This book illuminates the problem of women in Chinese philosophy through the lens of the lives and work of two contemporary Taiwanese female philosophers. It takes two approaches that have been relegated, quite unfairly, to the margins of dominant discourses. The first is concerned with the work of women philosophical theorists who are still overshadowed by their male colleagues, regardless of where they live, their theoretical potential, and the value of their research. The second approach is related to (...) the question of the role of Taiwanese philosophy in maintaining the continuity of the Chinese intellectual tradition in the second half of the twentieth century. The book thus connects these two issues and provides a bridge linking them. Although discrimination against female philosophical theorists, on the one hand, and the failure to recognize the important contribution of Taiwanese philosophy to the development of modern Chinese philosophy, on the other, seem, at first glance, to have little in common, both harbor a problem that has its roots in discourses of exclusion emanating from the political, historical, and social inequalities associated with power structures. (shrink)

Women philosophers of the past, because they tended not to engage with each other much, are often perceived as isolated from ongoing philosophical dialogues. This has led—directly and indirectly—to their exclusion from courses in the history of philosophy. This article explores three ways in which we could solve this problem. The first is to create a course in early modern philosophy that focuses solely or mostly on female philosophers, using conceptual and thematic ties such as a concern (...) for education and a focus on ethics and politics. The second is to introduce women authors as dialoguing with the usual canonical suspects: Cavendish with Hobbes, Elisabeth of Bohemia with Descartes, Masham and Astell with Locke, Conway with Leibniz, and so on. The article argues that both methods have significant shortcomings, and it suggests a third, consisting in widening the traditional approach to structuring courses in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) (...) and Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

This chapter is about women and ancient Pythagorean philosophy. Specifically, the focus is on the letters and treatises written in the Hellenistic and Imperial Age under the name of Pythagorean female authors. Scholars have primarily raised two objections against these texts: first, they are likely to be spurious and might not have been authored by women, but rather male philosophers writing under female pseudonyms. Second, these texts are not philosophical. After a brief introduction to the role of (...) women in Pythagoreanism and overview of the authorship issue, I show that, regardless of the original authors, these texts are written for women who are considered capable of reading philosophy. As such, they establish women’s philosophical potential in two ways: on the one hand, they ascribe philosophical arguments to female authors and, on the other hand, they encourage women to pursue philosophy. This makes the texts the first case of philosophical prose ascribed to Greek women and, I argue, an early example of female philosophical protreptics. (shrink)

Female Soul and Feminine Spirit. Philosophical Prolegomena to a New (Women) Culture in the Interwar Radio Lectures Alice Voinescu’s and Constantin Noica’s. The newly founded Romanian Radio (1927) invited since 1930 the most important personalities of the Romanian culture to speak in the frame of different radio conferences. Two of these personalities were the philosophers Alice Voinescu (1885-1961) and Constantin Noica (1909-1987). Although they represent two different philosophical orientations (Alice Voinescu as a post-metaphysical thinker and Constantin Noica as (...) a philosopher, who tries, like Heidegger in the German culture, to rebuild metaphysics), the two interwar Romanian thinkers meet each other in some philosophical topics. One of these is the critical manner, how they are thinking about the movement of the emancipation of women in the 20thcentury. Both of them agree that the female soul and the feminine spirit have not to lose their specific features in the tendency to become active in the frame of the public sphere. In their critical thinking, Alice Voinescu and Constantin Noica meet the philosophical ideas of German philosophers like Georg Simmel and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on actualization of gender discursive features, the current piece aims to clarify and accentuate the manifestation of gender-philosophical ideas interaction: feminism in the framework of objectivism. The source material for the current article is a novel by Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged", which is a philosophical work on objectivism. Theoretical basis. The development of the gender discourse, in particular the discourse of feminism is researched from the retrospective angle. This piece is an attempt to underline peculiarities of female (...) artistic images representation in Rand’s work and the way Rand’s novel influenced the logical development of feminist discourse. Discourse of feminism is a rather peculiar notion for Objectivism, where the notion of gender is, theoretically, annihilated as far as gender is irrelevant for both personal and professional growth, however, practically, gender representation and actualization is ubiquitous in Rand’s philosophy. Originality. The distinctive features of gender discourse in Objectivism are highlighted in this piece; the results are based on the application of comparative analysis. It is argued that philosophy itself may well be perceived through a literary work of fiction, thus making artistic images prototypes of philosophy functionaries. Conclusion. "Atlas Shrugged" is not merely a literary fiction, but rather a philosophical treatise on Objectivism, which is a philosophy of individual struggle and achievement. The main female protagonist of "Atlas Shrugged", Dagny Taggart, is a staunch supporter of Objectivism. In Rand’s opinion Dagny Taggart is a prototype of a true woman of utopian American capitalist society, and it is her artistic image that was misinterpreted by supporters of feminist movement ideas and Dagny Taggart became an icon of feminism, whereas in reality Dagny’s discourse is rather a discourse of femininity, for Dagny despises everything that is connected with feminist ideas and practices, and, it is an error to weave her discourse into a much wider feminist discourse. (shrink)

