for women’s subordinate position in society.

Detailed analysis of the “thinking uterus” debate illuminates the different ways in
which various arguments from/by the “anti-uterine” lobby were used to justify the subor-
dination of women: sometimes emphasizing the connection between the uterus and
thought and sometimes negating it, but always concluding that women’s inferiority is
to be found in some known or yet-to-be-discovered anatomical, and mainly sexual, defi-
ciency or problem.

Brains, Wombs, Casanova, and Obstetrics

This article addresses a philosophical reconstruction of one component of the the-
sis of the naturalization of female rationality. The component at stake associates the
working of the brain (in women) to the working of the uterus or womb. In the eigh-
teenth century, the relationship among what we might term today as “woman,
health, and brain” was tinged with discourses of disparagement and incapacity,

© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Hypatia (2021), 36, 22–41
doi:10.1017/hyp.2020.45



which went beyond the empirical data available. Medical theories of the time fos-
tered a view of women that located them far from rationality and closer to animals
than men. To be more precise, medicine of the Enlightenment played out an odd
debate over the relationship between women’s brains and their uteruses. Thus,
when it came to assessing women’s rational capacities, in question was whether
female thought had its origins in the uterus, given that there was no “proof” that
it came from the brain. This controversy came to be known as the “thinking uterus”
debate, and there was one most surprising participant in it: Giacomo Casanova. The
well-known Italian adventurer published a staunch defense of women’s cognitive
capacities and of their right to an education. To date, Casanova’s debunking of
the “anti-uterine” prejudices has received little attention in academic studies of
the fight for sexual and gender equality; my article recovers his important
contribution.

As well as analyzing the arguments brandished by both sides of the “thinking uterus”
debate, my article also ponders the persistence of a series of age-old commonplaces that
still beset contemporary obstetrics. As a result, in addition to shedding light on various
striking moments from the histories of medicine and ideas, my historical approach aims
to explore more deeply some of the associations between the role of the brain and the
role of the uterus that have been made repeatedly over the centuries, so much so, in fact,
that they seem to be part of our conceptual furniture. Yet their longevity does not mean
those associations are sound, nor does it mean that we should accept them or let them
continue to regulate our current social and political practices. Accordingly, the aim of
this article is to uncover the hidden patriarchal premises that, immune to all real
changes in paradigms and praxis, still permeate certain aspects of contemporary obstet-
rics. Ultimately, this article aims not only to uncover, but also to challenge such
assumptions.

Hypothesis of Research: Obstetrics as Genealogy or Logos of the Origin

This article hypothesizes that the survival of patriarchy is closely bound up with a par-
ticular way of viewing pregnancy. As to what I have referred to elsewhere as “the preg-
nancy of the subject” or “the pregnant subject” (Villarmea 2009; Villarmea and
Fernández Guillén 2012; Villarmea 2015a; 2015b; Villarmea and Guilló 2015; and
Villarmea, Olza, and Recio 2015), we still need to resignify notions of pregnancy,
labor, and childbirth that dispense with all age-old, misogynistic nuances. In agreement
with this hypothesis, the sphere of childbirth is currently proving to be fertile ground
for explorations from feminist and gender perspectives.

I am in complete agreement with Celia Amorós’s thesis that philosophical feminism
needs to reconstruct a genealogy that is nonpatriarchal (Amorós 2014, 11–12). Amorós
campaigns for nonpatriarchal philosophy to study in detail our customary discourses of
origin and provenance. My own view is that the analysis of medical obstetrics should
occupy a major part of this line of research. Obstetrics and obstetric practice have
been—and continue to be—one of the cornerstones of our society’s construction of
genealogy. This is why my article takes “genealogy” in its literal sense, as a logos or
study of genos, where the Greek term logos refers to “word” as something meditated,
thought over, or reasoned (in other words, “reasoning,” “argumentation,” “speech,”
“discourse,” or “knowledge”), and genos has to do with the Indo-European root
“gen-,” meaning “give birth” (as in “genesis” or “generate”). From this connection, I
shall argue that the logos regarding the genos that medical science implants in obstetrics

Hypatia 23



becomes one of the paradigmatic sites from which our society constructs its discourse
about our origin or genealogy.

My research attempts to unpick the “philosophical yields” (Amorós 2014, 12), which
are also social and political, of the medical institutionalization of pregnancy, labor,
and childbirth. Obstetrics is the medical or health science that deals with gestation,
childbirth, and puerperium. The term derives from the Latin adjective obstetricius
(“pertaining to the midwife”) and from the substantive obstetrix (“midwife”), which
literally means “the one at the front” (of the woman giving birth). It also derives
from the verb obstare (“to be at the front of”), the origin too, intriguingly, of the
word “obstacle.” According to my hypothesis, a certain approach to obstetrics is one
of the pillars supporting patriarchy; and should this be confirmed, it follows that a ratio-
nal critique of the patriarchy entails a rational critique of that approach. Thus, an anal-
ysis of the medical institutionalization of the sphere of childbirth would be a necessary
step in a contemporary critique of patriarchal reason. Any progress toward building the
egalitarian society we desire requires a reform of the science and practice of obstetrics,
which situates obstetrics not so much in front of, nor on the opposite side of, the
woman in childbirth in line with its etymology, but also at her side and with her,
even if only symbolically. Following this train of thought, I would like to propose the
notion of “ad-stetrics” (the science of those who are at the side of the woman in
labor) as an inspiring concept to bear in mind.

Viewed from the perspective of gender, the science that today concerns itself with
genos, obstetrics, can function to legitimize the use and abuse of the female body
and the mistreatment or violence inflicted on many of these bodies at a pivotal moment
in women’s lives. Pregnant and laboring women are a vulnerable and unique group with
a fundamental human right to dignity. Provision of quality maternity care globally is
uneven, and often fails to respect the rights of those it serves. Maternal care is a fierce
battlefield between “intervened” vs. “normal,” “safe” vs. “experienced,” “social” vs.
“medical” birth models (Newburn and Singh 2003; Karlsdottir, Halldorsdottir, and
Lundgren 2014; WHO 2014; Hall 2015; Euro-Peristat 2018). Efforts to improve mater-
nal health have traditionally focused on “too little, too late” situations. “Too little, too
late” means a lack of access to good quality care, or care that cannot be accessed quickly
enough, and covers inadequate access to services, resources, or evidence-based care.
But “too much, too soon” can also harm. “Too much, too soon” refers to care before,
during, and after childbirth that is too much, unnecessary, inappropriate, and even
harmful. “Too much, too soon” care is increasing everywhere as more women around
the world give birth in health facilities. Recent evidence shows that the situation is get-
ting worse, not better, in terms of women’s rights, neonatal well-being, and long-term
consequences.1

