3.1 The Historical Roots of Women’s Inclusion and Alienation in Philosophy

The discussion on women’s philosophising started in ancient Greece. Some passages in Plato’s Republic (fourth century BCE), are the best-known example, but, interestingly, a fragment of text attributed to the ancient woman philosopher Phintys takes a stand on the issue:

While many people perhaps think that it is not appropriate for a woman to philosophise, just as it is not appropriate for her to ride horses nor to speak in public, I think that some activities are peculiar to men, some to women, and that some are common to women and men, some are more appropriate for men than women, and some are more appropriate for women than men.Footnote 1 (Phintys, translation I. A. Plant in Plant 2004, 85).

Even though the larger whole of the extant fragment leaves the author’s conclusion of the right relationship between women and philosophising somewhat open, the text is usually interpreted as an early defence of women’s access to philosophy. While the identity and even the gender of the author remain uncertain, this text demonstrates that the question of women’s philosophical capacities and whether they should learn it was discussed quite early in the history of philosophy, in this case possibly in the third century BCE.Footnote 2

Philosophy was practised and learnt predominantly by upper-class males and prospective leaders of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, but some philosophical schools, such as the Pythagoreans or Plato’s Academy, did accept female members. As it is well known, Socrates argues in The Republic that as different natures are distributed evenly among men and women, also women should be able to become guardians (455e), and the same things should be taught to men and women (451e). In reality, women’s philosophical education could not be taken for granted. Sometimes women came to enjoy this education indirectly, through their family members,Footnote 3 and many of the women philosophers of Antiquity were, in fact, wives and daughters of male philosophers (see e.g. Castner 1982). Of some female students Diogenes Laertius writes that they dressed as men, in order to escape becoming hetairas (DL 3.1.46).

Not all students of philosophy were from the upper class: Epicurus is said to have been joined in his philosophical studies by Mys, a person he enslaved (DL 10.3), and for some philosophical schools, such as the Cynics, poverty was an ideal, which led some members to give away their fortune. Of the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus (55–135 CE) was, in fact, originally an enslaved person, who later obtained his freedom and founded a philosophical school.

The role of women is described in a fairly similar manner in the few extant texts attributed to ancient Greek women philosophers, all Pythagoreans (Theano, Perictione, Phintys, Melissa, Aesara, and Myia), as well as in many of the Greek male philosophers’ texts. It is debated whether this is because the views of male and female philosophers are actually similar or because the texts attributed to women were written pseudonymously by male philosophers.Footnote 4 According to the text attributed to Phintys, it is particular to a woman to keep house, stay indoors and look after her husband, while the vilest thing she can do is to mix “with men outside the family” and to give birth to “bastards”. In contrast to this, men’s natural tendencies, political activity and public speaking, cannot be reduced to loyalty to their wives or family. Apart from the case of Hipparchia (350–280 BCE), who abandoned all comforts of life to live with Crates in the streets in the way of the Cynics, and Aspasia of Miletus (c. 470–410 BCE), who is depicted in conflicting ways but appears to have had a lot of influence in her time, most anecdotes about ancient women philosophers as well as the handful of remaining texts attributed to women would place them in a docile and self-effacing outgroup. Even in Plato’s utopia, where philosopher women do not confine themselves to childrearing and housekeeping activities, these women are “handed over” to the men philosophers to produce new individuals of excellence (Rep. 458c, 459d). According to Plato, Socrates also claims that women are weaker than men in everything they do (Rep. 451e, 455d–e).

It should be noted, however, that even though the extant fragments attributed to women philosophers are scarce, this does not mean that some of the ancient women philosophers would not have been influential and well-respected in their own time. According to a contemporary historian, the astronomer, mathematician and Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia (355–415 CE), whose writings have not survived to our days, made “such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time”.Footnote 5

It would seem, then, that while it is not impossible for a woman to attain a high status in of the community of philosophers, women as a group have remained on the margins. From this perspective, it is hardly surprising that Pythagoras’s philosophical school—which allowed female members—was, in fact, called a brotherhood. In the case of this particular school, the connotation of religious orders or secret brotherhoods is not totally mistaken, as it had a leaning towards mysticism and entering it required participating in a rite of initiation. Yet the idea of brotherly interaction or even rivalry is not far removed from, for example, Plato’s dialogues, be it as it may that Socrates’s superior position remains largely unchallenged.

It can still be asked why philosophy has maintained the form of a fairly homosocial and ethnically homogenous community. After all, many fields that used to be male-dominated, such as medicine, are no longer so, and even riding horsesFootnote 6 and speaking in public, mentioned in Phintys’s text as quite inappropriate for women, have become perfectly acceptable for women in Western countries, at least for now. What appears to differentiate philosophy from these activities, however, is the persistence of its masculine stamp.

