Is logic masculine? Is women's lack of interest in the "hard core" philosophical disciplines of formal logic and semantics symptomatic of an inadequacy linked to sex? Is the failure of women to excel in pure mathematics and mathematical science a function of their inability to think rationally? Andrea Nye undermines the assumptions that inform these questions, assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independenet of concrete human relations, and logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In a series (...) of studies of the logics of historical figures--Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege--she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, or scientists. (shrink)

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For a number of years, those interested in recovering women's thought have known about Princess Elisabeth, a seventeenth-century correspondent and friend of Descartes whose questions provoked the philosopher to think more seriously about ethics and the passions. Up to now, only a few of her letters have found their way into print. This volume includes translations of all of Elisabeth's extant letters to Descartes, as well as of other materials relevant to understanding her philosophical perspective and her life. Nye has (...) supplemented the translations with a running commentary on the historical, biographical, and intellectual context of the letters. (shrink)

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

Philosophia brings together, for the first time, the work of three major women thinkers of this century, producing a developing commentary on the human condition as an alternative to the mainstream, masculine, philosophical tradition.

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

The history of modern philosophy is a major topic in philosophy and is crucial to an understanding of the advent of feminist philosophy. Feminism and Modern Philosophy introduces fundamental topics in modern philosophy from a feminist perspective. It takes the student through the subject step by step by looking at the main thinkers most usually examined on a course in modern philosophy and by examining the role of gender in studying classic philosophical texts. The book covers the following structure looking (...) at the ideas and work of the important thinkers in this period: * Rereading the canon * The attack on modernist philosophical reason * The nature of "Man" * The search for male allies * Discovering women philosophers * Are there universal philosophical truths? * The function of history within the discipline of philosophy Each chapter looks closely at the way in which the traditional philosophical canon has been re-interpreted by feminist theory and examines the implications for our interpretation of specific texts. It looks at, for example: * A feminist critique of Cartesian rationalism * The implications of Locke's state of nature for the idea of the family * An appreciation of Hume's unique "collaboration" with Annette Baier Chapters close with a summary and the book contains an extensive annotated bibliography. Andrea Nye's style is student friendly and will be ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time. It will be appropriate for philosophy as well as gender studies courses looking at the development of modern Western thought. (shrink)

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

This paper is part of a larger project of recovering the work of women thinkers. Heloise has traditionally been read as either a foil of Abelard or his intellectual appendage. In this paper, I present her views on love, religious devotion, and language as an alternative to philosophic method as it is conceived by Abelard.

This anthology brings together a diversity of readings in the philosophy of language from the ancient Greeks to contemporary analytic, feminist, and multicultural perspectives. The emphasis is on issues that have a direct bearing on concerns about knowledge, reality, meaning, and understanding. A general introduction and introductions to each group of readings identify both the continuities and differences in the way "big" questions in philosophy of language have been addressed by philosophers of different historical periods, institutional affiliations, races, and genders.

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, a collection of critical feminist essays on Hannah Arendt, illustrates both the disorientation and the insights that can result when feminist philosophers come to terms with a canonical figure who is a woman.

In complex and lucid prose, Nye then moves methodically through the major contemporary fields in philosophy - logic, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and political theory - in order to demonstrate the ways in which contemporary feminist thought is challenging basic presuppositions in each of these fields. In every case, she offers fair and articulate summaries of the major debates for and against incorporating feminist perspectives in mainstream philosophy, while presenting compelling arguments for her own vision of the crucial role (...) that feminist philosophy should play in transforming her discipline. (shrink)

Algunos libros recientes promueven a Alexander von Humboldt como un héroe ambiental desestimando el papel de su compañero de exploración, el botánico Aimé Bonpland, refiriéndose a él con unas pocas frases imprecisas: dejó Europa, se estableció en algún lugar de América del Sur, hizo algo de agricultura. Sostengo que los escritos de Bonpland y sus cuarenta años de desarrollo regional, que su investigación botánica, etno-farmacológica y en conservación ambiental en Argentina y Brasil, presentan un mejor modelo para una ética ambiental (...) que el ascenso a la fama de Humboldt en Europa. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex identifies the philosophical vantage point from which she will survey the situation of women as existentialist. The ways in which she must later compromise that committment to theory in order to remain true to her feminist insights foreshadow recent developments in feminist ethics and epistemology.

This paper identifies the founding project of traditional philosophy of language as an attempt to unify the diversity and individuality of spoken language in order to produce a transpersonal intelligibility. The supposed necessary truth that we cannot directly understand what others say which underlies such a project is exposed as a willful avoidance of the discourse of others typical of masculine styles of communication.

This is a unique, groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays by leading women in philosophy. It provides a glimpse at the experiences of the generation that witnessed, and helped create, the remarkable advances now evident for women in the field.

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, a collection of critical feminist essays on Hannah Arendt, illustrates both the disorientation and the insights that can result when feminist philosophers come to terms with a canonical figure who is a woman.

Philosophy's traditional "man of reason"—independent, neutral, unemotional—is an illusion. That's because the "man of reason" ignores one very important thing—the woman. Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic collects new and old essays that shed light on the underexplored intersection of logic and feminism.

Recent books promote Alexander Humboldt as an environmental hero, dismissing Humboldt’s partner in exploration, the botanist Aimé Bonpland, in a few inaccurate phrases: left Europe, went native somewhere in South America, did some farming. Bonpland’s writings and his forty years of regional development, botanical research, ethno-pharmacology, and environmental conservation in Argentina and Brazil present a better model for an environmental ethics than Humboldt’s climb to fame in Europe.

The form of the sentence, as it is understood in contemporary semantics and linguistics, is functional. This paper interprets the metaphors in which Frege shows what the functional sentence means, arguing that Frege's sentence is neither an adequate translation of natural language nor of use in feminist theorizing.