The recent United Nations Report on Violence against Women with a Focus on
Childbirth and Obstetric Violence (UN 2019) finds that women the world over, regard-
less of socioeconomic status, are subjected to mistreatment and violence even during an
extremely vulnerable moment of their lives: labor. Violence can take the form of
medical procedures (such as episiotomies or caesareans) for which there is little phys-
iological justification. Such birth-care practices have yet to be identified and treated as a
human rights violation against women. They do not reflect isolated incidents nor spora-
dic episodes experienced by women in the course of their lives, but rather are part of a
continuum of the gender-based violence that occurs in the wider context of structural
inequality and discrimination, and also as a result of poor education and training.
According to this view, obstetric violence is another manifestation of patriarchy.2

24 Stella Villarmea



This essay uses a conceptual framework dating from the very beginnings of obstetrics
to uncover the hidden premises and assumptions that still permeate many of the most
common practices in twenty-first-century birth care. Of course, as a health science and
practice, the obstetrics of today bears little relation to its historical counterpart. Yet, and
this is my argument, an analysis of certain common obstetric debates from that earlier
period enables us to uncover many hidden or insufficiently visible aspects of obstetrics
today. Regardless of issues of intentionality and individual or corporate awareness,
I seek to trace the thread of concepts that unites primitive obstetrics with contemporary
practice to identify and unmask the internal web that connects them. Helping to free
today’s science from sexist prejudices remains the chief goal of feminist epistemology
and epistemological feminism.3 Doubtless, we all know that cutting off the hydra’s
heads is a never-ending task, yet that is no reason to give up our efforts.

Reason, Health, and Women at the Dawn of Obstetrics

Since antiquity, the nature of a woman’s body and mind (or soul) has been the subject
of debate. Thomas Aquinas’s dictum that “tota mulier est in utero” [woman is a womb]
is well known—a legacy of Aristotelian ideas and debates over whether women had
souls and, if so, of what kind or whether those souls were superior, complete, or
human, or whether they were just “matter.” Simone de Beauvoir made clear the pivotal
role of this dictum when she chose it as the first answer to the question “What is a
woman?” at the opening of her monumental contribution to philosophical feminism,
The Second Sex.

In a historical-cultural context that equated women with their bodily sexual condi-
tion, the first argument to be explicit in defense of the equality of male and female ratio-
nal capacities was formulated in the seventeenth century by the philosopher François
Poullain de la Barre, on the basis of Cartesian premises. Descartes had argued that
humans were a compound of two independent substances: the body (res extensa)
and the soul (res cogitans), but he did not work out the consequences of the indepen-
dence of these substances in the debate over the nature of the soul of a woman. It was
his disciple, Poullain, who pursued Descartes’s metaphysical and epistemological argu-
ment to its ultimate practical and political conclusion. In his book, De l’égalité des deux
sexes [On the equality of the two sexes] (Poullain and Frelin 1673/1989), Poullain argued
with absolute coherence that no difference between male and female souls could be
derived from the differences between their bodies; corporeal differences did not entail
different mental processes or thoughts. The complete argument is crystal clear: if
humans think with their soul (not with their body), then there can be no difference
between men and women in cognitive or rational terms. Thus, Poullain uses the radical
Cartesian distinction between the two substances to neutralize the popular prejudice
that the bodily characteristics of women lay behind their mental peculiarities—more
specifically, that (purported) female mental deficiencies were the result of their (differ-
ent) somatic properties. Poullain’s thesis that women’s lower intellectual capacities
could not be the result of their bodily differences can be considered as one of the
first milestones in the history of feminist theory.

As well as refusing to differentiate between human souls on the basis of corporeal
features, Poullain offered a frank explanation of the issues at stake. In his book De
l’éducation des dames [On the education of women] (Poulain 1674/1985), he claimed
that if women did not have the same analytical capacity as men, it was merely because
they had not been educated to develop it as their male counterparts had. The mechanics

Hypatia 25



of the mind did not differ from one sex to the other; on the contrary, the mind of either
sex was as capable as that of the other when instructed under equitable conditions.
Poullain makes no bones of the fact that the belief that women are intellectually inferior
to men is a prejudice based on the authority, custom, and “interests” of the latter. In
short, equal educational instruction creates equal thinking capacity. Accordingly,
equal opportunities become a prerequisite of any fair assessment of cognitive
performance.

As Cinta Canterla puts it in her book Mala noche, the

argument for the equality of souls (or, in its secularized version, for spirits or
minds) would soon grow outdated in the face of the advances of Enlightenment
medical theory, which tried to find an explanation for the capacities of every
human being, and especially the intellectual capacities, in the configuration of
the body and that updated and injected new life into the theories about sexual
difference that had held sway since Greek antiquity. (Canterla 2009, 44)

Canterla’s work shows how, under the paradigm of the New Science, eighteenth-
century medicine was particularly interested in the relationship between the body’s con-
stitution and human capacities. This approach meant that misogynistic theories of the
female body, chiefly its sexual configuration and procreative function, gave a new lease
on life to the supposedly inferior mental capacities of women. These theories were old,
but the scientific discoveries related to health gave them a new gloss. The sexism of this
New Science and medicine lay hidden beneath a wealth of data, procedures, and studies
leading to conclusions that, although in many respects undoubtedly new, were also
hamstrung by fixed, preconceived ideas and prejudices regarding everything that had
anything to do with a comparison between the sexes. The empirical approach to phys-
iology of this new Enlightenment medicine pushed theories about male and female
equality à la Poullain de la Barre into the background, while its hypotheses and
goals gave new strength to old theories about sexual difference. It became common
once again to believe that natural bodily differences had irrevocable consequences for
behavior and capacities, which not only were unchangeable but should actually be pre-
served. This, then, is Canterla’s suggestive argument: the medicine of the period became
a powerful source of legitimacy for sexual inequality. Time and again, Enlightenment
medical treatises regarded the uterus as the organ responsible for supposed female
bodily decadence, and for the suspected female tendency toward nymphomania and
“uterine frenzy.” These views, which enjoyed the credibility and authority conferred
by medical science, would be accepted by Enlightenment thinkers and used to add
respectability to their proposals that women should be educated in modesty and sub-
jected to external supervision (the father’s in the first instance, and then the husband’s).
And this in turn fed back into the prejudices of the physicians.