The question then arises: are women as a group simply incompetent or generally uninterested in philosophy? I would argue that there is nothing inherently gendered about the practice of philosophy as wonder, doubt, dialogue, critique, and a shared quest for truth and wisdom. As long as philosophy operates in this mode, it holds a promise of the freedom and power of thought and appears valuable to those who appreciate these things. In other words, I disagree with those who argue that, as a conceptual discipline, philosophy is inherently misogynist. Another aspect of philosophy, however, is related to a claim for ownership of knowledge, expertise and authority. In this game those, who feel more insecure about their entitlement to be heard, can have difficulties in getting recognition for their own points of departure and interests. As we will see, Le Dœuff argues that the perpetuation of women’s marginality in philosophy depends on the idea of the philosopher as someone who possesses knowledge.

3.2 The Perpetuation of Women’s Marginality

In The Philosophical Imaginary, Le Dœuff proposes a psychoanalytic discussion on the development of women’s position in the history of philosophy. She argues that due to their long-lasting exclusion from academia, women failed to develop an independent relationship to philosophy. Typically, a woman’s love for theory was transferred to a male philosopher, who adopted the role of a teacher, to the extent that the woman’s relationship to philosophy was totally mediated by that one philosopher. This shift is what she calls “erotico-theoretical transference” (Le Dœuff 1989, 104).Footnote 7 In the spirit of, Hipparchia (350–280 BCE) married her teacher Crates (365–285 BCE), Héloïse (c. 1098–1164) was associated with her teacher Abelard (1079–1142), Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia (1618–1680) with René Descartes (1596–1650), and even Beauvoir (1908–1986), who already had an access to university education, with a student slightly her senior, Sartre (1905–1980) (See Le Dœuff 1989, 100–120).

Le Dœuff insists that it is not the presence of women students that diverts the master–disciple relationship towards the instinctive realm, nor is the discussed transference only the product of women’s historical exclusion from universities. Rather, philosophical didactics itself “tends to take the form of a dual transference relationship”. According to LeDœuff, male students of philosophy are also likely to experience their own version of the erotico-theoretical transference, to the extent that they may emulate the clothing styles of the object of their admiration (Le Dœuff 1989, 105–106).

Le Dœuff argues, however, that in the past centuries, women’s relationship to philosophy was characterised by a different form of lack than men’s. After becoming disappointed with their advisors, men students of philosophy came to realise that their lack is of the radical kind that the Other cannot complete. This philosophical lack is the true starting point of philosophy and leads them to new questions, a re-evaluation of the philosophical tradition, and new ideas. For women students, who were only amateurs, being shut outside universities, the situation became problematic. Their lack remained of the ordinary kind, that can be fulfilled by the all-knowing master (Le Dœuff 1989, 105–107).

In Le Dœuff’s view, the desire of a student can be redirected towards theory and the whole field of philosophy only within the institutional framework. She argues that even now, when women students can, in principle, enjoy the same institutional support as men, they still move very prudently within philosophy, carefully examining the work of past philosophers, often conforming with the demands of the academic life to every detail. At the same time, they have difficulties in performing as the possessors of true knowledge, which is something that, according to Le Dœuff, still characterises the role of the philosopher. Nevertheless, she argues that rather than criticise women’s ways of doing philosophy, we should give up the ideal of philosophy that leaves no room for lack of knowledge. She also suggests that the subject of philosophy should not be seen so much as a master who knows, a solitary all-knowing subject. Instead, we could see philosophy as a collective enterprise which leaves space for not-knowing (Le Dœuff 1989, 116–127).

Le Dœuff undoubtedly exaggerates the extent to which the relationship of women philosophers to philosophy was mediated through their lovers, and how derivative their thinking was. Even if Le Dœuff’s description of this relationship was read loosely as a description of falling in love with philosophy without being able to transcend the mediating role of one male philosopher, rather than as descriptions of clearly erotic relationships between individuals, it can be argued that she overlooks the diversity of women’s relationships to their advisors. In cases like those of Hypatia, Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) and Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653), the father’s role was important, and one can only assume that the encouragement of a father can have a function rather different from that of a lover, a husband or even a distantly admired teacher. Possibly the father’s appreciation and support for the daughter’s intellectual endeavours could strengthen her self-esteem and facilitate her entrance into a male-dominated field. Close relationships with fathers and brothers could also initiate women in the tacit rules of social interaction between men. Even Le Dœuff’s paradigmatic example, Hipparchia, was not only Crates’s lover but had entered philosophy through her brother.Footnote 8

Respectively, the difficulty of women to enter the field of philosophy could partly be explained more simply than by Le Dœuff’s hypothesis of different kinds of desires, namely by the aspect of homosociality within the field. On the basis of this homosociality hypothesis, in a group that consists of mainly individuals of one gender, the behavioural patterns of that gender would tend to become the norm, whereas the individuals of the minority would feel a pressure to adapt to the norm. In the case of  women philosophy students and professional women philosophers, this would imply assimilating the role of the “good guy”. One’s ability and willingness to take on this role would then predict social success and continuation in the field whereas an inability or unwillingness to adhere to the norm would predict alienation and opting out. On the other hand, homosociality as the more or less unconscious desire to bond with individuals of the same gender rather than with other genders could also explain how the boundaries of philosophy are at the same time porous and resistant. Depending on the situation and the proportion of women among the participants, the tacit rules of interaction can vary a great deal, and hence women’s experiences of inclusion can likewise vary a great deal within the same community.

