Canon Fodder: New Works by and About Women Philosophers

Abstract

An evil opinion harbored until recently is that philosophy is a man's enterprise. That opinion created an evil practice: the omission of works by women authors from the canon of philosophy. The works reviewed here are nothing less than canon fodder. The latest volleys are: Prudence Allen's The Concept of Woman, Volume 2: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500 (2001); John Conley's A Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (2002); Eileen O'Neill's critical edition of Margaret Cavendish: Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (2001); Jennifer McRoberts's two-volume Philosophical Works of Lady Mary Shepherd (2000); and Therese Dykeman and Dorothy Rogers's six-volume The Social, Political and Philosophical Works of Catharine Beecher (2002).