An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy: Conversations Between Men and Women Philosophers

Professor Karen J. Warren brings together and sets into conversation fifteen pairs of Western philosophers, including Augustine and Hildegard, Abelard and Heloise, Descartes and Princess Elisabeth, Hobbes and Macaulay, Leibniz and Conway, Rousseau and Wollstonecraft, and Sartre and Beauvoir. Excerpts from key texts by these philosophers allow the reader to compare insights between women and men who philosophize. Reading this book made me more aware of how thoroughly we must revise the Western canon; I look on my shelves at the Sixty Great Books collection and feel amazed at how few women show up there.In some cases--Dewey and Addams for example--men and women enriched each other's thought. In others, the women supply exactly what's missing from a man's philosophy. Reading the questions posed by Princess Elisabeth to Descartes, questions he was unable to answer, stirs amazement that she anticipated so many criticisms we now take for granted. Today many of us see Descartes' thought as dualistic, disembodied, and disconnected from the world, but she saw it first, and told him so.Indispensable collection for the serious philosopher.

awesome, not just old white guys

The book juxtaposed better known male philosophers, with often less well known women thinkers. I found the women often showed more emotional groundedness in their philosophical stances. The men sometimes came off as ivory tower types who didn't live their own perspective in the nitty gritty of their own lives. But this is no mere "feminist reconstruction" of the past. I found the editor and the writers of individual chapters to be honest and fair in what they wrote. This is exactly what I was looking for to help flesh out the early lectures in a History of Psychology course I was teaching. Very interesting.

Very good condition.