In any case, Le Dœuff’s conclusion about the needed transformation is sound. For the practice of philosophy to become more inclusive and, in fact, more philosophical, philosophy should be seen more in terms of a continuously evolving process of thought rather than as mastery. Young women become enthralled by the open-ended quest that philosophy purports to be in the first instance, but many of them experience discomfort when they realise that in order to “make it” in philosophy, they have to fight for speaking space and repeatedly demonstrate their learnedness, argumentative skills and possession of knowledge. From their perspective there is something self-defeating in the philosophical enterprise: it promises dialogue and freedom of thought but often produces hierarchies and silencing.

In what follows, I examine the role of the philosophical canon and a phenomenon connected closely to it, namely the cult of the genius, in learning philosophy. The problem of this aspect of philosophy will be analysed in some detail. I start my discussion from the more rewarding side of being in a relationship to the canon, namely the patient labour of thinking with the other that philosophy students are encouraged to pursue.

3.3 Dealing with the Tradition: Intimacy and Idolatry

In philosophy, more than in many other fields, the tradition is mediated through a discussion of a canon, that is, texts from the history of philosophy that are deemed central or epoch-making. That the canon is quite homogenous in terms of the gender and ethnicity of the authors is a question that has been implicitly present in the preceding considerations of women’s marginality. This phenomenon is connected to another equally problematic one, the cult of the genius. I argue that the mediation of the tradition through canonical texts is not merely problematic but can be seen as one of the distinctive features of philosophy. That we might need to allow for a plurality of canons does not imply that we should or could cut the ties of philosophy with its past. Philosophy involves a dialogue across millennia, and in its ability to provide a link to historical others it resembles some other disciplines, such as literature studies or history. What is specific to philosophy, however, is the role that the texts and their authors take. Even though a study of those texts produces information about their authors and their intellectual context, very often philosophers are motivated by the possibilities of dialogue and of obtaining a better understanding of issues that the historical philosopher discusses.

In the process of reading and studying the texts, the authors become important interlocutors to the readers, be the latter students or researchers. As I have argued elsewhere, following Beauvoir, there is a specific intimacy to the reading experience: the other—the author, the narrator, the text—speaks to the person reading, and yet the reader is the one who acts to bring these words to life. Indeed, a particular kind of intersubjectivity exists within the reading experience, one that involves both passivity and activity on the part of the reader: the words written by the other guide the reader’s attention and take the place of one’s own “inner speech”, yet without the act of reading and the reader’s own imaginative input the letters would remain mere black marks on white background. In other words, while reading, we adopt the voice of the other as our own, sharing, in part, its intentionality. At the same time, the voice of the other remains foreign to us: it speaks to us within us, activated by us, but the only control we exert over it is the control over starting and ceasing to read (See Korhonen and Ruonakoski 2017, 30–33, and Beauvoir 1965, 1979, 2011a and 2011b). Even so, we can disagree and pause to think of alternative ways of dealing with the issues the author is addressing. The alteration between the activity of reading and reflective pauses is, in fact, how the philosophical dialogue works during the reading process. Perhaps more than in the case of reading fiction, we engage in a movement between activating the words of the author, developing an affective stance on them—one of disbelief, acceptance or of a happy recognition—and pauses to formulate the beginnings of possible counterarguments.Footnote 9

Indeed, philosophical writings are not read mainly because they provide “facts” but because they help us think by engaging both our affective and reflective abilities. It is a mistake to read Hannah Arendt because she tells us “facts” about how the Nazis came to power or even “facts” about the nature of the totalitarian; instead, one should read The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/2017) in order to learn to think about totalitarianism with her. This is precisely the liberating aspect of reading philosophical works: not learning what to think but engaging critically in an inner dialogue with someone who has already produced an analysis of particular topic, learning to think with the other more rigorously and more creatively than you would be able to do all by yourself.