바람, 그리고 돌과 함께 제주 여성은 오래전부터 관심의 대상이었다. 그런데 이 관심은 他 者의 시선에서 비롯된 것이었다. 문제는 그러한 관심에 자극받아서 이루어진 주체의 시선도 타자의 시선에서 벗어나기 어렵다는 현실이다. 이러한 맥락에서 이 연구에서는 지금까지 제주 여성을 주제로 삼았던 선행연구의 ‘視線’을 검토해 보고자 한다. 먼저 신화의 여성성 연구에서 는 타자의 시선에 주목하였다. 민주화 운동을 기점으로 여성신화 연구가 활성화된 것은 대항 담론적 성격을 가지기 때문이다. 그런데 남성 중심의 주류문화에 대항하는 여성원리의 원형을 신화에서 찾고자 하는 시선에서는 제주 여성을 타자로 보는 문제점이 드러난다. 다음으로 (...) 일 상의 신화적 연구에서는 주체의 시선에 주목하였다. 근대화 과정을 거치면서 여성 노동력의 가치가 절하되어 남녀의 경제적 불평등이 심화되는 경향 속에서 전통적 삶의 주체로서 제주 해녀를 소재로 한 연구가 증가했다. 이 연구들은 제주 해녀의 신화화에 대한 비판적 시각을 가 지고 있으므로, 여성성의 신화를 탈신화화 해야 한다는 점을 주장하고 있다. 마지막으로 기억 의 재구성 연구에서는 자기 응시에 주목하였다. 2000년 이후 제주 여성 연구는 ‘기억의 주체’ 에 집중하게 되었다. 제주 4 3을 기억하고 증언하면서 제주 여성은 ‘남성성에 대립하는 이념’ 으로서의 여성성, ‘젠더적 이미지’를 넘어선 스스로를 응시하게 된다. 이러한 자기 응시가 ‘제 주의 여성’에 국한되지 않고, 문화이주민을 포함한 여성 일반으로 확대되어나가야 할 것이다. (shrink)

Plato's most magisterial dialogue, the Republic, takes up the question "what is justice," and its central image is an imaginary city constructed in speech designed to aid in this inquiry. In Book V of the Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutors that they have completed the "Male Drama," of the city in speech and that it is now time for them to take up the "Female." The "Female Drama" is Socrates name for the action of the central books of (...) the Republic: V-VII. Much has been made of what this transition in the Republic signifies for political questions. The Republic is not only concerned with politics or political justice, however. Like all of the images and arguments in the Republic, the Female Drama of the city in speech has meaning both for political and individual justice, but there has been no systematic inquiry into the central books of the Republic for their meaning for individual justice. That is the ambition of this book. On the level of moral psychology, Thomas argues that while the Male Drama of Books II-IV presents images of fully formed versions of the psychological activities that come together to define justice in a human life, the Female Drama explores the modes of potentiality and becoming necessary for those psychological activities to come into being. More specifically, Books V-VII explore the three modes of potentiality necessary for the development of justice: genesis, trophe, and paideia. (shrink)

Michèle Le Doeuff coined the term “déshérence” to describe a phenomenon affecting the relation of women to knowledge. Déshérence reflects the antithetical connection between women and value: if something is socially devalued, women may claim it; if something women already possess reveals itself as valuable, then they have to relinquish it. My article shows how Plato’s Statesman offers a perfect example of déshérence in its two complementary forms. But the article’s primary objective is to shed light on the connection between (...) Plato’s Republic and his Statesman. Indeed, the presence of déshérence becomes clear when considering a perplexing question about the Statesman: What happened to the philosopher queens in this dialogue? If advocating for them was once seen as worth risking a formidable wave of mockery and attacks in the Republic, why are the philosopher queens nowhere to be seen in Plato’s following dialogues? This question leads to a reconsideration of the role of the guardians in the Republic and to a recognition of their presence in the Statesman. As it turns out, those we call “philosopher queens” are still instrumental to what Plato sees as an excellent polis. The reason why we do not see them is that they are not where we expect them to be. (shrink)

Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage: The Essential of Writings of Im Yungjidang and Gang Jeongildang introduces the lives and thought of two Korean women Confucian philosophers from the late Joseon Dynasty (18th -19th century), Im Yunjidang (1721-93) and Gang Jeongildang(1772-1832), and sketches some of the ways their work can contribute to contemporary philosophical inquiry. Both women are known for arguing, on the basis of distinctively Confucian philosophical claims about the original, pure moral (...) nature shared by all human beings, that women are as capable as men of attaining the highest forms of intellectual and moral achievement and thereby can become female sages (yeoseong). The fact that they lived in a highly patriarchal culture presented special challenges, but the conditions of their individual lives offered unique opportunities and exerted different kinds of pressure upon them, which subsequently was manifested in their distinctive versions of a generally shared vision. This book explores how they were able to overcome both the general and particular challenges of their place and time and go on to live impressive and exemplary lives. We also shows how their resistance and response to the patriarchal context of late Joseon society and the different challenges they faced in the course of their individual lives informed the content and style of their philosophy and produced original philosophy that remains of great value to us today. (shrink)

Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage explores the lives of two Korean women Confucian scholars of the late Joseon Dynasty, Im Yunjidang (1721–1793) and Gang Jeongildang (1772–18...

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is (...) a result of the percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

While agreeing with Bergès on the importance for philosophy of reading the works of women such as Roland, Gouges, and Grouchy, her account of them as committed to the concept of liberty as non-domination, articulated by Philip Pettit, is questioned. It is argued that their views are more accurately described as involving a commitment to the tradition of positive liberty, that was criticised by Berlin in his famous essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. The republican writings of Catharine Macaulay are shown (...) to be part of the context in which these women wrote, and similarities between her philosophical outlook, which involves a clear commitment to positive liberty, and the positions developed by the French authors are explored. It is argued that, in general, it is methodologically problematic to uncritically apply concepts that were developed by intellectual historians who failed to include works written by women in their histories, in order to understand the philosophical commitments of neglected works by such women. (shrink)

이 연구의 목적은 『국가』에서 플라톤이 여성에게 열어 놓은 철인통치자의 가능성을 그의 이상국가론 전체 맥락 속에서 해석하고, 이른바 ‘철인여왕’(philosopher-queen) 비전이 여성과 정치의 관계 및 여성 리더십에 대해 시사하는 바가 무엇인지 살펴보는 데 있다. 플라톤은 여성이 남성과 평등한 역할을 수행할 수 있다는 획기적인 주장을 하필 ‘국가를 수호하고 경영하는 사안’과 관련하여 제기하는데, 이는 철인여왕에 대한 아이디어가 그의 이상국가론 및 이상국가의 정치와 연결시켜 이해해야 할 문제임을 말해준다. 이 연구는 ‘철인여왕’의 제안이 ‘철학적 지배’로서의 정치에 대한 구상과 연결되면서 누가 그런 이상적인 지배에 참여하는 정치 리더가 될 (...) 수 있는가에 대한 플라톤의 생각을 극적으로 드러내는 장치 역할을 한다고 해석한다. 『국가』에서 ‘정치’는 여성이어서 혹은 남성이어서 할 수 있는 어떤 일이 아니며, 여성이든 남성이든 필요한 본성과 교육 조건을 만족시켜야만 비로소 참여할 자격이 생기는 일이다. 즉, 고대 아테네 민주정의 역사적 현실을 배경으로 전개된 이상국가의 구상에 플라톤이 굳이 ‘철인여왕’의 아이디어를 포함시켰을 때, 그는 정치적 리더십이 ‘남성’이기에, ‘남성’으로서, ‘남성’만이 갖는 자격이나 능력이 아니라 공동체의 보편적인 가치와 그것을 실천하는 방법을 배워 아는 자들에게 따르는 사명이자 의무라는 점을 강조한다. 얼마나 많은 사람이 정치적 결정에 참여하는가만으로는 충분하지 않으며, 공동체 전체를 위해서 최대한 올바른 결정이 내려질 수 있도록 적절한 교육을 받은 자들이 리더십을 발휘하는 게 중요하다는 것이다. 이로부터 우리는 오늘날 여성의 정치적 리더십 문제와 관련하여 생각해볼 한 가지 중요한 통찰을 얻는다. 여성 리더십 논의의 초점은, ‘남성적’ 특성과는 다른, 그것을 보완하거나 대체할 수 있는 ‘여성적’ 특성이 무엇이고 어떻게 발전시킬 것인가 하는 문제보다, 자신이 속한 사회 또는 영역을 이해하고 장차 나아갈 방향을 제시할 수 있는 능력을 키우는 교육에 맞춰질 필요가 있다는 통찰이 그것이다. (shrink)

