Duke’s Project Vox is an initiative at Duke University committed to recovering the voices of early modern women philosophers missing in history. Philosophy, as a discipline, is often said to lack diversity. Not only is the discipline short on women, it is short on black and minority ethnic representation, which is a different topic in itself. In this post I am focusing strictly on women philosophers whose mark in Philosophy is outstanding and who have enriched the discipline with their brilliant ideas. This list is by no means a ranking; I present it in alphabetical order for organizational purposes only.
Anne Dufourmantelle (1964 – 2017)
“Being alive is a risk. Life is a metamorphosis and it begins with this risk”.
Dufourmantelle was a French Philosopher and Psychoanalyst whose philosophical work surrounded risk taking. She maintained that risk taking was critical because zero-risks is a mere fantasy and real danger must be faced in order to survive. She attended Brown University and Paris-Sorbonne University where she earned a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1994. She practiced psychoanalysis and was a professor at the Switzerland-founded European Graduate School. She was the author of 30 books and in 1998 won the Prix Raymond de Boyer de Sainte-Suzanne from the Académie Francais. Dufourmantelle died in July 2017 at Pampelonne beach near Saint-Tropez, France, while trying to save two children caught in the Mediterranean when the water became turbulent. The children were rescued by lifeguards and survived, but Dufourmantelle could not be resuscitated. A brave philosopher and human being she was.
Gertrude Elizabeth Anascombe (1919 – 2001)
“Christianity taught that men ought to be as chaste as pagans thought honest women ought to be; the contraceptive morality teaches that women need to be as little chaste as pagans thought men need be”.
Often referred to as G.E.M or Elizabeth Anascombe, Anacombe was a British analytical philosopher whose works encompassed many areas of philosophy such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and ethics. Considered one of the most gifted philosophers of the twentieth century, her article, “Modern Philosophy” (1958), presented the term “consequentialism” into analytical philosophy and had a vital influence on modern virtue ethics. Her book, “Intention”, published in 1957, is known as her greatest and most significant work. Born in Ireland to British parents living in Ireland, Anascombe attended a London high school, became interested in Catholicism during her teenage years, and graduated with a first class honours degree in Philosophy in 1941. She was a student of the Austrian-British Philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and translated some of his most important works such as the Philosophical Investigations he published in 1953. She was a Professor of philosophy at Cambridge University until she retired in 1986. Her inaugural lecture at Cambridge University in 1971 on “Causality and Determination” is still widely regarded as a classic today. G.E.M died in Cambridge in 2001.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being”.
Arendt was a German-born American Political theorist and one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th-century. Although she did not consider herself a philosopher, she was highly deemed as one by those familiar with her works and is one of my favourite thinkers. Born into a German-Jewish family, Arendt left Germany for France in 1933 and resided in Paris for the next eight years, working for Jewish refugee organisations. Growing up in what is now known as Kaliningrad and Berlin, Germany, Arendt observed totalitarianism in two forms at different ends of the political spectrum – Stalinism and Nazism. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and became part of the intellectual circle in New York. She wrote expansively on totalitarianism during her life and is famously known for two works that had a huge impact within and outside the academic community. The Origins of Totalitarianism ― published in 1951 ― was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes which generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical precursors of totalitarianism. The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the underlying categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). Arendt held a number of academic positions at several American universities before her passing in 1975.
Hypatia of Alexandria (Born c. 350-370, died 415 AD)
“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people”.
Hypatia was a Greek mathematician extraordinaire, philosopher and astronomer who was born in Egypt in 350 AD when it was under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire. The daughter of a noted mathematician and philosopher, Theon Alexandricus (330 – 405 AD), Hypatia was educated in Athens. There, she became the head of the Neoplatonist school in the ancient city of Alexandria (founded by Alexandria the Great in 331 BC) in 400 AD and taught mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. She was tortured and murdered by a Christian mob due to her influence on Orestes, the Roman governor of Alexandria, who often sought her counsel and who was in a bitter, city-wide feud with Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria. For some historians, her death was one of the markers of the end of the classical era, the era in which Greek and Roman society thrived and exerted great influence throughout Europe, North Africa, and Southwestern Asia.
As Iain Pears, a Journalist describes her in his novel, The Dream of Scipio:
"Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her".
Laura Bassi (1711 – 1778)
“If I had known what it was like to have it, I would have settled for less”.
