So You Want to Teach Some Women Philosophers?: Nineteenth-Century Britain

Building on blog posts from Peter Adamson, Jonardon Ganeri, and Karyn Lai with suggestions for introducing Islamic, Indian, and Chinese philosophy into thematic courses, here I offer some suggestions for how to introduce nineteenth-century British women philosophers onto thematic courses.

As Eileen O’Neill established in her essential article “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and their Fate in History,” wherever and whenever we look in philosophy’s past, we find that women were there, intervening into philosophical debates. But women’s words have not been heard and carried forward into accounts of philosophy’s history, and until recently women were left out of the canon. Women have thus been absent not from philosophy’s history, but from its historiography. We need to expand our canons and rewrite our historical narratives to include the women’s voices that were previously missed out. This goes for teaching as well as research. Change is already well underway with respect to the early modern period, which has been the focus of much of the scholarship recovering women’s past philosophical contributions.

However, the nineteenth century has been neglected, including nineteenth-century Britain. Perhaps it is assumed that British society at the time was so unremittingly patriarchal that women cannot possibly have been philosophising then, or that women must perforce have written only about women’s rights and related political topics. In fact, while many nineteenth-century British women philosophers did address gender and other political issues, they also wrote on the full spectrum of areas of philosophy. In my suggestions below I deliberately focus on non-political areas (with the partial exception of animal ethics). This is to help instructors include women without reinforcing the preconception that nineteenth-century women only tackled social and political topics.

Plenty of work by these women lends itself well to inclusion in thematic courses. As they were English-speaking, no translation or language issues arise, and these authors often wrote in a direct, accessible, forceful, and lively style. This is because of their publishing context, the vibrant book and periodical culture of nineteenth-century Britain, in which debates were carried on across successive issues of journals, addressed to a general audience of informed readers, spilling over into wider public debates. Many books consisted of collections of journal articles and many journal articles were responses to books. The book sections and free-standing essays suggested below are all available in digital archives such as Hathitrust and Internet Archive, and the journal articles can be accessed through libraries’ historical periodicals collections; in a few cases there are also modern scholarly editions.

So the challenges of teaching this material do not lie in accessing or deciphering the primary texts. They lie in our collective unfamiliarity with the intellectual context of this place and period, and in the limited amount of secondary philosophical commentary on these women’s ideas and arguments. Most of the existing secondary literature on these authors comes from academics whose primary speciality is literary and cultural history. Their work is invaluable, yet they do not always foreground reasons and arguments as philosophers do. As I see it, the best thing to do here is explain to students that because we are only now coming to appreciate these women as philosophers, there is not yet an abundance of specifically philosophical discussion of their writings and arguments. This can be an exciting opportunity for students: the field is not so crowded as to leave no space for them to reach original insights. Moreover, students get to encounter first-hand the disparity in how historical female and male philosophers have been treated, for example when turning from the flood of literature on Darwin and John Stuart Mill to the mere trickle that exists on Cobbe or Besant.

Needless to say, the following is only a small cross-section of all the philosophical writing by women in nineteenth-century Britain, and Britain of course is only one country amongst many. For other nineteenth-century women philosophers, one might consult the following. For American women philosophers, one source is Dorothy Rogers and Therese Boos Dykeman, eds., Contributions by Women to Nineteenth-Century American Philosophy: Frances Wright, Antoinette Brown-Blackwell, Marietta Kies (Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen, 2012). For Africana women philosophers, one place to start is Sandrine Berges’ blogpost. And for German-speaking women philosophers, there is Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar, eds., Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2021). Another source on many of these figures—and others besides—is the Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers, editors-in-chief Ruth Hagengruber and Mary Ellen Waithe.

In reading and teaching the suggested authors below, two contextual factors are worth bearing in mind: (1) Some of these books came out anonymously, as did some of the journal articles, while others were published under initials or pseudonyms. This is because in Britain journal articles—by men and women alike—were typically anonymous up until the 1860s, and books were regularly anonymous too. The principle of signed authorship only gradually came in over the century. Anonymity, pseudonymity, and initials of course had particular uses for women. (2) Unfortunately, these women rarely referred to or discussed one another’s ideas and arguments in print. Often there is evidence in letters that women knew of and were responding to one another’s work, but they rarely said so in published work.

