Abstracts

How Du Châtelet was excluded from the modern philosophy canon at its inception

Andrew Janiak 

Du Châtelet’s Institutions physiques was published in French, German and Italian between 1740-43. Maglo (2008) and Roe (2018) showed that it was copied for a dozen articles in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. In Encyclopédie entries and in other work, D’Alembert tackled Du Châtelet’s views, but ignores her in his Discours preliminaire, the text which announces the canon of Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke and Leibniz. Following Ebbersmeyer (2019), I then note that although Du Châtelet was one of only four women to appear in Brucker’s Portrait Gallery of Famous Authors, she was never mentioned in his influential history of modern philosophy (1744). For Brucker, women could contribute to philosophy only as followers of some man and could therefore be excluded from the canon.

Du Châtelet herself foresaw this harmful interpretation, recognizing that women might be seen as “derivative” thinkers promoting the views of some “great man” like Descartes or Leibniz. In the preface to the Institutions, she says that modern philosophy has been distorted by treating the works of such men as the gospel. The Institutions, which eschews any “school” of thought, represents an autonomous philosophical treatise. This perspective reflects her broader conception of philosophy: no philosopher has seen everything, she says, so no philosopher ought to be idolized and no reader ought to be a mere disciple.

The Intellectual Praxis of The Noble Woman Anne Krabbe

Anne-Marie Mai 

Anne Krabbe (1552–1618) came from a distinguished old Danish aristocratic family and, like her relations, she was deeply interested in her family history and in collecting ballads. At the age of thirty-six, she married the delicate Jacob Bjørn, who was her junior by nine years and who owned the manor house of Stenalt, situated by Randers Fjord on the east coast of Jutland. Jacob Bjørn died quickly, in 1596, and Anne Krabbe spent the twenty-four years of her widowhood eagerly pursuing her historical interests and enhancing her manor and garden. She collected ballads, books, and artefacts and restored Ørsted Church, which was part of her estate. She used her collections in establishing Stenalt as a so-called ‘power house’, which became the centre of economic, cultural and historical influence. Anne Krabbe was not an academic philosopher or a famous learned woman, but like other noble women she developed an intellectual praxis and a life philosophy that became an important, but rather neglected part of the renaissance.

While saying that they were wise, they made themselves fools, Anna Maria van Schurman’s Criticism of Metaphysics

Anne-Sophie Sørup Wandall

Very little has been written about early modern women’s metaphysical thought. Not before 2018 did we see a publication devoted exclusively to women’s contribution in this philosophical discipline.

In my presentation, I will reconstruct and critically assess Anna Maria van Schurman’s arguments against the discipline of metaphysics, beginning with her unforgiving criticism of abstract, conceptual thinking and the moral character of metaphysicians. Then, I will discuss whether van Schurman’s anti-metaphysical position is vulnerable to the charge of self-referential incoherency, meaning that it can itself be read as a metaphysical theory. In this context, I will discuss the limitations of metaphysics, incorporating terminology from contemporary meta-metaphysical debates. Finally, I will offer some reflections on why van Schurman became so disillusioned with this academic discipline, relating her criticism of metaphysics to the loss of her intellectual identity in exchange for her newfound identity as a prominent figure in the Labadist community.

The trouble between women, gender and science in modernity – a historical approach

Bente Rosenbeck

Women were allowed to enrol at the university in Denmark in 1875. However, even long after the sight of the odd woman student had become fairly commonplace, the idea that they might conduct research was still completely inconceivable. The deeply negative attitude toward the few women who attended university was due to a negative view on the female body, the sexual and reproductive body.

Womanhood and the practice of science were incompatible. This would become increasingly significant in the 19th century, with the modern university and the advent of reforms aimed at bringing research under university auspices. Women entered the universities at the same time. What happened?

