The project investigates early feminist arguments and their place in the history of philosophy. It covers a wide range of philosophical writings by, for, and about women, offering the first comprehensive philosophical study of the debates related to gender running through the Renaissance and into the Enlightenment.
Our primary research question is whether there was what we may call a coherent tradition of feminist thought, starting from Christine de Pizan’s (1346 - ca. 1430) criticism of male dominance in the early fifteenth century and until the explicit political demands for social change in the early nineteenth century. We expect to find continuity that stretches across differences, that is, patterns of arguments which recur consistently, even when certain aspects of an argument change over time.
The continuity hypothesis is tested in relation to four clusters of themes: (i) the entitlement to education and education’s relation to innate capacities; (ii) claims about women’s superiority and/or equality between the genders; (iii) the relations between body and mind; (iv) issues of virtue, citizenship, and political rule. We therefore analyse chosen arguments through metaphysical, epistemological, and moral lenses (including questions such as the essential nature of gender difference and similarity; the evidence needed to know whether women are equal, inferior, or superior to men; and the political implications of different conceptions of gender for women’s place in society).
Our work covers a variety of thinkers from different periods and countries, including lesser-known figures such as Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653), François Poulain de la Barre (1647-1723), Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), and Mary Hays (1759-1843). A special emphasis will be put on marginalised figures in the history of philosophy, including non-Christian/European writers, as well as on the interconnections between proto-feminist, anti-slavery, and anti-colonialist ideas.
