Women,philosophy and the history of philosophy*

ABSTRACT

It is only in the last 30 years that any appreciable work has been done on women philosophers of the past. This paper reflects on the progress that has been made in recovering early-modern women philosophers in that time and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. I argue that as women are integrated into the broader picture of philosophy, there is a danger of overlooking the different conditions under which they originally philosophized and which shaped their philosophies. Having retrieved them from oblivion, we now face the challenge of avoiding a ‘new amnesia’ by developing historical narratives and modes of analysis which acknowledge the different conditions within which they worked, without diminishing their contribution to philosophy. I offer these remarks as a contribution to current debates about the forms that historical narrative should take, and the best way to promote women in philosophy today, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.     

Duhem and history and philosophy of mathematics

The first part of this paper consists of an exposition of the views expressed by Pierre Duhem in his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory concerning the philosophy and historiography of mathematics. The second part provides a critique of these views, pointing to the conclusion that they are in need of reformulation. In the concluding third part, it is suggested that a number of the most important claims made by Duhem concerning physical theory, e.g., those relating to the Newtonian method, the limited falsifiability of theories, and the restricted role of logic, can be meaningfully applied to mathematics.I am indebted to Professors Douglas Jesseph and Philip Quinn for helpful comments on this paper.     

Open-mindedness and ajar-mindedness in history of philosophy

• There was once a princess called Sophia,

• whose philosophy museum was superior.

• But most of the stores

• became locked behind doors,

• which led to collective amnesia.

• Then along came a band of ajar-minders,

• who decided to issue reminders

• of the treasures inside

• that hadn't yet died,

• and opened the doors to all finders.

     

Phenomenological method and contemporary ethics

Continental Philosophy Review - Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those...     

Writing the history of Russian philosophy

This article addresses the writing of the history of Russian philosophy from the first of such works—Archimandrite Gavriil’s Russian Philosophy [Russkaja filosofija, 1840]—to philosophical histories/textbooks in the twenty-first century. In the majority of these histories, both past and present, we find a relentless insistence on the delineation of “characterizing traits” of Russian philosophy and appeals to “historiosophy,” where historiosophy is employed as being distinct from the historiographical method. In the 1990s and 2000s, the genre of the history of Russian philosophy has grown increasingly conservative with regards to content, with histories from this period demonstrating an almost exclusive Orthodox focus. This conservatism, in turn, has contributed to widespread contention in recent years over the status of these philosophical textbooks—disagreements that often lead to either (1) further appeals to “historiosophical” methods; or (2) denials of the domestic philosophical tradition altogether, where the response to the query “Is there philosophy in Russia?” is emphatically negative. This article argues that the contemporary disputes over the development and preservation of the Russian philosophical canon are in many ways part of a larger debate over the roles of Orthodoxy and the history of philosophy in post-Soviet philosophical thought.     

On experimental philosophy and the history of philosophy: a reply to Sorell

In this paper, we reply to Tom Sorell’s criticism of our engagement with the history of philosophy in our book, The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy. We explain why our uses of the history of philosophy are not undermined by Sorell’s criticism and why our position is not threatened by the dilemma Sorell advances. We argue that Sorell has mischaracterized the dialectical context of our discussion of the history of philosophy and that he has mistakenly treated our use of the history of philosophy as univocal, when in fact we called on the history of philosophy in several different ways in our text.     

Doing philosophy is doing its history

While Curley argues that we need to know the history of philosophy so as not to avoid important alternatives to contemporary proposals, I argue that philosophy is an essentially historical enterprise. Unlike science, philosophy cannot forget its history. Not to know the history of philosophy is not to understand why the questions we seek to answer are worth answering or asking.     

The history of philosophy in contemporary philosophy: The view from Germany

Conclusion I have frequently mentioned objective problems and topics in the preceding sections. But what exactly is the force of objective here? As my remarks should have made clear I have been using objective to contrast with purely historical. A purely historical approach never gets beyond reproduction, commentary, and interpretation. I call an approach objective when it involves a philosopher who advances his own theses and claims.This minimal understanding of objectivity (in the context of my remarks in this paper) by no means implies that there are problems and topics, systems of concepts, methods, and similar factors that are eternal, completely independent of the contingencies of history (of philosophy, of the sciences), that are not relative to a language, to a logic, to a model, etc. Indeed whether there are problems, etc., in just this absolute, atemporal sense is itself a question for systematic philosophy. It seems clear that the formulation of a problem can only take place against a cognitive background of some sort and within some conceptual scheme.³⁴ Such an assumption is made by most if not all analytic philosophers. But the fact that a philosophical tradition recognizes conceptual schemes does not make it a purely historical, non-objective philosophy, in the sense already introduced and described. A philosopher who explicitly accepts a certain conceptual scheme proceeds in an entirely objective and systematic (and not purely historical) manner when, within this framework, he formulates his own theses.This paper is the text of a talk. the title is due to Barry Smith.