Abstract
This paper is a response to and discussion of Maddalena Bonelli’s “Women philosophers in antiquity: Open questions and some results.” It also aims to advance the general discussion of the issues Bonelli raises. In it I contextualise Bonelli’s discussion, and take up three of her questions: What is the status of the work of restoring ancient women to the philosophical canon? What criteria ought we to use to decide who counts as a philosopher? What sort of philosophy did women practice in antiquity, and in what ways might the restoration of ancient women thinkers to the canon change the way we conceive of ancient philosophy itself? I consider the way in which Bonelli’s paper advances the discussion of each question, raise some worries about the discussions, and provide suggestions for how we might think about these issues further. I maintain that the reshaping of the philosophical canon that takes place when we integrate ancient women involves a reshaping of the discipline, and of our methods for accessing it. This is a result I argue we ought to embrace rather than resist. I conclude with a summary of the main contributions of Bonelli’s paper.
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Notes
- 1.
All in-text citations refer to Bonelli’s paper in this volume, unless otherwise indicated.
- 2.
My discussion will focus on women in ancient Greek philosophy, but some of these same questions could be asked about women in other traditions, and those examples could in turn inform analysis of the Western tradition.
- 3.
That said, the seventeenth century saw some other, limited coverage of ancient women philosophers in doxographies. In addition to Ménage’s project, this includes the works of Jean de la Forge (1663) and Marguerite Buffet (1668). For other works in the period between Ménage and Waithe (1987) see Waithe (2015, pp. 25–26).
- 4.
For a discussion of Ménage’s work see Rée (2002, pp. 648–649).
- 5.
This “coat-tailing” trend is discussed by Waithe in a newer piece (2015), and the trend for describing ancient women philosophers relative to a male philosopher, or based on physical appearance, is discussed in Hawley (1994). Hutton (2019, pp. 686–687) discusses how this trend continues at least into the early modern period (albeit with different labels) and continues to exclude or marginalize women philosophers.
- 6.
At least in the restrictive sense of being focused exclusively on women philosophers. Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405), which includes some women philosophers, is an early example of engagement with women intellectuals more broadly construed.
- 7.
- 8.
Among other things, this risks downplaying the degree to which women were excluded from philosophy, as Deslauriers (2012, p. 345) points out.
- 9.
- 10.
Waithe (1987, p. xix). Waithe’s introduction gives an account of the state of the evidence at the time she started assembling it, which is as surprising as it is depressing.
- 11.
Bonelli compares the use of Plato’s dialogues as evidence for the ideas of the historical figure Diotima to that same question with respect to Socrates. But these are not readily comparable, since there is independent evidence for the existence of Socrates, and this is not the case for Diotima. Her point about “lack of direct transmission and the verifiability of our sources’ credentials as regards male philosophers” (Sect. 1.4) might more aptly be made by reference to figures such as Thales or Heraclitus, for instance, or Hypatia versus Pythagoras, as evoked by Waithe (2015, p. 27).
- 12.
Readers would particularly benefit from acknowledgement and some discussion of the advances made on this question by works in feminist history of philosophy, such as (but by no means limited to) Alanen & Witt (2004).
- 13.
- 14.
This is not quite right: for instance, in her final chapter Waithe considers women such as Arete of Cyrene, for whom we have no direct writings or clear attributions of theories, at least insofar as the treatment in Waithe is concerned. Later, Bonelli characterises Waithe’s criterion as “the exclusive consideration of women who have thought or written about philosophy” (Sect. 1.3). This is more accurate.
- 15.
See also Waithe (2015, p. 23).
- 16.
The conditions for which will vary by time and place, as Waithe (2015, p. 22) notes.
- 17.
- 18.
Conversely, Waithe (2015, p. 22) argues that being designated a philosopher in one’s own time is not itself sufficient as a criterion, nor is calling oneself a philosopher.
- 19.
There is plenty of interest in thinking about “philosophy as a way of life” in the ancient context—see, for instance, Hadot (1995). But this is usually focused on idiosyncratic male figures. Consideration of the sometimes painfully domestic realm women thinkers often occupied has not yet been an area of such reflection.
- 20.
On genre as a means of excluding women and Indigenous philosophers see Waithe (2015, pp. 23–24).
- 21.
O’Neill (2007, p. 36) makes this point regarding gender as a philosophical topic: “[…] issues concerning gender have, since the time of Kant, been viewed as external to philosophy proper; they are of “anthropological” interest, matters of the social sciences that are beyond the purview of philosophy proper. But feminist historians of philosophy, with our acceptance of gender issues as constituting an important set of philosophical concerns, and with our openness to exploring different styles and genres of philosophy, are in an excellent position to excavate many of the women’s long-forgotten texts, and to demonstrate the philosophical contributions that they make. The work will be hard, but the payoffs just may change the shape of our picture of western philosophy.”
- 22.
On which see e.g. Hutton (2019, p. 693).
- 23.
Hutton (2019), especially p. 694.
- 24.
On which see Waithe (2015, pp. 29–30) on “burning issue” bias.
- 25.
Rée (2002, pp. 651–652) extends this point, relating it not just to our discipline’s past but its future: “If a canon functions, in the first place, to give a present identity to an intellectual discipline by defining the past of which it takes itself to be the inheritor, it also serves, secondly, to shape its sense of its intellectual options for the future, and hence to determine the kinds of works that get written, and indeed the kinds of thoughts that get thought. But in the third place, changes in forms of canonicity can have retroactive effects, entailing wholesale changes in conventional interpretations, alterations in traditional rankings, and even the deletion of whole ranges of works that were previously well-regarded […] it will require a reconfiguration of philosophical inquiry itself and a systematic reworking of its relations to its future and its past.”
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to the Footnotes Writing Circle for helpful discussion of a draft of this paper. This paper is dedicated to Rachel Prideaux.
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O’Reilly, K.R. (2021). Women Philosophers in Antiquity and the Reshaping of Philosophy. In: Chouinard, I., McConaughey, Z., Medeiros Ramos, A., Noël, R. (eds) Women's Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73190-8_2
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