The Enlightenment is a key moment in the construction of the relationship between
the “female” body and reason, for it set in motion the chain of associations that would
be crucial to the later conceptual developments I wish to emphasize here. An insistence
on the pernicious influence of the womb on the rational capacities of women had one
particularly blatant consequence: the belief that their uteruses made women descend
into chaos and nervous breakdowns. Irrationality, sensitivity, or emotionality, peculiar
to and extreme in women, and their characteristic volubility or imaginative disorders
were the result of, and could be explained by, the fact that only they had a womb.
This supported the connection between the uterus and madness that is present in

26 Stella Villarmea



the etymology of “hysteria” and has been so exploited in the history of medicine and
psychology. Once again, we see how in the case of women, and only in their case, sex-
uality and reproductive function are what account for cognitive capacity and mental
state or health. This insistence that women are chronically ill and in thrall to their
reproductive function goes hand in hand with the emphasis on the female body as a
source of irrationality. Thanks to their capacity to become pregnant and therefore to
submit themselves to organic processes, women were historically classified as bodies
incapable of complete self-control, which was the paradigm of rationality. The processes
of pregnancy and childbirth were associated with an inability to control the body, and
they became another pillar that supported arguments for their female irrationality.4 On
the spectrum from animal to human, the pregnant or laboring woman was positioned
near the former and well away from the latter.

All this is evidence of the point to which the relationship among “woman, health, and
brain” has been tainted since the eighteenth century by a discourse of disparagement and
incapacity that goes far beyond empirical data. Medical theories promoted and justified a
view of women as virtual animals in need of society’s guardianship. Patriarchal prejudices
pervaded the study of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding to such an extent that
these states and experiences were made akin to irrationality or mental disorders. To reveal
further how the survival of the patriarchy is directly related to the endurance of a partic-
ular view of the pregnant woman and childbirth, I now turn to a detailed analysis of one
of the debates typical of fledgling obstetrics. In what follows, we shall consider the discus-
sion of two distinguished gynecologists of the time regarding what the famous Italian
adventurer Giacomo Casanova called the “thinking womb” controversy.

Casanova and the “Thinking Womb” Debate

“Lana Caprina”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) is famous for his entertaining autobiography, Histoire
de ma vie [History of my life], one of the best sources of information about the customs
and conventions of social life in eighteenth-century Europe. This encyclopedic narrative
can be read on many levels, and I recommend it to anyone who might enjoy a breath-
taking tale, fictionalized yet sincere. Casanova became notorious for his adventures and
his affairs with women, which were frequently complicated, oftentimes humorously
related, and full of coups de théâtre and close shaves—so much so that his personality
and escapades have made him the epitome of the “womanizer” or “Don Juan.” His
name is synonymous with seduction.

All these details are well known and reappear time and again in popular works on
Casanova. Less familiar is his passionate yet lucid defense of women’s equality and their
right to an education. This side of Casanova, which earns him a place in the finest fem-
inist tradition, is best seen in one of his early works, which made his name and had
immediate and widespread effect. Published in 1772 in Italian under the title Lana
caprina: Epistola di un licantropo [Splitting hairs: Letter from a lycanthrope], the
work presents solid arguments against the prevailing views of female inferiority and
submission. In 2000, the French National Translation Prize was awarded to the then-
recent edition of this opuscule (Casanova 1999/2014). A splendid Spanish version
was published by Hermida Editores in 2014, with the title Lana caprina: Epístola de
un licántropo. There seems to be no translation yet published in English. I will thus
use the Spanish edition in this essay.

Hypatia 27



Lana caprina takes as its title a line from Horace (Epistles I, 18,15): “Alter rixatur de
lana saepe caprina” [There’s always someone arguing over the wool of goats]. To won-
der whether goats have wool is, indeed, to waste time in fruitless discussions of issues
that do not require attention—in other words, over nonsense. (Although that does not
mean that we cannot learn much about what underpins these discussions if we do listen
to them.) The title Casanova chose for his work perfectly captures what lies between its
covers: a satire on the medical diatribes of the period and their prejudices regarding the
alleged lack of reason that purportedly characterized women.

When Casanova wrote Lana caprina, he was already back from his adventures. He
had been imprisoned in and expelled from almost every city he had lived in, and
was now embarking on a more settled period. Lana caprina was his first bestseller:
its first edition of 500 copies sold out in fifteen days. The hundred sequins of gold
he pocketed was a far from negligible figure at the time. The Venetian author penned
his work in epistolary form after visiting Tartuffi’s library in Bologna, where a cross-
eyed monk had given him two leaflets written by the doctors of anatomy Petronio
Zecchini and Germano Azzoguidi. Casanova himself describes the situation in his
Memoirs:

A week after my arrival at Bologna, happening to be in the shop of Tartuffi, the
bookseller, I made the acquaintance of a cross-eyed priest, who struck me, after
a quarter of an hour’s talk, as a man of learning and talent. He presented me
with two works, which had recently been issued by two of the young professors
at the university. He told me that I should find them amusing reading, and he
was right.

The first treatise contended that women’s faults should be forgiven, since they
were really the work of the matrix, which influenced them in spite of themselves.
The second treatise was a criticism of the first. The author allowed that the uterus
was an animal, but he denied the alleged influence, as no anatomist had succeeded
in discovering any communication between it and the brain.

I determined to write a reply to the two pamphlets, and I did so in the course of
three days. When my reply was finished, I sent it to M. Dandolo, instructing him
to have five hundred copies printed. When they arrived, I gave a bookseller the
agency, and in a fortnight, I had made a hundred sequins.

The first pamphlet was called “L’utero pensante,” the second was in French and
bore the title “La force vitale,” while I called my reply “Lana caprina.” I treated the
matter in an easy vein, not without some hints of deep learning, and made fun of
the elucubrations of the two physicians. My preface was in French, but full of
Parisian idioms, which rendered it unintelligible to all who had not visited the
gay capital, and this circumstance gained me a good many friends amongst the
younger generation. (Casanova 2004, chapter 18, paragraph 177)

As Casanova tells us, the two doctors were involved in a debate over the nature of
woman and her womb. Whereas the two doctors concurred in attributing to women
a shortfall of rationality, they differed over the arguments on which they based their
conclusion. Since the debate they conducted is representative of the state of the question
at the time, it is important to understand the arguments each wielded. In what follows, I
shall first present and analyze their positions regarding the nature of the womb and its
consequences for female nature, as a way into the obstetrics debate of the time and its

28 Stella Villarmea



ongoing impact; I shall then compare those positions with Casanova’s own views on the
matter.

