Who comes to mind when you think of philosophy? Even in our post #metoo era, the first thing we think of is a white-haired man stroking his beard and thinking about the meaning of life. But centuries of discrimination, marginalisation and implicit biases haven’t stopped women from creating ground-breaking work. These five courageous female philosophers have entered the world of philosophy despite all odds. Read on to find out more about Hypatia of Alexandria, Tullia D’Aragona, Simone De Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt and Donna Haraway.
1. The Mathematician: Hypatia of Alexandria (C.355 CE-416 CE)
Hypatia of Alexandria was a neoplatonic philosopher and well-respected teacher in Alexandria. Despite the prevalent misogyny and political tensions of her time, she managed to establish herself as a renowned mathematician and philosopher. According to historian Will Durant: “She was so fond of philosophy that she would stop in the streets and explain, to any who asked, difficult points in Plato or Aristotle.”
As part of the neoplatonic school, she believed that everything can be reduced to a fundamental singular thing, and that philosophical inquiry (and mathematical thinking) were a way of getting closer to that unity.
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterEven though all her writings have been lost, the details of her death are not. In 416 BC, she was brutally murdered by a Christian mob who accused her of having influenced the politicians of the time with her “charms and witchcraft.” Given such accusations, it is likely that the reason was much more mundane — the men who murdered her were scared of her power and influence. Despite their efforts to silence her, Hypatia´s murderers did not succeed in erasing her from history. To this day, her example reminds us that the right to think freely is not only our highest good, but that we have a responsibility to nurture and defend it.
OUR FAVORITE QUOTE:
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
2. Philosopher of Love: Tullia d’Aragona (c.1501-1556)
Tullia d’Aragona’s identity is steeped in myth — was she a poet, a philosopher, a courtesan? What we know for sure is that this intelligent, beautiful, and independent Renaissance woman was vilified and admired by many. But let us not make the mistake of focusing on her private life rather than her work!
Her Dialogue on the Infinity of Love is a beautifully written, well-reasoned and thought-provoking piece of writing. In line with the platonic tradition, Tullia d’Aragona uses the dialogue-format to ask whether love is infinite. She concludes that real love is infinite because it can never be fully satisfied. The philosopher arrives at this view by distinguishing between vulgar, dishonest love and virtuous, honest love. Whereas the former can be satisfied by carnal union, the latter can never be fully achieved, because its end-goal is the complete merging with another human’s body and soul. As this type of merging is impossible, the lover “will never satisfy his desire and thus cannot love with a limit” (D’Aragona).
Apart from demonstrating that Tullia d’Aragona was highly educated and able to argue a point with clarity and charm, she also takes a stance regarding male prejudice against women. When her sparring-partner Varchi tried to put her down by asking whether it is “such an heroic feat to defeat a woman,” she replied, “You’re not in contest with a woman. You are fighting against reason.”
If Tullia d’Aragona had been a man, there would be no doubt about her standing as a philosopher rather than merely “a woman of letters.” And yet, she is one of the few women who managed to play the system and get her ideas out into the world.
OUR FAVORITE QUOTE:
“Humans aspire to be angels by way of love.”
3. The Existentialist: Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
Simone de Beauvoir refused to identify herself as a philosopher and only declared herself a feminist at the age of 64. And yet, her contribution to 20th-century feminism and philosophy is beyond doubt. Her book, The Second Sex, is a hallmark in the history of human thought.
The Second Sex analyses the idea of “woman” through a biological, psychoanalytical, social, mythological, historical, and political lens. By doing so, she lays open how “male” has become synonymous with “human” whereas women have been placed in the position of “the Other.” According to Beauvoir, the ideology of women as “the weaker sex” and inferior to man, has kept women in a state of dependency and oppression. But Simone de Beauvoir goes further and criticizes the idea that women must “become like men” to gain equality and power. After all, this only re-enforces the privileging of the male. Instead, women should be allowed to be feminine, equal, and free.
This extraordinary philosopher didn’t stick to writing about questions concerning women: She has also produced thought-provoking works on the question of freedom and violence. The letters exchanged between her and fellow existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, her lifelong romantic and intellectual partner, show her commitment to her own ideals.
OUR FAVORITE QUOTE:
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
4. The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century political philosopher and one of the first to engage extensively with the new era humanity had entered. After studying philosophy with names such as Martin Heidegger, she was forced to flee Germany due to her Jewish heritage. But this wasn’t the end of her odyssey. A few years after settling in Paris, she had to flee from the Nazis a second time.
Having experienced displacement and persecution, Hannah Arendt was part of a generation whose world was dissolving faster than one could comprehend. Old categories of good and bad, right and wrong proved useless when confronted with the unimaginable horrors of the Nazi concentration camp and the Russian gulag.
It is therefore hardly surprising that Hannah Arendt made it her mission to try to make sense of the huge changes that were happening in the world. She has written extensively on the origins of totalitarianism, the state of the contemporary world and the question of evil. In her view, the state of modernity is characterized by a loss of world, human beings were losing the connection to the earth that birthed them. They were quite literally attempting to escape the confines of the earth by going into space. Work and productivity were coming to be valued above all else. In short, humans were experiencing an increasing sense of alienation from each other and the world. The mass atrocities committed by totalitarian states were only one of the symptoms of this increasing alienation.
Arendt’s most controversial work was her report on the trial of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. Instead of designating him an evil monster, she instead stated that he was “terrifyingly normal.” He simply did everything he could to advance himself within Hitler’s regime. In Arendt’s view, Eichmann simply wasn’t capable of (or didn’t make the effort to) “think from the standpoint of somebody else.”
OUR FAVORITE QUOTE:
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous”
5. The Posthumanist: Donna Haraway
Born in 1944, Donna Haraway is the youngest philosopher on our list. And yet, her contribution to the world of philosophy, feminism, environmental and posthumanism will continue to resonate far into the future. Her most well-known work is the Cyborg Manifesto. Having been born into a reality of accelerating technological progress, environmental destruction and alienation, the philosophy of Donna Haraway seeks to bring humanity back to an understanding of the unity, interconnectedness and complexity of our universe. Drawing on feminism, postcolonial theory, indigenous knowledge and modern science, Haraway playfully puts the human back in our place. In her view, our identity as human, woman, or self is a construct. Drawing on the allegory of the cyborg, which is both human and machine, she invites us to find back to a more humble understanding of ourselves and our place in the greater scheme of things.
While posthumanism may seem to be a fairly new phenomenon, it does in fact represent a return to the cosmologies of indigenous people and various nature religions. By understanding and accepting that humans are in no way superior or separate, but in fact a part of nature, we can find back to a healthier and more aligned existence.
OUR FAVORITE QUOTE:
We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism. In short–cyborgs.”
Other Female Philosophers Worth Noting
It is impossible to do justice to women’s contribution to philosophy within the scope of one article.
The five women on this list have contributed greatly to the history of human thought, but there are plenty of others whose names deserve to be mentioned, such as the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, the gender theorist Judith Butler, the African-American philosopher Angela Davis or the philosopher and fiction-writer Ayn Rand.
Given the erasure of women’s contribution to the world of philosophy, there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to finding a worldview that is not dominated by patriarchal, colonial and capitalist systems.
And while the women mentioned within this article serve as great examples, there are plenty of other female thinkers whose names we may never get to know.
