The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers: First to the Twentieth Century
Abstract
When down from the moon stepped the goddess of the night, she bid Minerva/Athene come to her. "Minerva/Athene," she said, "you sprang fully formed from the head of your father. Now all the daughters of mankind think they, too, are as rootless as you. Tonight I bid you dance, join the circle round 1 that tree glistening with the clarity of wisdom. Mother Natura and Lady Philosophia, hands together, already have begun the promenade of myth and allegory. " Still in the garb of gold and white stone, Minerva/ Athene did as she was bid and danced till dawn. Then in new light, she found herself suddenly a budding flower on a tall branch, and even more swiftly a crystalline fruit, rivaling the morning sun, refracting the light. Behold, she had grown roots, difficult to discover down in the dark of history, deep in the solid knowledge of earth. And the daughters of humankind saw and reveled in their roots. This is the story of this book, a history, long and diverse, of women thinkers and their thought. It will become a legacy for all who study it, a legacy that Heloi"se, Marie de Gournay, Sor Juana Ines de Ia Cruz, and Judith Sargent Murray among many women philosophers assured by composing lists of the names of women little acknowledged century after century. While the Hannah Arendt's, Susanne K.
Chapters (10)
Pan Chao (Ban Zhao) is first among the few women who have sustained notice in China’s long history. A respected scholar, teacher, and writer in the Imperial Court of the Later Han Dynasty in first century C.E., China,1 Pan Chao taught history, literature, the Classics, and astronomy. While she wrote poetry and the singular Lessons for Women, her most famous achievement was finishing after his death, her brother Pan Ku’s exceptional history Han Shu.
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Héloïse’s life story as revealed in her letters to Abélard is as instructive to us as are her philosophical arguments.1 The vitality of the story is so compelling, that it has been retold through the centuries in novels, poems, songs, motion pictures, and art.2 Intimately connected to her philosophy the life of Héloïse questions principles about love and its obligations, the relation of man and God and its consequences on human action and feeling, and the relation of women and men in regard to human and divine law, to personal ethics, to fate. How we live our lives when the fulfillment of love is impossible or unethical or imprudent is a dilemma of the human condition, as much a part of our life today as it was in Héloïse’s Middle Ages.
Marie le Jars de Gournay pointed out the folly and harm of using words to create false myths to authenticate women’s ridicule and exclusion. Her involvement with the great language debate of her time, her translations and editing, her compositions in prose and poetry—all gave her expertise and authority to champion against those who, she discerned, made rules unreasonable and harmful to women. Born on October 6, 1565, Marie de Gournay experienced the golden age of French literature during the reigns of Charles IX, Henri III, IV, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. Residing in Picardy and in Paris, de Gournay participated in the intellectual activity of France beginning with her editing of Michel Montaigne’s Essays. When Marie de Gournay’s father, a country nobleman, died leaving his widow to rear their six children with reduced means, Marie, the eldest, a studious child, taught herself Latin by comparing original texts with their translations, finding Greek difficult to master. De Gournay described herself as neither beautiful nor ugly, but of medium size with chestnut colored hair and a face round with clear, dark complexion; nevertheless, she was not generally considered attractive, nor well dressed.1 She chose the life of scholarship rather than of marriage. Her life ended at age 79 on July 13,1645 at the commencement of the reign of Louis XIV.
Anna van Schurman spent a life involved with philosophers of her time as well as with a range of scholars, artists, theologians, and while her intelligence was acclaimed in Europe and abroad, her work was not mentioned in the traditional canon. As a woman not permitted to attend university and thus to engage in academic affairs officially, she chose to present her feminist epistemology in the form of an academic dissertation, her works being read by academicians of highest regard, e.g. Descartes and Gassendi, who was chair of mathematics in Paris.
Mary Astell’s influence on the women of England was substantial. To her contemporaries engaged in philosophical controversy, Astell articulated the importance of scholarly community for women as well as men. If she, herself, did not experience the collegiality of the academic life at university, she experienced it from participating in a network of people engaged in profound discussion. Her life exemplified her philosophy: change yourself so that you might change your world.
Admired in Mexico for her talents and the brilliance of her mind and internationally assessed as philosopher now, for centuries Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz had been assigned to oblivion.1 Current investigation of Sor Juana’s feminism and her notions of such traditional philosophical concepts as the Great Chain of Being is yielding new awareness of the complexity of her thought. While we are acquiring a fuller understanding of what she contributed to the canon of philosophy, inquiry into her life itself confirms her place as scholar and feminist forerunner.
