The Monist, 2015, 98, 7-20

doi: 10.1093/monist/onu003
OXFORD
Article

‘Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays’:

An Essay on Women and History of Philosophy
Sarah Hutton*

ABSTRACT
This essay discusses historiographical issues relevant to restoring female philosophers
of the past to philosophical view today. I argue that women philosophers have not
been well served by Anglo-American conceptions of philosophical history which are
wholly presentist in orientation and overly focused on canonical thinkers. Addressing
some of the issues raised by Bernard Williams in his essay, “Descartes and the
Historiography of Philosophy,” I argue that retrieving women philosophers from obliv
ion and obscurity requires an historical approach that does not separate the ‘history of
philosophy from the history of ideas’, but which is more historical and more inclusive.
One way forward is to treat the history of philosophy as a conversation between
philosophers across time.

The title of my paper is taken from an essay by Eileen O ’Neill, in which she exposes
the arbitrariness of the criteria by which women philosophers are selected for, or
rejected from, inclusion in the annals of philosophical history. In that essay,
published in Hypatia in 2005, she highlighted the way definitions of philosophy have
been used to exclude women. Here, I discuss historiographical issues relevant to
restoring female philosophers of the past to philosophical view today. It is my con
tention that the difficulties we face in doing so arise not just from gender prejudice,
narrow views of what constitutes philosophy, and arbitrary criteria for qualifying to
be considered a philosopher (hence the ‘blue-eyed,’ Wednesday children of the title
quote). To include women in the history of philosophy requires changing not just
the canon, but the grounds on which the canon is selected: changing the basis on
which the received story of philosophy is constructed. Different approaches to the
history of philosophy yield different results in relation to the inclusion of women.
The approach least hospitable to their inclusion is the conception of the history of
philosophy which is dominant in Anglo-American philosophy today. This is paradox
ical, because most of the work on women philosophers being done today is being
undertaken by philosophers grounded in this tradition. In this essay I argue that
the history of philosophy is im portant for the study and understanding of women
philosophers and that it needs to be a fully historicized history of philosophy. I shall

* Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Hegeler Institute.
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8 • 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays'

do so by reference to one of the most penetrating discussions of the distinction

between ‘history of philosophy’ and ‘history of ideas’, that of Bernard Williams in his
essay, “Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy.”
In the Anglo-American philosophy of the postanalytic period, the prevailing view
of the history of philosophy is that it should concern itself with what philosophers
today find relevant and interesting in the philosophy of the past. On this view, other
aspects of the philosophical past are designated ‘the history of ideas.’ The result is
that Anglo-American history of philosophy focuses on those canonical figures which
are now regarded as major philosophers, and on those aspects of their thought be
lieved to have direct relevance today. This view therefore excludes from the purview
of the history of philosophy noncanonical figures, themes which no longer command
attention, the context (both philosophical and social) in which philosophers philoso
phized, and what they, in their time, considered relevant and important. It also
excludes huge swathes of history not deemed to have contributed anything of signifi
cance to philosophy, notably the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Such matters are left
to historians of ideas. By contrast, in European traditions, this distinction does not
obtain. Here there are historians of philosophy who are comfortable about regarding
historical aspects as integral to the history of philosophy, and are less likely to focus
on present-day problems as the main driver of investigation.2 European traditions
are apparent in the work of two of the most important American historians of philos
ophy of the second half of the twentieth century, Richard Popkin and Charles
Schmitt, both of whom were influenced by the great German refugee historian of
Renaissance Philosophy, Paul Oskar Kristeller. Within the Anglo-American tradition,
there are honourable exceptions to the rule that historians of philosophy should be
attentive solely to present interests: some recent studies of early modern philosophy
bring in a wider range of figures for discussion and give some attention to context.
The Garber-Ayers Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy is one exam
ple. Stephen Nadler’s Companion to Early Modern Philosophy is another.3 But the
Anglo-American model of the history of philosophy has not served so-called ‘minor’
figures well. Although a few more ‘minor’ figures have been admitted for scrutiny in
works such as these, elsewhere their fate has been to be relegated to the history of
ideas or to oblivion, from which they are only likely to be rescued if they are per
ceived to be relevant to one of the ‘great’ philosophers, or if they are found to have
said something considered by philosophers now as interesting and important.
Among the ‘minor figures’, women philosophers have fared particularly badly on this
approach: until recently, they simply have not figured. This is true of both women
who did contribute to philosophical developments and those who did not, and of
women whose contribution has been lost because there is no written evidence for it
(e.g., because they published anonymously, or did not publish at all). The situation
has changed in recent years, thanks to the work of retrieval which has been under
taken by women historians of philosophy. To the extent that this work has been
driven by what these pioneers consider important, these studies could be called ‘history
of philosophy’ in the above sense. However, the most successful work of recovery has
been undertaken using the techniques and methodological assumptions that are com
monly regarded as ‘history of ideas’ rather than ‘history of philosophy.’ In this essay I
 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays' • 9

argue that in order to reintegrate women philosophers into the history of philosophy,
we need a properly historicized history of philosophy that does not dismiss the histori
cal study of philosophy as mere ‘history of ideas/ and that is not dictated by modem
interests and the philosophical assumptions of the present. I would argue, further, that
the successful programme of retrieval of women philosophers, incomplete though it is,
has implications for the historiography of philosophy more generally.