Finally, if anyone wants more advice on introducing these or other nineteenth-century British women philosophers onto their courses, or help obtaining the suggested readings, please contact me.

Knowledge

In epistemology, women centrally divided into two groups: proponents of empirical and inductive accounts of knowledge and those who saw more role for a priori knowledge. On the empirical side, Frances Wright treated sense-experience as the basis of all knowledge; Mary Prince emphasised the epistemic importance of direct, lived experience (of slavery in particular); Harriet Martineau proposed methods for training one’s powers of observation (specifically for gaining knowledge of society); and Constance Naden gave an original account of induction and deduction as the basis of scientific knowledge. On the other side Frances Power Cobbe defended a priori knowledge, which she equated with intuition (she had ethical knowledge in mind but also addressed knowledge more generally); while Victoria Welby argued that all facts presuppose interpretations.

Frances Wright (1829), Course of Popular Lectures, New York: Office of the Free Inquirer, Lecture I, “On the Nature of Knowledge.”

Mary Prince (1831), The History of Mary Prince, London: Westley and Davis, esp. pp. 11, 22-23.

Harriet Martineau (1838), How to Observe Morals and Manners, London: Knight, “Introduction” and Ch. 1.

Frances Power Cobbe (1855), An Essay on Intuitive Morals, Vol. 1, Theory of Morals, London: Longmans: Ch. 2, “Where it [the moral law] is to be found.”

Constance Naden (1890), Induction and Deduction, London: Bickers and Son, “Introduction” and Ch. XI, “Summary of Results.”

Victoria Welby (1893), “Meaning and Metaphor,” The Monist 3: 510-525.

Secondary literature:

On Prince, see Mary Jeanne Larrabee (2006), “’I Know What a Slave Knows’: Mary Prince’s Epistemology of Resistance”, Women’s Studies 35.5: 453-473.

On Martineau, see Michael R. Hill and Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, eds. (2003), Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives, London: Routledge.

On Naden, see Clare Stainthorp (2019), Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet, Berlin: Peter Lang, esp. Ch. 3.

On Welby, see Susan Petrilli (2009), “Introduction” to Signifying and Understanding:Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement, ed. Susan Petrilli, Berlin: De Gruyter.

Reality

The selections below fall into two pairs. First, under the guise of expounding Epicureanism, Wright outlines a form of materialism; while Naden puts forward a unique combination of idealism and materialism, “hylo-idealism.” Second, Mary Shepherd argues, against Hume, for the reality of causation and causal powers; while Martineau, in a lengthy critical review of a work by Samuel Bailey, advances an inductive and empirical account of causation that contrasts with that of Shepherd.

Frances Wright [1822] (1850), A Few Days in Athens, Boston: Mendum, Ch. XV.

Constance Naden [1884] (1890), “Hylo-Idealism: The Creed of the Coming Day,” in Induction and Deduction, pp. 155-166.

Shepherd, Mary (1824), An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, London: Hookham, Chapter 2, Sections 1-3.

Harriet Martineau [1829] (1836), “Essays on the Pursuit of Truth,” in Miscellanies, 2 vols.; Boston: Hilliard, Gray: Vol. 2, 174-196.

Secondary literature:

On Shepherd, one of the few figures included here on whom there is a reasonable amount of philosophical literature, a good starting-point is Deborah Boyle (2020), “Lady Mary Shepherd: A Snapshot,” Philosophers’ Magazine 89: 55-59, URL: https://archive.philosophersmag.com/snapshot-lady-mary-shepherd/

On Martineau, see:

Odile Boucher-Rivalain (2012), “Harriet Martineau (1802–1876), from Unitarianism to Agnosticism,” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 76: 27-43, URL: https://journals.openedition.org/cve/520

Caroline Roberts (2002), The Woman and the Hour: Harriet Martineau and Victorian Ideologies, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Science and evolution

In nineteenth-century Britain there was much discussion about whether Darwin’s theory of evolution could be reconciled with Christianity and whether the theory supported or undermined morality. Julia Wedgwood and Arabella Buckley both argued that evolutionary theory was compatible with Christianity and morality, whereas Cobbe maintained that it fatally undermined them.