A large mural depicting Judith Sargent Murray, pen in hand at the center of activity in a world past and present, is now newly displayed in the center of Gloucester, Massachusetts, her birthplace. Pen in hand is an apt depiction. Murray, spent a lifetime with a pen articulating her ideas on intellectual and moral virtue, the political philosophy of revolutionary America, man’s relation to God and the universe, and women’s equality. Her ideas did not find their way into the philosophical canon. In her own lifetime she was praised for her Universalist ideas, in the nineteenth century as poet, in the twentieth century as an historical figure of stature, but not yet as philosopher.1
Despite John Stuart Mill’s pronouncement after the death of Frances Wright that she had been one of the most important women of her day, Wright is almost unknown by philosophy students who study Mill’s Utilitarian feminism.1 Wright had claimed Jeremy Bentham, Mill’s mentor, “my philosopher,” and he in turn identified her as “of strongest mind.” Wright’s notoriety was extensive: Lafayette called her “daughter,” Mary Shelley “wonderful and interesting,” Frances Trollope “glorious,” Walt Whitman “a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate,” the Swiss economist Sismondi “a new St. Theresa.” But Catherine Beecher accused her of being “brazen” and others called her a “red harlot of infidelity.”
With her faith in science, her understanding of the laws of nature, and her interests in philosophy and theology, Antoinette Brown Blackwell anticipated the complexities of biological inheritance now advanced by discoveries of DNA and gene therapy. She had a sense of the magnitude of the consequences that the emphasis on male-only representation of the species in biology would produce. Her feminism as well as her interest in the philosophy of science led her to question the state-of-the-science thinking of her day and to foresee positive possibilities which are now becoming actualized: inclusion of women in medical research as researchers and as subjects, medical studies on brain-function differences within and between the sexes, and interest in the caring functioning of the sexes. In her prodding Brown-Blackwell contributed to the philosophical canon. The kinds of issues she addressed indicate her to be a representative thinker of her Victorian age.
Imagine, now that we have studied the selections in this book, the tradition of philosophy without the ethics of Pan Chao, the philosophy of love of Héloïse, the feminist philosophy of Marie de Gournay, Anna van Schurman, Mary Astell, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Judith Sargent Murray, the Utilitarianism of Frances Wright, or finally the evolutionism of Antoinette Brown Blackwell—how bleak the philosophical canon of nineteen centuries. Yet the canon has lacked the contributions by these and other women.
... Gerta Lerner, na rozdíl od Lindy Nochlin, refl exi dějin fi lozofi e z genderového hlediska neiniciovala, ale měla k dispozici výsledky již poměrně rozsáhlého feministického výzkumu této oblasti, který se začal intenzivně rozvíjet v Anglii, USA, Kanadě, Francii, Německu a a Itálii přibližně od osmdesátých let dvacátého století. Mnohé autorky konstatovaly, že ve fi lozofi ckém kánonu se nenachází ani jedna žena [Waithe 1987;Nye 1994;McAlister 1996;Dykeman 1999;Freeland 1999;Witt 2000;Tuana 1992Tuana , 2006Gardner 2004], i když je historicky doloženo, že v minulosti ženy fi lozofovaly. Feministická kritika "dějinné paměti" v oblasti fi lozofi e byla v zásadě souběžná s vývojem této refl exe v dalších disciplínách a oborech (výtvarné umění, literatura, religionistika, dějiny vědy a další), ale začala zde později a inkluze žen do dějinné paměti dosud nedosahuje úrovně jiných oblastí [McAlister 1989]. ...
... Ve výše uvedených pracích najdeme několik různých odpovědí na tuto otázku. Dykeman 1999] tvrdí, že tím poskytujeme studujícím adekvátnější a "pravdivější" obraz dějin fi lozofi e a vývoje fi lozofování, Gardner [2000] pak argumentuje tím, že fi lozofi e žen, hlavně morální fi lozofi e, nastoluje problémy, které není "tradiční" mas-kulinistická fi lozofi e 12 schopna identifi kovat, a také nabízí řešení, která mohou změnit naše dnešní fi lozofi cké chápání světa. Bordo [1987] tvrdí, že odhalování fi lozofek nám pomáhá pochopit, co tradiční kánon vylučuje a umlčuje, a Tuana [2004] vidí důvod v tom, že inkluze žen pomáhá zpochybnit tradiční chápání fi lozofi e a má potenci obohatit dominantní model fi lozofi e. ...