The Thinking Womb Thesis

Petronio Zecchini had written the leaflet De geniali della dialettica delle donne ridotta al
suo vero principio [On the nature of female dialectic reduced to its true principle]. A pro-
fessor at the University of Bologna, Zecchini began his tract asking to be forgiven for his
offenses against women, as if wishing to apologize beforehand for maintaining as the
central tenet of his essay the contention that women were completely dependent on,
and at the service of, the womb and that said organ overruled their wishes or consent.
For Zecchini, the womb was womankind’s “true beginning,” that is to say the origin of
their entire behavior, their thoughts, and their rational processes. That is why Casanova
referred to Zecchini with playful lucidity as the author of the leaflet on the “thinking” or
“speaking womb.”

We should be grateful to Casanova for giving the author of the Dialectic Reduced the
nickname of “Vir fugiens” [The man who flees]. This sobriquet takes its meaning from
the Latin aphorism that was engraved on the frontispiece of Zecchini’s work, beneath a
medallion: “Vir fugiens & denuo pugnabit” [The man who flees may fight again]. It
occurred to Casanova that “the man who flees” was a good way to describe someone
who rambles on without bothering to prove his claims. (It occurs to me that the second
part of the aphorism chosen by Zecchini is also relevant to our theme: unfounded libels
are the dialectical strategy to which apologists of sexism resort in order to retreat grace-
fully before returning unharmed to the fray at a later date.)

As reported by Casanova, Zecchini concluded his work by saying: “Women either do
not think, or if they do think, they think in an odd way all their own” (Casanova 1999/
2014, 39). In short, Zecchini’s thesis is that the womb governs female reason. However,
my analysis of his discourse sheds light on some interesting qualifications to his posi-
tion. Zecchini admits that in reality women think with their reason but from their
womb. This implies that, although women also use reason in their thinking processes,
the organ that is finally responsible for those processes is not the brain but the womb.
Thus, it becomes clear that reason in women is a mere means or tool of the real motor
or causal agent that initiates, controls, and explains the rational process (as well as all
other behavior), namely, the womb. Although potentially anachronistic, it would not
be inappropriate to use the following metaphors to illustrate Zecchini’s thesis: the
womb as origin, headquarters, seat, center of operations, force-field, or center of influ-
ence over all female behavior, including intellectual behavior. In Zecchini’s words (as
transmitted by Casanova): “I have called your womb a thinker not because I attribute
to it the faculty of thought, but because it is the absolute master of your thought,
and if the womb is not a thinker because it does not think, it is inasmuch as it
makes you think its way” (49).

This unique argument whereby women think with reason but from the womb
allowed its promulgators to draw the following conclusion: women do think, but in a
quite peculiar way. Obviously, given the characteristics of the uterus, which is not an
organ designed for thought, its use for rational ends could not be expected to yield spec-
tacular results. A deliberately logical explanation could therefore be given for the defi-
cient thinking capacity of women: as they did not use the right organ when reasoning,
the results could not be completely normal, proper, or correct. The answer to the ques-
tion of whether women think was then, yes, but not properly—when all is said and
done, thinking with the womb is not real thinking.

Hypatia 29



An analysis of this kind of discourse from a gender perspective shows that it actually
works in the opposite way from what it would have us believe. Advancing as its first
premise (for the conclusion is, in fact, just that, a mere premise) that female thought
is defective by nature, a cause is then sought to explain it. That cause is found in a
second premise, namely, that women think with an inappropriate organ. Given these
premises, all that remains is to assign to women as their organ of thought the only
one that makes them different from men: their wombs. Thus, the culmination of the
argument is not only ad hominem but, in a very strict sense, ad feminam.

But what is the most serious consequence of our anatomy professor’s position? By
arguing that the womb governs female behavior, Zecchini concludes that women are
not responsible for their actions, whether good or bad, nor for their successes or fail-
ures. Women are completely dependent on their uterine fluctuations and are therefore
incapable of free, rational action. Here we can see how the New Science and medical
advances gave a new lease on life to justifying female inferiority and political minority
of age, both in relation to their cognitive capacities and to the moral and political con-
sequences of those capacities. Therefore, because women had no capacity for indepen-
dent thought and were not responsible for what they did, they had to be under the
protection of men (fathers or husbands).

This view of women’s mental deficiency had its most direct consequence in the
denial of their access to citizenship and the prohibition of their right to vote.
Women could not vote, the argument went, since they could not detach themselves suf-
ficiently from their own physiological peculiarities to think in terms of society as a
whole and the common good.5 In practice, one might reason that the deprivation
came before the explanation: society first determined that women were not to be
allowed to vote and only later explained that discrimination by appealing to women’s
supposed rational deficiency resulting from their organic constitution. Women were
deemed not to possess the rational capacity to choose what was morally or politically
good without being bidden by their bodies. Everything women thought or decided
had its beginning and end in their organic particularity and in the (fluctuating) state
they happened to be in at a given time. Given this premise, there was no reason to
allow changeable and undiscriminating beings to express their views on important
questions of social and political life. Accordingly, their irrationality was identified as
the required justification for the predetermined denial of the vote for women.

In contrast, no equivalent argument was ever formulated for men, as none was ever
required. There was no assumption or conception of men being determined by their
bodily conditioning factors whenever they thought, made decisions, or acted. In men,
it was held that reason was able to detach itself from the changing, individual particu-
larities and was capable of autonomy. Hence, they could and must take part in public
debate about the common good by means of the right to vote.

This contrast between male and female reason was stated quite openly and at length
by thinkers of the stature and influence of Rousseau and Kant.6 This is sufficiently well
explained in feminist studies in the history of philosophy such that there is no need to
say more about it here.7 My focus lies elsewhere: namely, to trace the transposition of
these same arguments into the medical texts of the age and to ascertain at what point
medical justifications, with the credibility and authority of New Science, began sustain-
ing philosophical speculation.

Let us then return to the debate between our two doctors, and examine the
counterargument.

