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Feature Women or Philosophers? Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting consider how gender shapes inclusion in philosophy This history of philosophy is a history of men. Or at least, that’s how it has been told over the past several hundred years. But, over the last few decades, we’ve begun to see more and more recognition of women philosophers and the huge impact that they have had on the course of our discipline. There have always been philosophers who happened to be women. Hypatia of Alexandria was known by her contemporaries simply as The Philosopher, and hundreds of young men travelled from throughout the region to attend her public lectures. Philosophers who happen to be women, then, are nothing new. But our failure to recognise them as full contributors to the subject makes them appear to us as something of a surprise. A result of this is that women are often remembered as women first: they are seen more as women than they’re seen as philosophers. We have played a very small role in highlighting the work of women philosophers, following on from many great projects that also do this vital work in the academy and beyond. For the last two years, the two of us have been working on a book about women philosophers, The Philosopher Queens. It began with a trip to the local bookshop to find a book on woman philosophers. If you’ve ever done the same, you’ll know that there are very few of them. Mary Warnock published Women Philosophers, an anthology of selections from some greatest hits, over twenty years ago. It’s been out of print for some time. In your average bookshop you might find books written by women philosophers of course, such as The Second Sex or Origins of Totalitarianism or A Vindication on the Rights of Women. But you will find very little about women philosophers at all. Our book even has the word philosopher in the title, and yet it was placed where the women are kept On this particular trip, there were a number of books on the history of philosophy that featured chronological chapters on different thinkers, almost all of them men. One book, The Greatest Philosophers, was edited by two men. Each chapter was written by a man, and each chapter highlighted the work of a philosopher, all men. You’re beginning to sense a theme. And so, after two years of work with our wonderful writers we’ve published The Philosopher Queens: a book edited by two women, written entirely by women, highlighting the work of philosophers, all of them women. 6
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Feature So in late 2020 when our book was finally out in the world, we went back to the same book shop to find that our book on great philosophers throughout history had been put in the section on women and gender studies. This happened across bookshops throughout the UK, with most large highstreet bookshops putting The Philosopher Queens with other books apparently about, by and for, women. Our book on some of history’s greatest philosophers was seen first through the lens of women’s issues, rather than philosophical ones. This might seem like a petty point, but it speaks to a broader problem. That women philosophers are often seen as women first and philosophers second. Any deviation from the standard understanding of philosophy and who counts as a philosopher can often cause this kind of positioning outside of disciplinary boundaries. Our book even has the word philosopher in the title, and yet it was placed where the women are kept. This kind of stereotyping whereby women are considered to be speaking for, and to, exclusively other women happens elsewhere as well. We’ve heard many stories of women philosophers being asked to teach on feminism and gender even when it has nothing to do with their research interests. A wellknown metaphysician was giving a talk at a university philosophy society and found that the programme said she was giving a talk on “feminist philosophy” when she was actually hoping to speak about the concept of time. We’ve been asked many times about our own work on feminism: we actually work on migration and date ethics. Such a pattern points to a broader problem with our discussions of and with women philosophers – that we forget that they are principally philosophers. Instead, many are immediately associated with their gender rather than the object of her study or attention. This is not to say that many women philosophers don’t engage in these topics that specifically concern women and feminism, or would mind discussing them. Of course, women are particularly well-placed to do feminist philosophy because of their personal experience. But, the presumption that women philosophers always do this work traps them in areas of the discipline that are often ignored by the mainstream, and robs them of the opportunity to be known and recognised for their other important academic contributions. The assumption that women have only begun doing philosophy seriously relatively recently is simply mistaken This is a challenge that is not unique to women philosophers. Many other philosophers and philosophies are miscategorised because they do not fit the normalised idea of what counts as philosophy and who counts as a philosopher. We have heard accounts of books on Indian philosophy being placed in sections ranging from religion to occult to astrology. Again, this is merely a visible symptom of a more significant underlying problem – that those who do not fit the stereotypical notion of the Western philosopher are categorised by their iden- 7

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Feature

Women or Philosophers?

Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting consider how gender shapes inclusion in philosophy

This history of philosophy is a history of men. Or at least, that’s how it has been told over the past several hundred years. But, over the last few decades, we’ve begun to see more and more recognition of women philosophers and the huge impact that they have had on the course of our discipline. There have always been philosophers who happened to be women. Hypatia of Alexandria was known by her contemporaries simply as The Philosopher, and hundreds of young men travelled from throughout the region to attend her public lectures. Philosophers who happen to be women, then, are nothing new. But our failure to recognise them as full contributors to the subject makes them appear to us as something of a surprise. A result of this is that women are often remembered as women first: they are seen more as women than they’re seen as philosophers.

We have played a very small role in highlighting the work of women philosophers, following on from many great projects that also do this vital work in the academy and beyond. For the last two years, the two of us have been working on a book about women philosophers, The Philosopher Queens. It began with a trip to the local bookshop to find a book on woman philosophers. If you’ve ever done the same, you’ll know that there are very few of them. Mary Warnock published Women Philosophers, an anthology of selections from some greatest hits, over twenty years ago. It’s been out of print for some time. In your average bookshop you might find books written by women philosophers of course, such as The Second Sex or Origins of Totalitarianism or A Vindication on the Rights of Women. But you will find very little about women philosophers at all.

Our book even has the word philosopher in the title, and yet it was placed where the women are kept

On this particular trip, there were a number of books on the history of philosophy that featured chronological chapters on different thinkers, almost all of them men. One book, The Greatest Philosophers, was edited by two men. Each chapter was written by a man, and each chapter highlighted the work of a philosopher, all men. You’re beginning to sense a theme. And so, after two years of work with our wonderful writers we’ve published The Philosopher Queens: a book edited by two women, written entirely by women, highlighting the work of philosophers, all of them women.

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