Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet
1706–1749 · French Enlightenment · Known
Du Châtelet put Newton's Principia into French, and hers is still the translation in use. She refused to do physics without metaphysics, grounding Newton's mechanics in Leibniz and Wolff and defending living force, the measure of motion at stake in the energy debates of her day. She accepted God on reason and had no time for revelation. Happiness, she wrote, comes of study, of virtue, and of an appetite for pleasure she saw no reason to apologise for.
Signature
The position Du Châtelet is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ignorance
- Bondage – Bliss
- Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Sense Experience
Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (38 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Du Châtelet refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Deism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Pleasure / Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal First Cause
What is the origin of reality? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Primary Bond
- Vocation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?