The generation of animals was a difficult phenomenon to explain in the seventeenth century, having long been a problem in natural philosophy, theology, and medicine. In this paper, I explore how generation, understood as epigenesis, was directly related to an idea of rational nature. I examine epigenesis—the idea that the embryo was constructed part-by-part, over time—in the work of two seemingly dissimilar English philosophers: William Harvey, an eclectic Aristotelian, and Margaret Cavendish, a radical materialist. I chart the ways that they (...) understood and explained epigenesis, given their differences in philosophy and ontology. I argue for the importance of ideas of harmony and order in structuring their accounts of generation as a rational process. I link their experiences during the English Civil war to how they see nature as a possible source for the rationality and concord sorely missing in human affairs. (shrink)

A number of recent papers or monographs have examined Susan Stebbing’s criticisms of Arthur Eddington’s scientific-philosophical writing. These papers focus on Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s attempt to infer philosophical conclusions from developments in modern physics, his view that there is a discrepancy between the world of science and the world of common sense (best encapsulated by his famous ‘two tables’ metaphor), and his use of “inexact language” to try and convey modern scientific insights to his readers. On November 10th, 1938, (...) Eddington presented a paper at the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge entitled “Prof. Stebbing’s ‘Philosophy and the Physicists’.” Eddington did not go on to publish this paper and it is not discussed in relevant scholarship. However, the details of Eddington’s talk are outlined in the minutes of that meeting. I argue that these minutes provide new insights into both the Stebbing-Eddington debate and developments in Eddington's late philosophical views. A full transcription of the minutes are included as an Appendix to this paper. (shrink)

The landscape of historical research on early modern philosophy has changed dramatically since the publication of Eileen O'Neill's landmark essay, “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History” (O'Neill 1997). In the past thirty years, increasing quantities of scholarly attention have shifted toward retrieving and reassessing the contributions of marginalized voices throughout the history of philosophy. Few interventions are as impactful within this growing field as Marcy Lascano's recent monograph comparing the metaphysical systems of Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) (...) and Anne Conway (1631–1679). Lascano identifies three core metaphysical themes that are shared between both figures: monism, vitalism, and self-motion. In addition to these core themes, she presents a few more points of comparison—such as their shared dissatisfactions with mechanical philosophy—as well as some points of disconnect—such as the differing roles of God and teleology in their frameworks. Readers will find a clear overview of both authors’ metaphysical frameworks presented within a helpful model for comparative interpretation in ameliorative historical research. ... (shrink)

This introductory article outlines how this special issue contributes to existing scholarship that calls for a rethinking and re-evaluation of common assumptions about early modern philosophy. One way of challenging existing narratives is by questioning what role systems or systematicity play during this period. Another way of rethinking early modern philosophy is by considering assumptions about the role of philosophy itself and how philosophy can effect change in those who form philosophical beliefs or engage in philosophical argumentation. A further way (...) of advancing early modern scholarship is by examining the tight links between early modern views on metaphysics and epistemology, on the one hand, and moral, social, and political philosophy, on the other hand. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether and how the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism, which has been questioned for several reasons, should be replaced. It has been proposed to replace it with a distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy, but this distinction cannot easily accommodate early modern debates concerning moral, social, and political philosophy. In addition to highlighting several ways how early modern philosophy has and can be rethought, we summarize how the papers in this special issue contribute to these ongoing efforts. (shrink)

It is clear that philosophy has a “woman problem”. Despite the recent acceptance of this fact, it is less clear what ought to be done about it. In this paper, we argue that philosophy as a discipline is uniquely well-positioned to think through the marginalisation suffered by women and other minorities. We therefore interrogate two values that already undergird conversations about inclusion— representation and intersectionality—in order to think about the path ahead. We argue that, once we have done so, it (...) becomes clear that the slow pace of improvement over the last few decades is unacceptable and more radical steps need to be taken. First, we outline the current state of women in philosophy focusing on three areas: levels of employment, publishing, and sexual harassment. Then we turn to representation and intersectionality respectively. We conclude by arguing that many women and people of colour have been arguing for a more radically diverse philosophy for many years. What we are facing is a lack of ambition on the one hand and problem of attention on the other. (shrink)