I have discussed the issue of reading philosophical works at some length in order to show how much feeling can be invested in this act, and what kind of liberating power it has. Yet there is a flipside to this affective–intellectual process: the author becomes the object of an adoration similar to fiction authors, and, with the institutional support to the philosophical canon, acquires the cloak of genius. In other words, the very human need to be in contact with another human on an intellectual level, together with the cultural demand for academic trailblazers as sources of inspiration, paradoxically contributes to the production of a demigod. Given the scarcity or virtual non-existence of women philosophers in the canon, this phenomenon is particularly problematic from the viewpoint of women students.

What do we then mean by “a genius”? To be sure, the meaning of the word has changed radically over time. Christine Battersby, the author of Gender and Genius (1989), argues that the current conception of the genius was born only in the eighteenth century, with the Romantics, when the two concepts of “genius” (Lat. genius) and “ingenious” (Lat. ingenium) amalgamated. In Roman Antiquity, the word genius first referred to a male household spirit, and it was associated with the paterfamilias, the male head of a household, but later each free male was considered to have from his birth a genius, which represented his potential virility and life-giving force. (Battersby 1989, 52–53). Ingenium, on the other hand, referred to natural abilities or inborn talent.

Skipping the intriguing gendered developments of these concepts through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and entering the Age of Enlightenment, we come to see that Immanuel Kant conflated the concepts in his influential The Critique of Judgement (1790; see Battersby 1989, 76): “Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art” (2007, 136, §46).Footnote 10 Kant underlines that genius is a natural gift, a talent that differs from dexterity (Geschicklichkeitsanlage), which was, according to Battersby, earlier associated with ingenium. For Kant, genius is opposite to the spirit of imitation and characterised primarily by originality (Kant 2007, §46–47; Battersby 1989, 43–51, 76–77). He is aware of the etymology the word, and describes the workings of the genius, as if nature itself worked through a man:

Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would enable them to produce similar products (Kant 2007, 137, §46).

True enough, Kant discusses genius in the context of great art, but Arthur Schopenhauer, who proclaimed himself a Kantian (and a man of genius), discussed genius in a larger scope, as a category of superhumans. For Schopenhauer, geniuses were also characterised by solitude:

The same reason indeed accounts for the peculiar inclination of all men of genius for solitude, to which they are driven by their difference from the rest, and for which their own inner wealth qualifies them. For, with humanity it is as with diamonds, the extraordinarily great ones alone are fitted to be solitaires, while those of ordinary size have to be set in clusters to produce any effect (Schopenhauer 1907, 251).Footnote 11

In Schopenhauer’s philosophy the celebration of the genius as a virile force, which nonetheless incorporates feminine sensitivities, is conflated with a clearly misogynist discussion of women’s capacities (see Battersby 1989, 107–111). However, it is difficult to see how the category of the philosopher genius—which Schopenhauer and Friedrich NietzscheFootnote 12 were perhaps the keenest to represent—could even in principle accommodate women, given that the Romantic idea of genius which we have inherited was built on the idea of male life-giving force. According to Battersby, it has often been the case that male thinkers have specifically argued against the possibility of the female genius (1989, 3–4).

Indeed, the idea of the solitary philosopher genius seems to accommodate poorly women thinkers and those of different minorities, who may fail to see themselves as legitimate heirs to the tradition. Occasionally one can witness among White male students a kind of affectionate mocking attitude towards the “big names” in philosophy, as if Aristotle and Heidegger were their big brothers who they make fun of but at the same time admire and feel supported by. Whether or not women philosophy students were likely to adopt a similar jocular attitude towards historical women thinkers, the very fact that these thinkers never occupied such a universally iconic position in the philosophical canon as the male philosophers makes for a nonparallel relationship: mocking historical women thinkers is hardly like mocking the incomparably ingenious and influential ancestor but rather like mocking the already ridiculed, poor and marginalised distant relative, a mad auntie who herself may be the only one to think that she is a philosopher.

In philosophy seminars, there exists a pressure to say something “smart” that demonstrates that you already have a good command of philosophy and that you are able ask the “right” kind of questions. It is difficult to say how much the varying ways in which students respond to the situation—from apparent arrogance to verbosity and refraining from speech—reflect their attempts to hide their uncertainties and the tacit expectations of the role of the philosopher. Yet for some of the women students these expectations and the general atmosphere of seminars may very well belong to the alienating aspects of philosophy.

In the mythical imagination, the solitary hero philosopher is seen to sacrifice bourgeois comforts and even their own mental health for a rigorous pursuit of an inner truth, as manifested by the popularity of the legends of Schopenhauer’s supposed dysthymia, Nietzsche’s syphilis-related confusion, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s tendency to depression and his entertainment of suicidal thoughts, or Simone Weil’s supposed pseudo-anorexia (see e.g. Hannan 2009, Margulis 2004, Peters 2019, Oxenhandler 1994).Footnote 13 The idea of the philosopher as a lone wolf can be actually harmful, when it dominates the way students conceive their future possibilities and the most profitable actions. Philosophy majors may think that to be taken seriously or to achieve their own ideals, they should dedicate their lives to philosophy, that is, always put philosophy first and more mundane pursuits second. In reality, functioning relationships with their peers can be equally or more important for their ability to be creative in philosophy and to enjoy studying it.Footnote 14

If this is the case, philosophy students who find support in like-minded peers or generous supervisors, will be more likely to feel “at home” in philosophy and less likely to let any difficulties send them off the rails. It takes a lot of determination to continue in a competitive field when there is neither social support nor financial reward in view. In addition, the idea of the philosopher’s work as a solitary struggle can have repercussions for how professional philosophers act in the role of leaders and teachers.