30 Stella Villarmea



The Vital Force or Animal-Womb Thesis

Our second doctor of anatomy, Germano Azzoguidi, had written the pamphlet Lettres
de Madame Cunégonde de B (Bologne) écrits à Madame Paquete de Ferrara (Letters
from Madame Cunegunda of Bologna to Madame Paquette of Ferrara) as a critical
reply to his opponent. In this work, Azzoguidi suggested that a woman is home to
an “animal” in the form of her own uterus. To understand this identification of the
womb with an animal, we need to remember that the identification of everything asso-
ciated with female sexuality and procreative capacity with animality was widespread in
the eighteenth century, as it had been since antiquity and would continue to be in the
following century. Even so, Azzoguidi’s contribution to this line of thought is still a
surprise since he proposes that a particular female sexual organ not only behaves like
an animal but, in fact, is an animal.8 Azzoguidi does not expand on the idea of the
womb being an animal. But it might be in view of the way animality connotes force
and vitality that Casanova calls his position the “vital force” thesis.

Despite his association of the womb with an animal, Azzoguidi unexpectedly argues
that the womb has no power over female reasoning. What matters most about his posi-
tion is the argument he uses in support: the womb cannot be the cause of women’s
thoughts because there is no anatomical connection between both “vessels.” True
enough, the anatomists had still to find the organic connection between the uterus
and the brain; yet anatomy felt itself advanced enough to be able to deny the existence
of any causal relationship between them as empirical evidence was not forthcoming,
and action at a distance had been ruled out. With impeccable scientific logic,
Azzoguidi countered Zecchini with the argument that women could not think with
their brain from the womb since those organs were not connected.

It is striking that Azzoguidi rejected the uterine origin of female thought only
because he had been unable to find any vessels connecting the relevant organs. One
feels he would not have been in the least surprised if such an anatomical relationship
were to be discovered in time: for Azzoguidi, the relationship could not be proven
simply because the causal process had yet to be found, but not because it was nonsen-
sical to believe that women, unlike men, thought with, or from, their sexual organs.

Azzoguidi formulated a final argument against his fellow anatomist Zecchini when
he criticized the latter’s claim that women think with their wombs, as a contradiction in
terms. The womb does not think; the brain is the only thinking organ. Therefore, if
women do think, they must do so with the organ ordained by nature for such a purpose,
that is, with the brain. As the brain is the only thinking organ, if women think at all,
then they must also do so with the brain. We have already seen how Zecchini was in
fact in agreement: thinking with the womb is not exactly thinking, except by approxi-
mation. So, what really happens is that women do not think.

We can see, therefore, that the question under debate is the very question that
triggered the controversy: does a woman think or not? The ongoing debate, with its
great display of dialectic skill, sought to elucidate whether women thought, and, if
they did, what organ they used to do so. In a nutshell, the debate between these two
Bolognese doctors of anatomy was a rerun of the original and most recent prejudices
of misogyny of the time. Zecchini argued that the womb governed female behavior
and that therefore women were incapable of free and rational action; Azzoguidi criti-
cized Zecchini’s thesis but, without dissociating himself from the corporealization or
naturalization of the concept of woman, focused exclusively on the issue of whether
any physical connection existed between the organs of the womb and the brain.

Hypatia 31



As I remarked earlier, this type of controversy was the direct descendant of the
age-old arguments over whether women had souls. The medical debate sketched here
illustrates how sexist premises, which since antiquity had been central to patriarchal dis-
course and practice and that still existed and were influential, were introduced to the
new terrain that medical scientists were staking out in Modernity.

The Force of Education versus the Influence of the Uterus

In the words of Marina Pino’s succinct summary in her prologue to the Spanish edition
of Lana caprina, “we now have the theory of the womb that thinks for women and the
theory that the female womb is an animal that cannot think for them because there is
no channel permitting it to do so” (Casanova 1999/2014, 16). What, then, does
Casanova bring to the debate? What was his objective in reproducing and commenting
on the controversy between the two doctors? The answer to both questions is crystal
clear: Casanova ridiculed this kind of debate, which explains the title of his work,
“lana caprina.” He thought it absurd to argue over whether women think with their
uterus, and he felt it important—as well as entertaining—to dismantle the foundations
of the controversy. His clever mockery of the competing positions alerts us to the other
conceptual current related to equal rights that traversed the Enlightenment: the theori-
zation and attempts to put into practice the universalization of human potential, regard-
less of distinctions on grounds of sex, race, social conditions, or health. Casanova’s is a
passionate yet lucid contribution to one of the main chapters in this universalization:
equality of rights for men and women.

Casanova analyzed the whole debate from its initial premise to its final conclusion
before setting his sights on the first contender, Zecchini, and his thesis that women
were “speaking wombs.” The adventurer and lady’s man makes short work of putting
his finger on the absurd and groundless sexist prejudices that underwrite the ideas of
those doctors who claim to establish intellectual difference and differences of character
between the sexes on the basis of anatomical differences. Casanova ridicules the debate
with arguments partly resembling those I set out previously, but that at times are more
provocative, as when he explicitly hints at how Zecchini associates the reproductive
capacities of the female to rationality, but not those of the male: “Woman has a
womb and man has sperm, and that is the only difference; but if thinking pertains
to the soul and not the body, why should this doctor turn his attention to women’s
wombs more than to men’s sperm?” (52).

Casanova even anticipates a possible retort when he says that, although “thought is a
property of the soul, the soul depends on the body for a huge amount of impressions
and affections, wherefore it is not impossible that the womb furnishes women with that
huge amount, thereby shaping them into thinking souls that differ from those housed in
male bodies” (52). In answer to this possible objection, Casanova imagines a woman
who argues as follows:

Assuming the doctrine of the adversary, let me accept that it is true that for this
reason my womb causes alterations in my thinking faculty with the result that it
makes me a different thinker from a man, then the sperm will have sufficient force
in men to make them think under the influence of spermatic affections and there-
fore in a fashion unique to them and different from women. And this leads us to
the conclusion that a woman thinks like a woman, a man like a man. Pierre danse
mieux que Jean, Jean danse mieux que Pierre, ils dansent bien tous deux. [Pierre

32 Stella Villarmea



dances better than Jean, Jean dances better than Pierre, both are good dancers].
But if we examine the facts instead of straining our wits to formulate theories,
we notice that men and women think in the same way. What the libeler of
wombs terms dialectical diversity is no more or less than a certain difference in
the propensities, the desires, and the passions; yet these in no way change the
way of thinking, which is why his doctrine of the womb is a shameful physical
theory reduced to a most disagreeable conclusion. (52–53)

It is important to emphasize that in choosing a woman to formulate such a soundly
logical counter-argument, Casanova provides possible evidence of the degree to which
he believed women use (and can use) the same logic as their interlocutors. To ascribe to
a woman the words quoted above is another rhetorical strategy Casanova deploys to
persuade us that women think (and can think) in the same way as men.