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today. The aim of this book is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon Lee, and (...) Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women. (shrink)

Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and (...) the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other. (shrink)

Despite what you have heard over the years, the famous evil deceiver argument in Meditation One is not original to Descartes. Early modern meditators often struggle with deceptive demons. The author of the Meditations is merely giving a new spin to a common rhetorical device. Equally surprising is the fact that Descartes’ epistemological rendering of the demon trope is probably inspired by a Spanish nun, Teresa of Ávila, whose works have been ignored by historians of philosophy, although they were a (...) global phenomenon during Descartes’ formative years. In this paper, I first answer the obvious question as to why previous early modernists have missed something so important as the fact that Descartes’ most famous publication relies on a well-established genre and that his deceiver argument bears a striking similarity to ideas in Teresa’s final work, El Castillo Interior? I discuss the meditative tradition at the end of which Descartes’ Meditations stands, present evidence to support the claim that Descartes was familiar with Teresa’s proposals, contrast their meditative goals, and make a point-by-point comparison between the meditative steps in Teresa’s Interior Castle and those in Descartes’ Meditations which constitute their common deceiver strategy. My conclusion makes a case for a broader and more inclusive history of philosophy. (shrink)

The past twenty five years have seen an explosion of feminist writing on the philosophical canon, a development that has clear parallels in other disciplines like literature and art history. Since most of the writing is, in one way or another, critical of the tradition, a natural question to ask is: Why does the history of philosophy have importance for feminist philosophers? This question assumes that the history of philosophy is of importance for feminists, an assumption that is warranted by (...) the sheer volume of recent feminist writing on the canon. This entry explores the different ways that feminist philosophers are interacting with the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This article is a slighty adapted version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Philosophy presented on 21 June 2024 at the University of Copenhagen. Given my seniority and as the first woman ever to be appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, I decided to take this opportunity to address a broader and more fundamental topic: namely, what is philosophy, what role does philosophy play in today’s university systems, and what kind of history of philosophy do we (...) need for the 21st century. My lecture has three parts. First, I present and defend a specific understanding of philosophy focussing on the notion of knowledge for its own sake. Second, I outline some of the challenges for contemporary and future historiography of philosophy. Third, I conclude with some remarks on the societal relevance of feminist history of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper makes explicit some issues of gender that have been implicitly raised in recent discussions concerning the recovery of European women's contributions to the history of seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century philosophy. A useful way to bring these issues to light is to distinguish between the project of recovering women's contributions and the project of justifying their inclusion. The former project is an important effort to provide a more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy. Within the latter project, there is (...) a distinction between justifying the inclusion of a specific author and justifying women's inclusion in general. The suggestion that we need to justify women's inclusion in general is fundamentally illegitimate because it presumes that either women's philosophical ability is up for debate or that their contributions require special explanation, both of which are misogynist. (shrink)

Marie de Gournay and Anton Wilhelm Amo, though thinking and writing in different social contexts, each offer an account of prejudice which bears a deep philosophical resonance to that of the other. This resonance is striking and mutually illuminating: Gournay and Amo develop a view of prejudice as a kind of epistemic and moral viciousness that damages both the prejudicial person and their socio-epistemic neighbors. Their accounts highlight how agents are rightly held responsible for prejudice, as it is the agents' (...) epistemic negligence and moral failure that allows prejudice to take hold. As such, their view offers a balance between a critical examination of individuals and an acknowledgement of the deep sociality that pervades the epistemic domain. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, an immense wave of scholarship has recovered the voices of the many women who contributed to early modern philosophy, transforming our picture of the period. It is now typical for...

This article highlights the importance of new research on women philosophers and addresses some methodological issues to be taken in consideration. The thesis presented here is that through this new line of research it is possible to analyse the close connection between philosophy, politics and institutions. The paper opens with a critique of the assumption that philosophy has until recently been the exclusive property of men, giving the example of some forgotten women philosophers who lived in Hegel's time. After considering (...) the risk of ghettoization inherent in Women's Studies, the author closes by showing how the reconsideration of women philosophers can help to question the methodology and the status of philosophy in general, and in particular to question the philosophical canon. The text serves as an introduction to a special issue of theHegel Bulletindedicated to women philosophers in Hegel's time. (shrink)