What one decides fit for appearance through writing and speech bears a political signifi cance that risk being distorted through both language, reception in the public, and through calls for gendered representations. How can work of female philosophers be interpreted as a concern for the world from that of having to respond to a male-dominated discourse through which speech becomes trapped into what one might represent as ‘other’? In this paper, I explore the public reception of two (...) class='Hi'>female thinkers who question, in diff erent ways, the dominant notion of the author or philosopher as a male subject; what kind of limitations does the relative notion of ‘female’ pose political action, and how can privilege constitute a hindrance to feminist solidarity? (shrink)

Pamela Sue Anderson’s project about vulnerability and the silencing of the female speaker began with her realization of the female philosopher’s position within academia. Exposing the disavowal of the female “knower,” Anderson lays bare the mechanisms of excluding women from intellectual, artistic and religious discourse. Moving beyond the negative configuration of vulnerability associated with an openness to violence, Anderson refigures it as an openness to affection. The denial of thus refigured vulnerability has led to the literal and (...) discursive oppression of women through the “wilful ignorance” of their intellectual, emotional and sexual needs. In this article Filipczak analyses manifestations of this oppression exposed by female writers who illustrate the predicament discussed by Anderson in their fiction. Starting with Anderson’s refiguring of Antigone as a figure of dissent and marginality in her early work, Filipczak discusses Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, Morag Gunn from The Diviners by Margaret Laurence and Mary Magdalene from The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Michèle Roberts. What connects these characters is the fact that they are disavowed as knowers in intellectual, artistic or theological endeavours by male figures of authority who deny vulnerability as an openness to affection, and rely on social collusion with such denial. The analysis also refers to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Aritha van Herk’s Places Far From Ellesmere. (shrink)

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is (...) a result of the percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

Criticisms of the “container” model of pregnancy picturing female and embryo as separate entities multiply in various philosophical and scientific contexts during the last decades. In this paper, we examine how this model underlies received views of pregnancy in evolutionary biology, in the characterization of the transition from oviparity to viviparity in mammals and in the selectionist explanations of pregnancy as an evolutionary strategy. In contrast, recent evo-devo studies on eutherian reproduction, including the role of inflammation and new maternal (...) cell types, gather evidence in favor of considering pregnancy as an evolved relational novelty. Our thesis is that from this perspective we can identify the emergence of a newhistoricalindividual in evolution. In evo-devo, historical units are conceptualized as evolved entities which fulfill two main criteria, their continuous persistence and their non-exchangeability. As pregnancy can be individuated in this way, we contend that pregnant females are historical individuals. We argue that historical individuality differs from, and coexists with, other views of biological individuality as applied to pregnancy (the physiological, the evolutionary and the ecological one), but brings forward an important new insight which might help dissolve misguided conceptions. (shrink)

We encounter autonomy in virtually every area of philosophy: in its relation with rationality, personality, self-identity, authenticity, freedom, moral values and motivations, and forms of government, legal, and social institutions. At the same time, the notion of autonomy has been the subject of significant criticism. Some argue that autonomy outweighs or even endangers interpersonal or collective values, while others believe it alienates subjects who don’t possess a strong form of autonomy. These marginalized subjects and communities include persons with physical or (...) psychological disabilities, those in dire economic conditions, LGBTI persons, ethnic and religious minorities, and women in traditional communities or households. This volume illuminates possible patterns in these criticisms of autonomy by bringing to light and critically assessing the contribution of women throughout the history of philosophy on this important subject. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of historical periods and influential female philosophers and thinkers, from medieval philosophy through to contemporary debates. Important authors whose work is considered, among many others, include Hildegard of Bingen, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Moller Okin, Hélène Cixous, Iris Marion Young, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Women Philosophers on Autonomy will enlighten and inform contemporary debates on autonomy by bringing into the conversation previously neglected female perspectives from throughout history. (shrink)

