Feminist Engagements with the History of Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract Feminist engagement with the Western philosophical canon is not a recent development; indeed, it stretches back at least to the Renaissance in the work of early feminist thinkers like the poet and philosopher Lucrezia Marinella. In The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, Marinella uses an Aristotelian framework of bodily temperatures to argue for the superiority of women—a deeply ironic strategy of appropriation given Aristotle’s explicit and well-known views on the inferiority of the female animal. Still, the appropriation of canonical philosophers for use in feminist theorizing is an important strand in feminist engagement with the philosophical canon. And our knowledge of the existence of philosophers like Lucrezia Marinella exemplifies another facet of feminist engagement with the philosophical canon, namely the ongoing transformation of the history of Western philosophy to include the presence and voices of women philosophers. Other feminist historians of philosophy focus on uncovering and criticizing the sexism or misogyny in the thought of canonical philosophers like Aristotle and Kant (and many others). Finally, the proliferation of feminist engagements with the history of philosophy, and the questions that they raise about how contemporary philosophy is related to its past, has inspired reflection by feminist historians on the nature and methods of their discipline.