If we are not happy with the idea of genius as it has been described above, should we then reject it altogether? Rejection of this idea may be easier said than done, for it cannot be denied that being recognised as beyond compare in one’s field remains one of the alluring qualities of the genius, and ultimately, a ticket away from the seeming futility of existence.Footnote 15 In reality, though, attaining a high standard in one’s field may not be so much a question of innate talent, as the Romantics would have had it, but one of practice and perseverance (see Berliner and Eyre 2018). Yet even perseverance is not enough, if you do not find the right people with whom to discuss and develop your ideas, and to support you—who help you flourish.

After all, the cult of genius obscures the character of philosophy as a collective endeavour and emphasises the person instead of the work. As is frequently repeated, philosophy is dialogue. We discuss ideas that belong to a tradition; we try to understand that tradition and the views of others as best we can even when we wish to overcome that tradition. We also ask for our peers’ comments and counterarguments for whatever new ideas we are able to develop. Philosophy is a collective effort in the sense that it requires a community of thinkers who believe in the importance of doing philosophy and who, across millennia, strive for clarity and a better understanding of reality. True enough, at the same time it is the effort of individuals, who often need solitude in order to engage in this dialogue with their full capacity and who enjoy working alone. In this context, what should we make of the category of genius?

Battersby’s solution is not to discard genius altogether but to discard the Romantic idea of it as a solitary man, who resembles a “mad” person but at the same time embodies a virile force of life, and expresses utmost originality. In her view, the task of feminists is to change the definition of genius and to bring out women geniuses. And in fact, during a workshop in which the cult of genius was being discussed, a woman colleague exclaimed: “Don’t we all want to be geniuses?” Perhaps this question could be transformed into the form: “Don’t we all want to achieve individual brilliance in our thinking?” In that case, the answer is probably “yes”. We do not do philosophy to be bad or mediocre thinkers, such as those inferior interlocutors of Socrates, who get it so wrong before he helps them out.

Brilliance is something that we can achieve in philosophy through a long and loving engagement in thinking, discussing and writing. Achieving it does not require being placed higher than others in the intellectual hierarchy, but rather succeeding in a more limited endeavour. From the perspective of temporality, the satisfactory moments of “achieving brilliance” in one’s work are not the moments in which others applaud the finished work, for, from the philosopher’s viewpoint, the work in question exists in those moments mainly as a past engagement. When the philosopher’s living engagement with the topic has already ceased to exist, however, the readers may find a promise of their own future possibilities in the finished work.Footnote 16 For the author, the philosopher, the actual satisfaction comes in the moments of insight, often after a long period of seemingly going in circles or of inefficiency, or the moments of flow, when philosophical thinking seems relatively effortless and appears to hold a lot of promise: it opens up towards a limitless future. These moments can be shared with others, or they can appear as the outcome of inspiring conversations. To be sure, recognition of one’s work is important, too, and in a positive scenario, it can re-enliven the work for the author. Often this recognition exists as a celebration of a work that has already been left behind by the philosopher and represents a gap between the author and the readers.

It may be helpful to analyse brilliance in philosophical writings precisely through their abilities to position us temporally. If a work opens up new possibilities for the reader, if it transforms their relationship to their own future, the work is likely to appear to the reader as brilliant. This way of understanding brilliance as a kind of transformative force is somewhat—but not completely—relativistic, because, depending on the reader, different works have this power, and even the same reader experiences the same work differently depending on when they read it. This implies that some flexibility could be inherent in the constitution of canons.

The analysis reveals that the relationship of philosophy students to the canon, or to the part of that canon that they choose to familiarise themselves with, consists of a specific intimacy brought about by the act of reading itself, a dialogue over time (the phenomenon of “thinking together”), and, in optimal cases, a new set of intellectual and experiential possibilities opened up by those works. I suggest that even if we may retain something of the Romantic conception of “genius” and even though the institutional solidification of a specific canon legitimises a conception of certain thinkers as heroic and superior, we should not ignore the future-opening aspect of different philosophers’ work that contributes to their adoration through the thankfulness it inspires. To help students analyse their relationship to the canon rather than just live it prereflectively, their teachers should explicitly address all of these aspects of engaging with the tradition.

