Feminist Philosophizing in Nineteenth-Century German Women’s Movements

Abstract

Abstract Leaders of nineteenth-century women’s movements in Germany often turned to philosophy to ground their activism. In this chapter, I focus on feminist philosophizing: explicitly theoretical thinking about the status, nature, and particular concerns of women that went on to inspire movements for social change. The chapter begins with the foundations of this thought among women in the early nineteenth century such as Dorothea Schlegel, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, and Bettina von Arnim. The chapter then discusses Louise Otto-Peters’s Enlightenment-based agitation for women’s education and employment; Clara Zetkin’s fight for women’s place in a socialist revolution; and Helene Stöcker’s Nietzsche-inspired reevaluation of sexual values. The chapter emphasizes the ways in which these women absorbed and extended German philosophical thought, including the philosophies of Kant, Schlegel, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.