1. A GENDER R E V O L UT I O N
The last thirty years have witnessed a gender revolution in the drive to restore
women to view in all aspects of intellectual life. Women’s history has grown
exponentially and feminist philosophy has flourished. In their wake interest in
women philosophers of the past has increased steadily. The pioneering work of
women like Eileen O’Neill, Mary Ellen Waithe, and Therese Boos Dykeman means
that it is no longer credible to deny that there were significant numbers of female
philosophers in the past or that they had anything philosophically interesting to say.4
There have been several attempts to analyse the philosophy of those women for
whom philosophical texts survive, and to integrate women into the history of philos
ophy, even to write a separate history of women’s philosophy.5 Some have sought to
show the relevance of particular women philosophers to modern philosophy by
highlighting themes and theories which anticipate modern developments; for exam
ple in his pioneering work on Anne Conway, Peter Loptson links her to
Wittgenstein and Kripke.6 There have also been attempts to show where they sit in
relation to the canon of male philosophers in the topics which they treat; e.g.,
Conway with Leibniz, Du Chatelet with Newton and Wolff.7 Others, especially
feminist philosophers, focused on critiquing the male canon and the philosophy it
represented and its exclusion of women. Some of the most influential early studies
identified philosophy itself as the problem, particularly philosophical reason, which
was treated with suspicion in body-centred feminist epistemologies. Following the
work of Susan Bordo and Genevieve Lloyd, Cartesianism (the presumed fons et origo
of modem rationalism) was, for a period, regarded as inherently misogynist.8
Political scientists, notably Carole Pateman, entered the fray, exposing the antifemale
bias of the very principles underlying the canon of political philosophy (in her case,
Hobbes and Locke).9 Wary of philosophers’ claims to gender neutrality, feminists
sought philosophical approaches which were more woman-friendly in their theoreti
cal presuppositions and sought to identify specifically female forms of philosophy.
One of the first studies of this kind was Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature
(1980).10 Others focused on the inherent sexism of philosophy: Susan Bordo’s analy
sis of Cartesian misogyny, followed on from Dale Spender’s provocatively entided,
Women of Ideas— and What Men Have Done to Them (1982), to be followed in its
turn by Londa Schiebinger’s, The Mind Has No Sex? (1991).11 The exclusion of
women from philosophy was thus explained metaphysically by the masculinist char
acter of philosophy itseE A drawback of much of the history told in this way is that
it is almost exclusively concerned with the exclusion and disadvantaging of women.12
It is thus restricted to the negative aspects of their history. These pioneering endeav
ours were on the whole well received in their day among feminists and the small but
10 • 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays'

growing readership of women historians and philosophers. Overall, they produced

variable results, but it is remarkable that the early works achieved what they did in
the absence of historical narratives which gave credible attention to women. Those
narratives were being developed by woman historians of philosophy in the work of
Eileen O’Neill, Jacqueline Broad, and Karen Green.13 The study of women in the
history of political thought has also served to highlight the contribution of woman
philosophers. Concurrently, there has been a concerted effort to retrieve women
from obscurity by editing and publishing their writings. At the time of writing, most,
though not all, of the philosophers recovered in this way were from the early modern
period. Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell,
and Catharine Trotter-Cockbum are the philosophers most easily available in mod
ern editions.15 The great value of this work is that it facilitates further study of their
philosophy and a better understanding of where they ‘fit’ in the history of
philosophy.
Thus things have come a long way in the last thirty years. We know the names
of far more women philosophers than were recognized in the 1980s. Their number
includes figures like Marie de Gournay and Elisabeth of Bohemia, now successfully
reclaimed as philosophers who were formerly condescendingly classified as learned
ladies. The early feminists Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft have been accorded
status as philosophers which they did not previously enjoy.16 There is now a
constructive debate about the place of women philosophers in the history of philoso
phy.17 And there have been changes in the history of philosophy which make it more
hospitable to minor figures and historical context and more open to recognising that
the notion of philosopher has varied across time.1 We are nowadays increasingly
likely to find women included in handbooks of the history of philosophy. We are less
likely to have to justify including women in histories of philosophy— though as
Eileen O’Neill pointed out as late as 2005, this does still happen. How far these
developments impact on the wider philosophical public remains an open question.
But it is not insignificant that the first meeting of the European Society for Early
Modem Philosophy in 2007 included a panel on women philosophers.
These developments notwithstanding, we still face the challenge of how to rewrite
the history of philosophy so as to include women philosophers and the problem of
how to do this without consigning all women philosophers to minor status. At the
heart of the problem is the modern canon oriented towards present-day philosophi
cal interests and perpetuating the divide between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ thinkers.19 One
thing has been clear from early on: you can’t just ‘add women and stir’ (as the saying
goes). The received canon is founded on conceptions of philosophy, philosophers,
and philosophical significance that are too restrictive to accommodate women. The
canon enshrines a consensus on great thinkers reached without women in mind. The
narrative which the prevailing canon illustrates ignores women’s contribution, and
the chronological subdivisions enshrined in it don’t necessarily work for women. The
prevailing canon is endorsed and perpetuated by a view of the philosophical history
wholly presentist in orientation, hostile to noncanonical thinkers, and restricted in
the chronological domain of philosophy it covers. As Karen Green and Jacqueline
Broad have pointed out, “piggy-backing on developments of men’s ideas” distorts
 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays' • 11

