A reader writes:
Would you consider starting a thread calling for suggestions for philosophical “Great Works” (influential works of philosophy), written by female philosophers? Great Works courses tend to focus on male authors only, so I thought a thread with suggestions would be useful to those of us who teach such courses.
I would suggest one of Hannah Arendt’s works that is becoming more influential as the years progress: On Violence (http://wp.me/pd52p-3lZ)
If you are looking for article length pieces, ‘What is the point of Equality?’ should qualify.
Beauvoir, The Second Sex!
I am not sure this is what you want, since it’s outside of philosophy, strictly speaking. But I am starting to think I should have my students read some of Nancy Chodorow’s work on personality, since it seems to have influenced so much work in philosophy. I find myself describing some of her work on personality nearly every semester. I teach mainly moral/political philosophy, but also some history of philosophy.
Anscombe’s Intention.
Beauvoir, of course! But also: Mary Wollstonecraft, Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler.
Vindication of the Rights of Woman?
The Iliad, or The Poem of Force – Simone Weil. Although it has been over four decades since I read it, this still resonates for me.
Lots of good names here. Definitely Ruth Barcan Marcus’s Modalities would be a candidate. Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (both Part I and Part II) is another one.
She might stretch the notion of ‘philosopher’, but Christine de Pizan is a possible name, with her Book of the City of Ladies and Treasury of the City of Ladies.
A lot of notable women philosophers were actually quite influential in their own day and just stopped being read because they were never canon-ized, so to speak. One of the things I’ve found in trying to study Lady Mary Shepherd, for instance, is that her works, especially An Essay on the Relation of Cause and Effect, were actually quite widely read throughout Britain — she had a number of enthusiastic fans (a number of them well-placed), was a well-known name, and while extensive direct discussion of her works isn’t very common (perhaps because they are abstract), casual mentions of her ideas can be found all over the place. It’s just that her books get harder and harder to find and people stop reading them. Similar things seem to be true of Catharine Trotter Cockburn, although in her case her The Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding seem to have been somewhat better known than her more distinctively original later works. It’s a notable pattern (one that hopefully will be broken by the ebook revolution, which is less dependent on the complicated process of reprinting).
Do they have to be feminist works? Nancy Cartwright’s How the Laws of Physics Lie has been very influential, as has most of her work (but that book in particular).
Just thought of another possibility: Ada Lovelace’s Notes on the Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage (the Sketch itself is by someone else, but her notes on it are so extensive that they’re longer than the relatively short work she’s commenting on). We don’t usually think of it as a particularly philosophical work, but of course it originally was, and it explicitly discusses issues in philosophy of mathematics (and, of course, philosophy of computing).
Brandon, Modalities is a collection of essays. It’s a collection of excellent (and in many cases extremely influential) essays, but an anthology might not qualify as a Great Work.
If individual papers count, then maybe her “Modalities and Intentional Languages” or one of the early quantified modal logic papers.
I don’t agree with the political perspective but, in the interest of fairness, Ayn Rand would be an interesting addition. Of course, as I finished typing that first sentence, I realized that including Rand in order to give her a fair shake is entirely out of keeping with her self-motivated philosophy. Take that, Ayn!
Luce Irigaray’s work in Individuation is also a good case of feminist psychoanalytical philosophy&theory.
Adding to this also texts of Rosi Braidotti, Gayatri Spivak and Svetlana Slapšak are excellent theoretical read.
jamiedreier,
True, but Hume’s Enquiries, both of them, are also collections of essays and this doesn’t ever stop them from at least being candidates. You might be right, though, that one could argue that there’s a difference between a collection of essays written with one view and published together and a collection of essays that’s specifically an anthology.
OT:…Hume’s Enquiries are not properly read as a collection of essays, in the way, say, his essays are. He changed the title, we should take him seriously (and his final chosen title for the entire shmeer was Essays and Treatises on several subjects).
And now, back to our regularly scheduled feminist programming. It would be good to know if the op is interested in contemporary/live women as well as dead ones. In the latter category, a little surprised no one has yet mentioned Margaret Cavendish (just because many contemporary philosophers don’t know of her influence doesn’t mean she wasn’t influential… :) )
I don’t know if these fall into what you define as “Great Works” but these authors have influenced me and fellow researchers: bell hooks (she has a plethora of work, but I have her book, Communion) and Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good.
If individual papers are considered, some of Charlotte Ladd-Franklin’s papers arguably had a significant influence on logic by way of both Peirce and Prior.
@ katyabramson6@gmail.com: After some thought I find I still disagree on the OT Hume point. Rather than highjack the thread, I’ve put my response here:
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2012/03/several-essays-in-one-enquiry.html
The question is a difficult one. What is and is not counted as a philosophical work is a matter of controversy. Many works written by female authors are often not considered to be philosophy.
I teach a class on philosophy and gender, which includes a number of feminist classics – by Christine de Pisan, Anna Maria van Schurman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir etc.
In terms of more contemporary work:
Iris Marion Young’s magnum opus “Justice and the Politics of Difference” was a landmark in Political Philosophy. In terms of her Existential Phenomenology and Feminist Philosophy, I would also highly recommend all the essays in “Throwing Like A Girl: On Female Bodily Experiences”.
Susan Okin’s “Justice, Gender, and the Family” – but this might be political theory instead of ‘philosophy’.
Carole Pateman’s “The Sexual Contract” was arguably one of the first comprehensive feminist criticisms of liberal social contract theory (again, this might be considered political theory).
Judith Shlkar’s work in Political Theory (as opposed to Philosophy blah blah blah) entitled “The Faces of Injustice”.
Hanna Pitkin’s “The Concept of Representation”.
Elizabeth Anderson’s work “Value in Ethics and Economics” is a stellar critique of the propensity of market values to enter all spheres of social, political and personal life. It’s also an excellent defense of value pluralism.
Martha Nussbaum’s work in Ancient Philosophy and Classics, “The Fragility of Goodness”. She also has written extensively in Political Philosophy and Feminist Philosophy promoting the “Capabilities Approach” in such works as “Sex and Social Justice” and “Women and Human Development”.
Helen Longino’s groundbreaking work in the Philosophy of Science (along with the Nancy Cartwright suggestion above), entitled “Science as Social Knowledge”.
There’s also Philippa Foot’s “Natural Goodness” in normative ethics – even dealing with some issues in Metaethics – as well as her “Virtues and Vices”.
Iris Murdoch’s work “The Sovereignty of Good”.
AND SO MUCH MORE!!! With all this writing, why should we ever have to read male-stream philosophy again? Sigh…
This is a list of a different kind. They might not all qualify as “Great Works”, but they are all great works.
“Modern Moral Philosophy” by GEM Anscombe
“Logical Parts” by LA Paul
“A functional calculus of first order based on strict implication” by Ruth Barcan Marcus
“A Defense of Abortion” and “Parthood and Identity Across Time” by Judith Jarvis Thomson
“Shifting Sands: An Interest-Relative Theory of Vagueness” by Delia Graff
“Why Constitution is Not Identity” by Lynn Rudder Baker
Suzanne Langer
Is this a list of works to be incorporated into a general “Great Works” curriculum going back to the ancients?
Anyway, not that many older works have been mentioned. If, as one of the other commenters suggested, you’re willing to stretch the strict notion of “philosophy”, you might include influential works like Julian of Norwich’s Revelations or Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle.
I’m strongly in favour of this! Ways for awesome work to be made known to me are always welcome!