On the Outskirts of the Canon: The Myth of the Lone Female Philosopher, and What to Do about It

Metaphilosophy 46 (3):380-397 (2015)
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Abstract

Women philosophers of the past, because they tended not to engage with each other much, are often perceived as isolated from ongoing philosophical dialogues. This has led—directly and indirectly—to their exclusion from courses in the history of philosophy. This article explores three ways in which we could solve this problem. The first is to create a course in early modern philosophy that focuses solely or mostly on female philosophers, using conceptual and thematic ties such as a concern for education and a focus on ethics and politics. The second is to introduce women authors as dialoguing with the usual canonical suspects: Cavendish with Hobbes, Elisabeth of Bohemia with Descartes, Masham and Astell with Locke, Conway with Leibniz, and so on. The article argues that both methods have significant shortcomings, and it suggests a third, consisting in widening the traditional approach to structuring courses in early modern philosophy

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Sandrine Berges
Bilkent University

Citations of this work

Women, philosophy and the history of philosophy.Sarah Hutton - 2019 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (4):684-701.
Philosophy’s Diversity Problem.A. E. Kings - 2019 - Metaphilosophy 50 (3):212-230.
Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers as a Philosophical Text.Deborah Boyle - 2021 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (6):1072-1098.
Texts Less Travelled: The Case of Women Philosophers.Tove Pettersen - 2017 - In Isis Herrero Lópes, Johanna Akujarvi, Cecilia Alvstad & Synnøve Lindtner (eds.), Gender and Translation: Understanding Agents in Transnational Reception. York University: pp. 153-178.

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References found in this work

Liberty before Liberalism.Quentin Skinner - 2001 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 63 (1):172-175.
Freedom in the market.Philip Pettit - 2006 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 5 (2):131-149.
Duty and Desolation.Rae Langton - 1992 - Philosophy 67 (262):481 - 505.

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