Modern science banished women to the private sphere and made them part of natural history rather than history. As part of the modernisation of science, gender was biologised and naturalised. The scientific conceptualisation of womanhood could be used as proof that women, by being linked to the private sphere, were not capable of taking part in politics or the labour market or producing intellectual work. The private and a female intellectual identity were defined in opposition to the public, the scientific and the male. A discourse about women’s inferior intellectual capacity arose, which lasted until the 1970s.

On Divine Bondage: Obedience and Freedom of Conscience as Paths for Intellectual Inquiry in Early Moder Women Spiritual Writings

Carme Font Paz

The essence and manifestation of God’s love has been a major concern for men and women of faith over the centuries, and the object of mystical, fictional and analytical approaches to understanding the relationship between human and divine nature. This presentation will briefly examine the methodological challenges posed by narratives of faith and grace that seek to represent subjective reality as an experience of universal truth.

By paying special attention to three seventeenth-century women writers from different Christian backgrounds, we shall see in what ways their notion of individual conscience was constructed and invoked as the primary reason for writing and public speaking against political error, pastoral misconduct, and domestic abuse within their congregations and communities of faith. Their arguments point at the “hypocrisie” and superficiality of the alleged “liberty of conscience and freedom” of their own communities, claiming to be freer in their obedience to God.

The Inclusive Enlightenment: Women’s Reception of the Ideals of the German Enlightenment

Corey W. Dyck

With only limited access to formal education and granted, at best, the status of ‘passive citizenship,’ German women at the end of the 18th century could immediately recognize the implicit exclusivity in the Enlightenment imperatives ‘sapere aude!’ and ‘emerge from your self-incurred minority.’ Indeed, this recognition is evident in figures like Amalia Holst, Henriette Herz, Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, and Elise Reimarus, each of whom, as I will contend, works in their own writings and their wider intellectual activity to reframe this exclusive conception of Enlightenment in a way that expands and extends its scope to enhance opportunities for participation within it and comes closer to realising the truly progressive character of the ideals of Enlightenment.

Female Philosophical Identity in the 21st Century

Eyja M. J. Brynjarsdóttir

In recent decades, it has become increasingly noted in the Western world that philosophy has a woman problem. It lags behind other humanities in terms of gender proportions and is now one of very few humanities disciplines where women are still a minority. Various explanations have been suggested, but I will be focusing especially on those having to do with intellectual identity. Among other things, philosophy has tended to promote the image of being a field for those who are highly intellectual. Given cultural stereotypes and hegemonic values, those most likely to be perceived as highly intellectual are able-bodied, white, cis men from privileged backgrounds. How do those who do not fit this script manage to gain an identity as philosophers? And how can we change philosophy to make it more inclusive and welcoming to a diverse group of people?

Stoic Ethics in Astell and Chudleigh: Virtue, Dignity, and the Passions

Jacqueline Broad 

This paper examines women’s engagement with Stoic ethics in early modern England. I argue that a distinctive conception of Stoic therapy emerges in the writings of Mary Astell (1666-1731) and Mary Chudleigh (1656-1710) on women’s education, motherhood, and marriage. In their writings, Astell and Chudleigh embrace well-known aspects of Stoic philosophy, such as living in accordance with nature, the importance of rational self-government, and the ideal of freedom from the passions. But they also allow room for the cultivation of eupatheiai or life-affirmative feelings, such as feelings of respect, affection, and good will toward other people. A complex of Stoic ideas, I maintain, lies at the heart of their defenses of women. Their writings reveal that there is a positive gender-inclusive narrative to tell about the Stoic tradition in this era—one in which Stoicism is shaped and adapted to address women’s specific concerns and lived experiences.

Nature, Poetry, and Politics: Karoline von Günderrode og Bettina Brentano von Arnim

Kristin Gjesdal

This presentation explores the contributions of nineteenth-century women to social and political thought. Through a novel reading of works by Karoline von Günderrode and Bettina Brentano von Arnim, it hones in on the philosophical arc from early romanticism to late-century socialism and beyond. The aim is to demonstrate new aspects of romanticism and idealism, but also to indicate how this reinterpretation poses a challenge for modern political philosophy. In this way, the presentation seeks to demonstrate how we, in paying attention to the works of women philosophers, can uncover new historical lines and gain new systematic tools for addressing key issues in contemporary philosophical thought, including issues relating to ecology, social justice, and the relationship between philosophy and art.

