The following is from Jessica Gordon-Roth, Assistant Professor at CUNY-Lehman. The emphasis was added by me, because it is splendid:
I asked my ‘Modern’ students how studying women philosophers shaped their understanding of the early modern period. To my surprise many took the opportunity to express how studying these women affected their understanding of philosophy more generally.
“Reading female philosophers helped me not only understand and appreciate the role of women in philosophy…it also expanded and challenged my understanding of many philosophers. For example Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s defense of Locke expanded on some vague points Locke made (which could be what Locke meant to say). So it opened my eyes to the possible implications of Locke’s arguments. Princess Elisabeth presented faults and questions about Descartes’ work which I would have never thought of myself and so it helped and inspired me to dig into Descartes’ arguments and all subsequent arguments in the class…which gave me a deeper understanding of the early modern period as a whole.”
“Reading female philosophers from the early modern period has shown me that there actually were female philosophers around that time and they just aren’t discussed as much…”
“Reading the works of…women philosophers…really changed my impression of…philosophy as a whole. All I had ever read prior to this course were male philosophers and it made the impression on me that those were the only people thinking philosophically at that time. Now I feel I have a fuller understanding of philosophy. I enjoyed seeing that women philosophers were just as intelligent and cunning as the men were. For example, Descartes, the philosopher most people know, had no valid response for Elisabeth’s objections to his arguments….”
“I feel I have learned many things from this course. First of all, I learned that it has not only been men asking the difficult questions throughout history, but many women have as well. Women have just not been given the spotlight…men have….”
“Prior to this class Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler were among the few I knew…”
“In general, reading female philosophers in this class provided me with a well-rounded understanding of the sort of writing and thinking that emerged from the modern period. It was encouraging to know that not only did the philosophy written by the famous men of the period reach women, but women actually engaged in it and affected those very men….Being able to understand how the social, political and religious environment affect the content of philosophy from a particular period, and to see how often philosophers respond to, refute, or praise the questions and arguments raised by others, showed me how philosophy is more of a network of conversation, rather than a collection of independent unrelated works…”
“There was a lot I did not know about female philosophers…especially not how they interacted with famous male philosophers. It also made me question why it took so long for me to learn about them as a philosophy major and senior. Why aren’t these other great philosophers taught in lower level courses?…”