Why does female under- representation emerge during undergraduate education? At the University of Sydney, we surveyed students before and after their first philosophy course. We failed to find any evidence that this course disproportionately discouraged female students from continuing in philosophy relative to male students. Instead, we found evidence of an interaction effect between gender and existing attitudes about philosophy coming into tertiary education that appears at least partially responsible for this poor retention. At the first lecture, disproportionately (...) few female students intended to major. Further, at the first lecture, female students were less interested in philosophy, were less self-confident about philosophy, and were less able to imagine themselves as philosophers. Similarly, female students predicted they would feel more uncomfortable in philosophy classes than male students did. Further study with a control is warranted to determine whether this interaction effect is peculiar to philosophy, or whether it is indicative of a more general gendered trend amongst first year undergraduate students. (shrink)

The results of a recent survey of Nigerian women might give pause to opponents of female genital mutilation (FGM). One could well argue that if these Nigerian women themselves favour FGM, then it is ironically paternalistic to oppose it. Should Western feminists actually support FGM if it is what women in the South want? I argue in this commentary that such an argument rests on shaky statistical, psychological, medical, political and philosophical grounds. We should go on opposing female (...) genital mutilation with all our power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 126.3 (2005) 458-460 [Access article in PDF] Robert Mayhew. The Female in Aristotle's Biology: Reason or Rationalization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. xii + 136 pp. Cloth, $28. Aristotle says quite a lot about sexual difference and the characteristics of male and female in his biological works, especially the Generation of Animals. He is interested in the purpose of sexual difference in (...) those animal species that display it, because he knows that many plants and some animals are not sexually differentiated and hence that sexual difference is not necessary for generation. He distinguishes between the principles that are male and female and the animals that have these principles. He defines male and female according to whether they generate in themselves or in another and explains that this ability depends on whether they are able to concoct semen from the ultimate nutriment (), which depends in turn on an ability to heat the blood. He discusses the generative organs of male and female, the contributions each makes to the process of generation, and the factors that determine whether a given animal offspring will be male or female. In all of this, he considers the views of his predecessors and tries both to salvage what he believes to be correct and explain his rejection of many claims. At the same time, Aristotle is working out his views on the relation between matter, form, and final causation, and on natural substances and the transmission of form. There is a lot going on in the discussions of sex and its operations in the biological works, but relatively little attention has been paid to it in the philosophical literature. For these reasons a book on the subject of the female in Aristotle's biology is a welcome contribution.Mayhew treats a range of issues in separate chapters: sexual difference in bees and wasps, the contributions of male and female parents to conception, the analogy drawn between eunuchs and females, Aristotle's scattered comments about anatomical differences (other than in generative organs) between male and female, and differences in character that might be based on biological differences. The discussion of these issues might be interesting, particularly if they could be connected, but Mayhew often fails to bring out what is at stake philosophically in, for example, Aristotle's discussion of the sexes of wasps and bees or in his references to the similarities of eunuchs to women.The argument of the book is directed not so much to the content of what Aristotle says as to the motivation behind his various claims about the female. Mayhew wants to argue that while Aristotle's conception of the female is, in general and in many details, false, it is the product of honest (if mistaken) science and not of misogynist ideological bias (1–2). Each chapter is intended to address two questions. First, what exactly does Aristotle claim? Second, is there any evidence that Aristotle's claim, and the arguments in support of it, are the product of rationalization? (6). Mayhew's answers to the first of these questions are generally accurate and helpful; he cites the important passages, sets them in context, and often says something sensible about how we should interpret them. The second question, about rationalization, is much more problematic.On the one hand, Mayhew sometimes uses it to untangle the complex of [End Page 458] commitments that Aristotle certainly brought to questions of sexual difference: a commitment to observational accuracy, but also to undivided form, to the priority of form over matter, and, doubtless (in my view, although not in Mayhew's), a more or less unreflective commitment to the priority of male over female. In the chapters on entomology and on the contribution of male and female to generation, Mayhew succeeds in distinguishing various scientific and philosophical concerns that lead Aristotle to say what he does, and which are probably sufficient to explain his views without supposing that we have to assume a bias against the female to explain those views.On the other hand, Mayhew construes the question... (shrink)