This article examines the issue of the genderedness of the philosophical canon. In the theoretical part of the article the author gives evidence of the constructed nature of the philosophical canon, which in the Euro-American space is clearly androcentric. She summarises criticism to date of the philosophical canon by feminist historians of philosophy and describes the results of their research, which is directed at several areas: uncovering forgotten women philosophers of the past; analysing philosophers' views on gender; identifying the genderedness of basic philosophical categories; criticising the dualism that characterises modern philosophical discourse; and finally, making various reinterpretations of the concepts of past philosophers. Each of these approaches has particular potential and limitations, which the author seeks to identify. In the second part of the article the author presents the results of her analysis of philosophy textbooks and books on the history of philosophy published in the Czech Republic after 1990. She conducted her analysis by comparing information on women philosophers contained in the texts of the selected books with the information available in other literature (mainly English). She also employed the typological method, and she identified five 'strategies' of marginalisation of women philosophers, whereby textbooks used at Czech universities contribute to maintaining the existing philosophical canon.
... There are many examples of female scientists who, despite their significant contributions, were not recognised in any significant way (Tucker, 2019; Lee, 2013). Most academic fields have a history of male-dominance, philosophy, being no different (Dykeman, 1999;Sandnes, 2011;Janiak and Mercer, 2015;Thomas, 2019). Likewise, there are historical African humanities scholars (Wolff, 2020;Trok, 2021), who have until recently all but been forgotten. ...
Due to an oft held presupposition by academic administrators that the humanities lack utility, it is common for humanities scholars to be fearful of the demise of our disciplines in institutions of higher learning. In a number of western institutions, humanities departments have been closed based upon this logic. Locating the discussion within the South African academy and based particularly upon the pedagogical experience of the University of South Africa, the authors note an emerging juxtaposition to the western utilitarian approach toward humanities. The decolonial turn is gaining traction in neo colonies and offers an approach away from western positivist-inspired reductivism. Therefore, from within the decolonial milieu, a recovery of the importance of researching and teaching themes of the human can arise when the conception of the person is integrally restored. We argue that when dominant knowledge systems are dislodged, space is created for epistemic plurality by which epistemic re-centring occurs. Doing philosophy in the decolonial environment affords the privilege of reclaiming humanity in the face of its neo colonial mutilation. This is even more so, when philosophy is taught through the dispersed mode of open, distance, and e-learning (ODeL), an andragogy that encourages recentring and decolonisation in both the theory and praxis of teaching and learning.
... In recent years, a wide debate has grown around issues of authorship, intellectual value and canonicity in the human and social sciences (e.g. Alatas & Sinha, 2017;Al-Hardan, 2018;Baehr, [2002] 2016; Bloom, 1994;Boyers, 2000;Burawoy, 2016;Connell, 1997Connell, , 2019Dykeman, 1999;Grundmann & Stehr, 2001;Koleva, 2020;Moretti, 2017;Outhwaite, 2009;Park, 2014;Patel, 2021;Reckwitz, 2002;Roulleau-Berger, 2021;Santoro & Sapiro, 2017;Sapiro et al., 2020;Steinmetz, 2013;Witt, 2006). Multiculturalism and other sources challenging academic curricula have fuelled this debate across disciplines, different sorts of humanity variously (self)identified, as well as countries and governments. ...
The article addresses issues of interpretation and selection as they are dealt with in current debates on the nature, the content, and the effects of processes and mechanisms of canonization in sociology. It makes a case for a more empirically grounded and sociologically sensitive approach to these issues, drawing from recent research programmes in digital humanities (e.g. distant reading) and insisting on the benefits of cumulative case histories of individual scholars with their patterns of social relations in different countries and languages. The case of gender inclusion/exclusion is focused upon as both exemplary and symptomatic. Finally, the article introduces to the following five articles, presenting briefly their contents and ratio.