Julia Wedgwood (1860-61), “The Boundaries of Science,” parts 1 and 2, Macmillan’s Magazine 2: 134-38 and 4: 237-247.

Frances Power Cobbe [1871] (1872), “Darwinism in Morals,” in Darwinism in Morals, and Other Essays, London: Williams & Norgate.

Arabella Buckley (1871), “Darwinism and Religion,” Macmillan’s Magazine 24: 45-51.

Secondary literature:

On Wedgwood’s dialogue, see Donovan Schaefer (2015), “The Science of Life,” in Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, ed. Joel Rasmussen, Judith Wolfe and Johannes Zachhuber, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

On Buckley, see Barbara Gates (1997), “Revisioning Darwin with Sympathy: Arabella Buckley,” in Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, ed. Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Schteir, Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

On Cobbe, see Alison Stone (2022), “Introduction” to Frances Power Cobbe: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Feminist Philosopher, New York: Oxford University Press, 2022, which includes most of the Cobbe essays suggested here including “Darwinism in Morals.”

Also on Cobbe, see Alison Stone (2022), Frances Power Cobbe, in Elements in Women in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, esp. sec. 6.

Mind

The central divide in philosophy of mind was between materialism and dualism. Martineau and Naden were materialists; Cornwallis, Cobbe, and Buckley were dualists. Cornwallis held a fairly typical dualist position and Martineau gave an exemplary statement of a materialist explanatory programme. The views of Naden, Cobbe, and Buckley are more distinctive. Naden’s materialism was part of her hylo-idealist metaphysics; Cobbe paired dualism with an account of unconscious thought; and Buckley postulated a collective spiritual evolution.

Caroline Cornwallis [1841] (1846), “Psychology,” in Philosophical Theories and Philosophical Experience, 2nd edn, Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, pp. 42-51.

Harriet Martineau, with Henry George Atkinson (1851), Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, London: Chapman, Letter I, pp. 1-5, Letter III, pp. 11-15, and Letters V, pp. 25-28.

Frances Power Cobbe (1870), “Unconscious Cerebration: A Psychological Study,” Macmillan’s Magazine 23: 24–37.

Constance Naden [1883] (1890), “The Brain Theory of Mind and Matter; or Hylo-Idealism,” in Induction and Deduction, pp. 155-167.

Arabella Buckley (1879), “The Soul, and the Theory of Evolution,” University Magazine 3: 1-10.

Secondary literature:

Jordan Larsen (2017) “The Evolving Spirit: Morals and Mutualism in Arabella Buckley’s Evolutionary Epic,” Notes and Records 71: 385-408.

Alison Stone (2022), “Later Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers on the Mind and its Place in the World,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 60.1: 97-123.

Ethical theory

Utilitarianism and intuitionism were the two main rival approaches to ethical theory in English-speaking contexts in the nineteenth century. We therefore find that most women philosophers take one or the other of these approaches. The defenses of utilitarianism suggested below from Wright and Besant could be profitably taught alongside the better-known work of John Stuart Mill, as could Cobbe’s criticisms of utilitarianism, which Besant criticised in turn.

Frances Wright (1829), Course of Popular Lectures, Lecture V, “Morals.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1855), Essay on Intuitive Morals, Vol. 1, Theory of Morals, Chapter 1, “What is the Moral Law”; see also, on Cobbe’s criticisms of utilitarianism, Chapter 4, “Why it [the moral law] is to be obeyed”, pp. 141-157.

Annie Besant [1874] (1882), “The True Basis of Morality.” (London: Freethought Publishing) URL: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Stout39-t8.html

Secondary literature:

Catherine Villanueva Gardner (2012), Empowerment and Interconnectivity: Towards a Feminist History of Utilitarian Philosophy, University Park PA: Penn State Press.

Leland, Kurt (2021), “‘Friendly to All Beings’: Annie Besant as Ethicist,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29.2: 308-326.

