Chapter 2: 'An Undiscovered Manuscript by Shepherd?'
Boyle interprets a remark about Shepherd’s work pre-marriage, made in a letter by Shepherd’s daughter, as referring to a manuscript distinct from Shepherd’s books and which includes material not contained in either of the later treatises1. Therefore, Boyle concludes her paper by suggesting that this manuscript may be a separate, undiscovered early essay written by Shepherd that is distinct from her later books2. However, Whewell, a close friend of Shepherd, sent out a general request that anyone who possessed any unpublished work, such as essays, by Shepherd should come forward3. So surely any unknown works by Shepherd, no matter what length or format they were, would have come to light shortly after her death. Why would a manuscript now appear centuries later that no-one was able to find when Whewell searched for any neglected essays at the time? Nevertheless, Boyle does not mention or address this request by Whewell and instead reaches the conclusion by highlighting the lack of references to, and discussion of, Priestley's thought in Shepherd's 1824 and 1827 treatises in order to support her argument that there may be some undiscovered manuscript essay by Shepherd4.
I find this an unconvincing ending to Boyle's paper. She5 is right to point out that there is some content in the 1824 book that matches Shepherd's 'Metaphysical Disquisitions', such as arguments concerning Hume's philosophy. But then, I suggest, she disappointingly draws conclusions that conflict with this point. I am also generally unconvinced by the reasons Boyle6 gives as to why the 1819 treatise should be ruled out as being Shepherd’s work. The evidence she cites is, I feel, insufficient and does not support her argument. After seemingly combing through the evidence, she then jumps to the claim that there may be an undiscovered essay without any supporting evidence. To my mind, either there are suppressed premises that Boyle7 has not made clear, or her argument does not logically follow from beginning to conclusion.
One reason I find her conclusion implausible is the structure of her argument. I find Boyle's stance8 surprising and discontinuous after the sceptical approach she adopts earlier in her paper towards the 1819 treatise. Surely, if we accept the strict criteria applied to the 1819 treatise resulting in it being discounted, then how are we meant to accept a different, loose criteria for believing that some manuscript essay has escaped scholarly notice for circa two centuries? To begin with, Margaret Atherton has been writing about Shepherd since the 1990’s and there are women historians, such as Sarah Hutton, who focus on unearthing manuscripts and books written by women philosophers. I would have thought that someone would have found this document earlier when sifting through archives, searching for so many different women philosophers and their manuscripts.
Moreover, the remark by Shepherd’s daughter, which Boyle uses to support her claim, does not seem to me to constitute sufficient evidence for the existence of an unknown manuscript. This remark can plausibly be read in other ways too. For instance, one alternative explanation is that Shepherd's daughter could be referring to draft versions of the two or three treatises Shepherd publishes. This could also explain why the content is not always identical. Shepherd may have merely edited sections at a later date in a way which altered the published work, perhaps thinking she was improving on her drafts. So she may have simply edited out passages she wrote on Priestley's arguments before publishing her draft manuscript. Shepherd could have received comments on her pre-published work by her peers which led her to cut out passages and arguments from her final version. After all, she did engage in debates with other philosophers and she hosted a salon, well-attended by intellectuals, such as Whewell, from various disciplines. Indeed, I think there may be textual evidence for this, for instance, when Shepherd is clearly seen reflecting on and updating her knowledge and thoughts in the footnotes, which are written in a retrospective tone, after the arguments in the main body of the text were written. For instance, in a footnote in her 1827 treatise, Shepherd writes that she belatedly became aware that someone else also thinks along the same lines as her: "Since writing this essay, I find that Mr. Destutt de Tracy has many ideas which I am happy unconsciously to have hit upon; but his argument is more confined than mine…."9.
So this footnote, I suggest, provides textual evidence for my two hypotheses. Hence, one, Shepherd revised and edited her earlier work at a later date pre-publication, and saw her work within a wider context than she had previously when writing her draft manuscripts. Two, it is clear that Shepherd wrote earlier essays which later became part of a published book. Therefore, an earlier essay need not be a separate, lost work from her treatises.
In addition, any such belated discovery of a manuscript invariably, I argue, needs to be treated with caution and scepticism. One should suspend belief, rather than fall into the trap of taking one side or the other too quickly by immediately affirming or denying its authenticity.
I have the same methodological approach to the discovery of Spinoza’s manuscript in the Vatican library. This Vatican text is even more anonymous than the 1819 treatise in the sense that the Vatican manuscript does not bear the author’s name and it is without a title as such because it merely bears the misleading name Tractatus Theologiae, despite it not being a theological text10. Indeed, I think that, given the complete lack of identifying information on the Vatican manuscript, quite frankly, it could have been written by anyone. Worse still, apparently11, it was not even logged properly in the library catalogue details and surprisingly, nobody had bothered to look at or record what was written in this book so we have no way of knowing what this anonymous work should and should not contain. Although this provides a reason why the Vatican copy was not found until well over 300 years after Spinoza's death, I still find it questionable why it bears a provisional title that does not match any of Spinoza’s published works and sounds closer to a different treatise (namely Spinoza's Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus) than the contents therein (Spinoza's Ethica Ordine Geometrico). This, amongst other reasons, makes me sceptical about the value of adapting Spinozian scholarship and philosophical arguments to the contents of this Vatican manuscript.
Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere12, some discovered manuscripts have turned out to be erroneous once a thorough technological verification process was undertaken, such as some recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls13. Unfortunately, this only came to light after much peer reviewed scholarship had already been written about them. So especially after this introduction of fake news into what is meant to be accurate, reliable, trustworthy sources of truth and academic argument, I maintain that one needs to be far more cautious about new discoveries, especially if they are three or four centuries later. As I have argued previously14, unpublished manuscripts must meet strict criteria such as being in readable condition, they must be objectively verified by technology, the work in question must be widely accessible on the internet so there is a breadth of specialists and scholars, both affiliated and independent, who can examine it and contribute to the discussion.
Thus, I suggest that, prior to forming any closed ended conclusions about authorship, the original copy of the 1819 treatise15 should be open access available to view for free so everyone can assess it for themselves before making up their own mind about it, not hidden away or only reprinted in a modern edition. Just as the Vatican copy is now belatedly, freely available for everyone to read online so anyone can assess the old manuscript textual evidence for themselves at any time16. However, I'm still baffled by the way this book has been catalogued. The author listed by the Vatican Online Library is Totaro not Spinoza. So presumably if someone were to look up the author's name, they would find it under T not S which is confusing. A shelf number reference cannot substitute the correct author's name. What system does the Vatican use? This makes no sense at all. Surely, the author listed should be the one who penned it in the 17th century.
Given this, why would libraries and scholarship assume we can easily assess the authorship of the 1819 treatise and catalogue it accordingly as though it is clear? Furthermore, perhaps this authorial discussion shows that publishing anonymously is never a good idea because down the line, the authenticity will be questioned and if it is a women's work, it is prone to be misattributed to a man. This causes a knock-on problem for scholarship and encourages sexism in history with cries that women have not contributed to fields of scholarship or the arts. As we have seen in art, women are mostly written out of history, rather than having failed to be of any note. It was only when feminism took on the task of discovering women in the past and putting together a herstory, rather than just accepting his-story/history, that we learn about and appreciate the sheer amount of work women have accomplished down the ages and throughout all disciplines.
References:
1Boyle, D., 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd' Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2(1): 5 pp1-4 [in open access download, last downloaded 4th April 2022] (June) 2020.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.32881/jomp.100
Available at:
https://jmphil.org/articles/10.32881/jomp.100/
2Ibid
3Bolton, Martha, "Mary Shepherd", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
Available at:
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/mary-shepherd/
4Boyle, D., 'A Mistaken Attribution to Lady Mary Shepherd'
5Ibid
6Ibid
7Ibid
8Ibid
9Shepherd, Mary. Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation. Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John hatchard and Son., 1827. Footnote p105
Available at:
https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/#page/n7/mode/2up.
10Totaro, Pina. "On the Recently Discovered Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethics." Journal of the History of Philosophy 51, no. 3 (2013): 465-476. doi:10.1353/hph.2013.0065.
11Ibid
12Kaucky, Liba., 'Chapter 3: Backdrop 2: Cavendish within a Feminist and Historical Context' in 'Research Thoughts on… Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne – Volume 1 "On Flourishing" ' (ebook published 2020)
13Greshko, M., ‘Exclusive: “Dead Sea Scrolls” at the Museum of the Bible Are All Forgeries’, National Geographic, 13 March 2020, Exclusive: ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries.
14Kaucky, Liba., 'Chapter 3: Backdrop 2: Cavendish within a Feminist and Historical Context' in 'Research Thoughts on… Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne – Volume 1 "On Flourishing" '
15Anon. An Enquiry Respecting the Relation of Cause and Effect: in which the Theories of Professors Brown, and Mr. Hume, are Examined; with a Statement of Such Observations as are Calculated to Shew the Inconsistency of these Theories; and from which a New Theory is Deduced, More Consonant to Facts and Experience. Also a New Theory of the Earth, Deduced from Geological Observations. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne. 1819
16Totaro, Pina., (Spruit, Leen; Steenbakkers, Piet) L'Ethica di Spinoza in un manoscritto della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (shelfmark Vat.lat.12838), in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XVIII, published by Città del Vaticano 2011 (NOTE/VOLUME 583, 586, 594-597*, tavv. IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XI, XII.)
Overview and publication details available at:
https://opac.vatlib.it/mss/detail/110118
Online copy of the old manuscript available at:
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