12h45 - 14h Batiment Dupriez,  
Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Geertje Bol (Ghent University)

Historians of philosophy have tended to view ambition as a Christian sin, but this traditional portrayal is only part of the story that we can tell about ambition in the early modern period. Similarly, they have largely neglected the gendered dimensions of ambition. For a more nuanced understanding of ambition, the writing of the seventeenth century philosopher and early feminist Mary Astell is a particularly fruitful place to start. She boldly reimagined ambition as a virtue, one that women in particular should be encouraged to develop. In examining Astell’s theory of ambition, I not only present a more complex understanding of early modern ambition than we are usually presented with, but also recover an insight of broader purchase, for the history of philosophy but also for feminist political philosophy: when ambition is judged vicious or virtuous, it not only matters towards what end ambition is directed, but also, crucially, who the ambitious agent is.