In his prophetic poems Blake conceives a perfection of humanity defined in part by the complete mutuality of its interdependent genders. Yet throughout the same poems he represents one of those mutual, contrary, equal genders as inferior and dependent , or as unnaturally and disastrously dominant. Indeed, females are not only represented as weak or power-hungry, they come to represent weakness and power-hunger . Blake's philosophical principle of mutuality is thus undermined by stereotypical metaphors of femaleness which I believe he (...) adopted automatically in his early poems and then tried to redress but found himself trapped by in his late works. Susan Fox is currently working on a book of poems and has written articles on Spenser and Blake as well as Poetic Forms in Blake's Milton. She is an associate professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York. (shrink)

Introduction. The problem of the “female issue in art” is one of the most pressing today. “Gender art” or “female art” is one of the trends in modern art exhibitions. Thanks to art feminism, today women artists can fully demonstrate their talent, which arouses great interest in their work from the world art community. The purpose of the article is to identify specific stylistic features characteristic of “female subjectivity” and feminist practices in the art of the second (...) half of the twentieth century. Methods: we used general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, the phenomenological method, since we identify the existential intentions that underlie modern art. We also use the hermeneutic method as we uncover hidden meanings in the works of women artists. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that we identify and describe specific stylistic features characteristic of the work of women artists of the second half of the twentieth century, which has not been done before. Results. We conducted a philosophical and cultural analysis of the works of women artists: Berthe Morisot, Hannah Höch, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Lucas, and identified common features characteristic of their work. We also conducted a philosophical and cultural analysis of art feminism as a phenomenon. Conclusions. Among the stylistic features that unite the work of women artists of the second half of the twentieth century, we have identified the following: appeal to purely female handicraft techniques (“fiber art”); the subject of art is the inner world of the artist’s own feelings and experiences; art is often considered as a kind of art therapy, a way to survive the traumas suffered; a female artist has more empathy for the model and her mental state than male artists; women artists are characterized by a rethinking of the attitude towards the body, an image of the body as unaestheticized, non-normative, unadorned, irony towards the body; for women artists, art often becomes a way to fight for their rights, gender and racial equality. (shrink)

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1508-1512.

This essay begins to develop a philosophical interpretation of Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale, a work of fiction that is known in English as The Neapolitan Novels. My ultimate aim is to explore the work's ambitious moral psychology, and particularly its subtle conceptualization of women's path to freedom. I begin by reconstructing some of the main ideas of Italian difference feminism as they are expressed in the texts of the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective—texts that are controversial milestones of Italian social theory, (...) yet are relatively unknown outside of Italy. I then show how these ideas provide a useful frame of reference for interpreters of Ferrante's novel. This discussion sets up a more extended analysis of the special status of Lila Cerullo, her strange condition of smarginatura, and the import of her puzzling earthquake speech. (shrink)

Misogyny is a particular kind of unjustified hatred or contempt for women in a man’s world. By “a man’s world,” I mean a society where men have more power and privileges than women. The United States is a man’s world, or “patriarchal society,” as it’s also called. A few pieces of evidence: In 2019, 127 women held seats in the United States Congress, comprising only 23.7 percent of the 535 members. We, the American people, have never elected a female (...) president. Although some women are legally entitled to equal treatment by their employer, statistics still show a wage gap between men and women. In 2018, a full-time employed woman earned about eighty cents for every dollar a full-time employed man earned in 2018, according to Census data. In academia, things don’t look much better. In the STEM disciplines and philosophy, women are outnumbered by men, and studies show attrition of women faculty as they move up the academic ranks. In all the STEM disciplines, women make up 42 percent of assistant professors, 34.2 percent of associate professors, and 23.4 percent of full professors. In philosophy, it is estimated that women hold 19 percent of the available tenure/tenure-track positions. Here too there is a pay gap. Across all disciplines in the U.S., male faculty make about $18,000 more annually than female faculty. The one-million dollar question is: why in the world would men hate women in a man’s world? (shrink)

Are women (simply) adult human females? Dictionaries suggest that they are. However, philosophers who have explicitly considered the question invariably answer no. This paper argues that they are wrong. The orthodox view is that the category *woman* is a social category, like the categories *widow* and *police officer*, although exactly what this social category consists in is a matter of considerable disagreement. In any event, orthodoxy has it that *woman* is definitely not a biological category, like the categories *amphibian* (...) or *adult human female*. -/- In the first part, a number of arguments are given for the view that women are adult human females; the second part turns to rebutting the main objections. Finally, a couple of morals are briefly noted: one for activist sloganeering, and one for ameliorative projects that seek to change the meaning of ‘woman’. (shrink)

1 Some philosophers defend the thesis that women are adult human females. Call this the adult human female thesis (AHF). There are two versions of this thesis—one modal and one definitional. Accord...

