"Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best"
About this Quote
Mary Astell points to a steady flaw in human nature: confidence swells fastest where examination runs thinnest. People cherish their own judgment, treating it as the best available guide, and then bend evidence and custom to defend it. Pride makes conviction feel like clarity. The result is stubbornness masquerading as principle, and conversation collapsing into competition.
Writing in late 17th-century England, Astell watched religious and political factions harden, and she saw how fashionable opinion ruled social life. She argued that women possess rational souls equal to mens but are denied the training that disciplines judgment. When education is shallow, the mind clings to what is familiar and flattering. Custom, party, and passion do the work that reason should, and people call it wisdom because it is theirs. The line is not a cynical shrug; it is a diagnosis that grounds her program for reform.
Her remedy turns on intellectual humility and method. If every understanding is naturally partial to itself, the first act of reason is to suspect oneself. Test notions against clear principles, seek objections, treat opponents not as enemies but as partners in the pursuit of truth. Astell presses for schools for women not merely to accumulate knowledge but to cultivate habits that break the spell of self-approval: attention, patience, fair-mindedness, and a willingness to be corrected. Such habits free people from the tyranny of fashion and from the flattery of their own minds.
The observation also carries a quiet political charge. Male authority often rested on the assumption that men judge best; Astell shows that the temptation to call ones own way best is universal, not masculine. Training, not sex, secures sound judgment. The line still stings today, when certainty is easy to perform and hard to justify. It asks for the courage to doubt oneself, and for the charity to imagine that truth may arrive through another persons understanding.
Writing in late 17th-century England, Astell watched religious and political factions harden, and she saw how fashionable opinion ruled social life. She argued that women possess rational souls equal to mens but are denied the training that disciplines judgment. When education is shallow, the mind clings to what is familiar and flattering. Custom, party, and passion do the work that reason should, and people call it wisdom because it is theirs. The line is not a cynical shrug; it is a diagnosis that grounds her program for reform.
Her remedy turns on intellectual humility and method. If every understanding is naturally partial to itself, the first act of reason is to suspect oneself. Test notions against clear principles, seek objections, treat opponents not as enemies but as partners in the pursuit of truth. Astell presses for schools for women not merely to accumulate knowledge but to cultivate habits that break the spell of self-approval: attention, patience, fair-mindedness, and a willingness to be corrected. Such habits free people from the tyranny of fashion and from the flattery of their own minds.
The observation also carries a quiet political charge. Male authority often rested on the assumption that men judge best; Astell shows that the temptation to call ones own way best is universal, not masculine. Training, not sex, secures sound judgment. The line still stings today, when certainty is easy to perform and hard to justify. It asks for the courage to doubt oneself, and for the charity to imagine that truth may arrive through another persons understanding.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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