Therese Boos Dykeman’s research while affiliated with Fairfield University and other places

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.

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.”

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

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. 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.