Why the dearth of female philosophers?
Women make up 10 percent of doctors of the Church, those Catholic philosophers whose works are considered most important. Not a huge percentage, but enough to confound any “all women are this way, all men are that way” theories. Being a nun was probably easier for a woman in earlier eras than getting someone to pay for her schooling and take care of her kids while she pondered abstract thoughts.
I appreciate the honest question, but the assumptions underlying it are pretty shocking in their ignorance. Some of the most powerful and mind-blowing philosophers I’ve read have been women: Hannah Arendt, Gayatri Spivak, Mary Shelley, just off the top of my head. It doesn’t take much digging *at all* to create a list of female philosophers that includes some of the most pointed and brilliant thinkers…well, ever. They’re at least as brilliant as some of the lunatic males – like Heidegger, to name just one – who’ve sat at the top of the Male Philosphers Pantheon for decades. Yeesh.
Also, I do believe that there is more to this than just the above two theories: after all, women have been decently active in literature and arts much more than philosophy, although they are all intellectual pursuits in terms of their apparent view by society. So Woolf’s reasons although make sense (very obviously) but they do not explain the great gap in numbers of the female writers and philosophers. Which again makes me think that this is more of either of these two reasons: a) there is something very powerful about the profession of philosophy b) there is a stronger gender difference issue at play here than people have explored.
One of my first exposures to philosophy was through courses with then 80-year-old Marjorie Grene [wish I had a better link], who studied at Harvard in the 1930s, took the Ph.D. nominally from Radcliff since Harvard at the time did not admit women, and went on to develop a…um…relationship with Heidegger (and may have been tangentially involved in the untimely demise of Imre Lakatos). Although I’m not the one to consult for details, I understand that she lived in Ireland and raised a family there, spending the nights after feeding the family re-reading the ancients and writing dozens of articles, some of them [imo] among the most prescient articles on topics that later became important in the specialty of Phil. of Biology. We’re talking about articles published in the 60’s and 70’s, long before the Phil of Bio was understood as a field of its own. I second the notion that there’s a significant difference betwe
raheel:Thank you for reminding me of Ayn Rand – now that is someone who has clearly had a great influence on 20th century Western thought.Please don’t dismiss the contributions of Rand on thought. While “real” philosophers ignore her, it seems the Bush administration totally buys into the notion of her muscular selfishness. And she has the support to vote her the best thinker. I’m horribly sorry but I think that given the US ignorance on philosophy and the College Republican fixation on Rand, I think that if there was a popular vote then Rand would win.