Despite some important progress over the past decade, academic philosophy remains a male-dominated discipline. This raises questions about how established philosophers can best support and advise female students and junior academics in philosophy. We need to avoid encouraging them to adopt a fatalistic attitude to their success, while also avoiding encouraging them to believe that their success lies in their own hands and that therefore it must be their own fault if they don't succeed. I argue that we (...) can do this by reflecting on what success in a misogynistic culture looks like, and by guiding young female philosophers to distinguish between the changes that it is possible for them, as individuals, to make, and those that require action by many individuals. (shrink)

Female empowerment has long been a prominent social concern in Western culture. With the rise of social media, the quest for female empowerment has become embodied in self-presentational practices, occurring conspicuously throughout the Instagram fitness subculture: ‘fitspiration’. Here, female empowerment is merged with the body-centrality inherent to fitness, and the self-sexualization that has become characteristic of both photo-based social media in general, and fitspiration in particular. Meanwhile, an extensive body of research highlights numerous detrimental effects of self-sexualization (...) on women. Evidently, something seems awry with the implied proposition ‘sexualization as empowerment’. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of power and its relationship to human flourishing, this article aims to critically examine the conception of female empowerment expressed in fitspiration and to conceptualize a philosophically compelling reformulation of universal human empowerment. I argue that what is commonly conceived of as female empowerment in trends like fitspiration—delineated in its explicit relationship to sexualization—may be seriously flawed. Rejecting this understanding in favor of a Nietzschean universal alternative may prove beneficial to individuals both within and without the contemporary fitness culture. (shrink)

This book explores the various ways, ranging over psychology, political philosophy and metaphysics, that both historical women and various conceptualizations of the female help shape Neoplatonism, one of the most influential philosophical schools of late antiquity, at various levels.

The same person who claims to be a relativist about musical beauty—who claims that all musical works are equally ‘valid’ and beautiful---adores certain musical works while detesting others. And the same person who claims to be a relativist about personal beauty—who claims that all people are beautiful, if only ‘on the inside’---finds certain people intensely attractive and finds others equally intensely repellent. And the same person who is guilty of the one hypocrisy is almost always guilty of the other. So (...) we are dealing with two hypocrisies---two ‘open secrets’, each of which has a social justification while lacking an alethic or logical justification---that parallel each other. And that is because the one hypocrisy is really just a proxy for the other: relativism about musical beauty—which is just an absurd purely philosophical position---is really just a proxy for relativism about female beauty—which is not an absurd philosophical position, but a deeply important social protocol that is rooted in the depths of female psychology. (shrink)

Gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, culture, etc., etc., etc…. How are we to rearticulate and retool those kaleidoscopic “problems” of social categories and identities each time differently, with different productivity, even as different “products”?—this capital, frontal problema, this “sufficient” bodily evidence in and of reality, “in front of you” and me. Such is the broad philosophical force, background and foreground, of the questions I dwell on here if only briefly. What interests me in particular, just as an example if not (...) exemplar, concerns the “Asian female” question, with which I happen to have some auto-ethnographical familiarity: the material specificity as well as translatability of some of the stereotypical identity markers of it categorically isolatable as such—I also show why a categorically responsive reflection matters, as my ultimate aim here is to advance a case for the social ontological centrality of this issue of Asian gender stereotypes to feminist and critical race theories. (shrink)

Growing evidence suggests the presence of a female leadership advantage (FLA), such that women leaders tend to be associated with more effective outcomes in uncertain conditions. However, mechanisms linking women's leadership to effective outcomes are less well understood. We integrate FLA insights with ethics of care philosophical framework to conceptualize how women leaders achieve effective outcomes in the context of the urban revitalization crisis in the United States. We propose and empirically test the mediating role of ethics of care (...) leadership in the relationship between women mayors and economic health of their cities. We used data from the Urban Institute that includes 272 United States cities and measures of variables in our conceptual model at five points in time spanning 36 years (_n_ = 1185 city-year observations). We capture ethics of care leadership focused on racial inclusion with an index measure of a city’s racial spatial segregation, homeownership gap, poverty gap, and education gap, and we capture economic health with an index measure of a city’s employment growth, unemployment rate, housing vacancy rate, and median family income. We found that female-led cities were associated with better economic health, and this association was mediated by female-led cities’ association with greater racial inclusion. Ethics of care leadership appears to be one pathway through which a FLA manifests itself in the context of the urban revitalization crisis. This underscores the importance of city leadership that balances social and economic prerogatives. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