... Všechny tyto aktivity se podílejí na postupné změně přístupu k výuce dějin fi lozofi e a fi lozofi ckému kánonu v západních zemích. Charlotte Witt píše, že ve fi lozofi cké encyklopedii z roku 1967, kde se nacházely informace o více než 900 fi lozofech, nebyla uvedena ani jedna žena [Witt 2000] a Michèle Le Doeuff popisuje svou zkušenost z přípravy pozdější (neuvádí bližší informaci) fi lozofi cké encyklopedie, do které se poprvé její zásluhou dostalo jméno Mary Wollstone craft [ Dykeman 1999] tvrdí, že tím poskytujeme studujícím adekvátnější a " pravdivější " obraz dějin fi lozofi e a vývoje fi lozofování, Gardner [2000] pak argumentuje tím, že fi lozofi e žen, hlavně morální fi lozofi e, nastoluje problémy, které není " tradiční " mas-kulinistická fi lozofi e 12 schopna identifi kovat, a také nabízí řešení, která mohou změnit naše dnešní fi lozofi cké chápání světa. Bordo [1987] tvrdí, že odhalování fi lozofek nám pomáhá pochopit, co tradiční kánon vylučuje a umlčuje, a Tuana [2004] vidí důvod v tom, že inkluze žen pomáhá zpochybnit tradiční chápání fi lozofi e a má potenci obohatit dominantní model fi lozofi e. Existují však i problémy a omezení tohoto přístupu. ...
This article examines the issue of the genderedness of the philosophical canon. In the theoretical part of the article the author gives evidence of the constructed nature of the philosophical canon, which in the Euro-American space is clearly androcentric. She summarises criticism to date of the philosophical canon by feminist historians of philosophy and describes the results of their research, which is directed at several areas: uncovering forgotten women philosophers of the past; analysing philosophers’ views on gender; identifying the genderedness of basic philosophical categories; criticising the dualism that characterises modern philosophical discourse; and finally, making various reinterpretations of the concepts of past philosophers. Each of these approaches has particular potential and limitations, which the author seeks to identify. In the second part of the article the author presents the results of her analysis of philosophy textbooks and books on the history of philosophy published in the Czech Republic after 1990. She conducted her analysis by comparing information on women philosophers contained in the texts of the selected books with the information available in other literature (mainly English). She also employed the typological method, and she identified five ‘strategies’ of marginalisation of women philosophers, whereby textbooks used at Czech universities contribute to maintaining the existing philosophical canon.
Feminist research on historiography of philosophy has been actively conducted in the anglophone academic space and primarily regarding Western philosophy for several decades. These inquiries led to fundamental rethinking of the canon of history of philosophy, the development of feminist methodological reflections by historians of philosophy, and discoveries (recoveries) of names of women philosophers of the past. Meanwhile, anticolonial research (including, but not limited to decolonial and postcolonial theory), aimed at combatting the problematic assumption that philosophy is a Western phenomenon, is being conducted. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the canon of history of philosophy remains almost exclusively male, and the anticolonial perspective is not applied to history of philosophy, even though for a major part of its history Ukraine was not independent and was under control of empires. To overcome the androcentric bias in historiography of Ukrainian philosophy, I believe we need to combine the feminist perspective with the anticolonial perspective since we are talking about women who are also representatives of a colonial nation, and this double status of being women and being colonial affected their experience. However, feminist and anticolonial approaches remain largely methodologically isolated, which is what prompts this article and the need to research the levels of their developments and the prospects of combining them for historiography of philosophy. This article fulfils this goal by reviewing both feminist and anticolonial approaches to historiography of philosophy separately, and then looking at cases of their successful combinations outside historiography of philosophy, reviewing challenges and similarities, and outlining methodological reasons for combining them when it comes to historiography of philosophy.
Therese B. Dykeman in analyzing silence ontologically as substantial and non-substantial, demonstrates how it is understood in language and discourse, in music and art, in space, motion, time, matter and in emotion and bodily stillness. Dykeman argues that silences can be dramatic, contemplative, vicious, awkward, joyful, self-expressive, paradoxical, ineffable, and mystical. Through exploring the nature of silence, she points out the limits of our usual thinking about silence, and invites us to think in more open and inclusive ways about the multi-faceted dimensions of silence.