Perhaps precisely because the concept of genius has decreased in value over the past decades, we seem to have attained the situation in which a woman or a person of colour or a person belonging to a gender minority can be seen as “a genius”. Even though it is difficult to raise anyone of one’s contemporaries as a genius, many women philosophers – Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Martha Nussbaum—seem to have already reached a status which would allow them to be later viewed as “women geniuses”, if their ideas are later deemed central to the narrative of the history of philosophy, and they are not written out of this, which has often been the fate of women philosophers. Many of the posthumanist thinkers are also women and may be fathomed to acquire this position someday.

Some philosophers, however, suggest that there are objective reasons why Aristotle is in the canon and others like Butler should not be. According to Donald Phillip Verene, for instance, there are actually only four important philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel—whose works the rest of Western philosophy only comments on and responds to (Verene 2018, 7). Philosophy that puts social criticism first and creates a “surrogate” canon of gender, race and ethnicity, would endanger the core of philosophy and give up imagination and history of philosophy for the benefit of politics. In comparison to Plato and Aristotle, thinkers such as Butler would fail to manifest a complexity of thought and “greatness”—they supposedly only have “one principal idea” (Verene 2018, 15).

It may very well be that the demand that a philosopher’s work need be both deep and broad in scope for it to be accepted into the canon makes it quite impossible for contemporary academic philosophers to ever gain this acceptance, for in the current state of science politics, specialisation is mandatory. Even so, the work of Butler and other contemporary philosophers can hardly be reduced to “one principal idea”. Regardless of the constitution of the future canon or canons, it should be clear that the discussion of the existing canon can be combined with a discussion of more alternative texts. In any case, it is rare that any philosopher would be simultaneously be an expert in Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, not to mention a wider canon, which means that for each of us, our understanding of the field always remains uneven, in some aspects thorough and in others superficial.

As I have suggested, historical philosophical texts, despite their problems, open up a future to their readers. In what follows, I consider yet another empowering potential of the past: the power of a historical “we”. To this end, the next section deals with the role female predecessors in philosophy.

3.4 Why and How to Raise Awareness of Early Women Philosophers

The thoughts attributed to Phintys were not discussed in the beginning of this chapter by chance. Rather, this was a case of deliberately introducing a possibility of an early female voice in philosophy, despite the fact that little of the writings of Greek women philosophers has been preserved to posterity, that these philosophers do not belong to the philosophical canon, and that their ideas may not appear particularly progressive from the perspective of philosophers of our time. Phintys’s case is not, of course, ideal from our perspective, as the authorship and dating of the text attributed to her remain unclear. Even so, the idea that there is a thinking, arguing woman early in the history of philosophy, and that these could be her words, rather than just words of female characters in male philosophers’ writings or male philosophers’ views about women, can be meaningful as such for many students and professionals in philosophy. Why? Not because of any feminine essence that all women would share, but because that woman has spoken from the position of a woman, who is also a philosopher and a member of a minority within her philosophical community.

In other words, we are dealing with the formation of a “we” in the historical continuum that reaches from Graeco-Roman Antiquity to our days and to the coming generations women philosophers, towards whom our own actions open up. True enough, not all women philosophers relate themselves primarily to this continuum, but for some a sense of it may help affirm their belief in themselves as philosophers: the history of philosophy is not simply the history of men philosophers, even though it is often presented as one.

More precisely, the sense of belonging does not emerge merely from arguments proposed by philosophers, for it matters from which positions those arguments are proposed. When Socrates writes that women, too, should get a philosophical education, if they show talent for philosophy, a woman reader may think: “A point well made, Socrates. You stood up for us!”—happy for his words, even though he (or Plato as the author of The Republic) also says that women are weaker in everything they do in comparison to men, as we can recall. When a woman writes that women, too, should be able to philosophise, a female reader may think: “Good for you, sister! You stood up for us!” While the “us” refers in both cases to “us women”, Socrates’s argument comes from the ranks of the privileged majority and concerns a minority, whereas a woman philosopher speaks about a group she belongs to. The difference then comes to concern the sense of agency: whether I, as a woman philosopher or as a female student of philosophy, am given some concessions by a male philosopher, or whether I participate in the formation of an awareness of “us women” as agents of philosophising and of political questioning. What is more, it is relevant that through my own actions, I myself participate in achieving a goal that was recognised already by my female predecessors in the history of philosophy. In other words, it is not a question of merely achieving a goal but of participating in an action that makes the achievement of that goal possible (See Beauvoir 1948, 80; 2004a, 183–184).Footnote 17

It would thereby seem important to raise awareness of early women philosophers. They can act as role models to women students and provide a fuller sense of what it is to be a practitioner of philosophy as a part of a continuum: I, as the subject experiencing both pleasure and difficulties in philosophy, am not alone—there have been others before me, and for them, too, these issues have had significance. When my female predecessors speak about the position of women in philosophy, I recognise a “we”, rather than myself as an object of gaze and a historical male figure as its subject.