women’s contribution, principally by excluding them, while feminist philosophers,

particularly those of analytic bent, have not been immune to accepting uncritically
the historical picture which this presents.20

2. H I ST OR Y OF IDEAS VERSUS H I ST OR Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y
Bernard Williams’s essay “Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy” is a
defence of the relevance of the history of philosophy to philosophy as a discipline. It
was developed from reflections first published in 1978, before the changes and
challenges consequent upon the rise of feminism and of new approaches to historiog
raphy.21 The final version of the essay reflects the pressures on analytic philosophy
from the new approaches to history of philosophy and critique by historians of ideas of
that time. While not a reflection of the status quo in analytic philosophy, it does give us
insight into the historico-philosophical environment within which the emerging field
of women’s philosophy had to find a place. Williams’s defence is founded on the dis
tinction familiar in Anglo-American philosophy between the ‘history of philosophy’
and ‘history of ideas’. There is nothing strikingly new about his formulation of this dis
tinction, but his discussion highlights a number of key historiographical issues.
Williams shares the view, prevalent when he was writing, that the history of ideas is
concerned with historical context while the history of philosophy is concerned with
current philosophical problems and a philosopher’s influence. History of ideas, writes
Williams, “looks sideways to the context of a philosopher’s ideas in order to realize
what their author might be doing in that situation,” while “history of philosophy is
likely to look at his influence on the course of philosophy from his time to the present”
with the result that “its product is to an important extent philosophy.”22 Noting that
each to some extent uses the skills of the other, Williams asserts that fundamentally
they are incompatible, because “the best possible history of ideas is likely to show that
philosophy did not in fact mean in contemporary terms what subsequent philosophy
has most made of it.”23 Williams’s discussion does not take cognizance of the fact that
the history of ideas (or intellectual history as it is now known) is a wide field embrac
ing many disciplines besides the history of philosophy—e.g., the history of religious,
political, and scientific thought. The history of philosophy as a subdivision of the his
tory of ideas in this sense is distinguishable from the others by its attention to, inter
alia, the structures of thought, the arguments used.24
The key importance of Williams’s essay is that it questions assumptions about
the origins of contemporary philosophical debates in past philosophy, challenging
the view of philosophers in the analytic tradition that philosophical “voices of yore”
can be “heard as participating in contemporary debates.”25 His point rests on the
important observation that philosophy of the past was understood differently in its
own time from how it is understood today, that philosophy “did not in fact mean in
contemporary terms what subsequent philosophy has most made of it.”26 He there
fore cautions against reading the philosophy of the past as if it were contemporary.
This is a fundamental historical point,

the idea of treating philosophical writings of the past as if they were contempo
rary is, at the limit, simply unintelligible. If one abstracts entirely from
12 • ‘B l u e - E y e d P h i l o s o p h e r s B o r n o n W e d n e s d a y s '

their history—including in this both the history of their context and the history
of their influence—one has an obvious problem of what project one is even sup
posed to be considering. One seems to be left simply with a set of words in
some modern language (which in many cases, have been generated by a transla
tor), and one associates these words with whatever philosophical notions they
may carry today. This activity has no title to being history of any sort.27

Williams proceeds to make a virtue of the difference between how philosophical

ideas were understood in the past and how they are understood today by arguing
that we should use past philosophy in order to challenge our assumptions about
the present, “to deploy ideas of the past in order to understand our own.” He
recommends doing this by “making the familiar seem strange, and conversely:”

What we must do is to use the philosophical materials that we now have to

hand, together with historical understanding, in order to find in, or make from
the philosophy of the past a philosophical structure that will be strange enough
to help us to question our present situation and the received picture of the
tradition, including those materials themselves.

