As many things do, it started with a Twitter rant.
As ex-philosophy students, we know that, when it comes to the history of philosophy, women are not exactly the centre of attention. But when we tried to find an introductory book about women philosophers, we were shocked to find that there are none. The only exception to this rule was ‘Women Philosophers’ written by the great philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock over 22 years ago.
Of course, we should have known that books on women in philosophy would be scarce. A cursory glance at a BA or MA philosophy syllabus will show you a number of modules focusing on the work on men like Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Rawls, and Russell (to name only a few). We are not saying these modules are not important, of course, they are. Part of learning philosophy means engaging with ideas from history most of which came from men. However, these modules and reading lists would have you believe that no women feature in the history of philosophy whatsoever. That is just not true.
While the rest of academia has been embracing and support the work of women, philosophy still seems sadly behind the game. Just under 30% of academics in philosophy in the UK are women, putting our subject behind English, law, anthropology, classics, history, politics and economics. Whilst we have some of the greatest women in academia working in philosophy our progress seems alarmingly slow.
So after an evening of angrily venting our frustrations on Twitter and finding that many young women working in philosophy felt the same, we decided that it was time to do something ourselves.
The Philosopher Queens was borne out of this frustration–the frustration that philosophy books don’t reflect the work of women in philosophy, both today or throughout history. That’s why we’ve asked 21 women to write a chapter on a woman in philosophy and their impact on the world. There were (obviously) too many women to squeeze into this one book, but we hope that The Philosopher Queens will be a first step towards filling this important and often ignored gap.
Each chapter is written by a woman working in philosophy today. Our chapters and contributing authors include:
Hypatia by Lisa Whiting
Lalleshwari by Shalini Sinha
Anne Conway by Julia Bocherding
Mary Astell by Simone Webb
Mary Wollstonecraft by Sandrine Bergès
Harriet Taylor Mill by Helen McCabe
Christine Ladd-Franklin by Sara Uckelman
Mary Anne Evans by Clare Carlisle
Edith Stein by Jae Hetterley
Hannah Arendt by Rebecca Buxton
Simone de Beauvoir by Kate Kirkpatrick
Iris Murdoch by Fay Niker
Elizabeth Anscombe by Hannah Carnegy-Arbuthnott
Mary Warnock by Gulzaar Barn
Iris Marion Young by Desiree Lim
Anita L Allen by Ilhan Dahir
Azizah Y. al-Hibri by Nima Dahir
… and more exciting chapters yet to be announced.
You can learn more about The Philosopher Queens at the Unbound website. If you decide to pledge, you can get 10% off by using the discount code: APA10.
Rebecca Buxton
Rebecca Buxton (@rebeccabuxton) is a researcher at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford, focusing on the political rights of refugees. Her background is in political theory and philosophy, and her forthcoming book on women philosophers, The Philosopher Queens, will be published in June 2020.
Lisa Whiting
Lisa Whiting (@LisaBabblings) is following in the footsteps of her philosophical idol, Mary Warnock, working at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority as a researcher. She previously studied Philosophy at Durham University, specialising in the intersection between moral philosophy and social psychology. Because she didn’t have enough to do she is now also studying at Birkbeck for an MSc in Government, Politics and Policy. In her spare time, she listens to podcasts, watches documentaries and enjoys a good Twitter rant.
I hope Susanne Langer will be included.
Whenever this topic comes up, I wonder whether I had some sort of eccentric education at the University of Michigan and later, the CUNY Graduate Center. That education included, prominently, work by:
Susanne Langer
G.E.M. Anscombe
Iris Murdoch
Mary Warnock
Mary Midgley
Philippa Foot
Judith Jarvis Thompson
Cora Diamond
Susan Haack
Susan Wolf
Patricia Churchland
Elizabeth Anderson
And these are just off the top of my head. There are definitely more.
I studied logic with the great Ruth Barcan Marcus at Yale as a Ph.D. student in philosophy. The NYT had to be pressured into publishing her obit in 2012 despite her groundbreaking contributions to logic, philosophy, and women in academia. In 1973 she was only one of two tenured women at Yale in arts and sciences. In eight years as an undergrad and law student at Stanford and grad student at Yale, Ruth abarcan was the only professor I had who was a woman. (And I had only one professor who was Black, at Stanford Law School, and no Latino or Hispanic professors, except in the Spanish Department.) https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/woman-fighter-philosopher/
My name is Dr Julie Hawthorne I have a PhD in Philosophy of Mind. It’s called “Understanding Creativity through Memes and Schemata” . I put it on the web so it’s easy to find if you want to use it. All the best with your project most women who do philosophy do Feminism in my experience.
I love the anthology, “An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy: Conversations Between Men And Women Philosophers,” edited by Karen Warren. It’s an excellent resource for teaching Introduction to Philosophy and for guiding philosophy majors through the history of philosophy.
I agree Robert Garcia, not that l am biased or anything. . .
If you get this twice I wasn’t sure if it posted.
Fifteen Women Philosophers was published in 2014, FIVE YEARS AGO, by decodedscience.org, and since decoded has recently folded, the rights reverted to me and the new edition in ebook EIGHTEEN AMAZING WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS (inc. 3 extra chapters) was independently published on Amazon in May 2019, swiftly followed by the paperback. During its first edition it appeared on several platforms, Amazon, Decodedscience.org, Smashwords, Goodreads. The editor of my monthly column has plugged it for me since inception. If you google me on Goodreads you can access all the editions with one click. I am not sure how you could not have found my work.
CHAPTER 1 HYPATIA
CHAPTER 2 MURASAKI SHIKIBU
CHAPTER 3 MARIE LE JARS DE GOURNAY
CHAPTER 4 MARY WOLLSTONECROFT
CHAPTER 5 SOJOURNER TRUTH
CHAPTER 6 ERNESTINE ROSE
CHAPTER 7 ADA LOVELACE
CHAPTER 8 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
CHAPTER 9 AYN RAND
CHAPTER 10 HANNAH ARENDT
CHAPTER 11 SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
CHAPTER 12 SIMONE WEIL
CHAPTER 13 PHILIPPA FOOT
CHAPTER 14 ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE
CHAPTER 15 IRIS MURDOCH
CHAPTER 16 MARY WARNOCK
CHAPTER 17 MARY MIDGLEY
CHAPTER 18 MARy BEARD
This has all been a great deal of hard work and it’s not easy self publishing either, once you have had your work published in the trdaditional way, as I had to do, after my publisher went out of business. This feels really bad and I hardly know how to deal with it. I had a post on FB a few weeks ago which I replied to, in a similar vein, but nobody is listening!
EIGHTEEN AMAZING WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS you should have hear about in school but probably didn’t, (first edition published 2014. Credit for the catchy subtitle, my editor Victoria Nicks.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1072689596/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3