Bassi was an Italian Physicist and academic who was a ground-breaker for natural philosophy and women in academia. Born into a wealthy family, her father, a Lawyer, recognized her apt for learning and opted to educate her at home. She was home-schooled from the age of 13 to 21 and during that period, developed an interest in science. At the age of 21 in 1732, she was placed before four professors at the University of Bologna, Italy and held her own during the 49 philosophical theses they debated. Shortly after the debate, she was made Professor of Anatomy and later given a position in philosophy. The weight of this achievement cannot be underestimated, as she was the first woman professor to be appointed at an European university. Bassi was an important figure in introducing Newton’s physics and philosophy to Italy and wrote 28 published articles on physics and hydraulics.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM (1947 – Present)
This list certainly would not be complete without the great American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. Born and raised in New York, Nussbaum studied theatre and classics at New York University, then proceeded to an MA and PhD in Philosophy at Harvard University. A previous professor at Harvard and Brown University, she is the current Ernst Freund distinguished Professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is both appointed in the Law school as well as the Philosophy department. Full of precision and wit, her work is grounded in the real world and involves political philosophy, feminism, ethics, animal rights, and liberal theory. She has written many books such as The Fragility of Goodness (1986), Sex and Social Justice (1998), Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004), and Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006). Even more impressive are her 56 honorary degrees from colleges and universities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Incredibly brilliant and passionate about her work, I always enjoy immersing myself in her works and teachings.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797)
“How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind”.
Wollstonecraft was a moral and political philosopher, writer and advocate of women’s rights. She is known as the first modern feminist or the founding mother of feminism due to her advocating women’s rights in her famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), widely considered the first great feminist treatise. She argued that women were morally and intellectually equal to men, and should be educated and treated equally in the public sphere. She was the first in a long line of important mothers of feminism and her works still impacts feminism today. Born into a family of seven children, Wollstonecraft did not receive formal education but acquired knowledge on her own, thoroughly grasping the works of ancient philosophers and had a knack for translating and reviewing the works of other intellectuals. She wrote in the classical liberal tradition that endorsed individual rights, especially against the limitations of political power. Wollstonecraft died of septicimia or blood poisoning two weeks after the birth of her second child.
Philippa Foot (1920 – 2010)
“You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit, you don’t understand your question any more.”
Foot was a British philosopher who is well-known for her work in ethics, specifically virtue ethics, showing that it was adaptable to a contemporary world view. A pioneer in moral philosophy, she was one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics, re-awakening Aristotelian thought. Her work in ethics is vast and include Virtues and Vices (1978), Moral Dilemmas (2002) and Natural Goodness (2001). She introduced the trolley problem in 1967, a thought experiment which explores the concepts of human morality and consequentialism. She was privately educated in her youth and proceeded to Oxford where she obtained a first class in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) and graduated to work as a Government Economist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Foot held a number of visiting professorships in the United States: Cornell, MIT, Berkeley, City University of New York. She was appointed the Griffin Professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976 and taught there until 1991, juggling her time between the United States and England.
Rosa Luxemburg (1871 – 1919)
“Before a revolution happens it is perceived as impossible; after it happens it is seen as having been inevitable”.
Luxemberg was a Polish political philosopher, economist, marxist, and revolutionary who played a key role during the First World War and the German Revolution. She and Karl Liebnecht, a German socialist, found the anti-war Spartacus League in 1915, which later became the Communist Party of Germany. Her political philosophies, collectively called Luxemburgism, is a revolutionary set of ideas under the realm of Marxism. Because of her strong opinions and ideas during the Spartacus uprising and her role in it, Luxemberg was arrested in Berlin by conservative paramilitary forces known as the Free Corps, and was later murdered in January 1919. Many have regarded her as a martyr of the socialist cause.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986)
“The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power”.
Beauvour was born in Paris and was an existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, social theorist, and french writer. She was raised in a Catholic household and attended convent schools growing up. However, due to her intellectual curiosity she had a faith crisis and declared herself an atheist at the age of 14 and began studying Math, Literature, and Philosophy. Through her books such as “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, released in 1947 and “The Second Sex”, released in 1949, she inspired the movement of second-wave feminism in the 1960s by capturing how women being categorized as the Other has caused their oppression throughout history, and she further laid the foundation for modern feminism. Unlike her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre, another great Philosopher whom she met when she was 21, her work concentrated on the pragmatic matters of existentialism. She was incredibly active in French politics and was a member of the French resistance.
Honourable mentions goes to Patricia Churchland, Damaris Cudworth Masham (18 January 1659 – 20 April 1708) , Mary Astell (1666 – 1731), Émilie Du Châtelet (1706 – 1749) and Iris Murdoch. These are other notable philosophers whose works I have greatly enjoyed.
Philosophical House 