Williams’s proposal for “putting philosophy of the past to use in present terms”
requires that we disconnect modern philosophy from the course of its history, that
we “neglect or overlook, to some extent, the history that lies between that philoso
phy and the present day.” Reception history and the fortuna of philosophies are not
Williams’s concern. His essay is thus directed towards the strategic use of past philos
ophy to improve the quality of debate in present philosophy. It is therefore an
important contribution to the ongoing debate on whether the philosophy of the past
is relevant to philosophy as a whole, and if so, in what respects. He is surely correct
that the process of “putting philosophy of the past to use in present terms” is incom
patible with the ‘history of ideas’ as he defines it. On his definition, the history of
philosophy is distinct in both methodology and content from the ‘history of ideas.’
But in my view “to deploy ideas of the past in order to understand our own” is not
of itself an historical activity. The process of defamiliarising modern philosophy by
comparing it to past philosophy certainly rests on historical foundations—how else
could we gain a perspective on past philosophy to serve as comparator? A prerequi
site for the procedure of defamiliarisation is that the philosophy of the past be inves
tigated historically, for without the insights that historical understanding affords for
grasping the difference of present from past interpretations of the philosophers, there
would be no baseline for applying his defamiliarisation strategy. After all we need to
be able to get some sense of what philosophers of the past meant, what they were
discussing, how and why, before comparisons with present interpretations can be
made. Hence the need for ‘historical understanding’. What Williams calls 'history of
philosophy’ is thus a by-product of the 'history of ideas’ as he defines it.
It seems obvious that ‘history of philosophy’, as defined by Williams, will not help
us understand anything much about women philosophers and their place in the
history of philosophy. But to show that, it is necessary to set aside the notion that
 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Bom on Wednesdays' • 13

the history of philosophy is an activity with a primarily philosophical outcome,

and that it does not involve historical enquiry of the kind which has been tradition
ally assigned to ‘history of ideas’. It is certainly the case that modem interests are
driving the recovery of women philosophers. Without the resurgence of interest in
the women of the past, generated in recent years by modern feminism and the
women’s movement, women philosophers would remain concealed in the dust of
history. With the founding of the journal of feminist philosophy, Hypatia, in 1983,
there was no going back on the impulse to recover feminist philosophers and female
philosophy. But the work of recovery required for rehabilitating women in the
history of philosophy must in its very foundations be historical. Essential to it is an
approach which does not privilege present interests over those of the past, but which
tries to view that philosophy from the perspective of the past.
Before going further, let me first say that there is nothing intrinsically reprehensi
ble about reading past philosophy through the lens of what we find philosophically
interesting us now. I would also concede that, up to a point, the philosophy of the
past can be subject to modern methods and analysis, and that we can search for the
precursors of modern philosophical ideas among the philosophers of the past. Where
I disagree with Williams is that any of these activities is necessarily historical. The
historical study of philosophy requires us to read the books of the philosophical
dead, but just reading the philosophical books of the dead is not of itself an historical
activity. All of these approaches to the past are liable to distortion through loss of
historical awareness. In relation to women philosophers, such approaches yield very
litde material and a good deal of misunderstanding. Nevertheless, to read women
philosophers in any of these ways presupposes historical investigation of a fundamen
tal land, for it simply would not be possible to read them if they had not been
unearthed by historical research. There is a prima facie need for a history of philoso
phy which is more historical and more inclusive.
Setting aside my quarrel about Williams’s restricted and unhistorical view of what
constitutes the history of philosophy and its splitting off from so-called history of
ideas, there are nevertheless many insights in Williams’s essay that have direct rele
vance to women philosophers, and a direct bearing on the question of how we rein
sert women into the history of philosophy and square with the notion I propose of a
more inclusive history of philosophy. In particular, Williams is right to challenge
untested assumptions about the influence of past philosophers. And he correctly
points out that historical investigations give a very different picture from modern
views about what past philosophers said. Also important are Williams’s caveats about
maintaining historical distance from one’s material and not treating the philosophy
of the past as if it were contemporary.

3. PAST AND PRESENT: D ISC O N N EC TIO N ’ AND

RECEPTION HISTORY
One major difference between women philosophers and their male peers is that,
although a canon of women philosophers is fast emerging, there is no presumed
genealogy of philosophical themes and arguments deriving from them. They are
14 • 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays’

obvious examples of “philosophers of yore” who cannot be heard as “participating in

