Bøger i Elements on Women in the Histo serien

"This Element aims to critically examine the philosophical thought of Im Yunjidang (1721-93), a female Korean Neo-Confucian philosopher from the Chosæon dynasty (1392-1910), and to present her as a feminist thinker. Unlike most Korean women of her time, Yunjidang had the exceptional opportunity to be introduced to a major philosophical debate among Korean Neo-Confucians, which was focused on two core questions - whether sages and commoners share the same heart-mind and whether the natures of human beings and animals are identical. In the course of engaging in this debate, she was able to reformulate Neo-Confucian metaphysics and the ethics of moral self-cultivation, culminating in her bold ideas of the moral equality between men and women and the possibility of female sagehood. By proposing a "stage approach" to feminism that is also sensitive to the cultural context, this Element shows that Yunjidang's philosophical thought could be best captured in terms of Confucian feminism"--

In this Element the author argues that genre deeply affects how early Christian female philosophers are characterized across different works. The included case studies are three women who feature in both narrative and dialogic texts: Thecla, Macrina the Younger and Monica. Based on these examples, the author demonstrates that the narrative sources tend to eschew secular education, while the dialogic sources are open to displays of secular knowledge. Philosophy was not only seen as a way of life, but sometimes also as a mode of educated argumentation. The author further argues that these female philosophers were held up in their femininity as models for imitation by both women and men.

Susan Stebbing (1885-1943), the UK's first female professor of philosophy, was a key figure in the development of analytic philosophy. Stebbing wrote the world's first accessible book on the new polyadic logic and its philosophy. She made major contributions to the philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophical logic, critical thinking and applied philosophy. Nonetheless she has remained largely neglected by historians of analytic philosophy. This Element provides a thorough yet accessible overview of Stebbing's positive, original contributions, including her solution to the paradox of analysis, her account of the relation of sense data to physical objects, and her anti- idealist interpretation of the new Einsteinian physics. Stebbing's innovative work in these and other areas helped move analytic philosophy from its early phase to its middle period.

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics.

Mary Wollstonecraft is recognized as an important early feminist. This Element argues that she is also an ingenious moral philosopher, who showed that true virtue and the liberty of women are necessarily interdependent. The Element consists of eight sections. After an introduction, Section 2 discusses Wollstonecraft's concept of reason by examining its metaphysical foundation and its role as moral capacity. According to Wollstonecraft, reason interacts closely with the passions. Then, Sections 3 and 4 discuss the roles of the passions and the imagination. Reason, passion and imagination all come together in Wollstonecraft's discussions of love and friendship, which are the topic of Section 5. Wollstonecraft values education and knowledge, but discussions of her epistemology have been rare. Section 6 analyses some aspects of her views on knowledge. Finally, Section 7 discusses Wollstonecraft's notion of virtue, including its relations to liberty and duty. Section 8 makes some general conclusions.

This Element presents the philosophical contributions of Nísia Floresta, a feminist philosopher of education from the 19th century in early post-colonial Brazil, who defended abolition and indigenous rights. Focusing on five central works (Direitos, Lágrima, Opúsculo, Páginas, and Woman), it shows them connected by a critique of colonialism grounded on feminist principles. Influenced by the practical Cartesianism of Poulain de la Barre through the pamphlets of Sophia, Floresta applies to the social structures the feminist principle that reason has no gender, arguing that a nation's civilizational level depends on whether natural equality is expressed in terms of social rights. Describing the suffering experienced by women, indigenous people, and the black enslaved population, she defends education as a strategy against colonialism. As such, education should aim towards physical and intellectual emancipation, restoring the lost dignity of individuals. Floresta's works thus foreground slavery and colonization as events that shaped philosophical modernity.