Cette thèse entend rendre compte du processus conflictuel par lequel, en France, la philosophie s’est constituée comme une discipline autonome, et s’est dotée d’un « canon » d’auteurs et de problèmes par lesquels elle se définit. Je l’analyse par le prisme de la réception de Blaise Pascal dans l’institution scolaire française entre 1809 et 1914. En effet, cet auteur occupe une position tout à fait singulière dans le processus de formation du canon. Il n’est ni un « oublié » ni une de ses grandes figures indiscutées de la philosophie. Sa réception très polémique au XIXe siècle est même structurée par les questions relatives aux critères d’entrée – ou de sortie – du canon. Étudier la place de Pascal dans l’institution scolaire me permet ainsi de mettre au jour les critères selon lesquels une philosophie devient acceptable comme telle en France au XIXe siècle. Ceux-ci sont à la fois internes (édition critique et fiable des œuvres, mise en évidence de leur portée théorique) et externes (acceptabilité morale d’une philosophie longtemps perçue comme « sceptique », compatibilité avec l’affirmation de la laïcité des institutions). Des effets de cette recherche sont attendus en retour sur notre pratique d’historiens et historiennes de la philosophie, dans la mesure où nous n’avons pas toujours conscience des critères selon lesquels nous apprécions telle ou telle philosophie.
This paper explores the idea of philosophical fortuna (fortune) in relation to the study of women philosophers of the past. Tracing a philosopher’s fortuna involves examining the reception of her philosophy across time in the context of changing philosophical debates, and the reworking of philosophical ideas in new and different circumstances. I argue that focusing on philosophical fortunae offers a means to reassess the realities of exclusion and marginalization of women philosophers, and to strengthen their claims to be admitted as full members of the community of philosophers. I conclude with a consideration of Mary Hays’s Female Biographies to this process.
It is only in the last 30 years that any appreciable work has been done on women philosophers of the past. This paper reflects on the progress that has been made in recovering early-modern women philosophers in that time and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. I argue that as women are integrated into the broader picture of philosophy, there is a danger of overlooking the different conditions under which they originally philosophized and which shaped their philosophies. Having retrieved them from oblivion, we now face the challenge of avoiding a ‘new amnesia’ by developing historical narratives and modes of analysis which acknowledge the different conditions within which they worked, without diminishing their contribution to philosophy. I offer these remarks as a contribution to current debates about the forms that historical narrative should take, and the best way to promote women in philosophy today, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.
Heloise has become known to posterity primarily as Abelard's partner and as philosopher. However, her letters to Abelard testify to the formation of religious identity unique to the twelfth century, and aspect of her work which has not been studied before. Research done recently by this author on the contemporary formation of religious identity, has revealed that this formation is primarily influenced by three factors: (1) the losses suffered by a person; (2) the person's social need to shift between religious and other identities, and (3) the gender stylisation imposed on a person by his/her socio-religious context. Taking its point of departure from these modern insights into the formation of religious identity, this article will identify and describe aspects of religious identity in Heloise's letters to Abelard, and compare them to the characteristics of religious identity present in Abelard's Historia calamitatum.
This dissertation examines debates about the concept of "materialism" in the United States during the nineteenth century. Though now more commonly used to describe a sense of avarice or obsession with material gain, nineteenth-century discussions focused primarily on philosophical materialism, that is, materialism as a distinct body of thought that held matter as first principle. In this project, I trace the paired development of both materialist and anti-materialist discourse in the U.S., dissenting cultural traditions that clashed repeatedly as they evolved over this period. I argue that these debates about materialism reveal one way Americans responded to the continually shifting terrain of the nineteenth century. In general, anti-materialist rhetoric revealed a desire to preserve certain facets of American religious, social, intellectual, and political culture believed to be under threat. For much of the century, anti-materialist critics fixated on the allegedly atheistic implications of philosophical materialism. Materialists, by contrast, frequently voiced a desire to unseat deeply entrenched beliefs and profoundly transform American society. I argue that materialism remained steadily controversial precisely because of its connections to radical religious, philosophical, and political doctrines that called for such large-scale transformations.
This essay discusses historiographical issues relevant to restoring female philosophers of the past to philosophical view today. I argue that women philosophers have not been well served by Anglo-American conceptions of philosophical history which are wholly presentist in orientation and overly focused on canonical thinkers. Addressing some of the issues raised by Bernard Williams in his essay, "Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy," I argue that retrieving women philosophers from oblivion and obscurity requires an historical approach that does not separate the 'history of philosophy' from the 'history of ideas', but which is more historical and more inclusive. One way forward is to treat the history of philosophy as a conversation between philosophers across time.