modern debates” (in the words of Williams). If we heed Williams’s advice about not
abstracting philosophers from their history, we shall be the better able to avoid the
historical error of treating the past as if it were present to us. The experience of those
familiar with the material is just how distorting it is to attempt to do so. However,
the pressure to find a genealogy of women philosophers is unrelenting. And the
work done on women’s philosophy of the past is not free from attempts to read
modern ideas back into earlier thinkers. It is important, therefore to keep in mind
Williams’s caveats about unhistorical reading. The history of women philosophers
must not make the mistake of abstracting the philosophical writings of women of the
past from their history and treating them as if they were contemporary.
Williams makes a virtue of the ‘strangeness’ of past philosophy, in order to
critique modern assumptions through defamiliarisation. In an obvious sense, most of
the philosophy of women of the past is ‘strange’ to modern eyes. Lacking familiarity
in the present, woman philosophers of the past are not candidates for Williams’s
method of using past philosophy to challenge the present, by defamiliarising the
present. The relative novelty of philosophical interest in female philosophers of the
past ensures that their writings are, for the most part, far from familiar to modern
readers, often baftlingly so. The writings of many earlier female philosophers are no
longer extant, while those that have come down to us are often not easily accessible.
There is thus no ‘familiar’ present to be defamiliarised by comparison with the past.
This is partly for the reason that, at this point in time, there simply isn’t enough ma
terial available on women’s philosophical thought to subject them to this process.
One possible exception is Mary Wollstonecraft, whose latter-day status as an icon of
feminism has lead to what she actually wrote being overshadowed by what she came
to represent.29 In the process, the philosophical foundations of Wollstonecraft’s
thought and her claim to being considered a philosophical thinker were overlooked.
Other women philosophers who have been recovered more recently do not, on the
whole, fit with our expectations of what we might find in a philosophical text—for
example, Anne Conway’s invocation of kabbalism, the fact that much of Catharine
Trotter’s output appears to consist of essays and comments on doctrinal matters, or
that Sor Juana della Cruz used poetry as the medium for her philosophy.
The “defamiliarisation” Williams proposes rests on a deliberate uncoupling of
present from past philosophy. He invites us to ignore the question of influence by
disregarding the “history that lies between that philosophy and the present day.” For
the purposes of his argument, at least, Williams has no interest in the trajectory of
change, and he specifically eschews the historical avenue opened up by the recogni
tion of the difference between past and present philosophy. But to acknowledge the
alterity of past philosophy is to acknowledge that there has been change during the
time lapse between then and now. And to my mind, what is historically interesting
about the difference is not the potential that past arguments have for challenging
modern versions of them, but the questions which the alterity of past arguments in
vite as to how, philosophically, we got from the past to the present, whether, how,
and why philosophers are interpreted differently at different times, how philosophy
has developed and transformed over time. What were the philosophical debates and
 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays' • 15

the reworkings of ideas and arguments, the reapplication of philosophical ideas in

new and different circumstances which occurred across time? What were the social,
cultural, and political conditions of such changes? Such questions are germane to the
idea of the fortuna (‘fortune’) of philosophies and philosophers, or reception history.
To investigate the fortuna (fortune and misfortune) of a philosopher’s reception is
the proper task of the historian of philosophy. And its proper subject includes
the philosophy of women— despite the fact that at the present so much of the
fortuna of women’s philosophy presents a panorama of dead ends. The disconnec
tion between present women’s philosophy and women philosophers of the past
means that there is no “history that lies between that philosophy and the present
day,” and in most cases there is no “actual influence.” Nevertheless, this does not dis
pose of the question of why this should be the case. In due time, the sorry picture of
abortive endeavours may well change. For, as historical work progresses, the picture
of women’s philosophy as a series of ‘voies sans issue’ is hound to change. Flistorians
of philosophy have already discovered that some women did have influence, at least
for a period. Thus the future picture of the fortuna of women philosophers is likely
to include cases of ‘dormancy’, of figures who suffered neglect until a revival of inter
est at a later date. The history of philosophy is full of such instances, for example the
recovery of Plotinus’s philosophy and the revival of scepticism in the Renaissance.
The ongoing drive to recover the women thinkers of the past may well produce
examples of this kind.
There is, however, a sense in which disconnecting past philosophy from the
present has important strategic value for recovering the philosophy of women of
the past. To insist on disconnecting the past from the present holds the key to elimi
nating the ‘major-minor’ distinction as an organising principle in the history of
philosophy. To disconnect canonical figures from their present use in this way offers
a means of opening up the domain of the history of philosophy to noncanonical
figures and the forgotten themes of past philosophy. Crucially, to call in question
modern, unhistorical assumptions about influence and the canon-formation which
they support and perpetuate, opens the way to avoiding presuppositions about
‘major-minor’ status which distort the history. To treat the philosophy of the past on
its own terms and to give all philosophers of the past a hearing (so to speak), irre
spective of what is presumed of their status, levels the playing field for women
because it will benefit all those, men as well as women, who are routinely consigned
to ‘minor’ status. The way will then be open for the construction of new histories,
unencumbered by assumptions about ‘major’ or ‘minor’ status. Such an approach
challenges the very basis on which this status has been accorded. It doesn’t necessar
ily ‘demote’ the ‘great’ philosophers, because it opens the way for a better under
standing of what makes who important. It puts us in a better position to see how
philosophy developed across time up until the present by giving us the base from
which to trace the trajectories of philosophical debates and the philosophers’ fortune.
None of this could be achieved without historical investigation. Nor can it be
achieved without philosophical understanding. It does not dispose of the problem
that historically women were in the minority in the philosophical community. But it
does permit investigation of whether it was really so, and if so why this should be so.
16 • 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Bom on Wednesdays’