As for Azzoguidi’s animal–womb thesis, Casanova comes to grips with it in places
such as the following satirical paragraph, which I quote in its entirety:

The woman’s lot would have been extraordinarily grim if, in addition to all the
hardships they undergo on account of our despotism, of the weakness of their
sex, and of the duties they have agreed and specified with nature and their families
on entering civil society, if, I say, to crown it all the Creator had given them an
internal animal called womb, which, not content to have copious whims of a mate-
rial nature also desired to take charge of her head and, within her head, of that
point of central force where the soul finds its seat and whence it transmits to all
the vital sensations in all the other parts of the body the effects of its thoughts.
If women were in thrall to their wombs, neither merit nor demerit could be pred-
icated of them; they would be deprived of all character of human society, worthy of
disdain and incapable of any reasoned action since they could be entrusted with
nothing without having previously examined the state of that inordinately peculiar
viscera. If that really were the case, all that could be said of them would be that
they did not really belong to the human species, but were an imperfect product
of nature, which had bestowed upon them no greater birthright than the appear-
ance of reason and no more. (69–70)

Obviously, the extreme hardship or injustice of women’s perceived enslavement to a
tyrannical womb did not mean it was not the true state of affairs. Far from falling into
this logical trap, the strength of Casanova’s appeal to common sense lies in his injunc-
tion to admit that whoever argued that an internal animal was in charge of the female
body and mind had to be ready not only to deny women the capacity to act voluntarily
and rationally, but also to deny that they belonged to the same species as men. This
argument entails the internal logic that women are a flawed creation of nature (and
of the Creator) inasmuch as their apparent power of reason and humanity would be
just that, apparent. And two simple doctors could hardly claim, so it seemed to
Casanova, to have proven that. As demonstrated, the unmasking of the sexist prejudices
lurking behind the veneer of scientific, or pseudoscientific, discourse is the coup d’effet
Casanova unleashes to discredit all discussion of “lana caprina.” He maintained that to
debate whether women have an animal instead of a womb is as idle as to argue the toss
over whether goats have wool or not. (But for all its stupidity, this debate has taken place
and has had repercussions. Goats are unaffected by arguments over trivialities; women,
however, are affected, and greatly so, by the “debates” that have been held about us.)

Hypatia 33



To my mind, more interesting than his entertaining criticism is Casanova’s explana-
tion of the reasons behind the current state of affairs. In a sophisticated and visionary
manner, he argues that both women and men are conditioned by education and social
roles, which together form the true origin of their behavior:

From childhood man grows accustomed to confronting and attacking in order to
defend himself from whomever seeks to oppress him; with cold blood he marches
off to war to spill blood or challenges to a duel a rival whom he slays, or who
slays him, without anger. Woman . . . knows nothing of war while her duels are verbal
combats; that is how she is brought up, and by dint of education she is reduced to
admiring male courage without being capable of conceiving or imitating it. (54–55)

This quote shows that, according to Casanova, displaying courage, for example in
warfare, is not an inherent sexual feature; rather it is a learned, gendered behavior.

Casanova contends that the difference between male and female reason stems from
context rather than from constitution. As he puts it, “Women’s education and lot are
the two reasons why our logic makes them different from us; and our education and
lot are the two reasons why our logic makes us different from them. Man holds all
in his power, but woman is possessor only of what man has given her” (54).
Women’s thoughts are the result of what they have learned, not the effect of uterine
influence:

Women do not study theology, nor the soul, nor the other life, nor the possibility
that pure spirituality exists; they only do what their good old pedagogues told them
to do. Thanks to study, men sharpen their wits and attain to an understanding of
mysterious dogmas while at the same time setting out the reason for which they
can no longer be amazed when affirming that they have understood them. (56)

His conclusion is unequivocal: women, like men, think with their heads but have no
greater powers of reason than those they have been allowed to develop.

Casanova recognizes that, if women are determined by anything, it is not by the
womb but by the education they receive and by their distinct social condition. As he
states emphatically at the end of his work, a woman “educated in certain circumstances
thinks one way; if educated in other circumstances would think another way” (64). This
thesis coincides with that of Poullain de la Barre, who, as we saw at the start of this arti-
cle, argued that the mind does not work differently according to its sex; instead, women
do not develop the same rational capacities as men because they are not educated on an
equal footing with them. Casanova reaches the same conclusion when deploying irony
to discredit the regressive thoughts of those anatomists who, at the height of the
Enlightenment, continued to rehearse discriminatory prejudices toward women that
the society of the age maintained.

To challenge the overall premise of my essay, one might counterargue that the doc-
tors’ expressions were metaphorical. For example, one could conclude that we should
not interpret literally the metaphor of the uterus as an animal. In response, I would
note that metaphors used for women are very different from metaphors used for
men. So much so that in the case of men, doctors do not devote time to searching
for metaphors to describe their (lack of) rationality nor its origin.

In my view, and on the grounds outlined above, Casanova is fully entitled to be
counted among the few writers of the Enlightenment—Mary Wollstonecraft,

34 Stella Villarmea



Theodor von Hippel, Choderlos de Laclos, Condorcet, and Olympe de Gouges are
others—who diagnosed female backwardness as a social problem caused by lack of edu-
cation. It is in texts like theirs that the origins of theoretical feminism are to be found.
“People think they know Casanova. They are wrong,” Philippe Sollers writes in the
opening of his lively guide to the famed libertine’s sprawling memoir (Sollers and
Mortimer 2016, 3). I agree, though for different reasons than Sollers’s. He spurns bour-
geois hypocrisy and cliché to affirm a jocund philosophy of life devoted to the twinned
pursuits of pleasure and joy. I offer my contribution to show that Casanova was in favor
of some of the more egalitarian ideas that were in circulation in his time. Meanwhile,
most of his contemporaries—Rousseau and Kant chief among them—were still confus-
ing effects with causes and attributing intellectual deficiencies and even mental pathol-
ogies to a purportedly natural condition. This naturalist fallacy prevented them from
recognizing the social origin of the problem of social inequality and gender disparity
at the same time as it lent legitimacy to their blindness.

