Thinking women: some thoughts on recovering women philosophers

INSPIRE lecture by Sarah Hutton (University of York).

Abstract

In the last century, so little was known about women philosophers, that it was commonly assumed that they were neither interesting nor important enough to figure in histories of philosophy. But the 1980s and 1990s saw the beginning of work which was to change all that. Since then, we have witnessed a veritable “renaissance” of women philosophers of the past. This recovery process has gathered momentum, but it is not complete. In my talk, I shall draw on my own experience of this recovery process to reflect on some of its implications for philosophy and the history of philosophy today.

The lecture will be streamed.

Please register at: psj@hum.ku.dk.

About Sarah Hutton

Sarah Hutton is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, UK. She studied at New Hall, University Cambridge (when 85% of Cambridge colleges excluded women), and at the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has published extensively on women in the history of philosophy. Her publications include Anne Conway. A Woman Philosopher (CUP 2004), British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (OUP, 2015) and Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680) (co-edited with Sabrina Ebbersmeyer) (Springer, 2021) as well as many articles on figures such as Margaret Cavendish, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft and Émilie du Chatelet. In 2022 she was awarded the Elisabeth of Bohemia Prize for her contribution to research on early modern women philosophers. She is currently President of the International Society for Intellectual History.