4. REWRITING HISTORY?
It is probably easier to write a history of women philosophers than a history of
philosophy that includes women, for the simple reason that there is less ground to
clear. A separate history of women’s philosophy also obviates the danger of subordi
nating their achievement to their more famous male contemporaries. As already
noted, worthwhile work has been done on this, notably by Mary Ellen Waithe and
Therese Boos Dykeman.30 This work is important for raising awareness of female
philosophers of the past and their thought. But separate histories of women philoso
phers are, at best, only partial histories. And they risk being sidelined, ‘ghetto-ised’ as
a curiosity history of minor figures who happen to be women. On the other hand,
inserting women into the mainstream alongside men risks diminishing their contri
bution. It is still hard to place women philosophically without reference to a previ
ously established canon of philosophers who happen to be male (Conway to
Leibniz, Elisabeth of Bohemia to Descartes, Constance Jones to Russell, etc.). This
custom is not, however, special treatment meted out exclusively to women, since
other less familiar figures are identified philosophically in this way (Collier to
Berkeley, Burthogge to Locke). The practice of approximating a woman philosopher
to a more famous male philosopher is defensible in so far as it is historically accurate
(i.e., that the women in question did engage with the canonical philosophers, or vice
versa: for example Elisabeth of Bohemia with Descartes, Damaris Masham with
Locke and Leibniz, or, conversely Leibniz with Anne Conway and Damaris
Masham). The practice is also defensible in so far as a philosophical point is to be
made and the male philosopher is the most important exemplar. But to make the
primary interest of any philosopher her or his approximation to a canonical figure
is indefensible. Besides, the lesson of history is that the figures with whom women
thinkers engaged and some of the philosophers most hospitable to women
philosophers were noncanonical figures. The relation of Conway and Astell to the
Cambridge Platonists is a case in point.
Another factor which makes it difficult to place women’s contribution is the basic
problem of sources. The discontinuous and often fragmentary nature of the source
material for so many women philosophers makes it difficult to construct a historical
narrative. The position of women in the history of philosophy is obscured by the fact
that they are often known only indirectly through those with whom they had contact,
either because they committed nothing to paper, because their writings are no longer
extant, or because they philosophized orally. We know Elizabeth of Bohemia was a
philosopher because of her correspondence with Descartes, but there are no other
extant writings. We also know that her niece, Sophia Charlotta, discussed philosophy
with Leibniz, but we have only fleeting and indirect knowledge of her philosophical
views. But these essentially historiographical problems are not unknown elsewhere in
the history of philosophy. Scholars of ancient philosophy have long been accustomed
to the fragmentary state of the evidence for pre-Socratic philosophers. And the fact
that Socrates wrote nothing down has not hindered them from acquiring information
about his philosophy.
Periodization is another problematic area. The finding list of women philosophers
produced by recent work on women’s philosophy of the past has identified women
 ‘Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays' • 17

thinkers in periods which fall outside the limits of the traditional story of modern
philosophy, notably medieval and Renaissance women. It is, perhaps, not accidental
that most of the work done to date has been on women who fit existing periodiza
tions— Conway the critic of Cartesianism whose philosophy anticipated Leibniz;
Catharine Trotter Cockburn who defended Locke’s philosophy. However even these
women do not necessarily sit comfortably within the dominant philosophical trajec
tories. Conway’s Platonism and her closeness to the Cambridge Platonists and
Trotter-Cockburn’s discussion of religious points are in tension with the received
narrative of the rise of modern philosophy.
We also have to recognize that the themes, interests, and philosophical priorities
of past philosophers were in most cases very different from today. This is actually
as true of canonical figures like Leibniz and Locke as it is of others. Among philo
sophical women before 1800, it is a striking feature that much of their output is
linked to religion in one way or another. This may reflect the conditions under which
they came to philosophy, and the limitations on what they could, as women, discuss
publicly. But it is also a reflection of their times, and of the fact that philosophy has a
long history of linkage to religion. As work on women thinkers increases, we shall be
able to form a better sense of the questions which interested them, and whether
there are any topics and questions which are specific to women philosophers.
Experience of researching philosophical women of the past has shown that an
enlarged sense of philosophical genre is vital for gauging women’s philosophical
activity. For example letters are a principal source of evidence for this, as in the case
of Anne Conway and Damaris Masham. In many cases letters are the only source we
have for their philosophy (the most notable case being Princess Elisabeth of
Bohemia, correspondent of Descartes). The history of philosophy should therefore
reflect how women philosophized, in practice, whether through correspondence,
commentary, or even poetry and novels.31

5. CONVERSATION
There is no easy answer to the challenges and problems to be faced when writing
the history of women philosophers. My discussion of them is far from exhaustive.
To bring it to a close, I venture to suggest that a solution may be found in the
practice of philosophy itself: that we treat the history of philosophy as a conversation
between philosophers across time. This is an approach which has emerged from my
own practice as an historian of philosophy whose research has largely been on minor
figures. It has developed especially in my work on women philosophers, in particular
my study of Anne Conway, which took as its starting point that fact that her philoso
phy was in dialogue with the philosophy of the seventeenth-century. Anne Conway
is one of the few women in this period to publish a work of philosophy, and I sought
to enrich our sense of her philosophy by examining those with whom she was in
dialogue both through and beyond her treatise, irrespective of whether her interlocu
tors were ‘major’ (like Descartes) or ‘minor’ like Henry More. Since then I have used
the model of philosophy as a conversation in order to integrate both women and
lesser known male philosophers into the history of seventeenth-century British
philosophy. The conversation model for philosophical history is consonant with
18 • 'Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays'