Lana caprina is well worth reading, a task that, as Casanova himself tells us, will not
occupy us for more than “an afternoon.” The man has become a myth, and it is about
time to eschew the myth. His little book, written with vibrant logic, healthy good sense,
and winning good humor, conveys to its readers today the fun, the wit, and the sarcasm
many women still choose to employ to mock those who fancy themselves their superi-
ors. Worth noting too is the blunt epithet Casanova used of women’s detractors: the
“anti-uterine.”

“Uterine Issues” in Contemporary Obstetrics

Now that we have reached the end of our conceptual analysis regarding an influential
theme in the history of ideas, it might well be asked, “Yes, but what has all this to do
with contemporary obstetrics? To be sure, the moderns had some funny ideas . . . but
what has it all got to do with obstetrics today? It’s part of the history of ideas and of
medicine, but it’s irrelevant to us today, isn’t it?” I assert that this is precisely what
we need to consider: whether some associations still shape the conceptual schemes
we operate under today.

The history of certain ideas needs to be taken seriously. The view that women were
sick beings both physiologically and mentally was the precondition that enabled the
subsequent characterization of the womb’s functioning as denying women their capac-
ity. If we remember that fact and its consequences, we shall find it easier to detect its
conceptually active, ideological remains in certain obstetric and midwifery discourses
and practices.

Arguably, a crucial barrier to warranting women’s rights in the labor room are beliefs
as to whether a woman in labor is actually in full control of her capacities. And why
would women in labor not be at full capacity? Well, here the answer is not openly
provided—as it would contradict all kind of legal regulations—but it points to the fol-
lowing: women’s lack of capacity during labor is presented as a de facto consequence of
the pain and fear associated with birthing contractions. Women are deemed to be in an
altered state of body and consciousness, and this altered state is taken to deeply affect
their capacity to retain and recall information, and to balance it when making a deci-
sion. When we take it as obvious that they are not fully in control, we normalize such
judgment, and this normalization encourages us to ignore what women say and works
to deny them the space and time to say what they need to say. In short, women who are
subject to the “uterine influence” during labor do not reason well. My philosophical

Hypatia 35



analysis focuses on this key aspect: there is much to be gained from noting, and then
challenging, the apparent lack of capacity of women in labor, due to their being subject
to the uterine influence.

As commented above, recent reports and literature of obstetric violence have put
onto the agenda data regarding the excessive frequency with which perinatal practition-
ers infringe basic legal parameters and health-care strategies and protocols. In line with
this focus, I present my historical reconstruction of the precursors of obstetrics to throw
some light onto current approaches to “uterine issues.” The thesis that the female con-
dition was deficient and weak because it was controlled by its reproductive function
enjoyed widespread support across eighteenth-century medicine and philosophy. We
should pause to ponder whether this idea of the sick, irrational woman in thrall to
her reproductive functions is still current in obstetrics today. When considering
pro-medicalization positions, we should investigate carefully whether this is one of
the reasons why pregnant women and women in childbirth are considered as patients
rather than users in our health systems, or whether it explains in part at least why preg-
nancy and childbirth are still approached both conceptually and in practice as illnesses,
when they are in fact not pathological but physiological conditions. We should consider
whether this is related to—in view of the large amount of available testimony—the
custom of treating pregnant women and women in childbirth like mere containers,
which is also relevant when assessing some of the simplistic defenses of surrogacy.9

Modern metaphors according to which women are more “animal-like,” wilder, and
more uncontrollable might also be an influence worth addressing in some of the con-
temporary discourses that defend nonmedicalized or “natural” birth.10

To investigate these issues, I have here reflected on the relation between the notions
of reason and the uterus in the history of Western thought. To understand how certain
obstetric and midwifery procedures have survived and how these are directly related to
the endurance of a particular view of laboring women, I have aimed to untie a critical
conceptual knot in the history of patriarchy, with a particular focus on the dawn of
obstetrics during the Enlightenment. I argue that it is necessary to reconstruct the his-
tory of the naturalization of female rationality in order to understand what is going on
in the context of childbirth. The philosophical analysis of the conceptual history helps
to explain what happens in the maternity ward, and why.

For those who are familiar with women’s lives and the feminist ideas that illuminate
it, there are too many active associations in contemporary obstetric discourse and prac-
tice. If we could trace those associations, we would avoid continuing to fall into certain
logical traps that support the continuation of practices around childbirth that are not
justified by medical evidence, not to mention being supported by new paradigms of
personalized, values-based, user-centered medicine. The emerging area of the field of
philosophy of birth is invaluable to, first, diagnose fallacious assumptions on the rela-
tion between the womb and reason, and, ultimately, challenge risky narratives with
major impact on birth care (Villarmea 2020; Villarmea and Kelly 2020).

Acknowledgments. This article is related to the following research projects: (1) Controversies in
Childbirth: From Epistemology to Practices (VOICEs), EC Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual
Fellowship Research Project, University of Oxford, EC-H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 (SEP-210456162), and (2)
Philosophy of Birth: Rethinking the Origin from Medical Humanities (PHILBIRTH) (Program for
Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to Societal Challenges, Ministry of Economy in Spain/
AEI/FEDER/UE (FFI2016-77755-R). This project has received funding from the European Union´s
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant
Agreement No 787646, ‘Controversies in Childbirth: from Epistemology to Practices (VOICEs)’. It has

36 Stella Villarmea



also received funding from the Ministry of Economy in Spain/AEI/FEDER/UE Research, Development and
Innovation Oriented to Societal Challenges Programme under the Research Project FFI2016-77755-R,
‘Philosophy of Birth: Rethinking the Origin from Medical Humanities (PHILBIRTH)’. I am very thankful
to Sarah Giles, Ana Bertrand-Bow, Justine Shaw, and Teresa Jiménez Calvente for their valuable comments
on the manuscript. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Villarmea 2018.