Reclamation work denotes the process of uncovering the lost contributions of women to the philosophy of education, analyzing their works, making them accessible to a larger audience, and (re)introducing them to the historical record and canon. Since the 1970s, scholars have been engaged in the reclamation work, thus making available to students, professors, and researchers a rich and varied perspective for tracing the evolution of educational thought. This article shares the responses of undergraduate and graduate students to discussing the reclamation work and canonical formation in their Philosophy of Education course. Two of the benefits most commonly cited by students involve learning a fuller, more accurate picture of history and ameliorating contemporary gender inequity. We assert that the traditional canon and syllabi for Philosophy of Education and Social Foundation courses could be enriched through the inclusion of works that trace the tradition of women's intellectual thought.
College professors seek to create intellectual experiences that free students from false perceptions and incomplete truths. This article explores one curricular decision and an accompanying pedagogical approach which, the authors argue, facilitates such a liberating experience. In the online environment of WebCT, students post their reactions to course readings, including a null curriculum consisting of a few examples of a complex body of literature by and about heretofore lost women writers. What we believe emerges from the students’ words is, first, that they feel awakened to their own unconscious complicity in perpetuating and normalising a male-dominated body of literature; second, the female students report experiencing an increased sense of empowerment because they believe that contemporary woman’s self-identity is intimately joined to the experiences and accomplishments of their scholarly female predecessors. The authors argue that the curricular choice to expose students to the women’s works, aided by the pedagogical decision to require online responses to these works, offers benefits for students and professors alike.
When one reads historical works covering long spans of time there are no more traces of our names to be found than there are traces to be found of a vessel crossing the ocean. —Anna Maria van Schurman AS WE DESIGN our courses in the history of modern philosophy, whether done as a survey in one or two semesters for our beginning majors or as more intense author/theme courses for our advanced majors and graduate students, there are a series of values and beliefs embedded into the structure of our courses. These include decisions about which individuals count as the great philosophers and those whose work was influential on the development of their work. Though the canon shifts historically and is often an issue of some dispute between the traditions within philosophy, we seldom make this fact a theme of our courses. 1 Our course design also embeds values concerning which texts and which topics are the most important to study and why. Woven into our courses are assumptions concerning the purpose of teaching the history of philosophy. Are these courses designed to prepare the student for more detailed historical work, or are they intended to provide an introduction to contemporary philosophical concerns? And if the latter, which contemporary concerns are our focus? 2 One of the questions for which feminist philosophy (and other forms of feminist theorizing) has become famous is the whose ques-tion. Whose science? Whose knowledge? And particularly relevant to the concerns of the new histories of philosophy, Whose history? Feminist philosophy proceeds from the premise that gender is an important lens for analysis. Our work begins with attention to women, to their roles and locations: What are women doing? What social/political locations are they part of or excluded from? How do their activities compare with those of men? What do women's roles and locations allow or preclude? How have their roles been valued or devalued? To this we add attention to the experiences and concerns of women: Have any of women's experiences or problems been ignored or undervalued? How might attention to these transform our current methods or values? And from here we move to the realm of the symbolic: How is the feminine instantiated and constructed within the texts of philosophy? What role does the feminine play in forming, through either its absence or its presence, the central concepts of philosophy? Although hardly unique in this respect, contemporary history of philosophy is complicit in a wider societal pattern of attention to men and the masculine role. 3 Women, though never fully ignored, are often relegated to a minor role, located in realms considered less important or influential, rendered a "helpmeet" to man, and then forgotten. The history of philosophy has played a large role in the forgetting of gender in the realm of philosophy. Our canon almost completely excludes the writings of women, and little attention has been given to the experiences or concerns of women or to the role of the feminine. Feminist work in the history of philosophy is dedicated to evoking gender. In the case of the history of philosophy, this focus bifurcates along the axes of (a) attention to women and (b) investigation of the symbolic imaginary related to feminine/masculine. This essay is a plea to undo the forgetting of gender by theorizing its absence and presence in the teaching of the history of philosophy. My essay is designed to provide an overview of the complexity of this task, as well as a sense of what is gained in the process. It will be my contention that the issue of gender is not simply a question of equity. Recalling gender calls into question models of philosophy and philosophical concepts that emerge from and rely on the forgetting of gender. Adding gender to our history of philosophy courses enriches them by helping us recover the value(s) of our task.
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