philosophical practice, which so often takes the form of engagement with and
development of philosophy by means of debate, dialogues, objections-and-replies,
commentaries, glosses, and correspondence. It also enables us to examine the
personal, cultural, and philosophical conditions in which any philosopher philoso
phized. It is a model which respects historical distance, places emphasis on past
perspectives on philosophy as a discipline, and takes as given the unfamiliarity to
modem readers of the philosophy of the past. It opens up the possibility of
tracing the fortuna of particular philosophies and individual philosophers and it
makes no prejudgements about themes, genre, or periodization. Arguably, the
conversational model is well suited for writing the history of women philoso
phers—it allows us to reconstruct their ideas, to place them in context without
implications as to secondary status, and to trace the fortunes of their philosophi
cal views. It also acknowledges historical actuality, by admitting the possibility
that women’s voices might have been drowned out, but it does so without under
valuing what they had to say. I would add that the conversation model also opens
up the possibility of women-only conversations, and thematic histories of
their thought. It does not diminish the philosophical content of past philosophy.
On the contrary, by bringing an historically informed analysis to bear on the
philosophy of the past, it has the potential to enrich our understanding of it.

6. CONCLUSION
At this particular point in time, women philosophers are something of a special case
in the history of philosophy largely because the work of retrieval is ongoing. This
situation illustrates the very practical sense in which women’s philosophy needs the
history of philosophy. The recovery of women’s contribution to philosophy requires
us to face problems created by the boundaries of the discipline and historical trajec
tories which do not necessarily accommodate female thinkers. We have to review
and rethink our conception of philosophy, of who qualifies to be considered a philos
opher, and the criteria by which we judge some more significant than others. In
order to do that we have to dispense with the narrow model of the history of philos
ophy, which continues to dominate, in favour of one that is historically based. And
that applies to all philosophers, men just as much as women. At the root of all is the
need to recover the writings of women philosophers, and to make them accessible in
modern editions that illuminate their philosophy by respecting their historicity.

NOTES
1. Bernard Williams, “Descartes and the Historiography of Philosophy,” in Sense of the Past. Essays in the
History of Philosophy, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 257-64.
Williams first formulated this distinction in the Preface to Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry
(London: Routledge, 1978).
2. For an historical overview of historiographies of philosophy, see Giovanni Santinello, ed., Storia delle
storie generali della filosofia (Brescia: La Scuola, 1981-2004); translated as Models of the History of
Philosophy (Dordrecht and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, cl993-).
3. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, eds., Dan Garber and Michael Ayers, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Stephen Nadler, ed., A Companion to Early Modem
Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
 ' Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays' 19

4. Eileen O ’Neill, “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and their Fate in History,” in
Janet A. Kourany, ed., Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998), 16-62; Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History o f Women Philosophers, 4 vols.
(Dordrecht, London and Boston: Martinus Nijoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987-1995); Therese
Boos Dykeman, ed., The Neglected Canon: N ine Women Philosophers, first to the Twentieth Century,
(Dordrecht and London: Kluwer, 1999).
5. Waithe, A History o f Women Philosophers; Jane Duran, Eight Women Philosophers. Theory; Politics and
Feminism (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Jacqueline Broad, Women
Philosophers o f the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Eileen O ’Neill
and Marcia Lascano, eds., Feminist History o f Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation o f Women's
Philosophical Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming 2015).
6. “Introduction” in Anne Conway, The Principles o f the M ost Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. Peter
Loptson (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982), 10-11, 17, 146-49.
7. Anne Becco, “Leibniz et Francois Mercure van Helmont: Bagatelle pour des Monades,” Studia
Leibnitiana, Sonderheft 7 (1978), 119-42, and Jane Duran, “Anne Viscountess Conway: A Seventeenth-
Century Rationalist,” Hypatia 4 (1989), 64-79. More recently, Ruth Hagengruber, ed., Emilie du
Chatelet between Leibniz and Newton (Dordrecht; London: Springer, 2012). Strategically, especially in
early work on women philosophers, a link with a more famous male philosopher had its uses for gaining
attention.
8. Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1987); Genevieve Lloyd, The M an o f Reason: 'Male' and 'Female' in Western
Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984). But see also Jean Grimshaw’s cautions in her Philosophy and
Feminist Thinking (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1986).
9. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).
10. Carolyn Merchant, The Death o f Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco:
Harper Row, 1980).
11. Dale Spender, Women o f Ideas and W hat Men Have Done to Them: From Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); Londa Schiebinger, The M ind has N o Sex? (Harvard:
Harvard University Press, 1991).
12. A point made by Karen Green, The W oman o f Reason: Feminism, Humanism and Political Thought
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), and Sarah Hutton, “Before Frankenstein,” in Judy A. Hayden, ed., The
N ew Science and Wom en’s Literary Discourse (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 17-28.
13. O ’Neill, “Disappearing Ink”; Broad, Women Philosophers; Karen Green and Constant Mews, eds., Virtue
Ethics fo r Women 1250 -15 0 0 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011).
14. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, eds., Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas o f European
Women, 1400-1800 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007); Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, A History of
Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400 -1 70 0 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Jane
Duran, Women in Political Theory (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013); Karen Green, Lisa
Curtis-Wendlandt, and Paul Gibbard, eds., Political Ideas o f Enlightenment Women (Farnham and
Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013).
15. Elisabeth of Bohemia, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Elisabeth von der Pfalz und Rene Descartes, ed. and trans.,
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (Fink Wilhelm Gmbh, 2014); eadem, The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth
o f Bohemia and Rene Descartes, ed. and trans. Lisa Shapiro (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007);
Margaret Cavendish, Observations on Experimental Philosophy, ed. Eileen O’Neill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001); eadem, Political Writings, ed. Susan James (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Anne Conway, The Principles o f the M ost Ancient and M odem Philosophy, ed. and
trans., Allison Coudert and Taylor Corse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Mary Astell,
Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); eadem, A
Serious Proposal to the Ladies, ed. Patricia Springborg (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1997); eadem, The
Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter o f the Church, ed., Jacqueline Broad (Toronto: Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013); eadem, The First English Feminist:
Some Reflections upon Marriage and other Writings, ed. Bridget Hill (Aldershot: Gower, 1986); Catharine
Trotter Cockbum, Philosophical Writings, ed. Patricia Sheridan (Peterborough, ONT: Broadview Press,
2006). Ruth Hagengruber’s anthology is one of the few to include texts from beyond early modernity.
See Ruth Hagengruber, ed., Klassische philosophische Texte von Frauen (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch
20 ‘Blue-Eyed Philosophers Born on Wednesdays'