Animal ethics

In Victorian Britain one of the fiercest philosophical and political debates was whether and how far vivisection—scientific and medical experimentation on live animals—is morally legitimate. Cobbe, the leader of anti-vivisectionism, advocated first regulation then abolition; against Cobbe, Lee argued that evolutionary ethics did not support but told against vivisection, in a dialogue in which “Michael” represents Cobbe and “Baldwin” Lee; Kingsford opposed vivisection absolutely; and Besant defended it (although Kingsford’s work subsequently prompted her to recant).

Frances Power Cobbe [1863] (1865), “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes,” in Studies New and Old of Ethical and Social Subjects, London: Trübner.

Frances Power Cobbe (1882), “Zoophily,” Cornhill 45: 279-288.

Vernon Lee [1882] (1886), “Of Honour and Evolutionism” (originally called “Vivisection: An Evolutionist to Evolutionists”), in Lee, Baldwin: Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations, Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Anna Kingsford (1883), “Unscientific Science: A Lecture,” Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot. URL: http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Other_Related_Works/Texts/OOR-I-Spirit/OOR-I-Spirit-015.htm

Annie Besant (1882), “Vivisection,” London: Besant and Bradlaugh. URL: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9xsdTs46pyUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Secondary literature:

Diana Donald (2020), Women Against Cruelty, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ch. 5.

Religion

Religion was a huge focus of attention and discussion for British philosophers, both women and men, in this period. One of the main points of contention was about whether morality requires religion or whether we can be better moral agents without religion. Martineau, Lee, and Besant came to adopt versions of atheism. Indeed, Martineau’s declaration of support for “philosophical atheism” in her posthumously published Autobiography was a major public event. In counter-reaction, Cobbe defended Christianity against Martineau, Lee and others—Cobbe’s “Agnostic Morality” was a reply to Lee’s dialogue “The Responsibilities of Unbelief,” in which Baldwin again represents Lee’s own stance. For her part Besant criticised Cobbe’s defense of religion, a criticism that formed part of Besant’s arsenal of pro-atheist arguments.

Harriet Martineau (1877), Autobiography, London: Smith, Elder & Co., Vol. 2: Fifth Period, Sec. II; and Sixth Period, Sec. I, pp. 205-219.

Vernon Lee [1883] (1886), “The Responsibilities of Unbelief,” in Baldwin: Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations.

Frances Power Cobbe (1883), “Agnostic Morality,” Contemporary Review 43: 783-794.

Frances Power Cobbe (1884), “A Faithless World,” Contemporary Review 46: 795–810.

Annie Besant (1885), “A World Without God: A Reply to Miss Frances Power Cobbe.” London: Freethought Publishing. URL: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_World_Without_God

Annie Besant (1893), “Atheism as I Knew and Taught It,” in Besant, An Autobiography (London: T. Fisher Unwin), ch. VII.

Aesthetics

The central issue in nineteenth-century women’s writing on aesthetics was the relation between art and morality. Baillie, the most celebrated British playwright of the earlier century, advanced a moralist theory of tragedy. Cobbe navigated between aesthetic moralism and art pour l’art. Dilke in contrast argued for aestheticism, while Lee, without wanting to return to moralism, nonetheless highlighted the morally beneficial consequences of experiences of beauty and beautiful art.

Joanna Baillie [1798] (1806), “Introductory Discourse,” in A Series of Plays vol. 1, 5th edn, London: Longmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.

Frances Power Cobbe (1865), “The Hierarchy of Art,” Parts I and II, Fraser’s Magazine 71: 97-108 and 334-346.

Emilia Dilke (1869), “Art and Morality,” Westminster Review 35: 148-182, esp. pp. 148-149, 158-168, 175-181.

Vernon Lee (1896), “Art and Life,” Parts I, II, and II, Contemporary Review 69: 658-669, 813-824 and 59-72.

Secondary literature:

Christine A. Colón (2009), Joanna Baillie and the Art of Moral Influence, Berlin: Peter Lang, esp. ch. 1.

Elizabeth Mansfield (1998), “Articulating Authority: Emilia Dilke’s Early Essays and Reviews,” Victorian Periodicals Review 31.1: 75-86.

Christa Zorn (2003), Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual, Athens OH: Ohio University Press.