Birgitte Thott’s On the Path to a Happy Life (ca. 1659)

Maria Nørby Pedersen

Women have for centuries found ways to do intellectual work. Many were first movers, struggling against the tide of patriarchist structure, but many participated in what seems to be well accepted (female) cultures of writing and learning. Researchers especially point to a close connection between women and religion as a place, where women could read, write, debate, and negotiate their place in society. However, both women and religion have been marginalized in historic research from the 19th century until the end of 20th century. There is still much work to be done in understanding the possibilities of early modern women and how they navigated an intellectual life in a Christian society. With this paper I will approach this double question of understanding early modern religion and early modern women writers, as well as their connection, by looking at two handwritten copies of a lost philosophical work by the Danish noblewoman Birgitte Thott from the 17th century. Through an analysis of the historical context, the materiality of the copies, and the content itself, I will discuss the possibilities of early modern women writers and the connection with religion. Thott’s thesis and its copies seem to point both at the exceptional work of a woman scholar and the popular, communal pious literary work among women of early modern Denmark.

Mary Wollstonecraft as a Natural Philosopher

Martin Fog Lantz Arndal

Although Mary Wollstonecraft today is mostly well known as a feminist philosopher and philosopher of education, her last published work Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, challenges that legacy. By highlighting aspects of Wollstonecraft’s thinking that pertains to ecology, nature, and natural history, I would like to emphasize aspects of Wollstonecraft’s thinking that challenge the feminist identity, proposing instead to read her as an early Romantic natural philosopher.

The Construction of a Female Intellectual: Mary Wollstonecraft in Åbo Tidningar 1797 and 1830

Martina Reuter 

The paper discusses two articles on Mary Wollstonecraft published as serial stories in Åbo Tidningar in 1797 and 1830 respectively. The first text is based on Wollstonecraft’s A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796) and originally written for Åbo Tidningar. It was the first extensive presentation of Wollstonecraft to a Swedish audience. The second text is based on William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of ‘Rights of Woman’ (1798) and it is a slightly abridged translation of a German book review originally published already 1800. My aim is twofold. I will a) analyse the two pictures given of Wollstonecraft in the two texts and b) contextualize these pictures in relation to what we know about the reception of Wollstonecraft in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Fire, Depth, Learning, Taste. Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht’s Poetic Philosophy and its Fate in History

Matilda Amundsen Bergström

Enlightenment philosopher and poet Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718–1763) was the most prolific female intellectual in the Swedish 18th century. Over the course of her long career, she published numerous texts in which she engaged directly with philosophical topics and writers. She consistently chose to do so in poetic form – a style of writing that she considered to be characterized by “fire, depth, learning, taste”. In her lifetime, this earned her the respect of the period’s intellectual elite. Yet as the history of Swedish philosophy was consolidated in subsequent centuries, Nordenflycht was written out of it.

In this presentation, I will argue that Nordenflycht’s initial success and later exclusion from the history of philosophy were both shaped by an interplay between gender and genre. In a first section, I will discuss Nordenflycht’s self-presentation in three of her most ambitious philosophical poems, all of which are addressed to male intellectuals. I will pay special attention to how poetic form impacts that self-presentation. In a second section I will consider some 18th-, 20th- and 21st-century examples of the reception of Nordenflycht. Here too, I will highlight how notions of gender and genre intersect – but this time to create a wholly different image of the poet.

