A History of Women Philosophers, Volume I: Ancient Women Philoophers, 600 B.C. - 500 A.D., edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, is an important but somewhat frustrating book. It is filled with tantalizing glimpses into the lives and thoughts of some of our earliest philosophical foremothers. Yet it lacks a clear unifying theme, and the abrupt transitions from one philosopher and period to the next are sometimes disconcerting. The overall effect is not unlike that of viewing an expansive landscape, illuminated only (...) by a few tiny spotlights. (shrink)

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

Oliva Sabuco's New Philosophy of Human nature (1587) is an early modern philosophy of medicine that challenged the views of the successors to Aristotle, especially Galen and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). It also challenged the paradigm of the male as the epitome of the human and instead offers a gender-neutral philosophy of human nature. Now largely forgotten, it was widely read and influential amongst philosophers of medicine including DeClave, LePois, Harvey,Southey and others, particularly for its account of the role of the (...) nervous system and cerebrospinal fluid in mind-body interaction. In this article I trace its early influence by tracing provenance of the editions produced during the lifetime of its author. (shrink)

Courses in the history of philosophy which exclude contributions made by women cannot legitimately claim to teach this history. This is true, not merely because those histories are incomplete, but rather because they give a biased account. I sketch the difficulties thus posed for the profession, and offer suggestions for developing a less biased, more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy.

The central goal of this essay is to develop a theory of justified paternalism that will be useful in evaluating and designing paternalistic public policies. The theory is designed for a society that promotes the development of characteristics of autonomy in its members. In the opening chapter I analyze widely-held legal, familial and philosophic conceptions of paternalism, discuss the inadequacies of each of those conceptions and develop a "unified" conception of paternalism. In Chapter II I analyze what it means to (...) be "morally responsible" and base this analysis on the legal, psychological and psychiatric accounts of responsibility that inform an autonomist society. From these analyses I develop two principles which inform an autonomist society: Respect for Others and Non-Interference and discuss the restraints on justifiable paternalism entailed by them. In Chapter III I discuss the roles of voluntariness and consent in the legal, phychiatric and philosophic concepts of moral responsibility and turn to an analysis of the disappointing treatments of these concepts in traditional philosophic justifications for paternalism. I argue that "unencumbered consent" is an appropriate concept of consent to utilize in any philosophic justification for paternalism that would be consistent with the concepts of moral responsibility and autonomy and the principles of respect for others and of non-interference. Chapter IV offers a decision-theoretic model justifying acting paternalistically for others. Each of the necessary conditions for justified paternalism is drawn from the aforementioned concepts and principles. In Chapter V, I show that if Rawls is to be consistent, he must adopt a theory of paternalism similar to mine, and I argue that my theory of paternalism overcomes libertarian, utilitarian and statistical arguments against it. I then apply the theory to specific forms of paternalism including involuntary commitment and guardianship, mandatory blood transfusions, flouridation of public water supplies, mandatory motorcycle helmets and seatbelts, social security taxation, mandatory education of children and suicide intervention. A 267-entry bibliography is appended. (shrink)

Philosophy became known as a “man’s” profession over the past three thousand years. This is an account of how, in the case of Diotima of Mantinea, the histories of philosophy came to systematically ignore, overlook, doubt and declare false the fact that some philosophers had uteruses. The effect has been a massive hysterectomy –the removal from or ignoring of women’s contributions to Philosophy as related by the major histories and encyclopedias of Philosophy. This nearly discipline-wide hysterectomy has created the false (...) impression that women cannot think philosophically. In this PowerPoint presentation I will present historical and archeological evidence relative to Diotima of Mantinea who may have been the first woman philosopher to receive a posthumous hysterectomy by later historians of philosophy. (shrink)