“How can it be that the female is both functional and a failure?”. Sophia Connell’s response comes in the form of a careful, thorough, and philosophically sensitive interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise on animal generation. By pursuing the topic of what Aristotle says about female animals and their role in reproduction, Connell casts light into many difficult corners of his theory: What does it mean to say that the male is the “hê archê [tês] kinêseos” of the generation? How (...) should we think of the motions in the semen that “construct” the embryo? Are these motions the same? According to Connell, they are not. The efficient cause of the generation is the male; he is the origin... (shrink)

What does it mean to be a female philosopher in late antiquity? This is the question that concerns us in this study and which I try to solve by referring to two personalities from Alexandria (IV-V century): St. Catherine and Hypatia. Although they are very well known, both in the Christian environment and in the world of profane sciences and the arts, the two philosophers from Alexandria share a common destiny: their works have not been preserved, although their (...) fame has reached today; they were rather seen as exceptions of the female gender, with implicit misogyny, and had a violent end. Being a female philosopher, even in the emancipated Alexandria of late antiquity, was a risky undertaking. (shrink)

Written over a span of more than two decades, the essays by Iris Marion Young collected in this volume describe diverse aspects of women's lived body experience in modern Western societies. Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity.

Natural philosophers make mistakes. Descartes got the laws of inertia wrong, Kant misunderstood the primacy of Euclidian geometry, and almost everyone (except perhaps Aristarchus of Samos) prior to the discovery of the telescope mistakenly thought that the solar system was geocentric. That we find Aristotle mistaken on questions in the life sciences — questions which required advances such as the microscope to even articulate — should come as little surprise. There seems nothing remarkable in the fact that Aristotle mistakenly (...) thought that the constitutive elements of the world were four (earth, wind, air, fire) or that the “organ” of thought was not the brain, but the heart. But the matter is otherwise when scholars examine Aristotle’s remarks about the female in his biological writings. When Aristotle claims that the leader of a hive is the king bee (HA 8 [9].40.623b9-10), that woman have smaller brains than men (PA 2.7.653a28-9), and that the female of the species have fewer teeth than the male (HA 2.3.501b19-21), Aristotle’s critics have suspected something more nefarious than simply poor observation at work. When Aristotle goes on to claim that “the female is, as it were, a mutilated male” (GA 2.3.737a27-8) or that “the female is more dispirited and more despondent than the male, more shameless and more lying, readier to deceive and possessing a better memory for grudges” (HA 8 [9].1.608b10-12), critics have accused Aristotle of trying to pass off misogyny as science. (shrink)

Much recent work has been done on Plato’s notion of the female Guardian, but examples are limited. Jane Duran argues that aristocratic women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are indeed exemplary and embody the concept of Guardianship.

We encounter autonomy in virtually every area of philosophy: in its relation with rationality, personality, self-identity, authenticity, freedom, moral values and motivations, and forms of government, legal, and social institutions. At the same time, the notion of autonomy has been the subject of significant criticism. Some argue that autonomy outweighs or even endangers interpersonal or collective values, while others believe it alienates subjects who don't possess a strong form of autonomy. These marginalized subjects and communities include persons with physical or (...) psychological disabilities, those in dire economic conditions, LGBTI persons, ethnic and religious minorities, and women in traditional communities or households. This volume illuminates possible patterns in these criticisms of autonomy by bringing to light and critically assessing the contribution of women throughout the history of philosophy on this important subject. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of historical periods and influential female philosophers and thinkers, from medieval philosophy through to contemporary debates. Important authors whose work is considered, among many others, include Hildegard of Bingen, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Moller Okin, Hélène Cixous, Iris Marion Young, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Women Philosophers on Autonomy will enlighten and inform contemporary debates on autonomy by bringing into the conversation previously neglected female perspectives from throughout history. (shrink)