Notes

1 I have examined controversies in birth care in Villarmea 2009; Villarmea and Fernández Guillén 2012;
Villarmea, Olza, and Recio 2015; Villarmea 2015a; 2015b. These publications provide the empirical base
from which the present analysis derives. For debates on maternal care, see Lancet Maternal Health
Series n.d. For a comprehensive view of how respectful maternity care, evidence-based co-design, and par-
ticipatory action have been taken up by a number of global authorities, including the World Health
Organization, see Byrom and Downe 2015. From the 1980s onwards, feminist social scientists who have
criticized the provision of maternity services in general and obstetric care specifically include Suzanne
Arms, Sheila Kitzinger, Robbie Davis-Floyd, and Ann Oakley (Oakley 1980; Kitzinger 1984; Oakley
1986; Davis-Floyd 1992; Oakley 1993; Arms 1997; Zwelling 2002; Kitzinger 2006; Davis-Floyd 2009;
Kitzinger 2015). As to the growing critique from inside the clinical profession, see Amali Lokugamage,
Soo Downe, Susan Bewley, and Wendy Savage (Savage 1986; Bewley and Ward 1994; Downe 2008; and
Lokugamage and Porter 2011). Within the existing data, it is worth reading some influential qualitative sys-
tematic reviews that evaluate medical literature on birth, such as Wax et al. 2010; Roome et al. 2016; Betrán
et al. 2018; Downe et al. 2018; Kennedy et al. 2018; WHO 2018; Thomson et al. 2019.
2 Venezuelan law defines obstetric violence as: “the appropriation of the body and reproductive processes
of women by health personnel, which is expressed as dehumanized treatment, an abuse of medication, and
the attempt to convert natural processes into pathological ones, bringing with it a loss of autonomy and of
the ability for women to decide freely about their bodies and sexuality, negatively impacting the quality of
life of women” (Venezuela 2007). An interesting discussion of the law is Pérez D’Gregorio 2010. To under-
stand better the phenomenon of obstetric violence as gender-based violence, see WHO 1985; Chalmers
1992; Fernández Guillén 2015; Recio 2015; Cohen Shabot 2016; Gérvas and Pérez-Fernández 2016; Ruiz
Berdún and Olza 2016; Sadler et al. 2016; Goberna and Boladeras 2018; Pickles 2020; Cohen Shabot
2020a; 2020b.
3 The alternative terminology that I employ here is intentional. Expanding upon an insight in Amorós
2000, 9–10, there is good reason to prefer the phrase “epistemological feminism” to the more usual “fem-
inist epistemology.” The notion of “feminist epistemology” seems to imply that there is a type of epistemol-
ogy that is feminist and another type that is not. It would then be possible to conceive of a nonfeminist
epistemology (not simply an “a-feminist” epistemology). In contrast, the notion of “epistemological femi-
nism” strenghthens the idea that any theory of knowledge—especially with regard to its methods, validity,
and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion—must fulfill certain requisites in rela-
tion to the treatment that women receive in that perspective. In short, if it really is epistemology—a reflec-
tion on what knowledge is—then it cannot blindly incorporate, or lead to, sexism. For more on this, see
Villarmea 2005.
4 The paradigmatic, and most influential, example of the ideological connection between uterine consti-
tution, rational handicap and education for submission is Rousseau´s Émile, ou Del´éducation [Emile,
or, On Education], and specifically its chapter 5, devoted to the education of Sophie, on which we cannot
pursue here.
5 Contrary to popular belief, one could argue that a woman in labor should be considered a supreme par-
adigm of self-control. Not so much in the sense in which “self-control” is linked to the display of modest or
decorous behavior, but rather in the sense in which “self-control” can be associated with the capacity to
traverse and cut across pain and pushes, for example. But this interpretation of self-control is not a com-
mon one.
6 The paradigmatic and most influential example of the ideological connection among uterine constitu-
tion, rational weakness, and education for submission is Rousseau 2013, specifically chapter 5, devoted
to the education of Sophie. Kant’s mysoginistic observations on female reasoning are present, for example,
in Kant 1965, 132–33. A more detailed analysis of this topic can be found in Villarmea 2005.

Hypatia 37



7 The argument that the presumed irrationality of women was the basis for denying them the vote can be
found in a number of historical and geographical settings and has been explored in feminist approaches to
female suffrage (Hellerstein, Hume, and Offen 1981; Offen 2000; Mayhall 2003; Bush 2007; Offen 2010;
Harrison 2013). An interesting coverage of the topic by the British Library can be found at https://www.
bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles. For the use of this justification to ban female suffrage in the less-known
particular context of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–37) and the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), see
Capel 1992; 2006.
8 The idea of the womb being an animal can be traced to a famous and colorful passage in Plato’s Timaeus:
(“the womb is an animal which longs to generate children”) and is connected to that of the wandering
womb. The wandering womb was the belief that a displaced uterus was the cause of a number of medical
pathologies found in women. The notion of the migratory uterus originates in texts of ancient Egyptians,
although it persisted in European academic medicine and popular thought for centuries. For more on this
fascinating topic, which is the basis for medical and philosophical theories of hysteria, see, for example,
Micale 1995.
9 For a more nuanced approach to surrogacy, see Fabre 2006; Teman 2010; Bailey 2011; Deonandan,
Green, and Van Beinum 2012; Phillips 2013; Straehle 2016; Marrades Puig 2017; Zehelein 2018.
10 An example might be the case of Michel Odent’s discourse, as recognized, for instance, by Martin 1989.

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Stella Villarmea is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University Complutense of Madrid, and Marie Curie
Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is interested in the relation between knowledge and emancipatory
action. She does research on the philosophy of birth, particularly on how our notion and experience of
childbirth reflect our view of the world and human beings. She has published on epistemology
(Wittgenstein, skepticism) and history of philosophy (Kant and Levinas) from a feminist perspective.
She currently conducts the EC research project Controversies in Childbirth: From Epistemology to
Practices (VOICEs) at the University of Oxford. stella.villarmea@philosophy.ox.ac.uk; svillarm@ucm.es

Cite this article: Villarmea S (2021). Reasoning from the Uterus: Casanova, Women’s Agency, and the
Philosophy of Birth. Hypatia 36, 22–41. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2020.45

Hypatia 41


	Reasoning from the Uterus: Casanova, Women's Agency, and the Philosophy of Birth
	Brains, Wombs, Casanova, and Obstetrics
	Hypothesis of Research: Obstetrics as Genealogy or Logos of the Origin
	Reason, Health, and Women at the Dawn of Obstetrics
	Casanova and the “Thinking Womb” Debate
	“Lana Caprina”
	The Thinking Womb Thesis
	The Vital Force or Animal-Womb Thesis
	The Force of Education versus the Influence of the Uterus

	“Uterine Issues” in Contemporary Obstetrics
	Acknowledgments
	Notes
	References