The attempt to raise awareness of female predecessors, however, immediately faces several obstacles. First of all, in the case of the earliest history of women philosophers, it is impossible to deny the scarcity of the remaining texts. In the case of ancient Greek philosophy, it may even be difficult to say whether the person to whom a text has been attributed, actually wrote it, as we saw for Phintys. Attempts to introduce the work of later women philosophers are complicated by the lack of available modern editions and translations. Secondly, it can be difficult to define the philosophical weight of some of these texts, especially if they are very short. Thirdly, the existing philosophical all-male canon is already in itself so dense that it is an impossible task for any contemporary philosopher to master all of it. Why introduce minor figures whose philosophy most certainly has been less influential than the existing canonical texts? Fourth, even if a philosopher who is not specialised in the history of women thinkers would like to introduce them on a course, this may be difficult to do without a degree of dilettantism. Finally, if we widen our horizons beyond the Northern hemisphere, to include African, Asian and South American philosophers, or philosophers of different minorities, does not our task of teaching philosophy become even more impossible and can it not at best provide only a very superficial glimpse into different philosophies rather than a solid understanding of the history of one?

Introducing some diversity in the curriculum need not, of course, lead to the exclusion of major European philosophers. It might not be a bad idea to broaden our views of what philosophy is. This diversification of course content could include both bringing new perspectives into individual courses and introducing whole courses with new content. To alleviate the problem of dilettantism, many sources on women philosophers exist already.

Authoring a monograph on the entire history of women philosophers for classroom use, is, of course, extremely challenging. I will just mention Mary Ellen Waithe’s four-volume A History of Women Philosophers (1987, 1989, 1991, 1995), Cecile T. Tougas’s and Sara Ebenreck’s Presenting Women Philosophers (2000), Marit Rullmann’s Philosophinnen I und II (1998a, b) and Ursula I. Meyer’s Philosophinnen-Lexikon (1997). As regards books with a narrower focus on philosophers of a certain era or even individuals, certain topics and periods are better represented than others. For instance, a remarkable body of work exists on early modern women philosophers’ treatises pertaining to epistemology and metaphysics. A lot has been written on the work of Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Wollstonecraft. Like male philosophers such as Descartes and Kant, these women philosophers have already been critically researched in detail and in what can be called interpretative traditions. In other words, it is no longer only a case of making these women philosophers’ work known, but passing on ways of interpreting them to future generations.

Another question is how to integrate a discussion of women thinkers into the discussion of the male-dominated philosophical canon. There are several ways to tackle this issue. In teaching the history of philosophy, integration can be promoted minimally by giving references to the work of women philosophers or including some of their work in the reading materials, so that interested students can do at least part of their coursework on it. A more developed form of integrating historical women philosophers into teaching is discussing their work in conjunction with that of their male contemporaries, pointing out connections and actual dialogues between them. Finally, a deeper knowledge of work of the historical women philosophers may lead us to a new conception of the whole history of philosophy, and to the presentation of this history in a new way to the students.

There are already some online resources, from which we can draw when we plan inclusive teaching on different philosophical topics. Project Vox, for instance, showcases early modern women philosophers such as Cavendish (1623–1673), Conway (1631–1679), Damaris Cudworth Masham (1659–1708), Mary Astell (1666–1731) and Châtelet (1706–1749), providing alternative syllabi for discussing issues pertinent to philosophy of that era.Footnote 18 Another interesting resource is Extending New Narratives in the History of Philosophy, which provides links to several databases, and develops projects of its own, such as digitalising manuscripts of women philosophers.Footnote 19 The website Querelle publishes the pro-woman texts of the so-called querelle des femmes, particularly the work of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian and French thinkers.Footnote 20 The German website History of Women Philosophers and Scientists offers information about historical women philosophers, their work and events related to them.Footnote 21

At the same time, the inclusion of women authors in the curriculum should not be reduced to historical figures. Inclusive teaching could also come to mean that whatever topic we deal with in our classes, we aim for gender balance in the reading materials. This is, in fact, more or less the practice in some universities—at the time of writing this work, for instance, at the University of Iceland. If all of the articles on our reading lists are written by men, we should consider the possibility that this does not reflect the actual gender balance of the writers of high-quality articles in that area, but that an implicit bias may be operating in our thinking, or that our interests are, in fact, gendered (see Haslanger 2008).

