Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women's Philosophical Thought

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, feminist theory has had a forceful impact upon the history of Western philosophy. The present collection of essays has as its primary aim to evaluate past women’s published philosophical work, and to introduce readers to newly recovered female figures; the collection will also make contributions to the history of the philosophy of gender, and to the history of feminist social and political philosophy, insofar as the collection will discuss women’s views on these issues.The volume contains contributions by an international group of leading historians of philosophy and political thought, whose scholarship represents some of the very best work being done in North and Central America, Canada, Europe and Australia.

“Anyone interested in teaching, writing about, or merely familiarizing themselves further with this area will find this collection invaluable.” (Margaret Atherton, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 58 (3), July, 2020)

Eileen O’Neill (1953- 2017) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her works included the first scholarly edition of Margaret Cavendish’s work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001), and an edited collection with Christia Mercer, Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics (Oxford, 2005). Her most influential articles concerned the historiography of early modern philosophy and include “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy” in Janet Kourany, ed., Philosophy in a Feminist Voice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), “Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy” in Australasian Journal of French Studies (2003) 40 (3): 257-274), and “Justifying the Inclusion of Women in Our Histories of Philosophy: The Case of Marie de Gournay” in Linda Martín Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay, eds.,The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy (Blackwell, 2007). She also published important work on issues in causation including “Mind-Body Interaction and Metaphysical Consistency: A Defense of Descartes” in Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (2), (1987: 227-245), “Influxus Physicus” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Steven Nadler (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), “Margaret Cavendish, Stoic Antecedent Causes, and Early Modern Occasional Causes” in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger 3 (July-September, 2013), and “Mary Astell and the Causation of Sensation” in Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faithedited by William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson (Ashgate, 2007).Marcy P. Lascano is Professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas. Her current research focuses on the works of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, and Emilie du Châtelet. She has published articles in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Philosophy Compass, and The Modern Schoolman, along with book chapters in Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, The Routledge Companion to the Seventeenth Century, and Women on Liberty, 1600-1800.  She is co-editor, with Lisa Shapiro, of Early Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. She is also working on a monograph on early modern women’s metaphysics.