Wilhelmine von Bayreuth's thought on philosophy according to a still unpublished manuscript

Paola Rumore 

The talk deals with the philosophical commitment of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, Frederick the Great's beloved sister, relying on new primary sources. Indeed, on the basis of a still unpublished manuscript, it is now possible to locate Wilhelmine's long-lasting philosophical confrontation with her brother and with Voltaire within the more general frame of her own philosophy. Beside the relevant passages in her private correspondence, and her opinions in favor and against Frederick's early closeness to Christian Wolff's philosophy and his later approach to Locke's, topics and arguments of the manuscript complete the image of the Markgräfin-philosopher. This new source gives voice to Wilhelmina's need to promote a tight interaction between philosophy and the practical realm of life; it gives expression to her eclectic attitude, reveals the richness of her sources, her understanding of the history of philosophy. Looking for answers to her own questions makes these thoughts of Wilhelmina on philosophy an important tool for understanding her place in the female philosophical scene of the time.

Subverting Supra Sexum: Birgitte Thott on Women’s Intellectual Limits

Rosa Skytt Burr 

Danish philosopher and translator Birgitte Thott’s (1610-1662) translations of ancient and contemporary stoic moral philosophy earned her a reputation at home and abroad for erudition so remarkable that she was celebrated for transcending the intellectual limitations of her sex. This notion is encapsulated by the then popular epithet supra sexum, i.e., “beyond [her] sex” in Latin, which was used often in laudatory poems etc. to isolate the subject from the rest of her sex. However, the topography of sex and learning presumed by supra sexum does not correlate with Thott’s, quite the contrary. Thott, who thought women’s access to education was such a vital cause that she dedicated her classic Seneca translation to women, argues that since studying leads to wisdom, virtue, and happiness, it is exactly by pursuing wisdom that women stay within the boundaries of their sex. This argument is a crucial part of her critique of the notion that studying harms women by making them proud, pompous, reckless and disobedient. In this paper, I will argue that Thott’s critique of the notion that studying harms women also subverts the logic of supra sexum into which she was so often placed. This is because the notion that studying harms women share key assumptions with the supra sexum logic concerning the intellectual limitations and boundaries of women. Both assume that women breach or come into fundamental conflict with or their sex by studying. In this paper, I will demonstrate how Thott subverts these notions by examining her ethical and epistemological arguments for women’s access to education.

Biographical note:
Rosa Skytt Burr is a PhD fellow in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of the research project “Archeology of the Female Intellectual Identity (1650-1800)”.

Can Female Philosophers Be Ingenious? On Elisabeth of Bohemia and the debate about the ingenium philosophicum

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer 

Does philosophy require any specific talent? And if so, do women possess this giftedness, called ingenium, to the same extent as men? The latter question was intensively debated during the Early modern period (and beyond) in Germany. While many voices argued for the negative, we also find keen defenders of women’s intellectual abilities. In my contribution, I firstly present some aspects of this debate focusing on arguments presented in texts about women in general. Secondly, I compare these findings with the peculiar case of Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (1618-1680). Considered to be one of the most famous women philosophers of the Early modern period, she is an illustrious example of both: women’s philosophical genius and the absence of it. Drawing on dedications and letters addressed to Elisabeth, I reconstruct the arguments for these conflicting assessments. Finally, I will draw some conclusions concerning the historical debate about women’s philosophical talent and its relevance for today.

Letters, Philosophy and Women Philosophers: Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham

Sarah Hutton 

The philosophical letter has distinguished classical precedents, but today philosophers’ letters are usually regarded as secondary to their published philosophical writings. However, letters are a major source for women’s intellectual life, especially in philosophy; they are sometimes the only sources we have that women philosophised. The fragmentary state of most women’s philosophical correspondence presents many challenges for forming a full picture of their thinking, but their letters are often revelatory of the personal and social circumstances in which they pursued philosophy, and a rare chance to witness thought in process. My paper will discuss the correspondence of early modern women philosophers (principally Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham) for what they reveal about pursuing philosophy outside academia, and the strategies which they adopted for participating in philosophical debate. I argue that the importance of letters as a means for women’s engaging with philosophy requires that we re-evaluate the relevance of letters for the history of philosophy.