Most importantly, university teaching staff and researchers themselves are predecessors of the students, and whether they like it or not, often serve as role models. For women students and students belonging to other minorities in philosophy, the diversity of the staff is one positive signal that they could have a professional career in philosophy (see e.g. Dotson 2012). Molly Paxton, Carrie Fidgor and Valerie Tiberius have demonstrated that the presence of women lecturers on a philosophy course correlates with the percentage of women students. Yet it remains uncertain whether this correlation reflects the ability of female staff to cater for their women students’ interests or whether their mere presence inspires women in their studies (Paxton et al. 2012).

3.5 The Jyväskylä Summer School: Feminist Thinking in Historical Perspective

The Jyväskylä Summer School was designed by Martina Reuter. A good proportion of the forty-one participants of the summer school came from the Erasmus + partnership universities. Some came also from other European countries and North America. 88% of the students were women.

The summer school was an experiment in how to integrate women thinkers into discussion of the history of philosophy in a novel and potentially empowering manner, creating different layers of dialogue through the ages and in the classroom. At the same time, the summer school proposed a nuanced critique of the politics of exclusion. It drew attention to how women thinkers have been excluded from the philosophical canon, but also to how feminist forerunners tend to be excluded from feminist canons.

The programme of this summer school was developed in a close interaction between the responsible lecturers, namely Reuter, Sandrine Bergès and Marguerite Deslauriers, who were all specialists in the history of philosophy. Together they had planned a course that would elucidate the development of feminist thought both as a part of the history of philosophy and in dialogue with the influential philosophers of each era. Starting from Plato and Aristotle, the lecturers went on to discuss the ideas of Héloïse, Christine de Pizan, Marie de Gournay, Lucrezia Marinella, Mary Astell, Poulain de la Barre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Madame Roland, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir. Together with the reading materials, which included texts from the above-mentioned thinkers as well as articles on the feminist theory of the history of philosophy, the lectures provided a comprehensive introduction to the roots of feminist thought. The lecturers demonstrated how female and male thinkers had argued both with and against prominent philosophers such as Aristotle and Rousseau to defend feminist positions, and how ideas, which would not necessarily strike us as feminist, had contributed to the historical development of feminist modes of thinking.

In this course, the content was designed very carefully to provide a coherent narrative, and students were given a history against which they could reflect upon their own situation in philosophy. Importantly, they were given an overview of the ideas of early feminist thinkers, and a description of why and how these thinkers, whose intellectual background differed in a number of ways from ours and who thereby sometimes defended positions alien to us, could still be considered as feminists: they stood up for women and women’s opportunities for action in their own societies, discussing the relationship between gender and power. In this way, the course not only provided the participants with a history of feminist thought, but also a wide, non-judgemental understanding of the possibilities of argumentation in a specific historical situation.

Pedagogically, the course was an example of how to discuss the history of philosophy creatively rather than following the established patterns. At the same time, this course demonstrated how one can, within fairly traditional modes of teaching such as lectures and reading seminars, still foster feelings of belonging and in fact empower students, when the content of the course is planned to support this. As Brook J. Sadler has pointed out, it is indeed possible to create a dialogical atmosphere through the careful elaboration of how the discussed philosophers have engaged in dialogue with each other (2004). This provides a model of dialogue for the students. In addition, the lecturer is an example of a philosopher engaging in a dialogue with other philosophers over time. Yet another level of dialogue is the dialogue between the students and the lecturer. Evidently the passion that the lecturer demonstrates for her topic and for the dialogue is also extremely important. When the lecturer demonstrates an affective relationship to the topic, it is easier for the student to be drawn towards that topic. In the course feedback, many of the students did in fact refer positively to the passion of the lecturers towards their topics.

A typical summer school day consisted of two 90-min lectures and a workshop, in which the students discussed the reading material of the day. The students were divided into three groups with three different instructors, due to the large number of participants. These seminar sessions were yet another opportunity for dialogue, which was more student-driven than during the lectures. At the end of the course—and following the model of the Icelandic summer school (see Sect. 4.4)—the students presented their research questions for the final papers in four groups. These groups were divided according to their topics, namely (1) concepts of gender, (2) equality and difference, (3) virtue and morality and (4) reason and passion. In a concluding session, students were asked to air their views about the summer school. After this summer school, like after all the others, the students were also asked to give feedback through a questionnaire.

Despite the generally positive undertone of the feedback, some participants found the course too Eurocentric. According to another criticism, the attempt to accommodate more than two thousand years of philosophy and feminist thinking within one course was overly ambitious. Perhaps this goes to show that the problem of exclusion and inclusion in presentation does not concern only the history of philosophy in general but also feminist thought. While many of the teaching staff may sigh at this point and think that we are facing an impossible mission, given that the expertise of one person can go only so far, this is not a reason to give up. Without claiming that there should no longer be courses in exclusively European philosophy, I suggest we acknowledge that the phase of globalisation we are living in right now could in fact produce new kinds of combinations in teaching and learning, and that increasing co-operation between feminist scholars from different parts of the world is a promising avenue to explore.