Verlag, 1998). There have been a number of translations of medieval and Renaissance women— notably
Karen Green’s translation of Christine de Pizan’s, The Book of Peace (Philadelphia PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2008). And the women thinkers represented in the University of Chicago Press
series, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” general editors Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr.
But we await modern editions of others from across the whole spectrum of the history of philosophy.
16. Lili Alanen, “Descartes and Elisabeth: A Philosophical Dialogue?” in Feminist Reflections on the History of
Philosophy, ed., Lilli Alanen and Charlotte W itt (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004),
193-217; Eileen O ’Neill, “Justifying the Inclusion of Women in our Histories of Philosophy: The Case
of Marie de Gournay,” in The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, ed. Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva
Feder Kittay (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 1-42.
17. Charlotte Witt and Lisa Shapiro, “Feminist History of Philosophy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed. (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/
entries/feminism-femhist/); Alanen and Witt, Feminist Reflections, especially the essays by Charlotte
Witt, “Feminist History of Philosophy,” 1-16, and Lisa Shapiro, “Some Thoughts on the Place of
Women Philosophers in Early Modem Philosophy,” 219-50.
18. For innovative discussion on approaches to the history of philosophy, see Conal Condren, Stephen
Gaukroger, and Ian Hunter, eds., The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested
Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Mogens Laerke, Justin E.H. Smith, and
Eric Schliesser, Philosophy and its History Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
19. For an illuminating discussion, see Jonathan Ree, “Women Philosophers and the canon,” British Journal
for the History of Philosophy, 10 (2002), 641-52.
20. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, “Fictions of a Feminine Philosophical Persona (or Philosophia
Lost),” in Condren, Gaukroger, and Hunter, The Philosopher in Early Modem Europe, 229-53.
21. Williams’s essay was published in 2006 (see note l). It was also the subject of an address to the British
Society for the History of Philosophy. Key contributions to the historiographical debates were Quentin
Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (i960), 3-53; John
Dunn, “The Identity of the History of Ideas,” Philosophy 43 (1968), 85-104. The new historiography of
philosophy is represented in Williams’s essay by Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from
Erasmus to Descartes (New York: Humanities Press, 1964; first published 1960).
22. Williams, Sense of the Past, 257.
23. Ibid.
24. For a fuller discussion, see Sarah Hutton, “Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy,” History of
European Ideas 40 (2014), 85-116; Also J.M. Kuukkanen, “Making Sense of Conceptual Change,”
History and Theory 47 (2008), 351-72.
25. Quoted from Williams’s notes published in Patricia Williams’s preface to The Sense of the Past, ix-x.
26. Williams, Sense of the Past, 257.
27. Ibid., 258.
28. Ibid., 259.
29. See Barbara Taylor, “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Wild Wish of Early Feminism,” History Workshop
Journal 33 (1992), 197-219.
30. Waithe, A History of Women Philosophers; Dykeman, The Neglected Canon.
31. John Conley, The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2002).
32. Sarah Hutton, Introduction to Anne Conway. A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004); eadem, British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming 2015). See also Lisa Shapiro who suggests a woman-friendly idea of philosophy as “good
conversation,” in Shapiro, “Some Thoughts.”
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