Zeitgeist-Women Philosophers In History
Posted: 25 Sep 2016 16:39
The term "Zeitgeist" is defined as "general intellectual & moral climate of an era.
Daily Mail Tuesday, 13th September 2016
Answers to correspondents
Compiled by Charles Legg
PROOF IT ISN'T A MAN'S WORLD
Are there any female philosophers ..
The history of philosophy -the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, Reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline - predominantly white and predominantly male, and topics deemed important by the discipline tend to ignore race, ethnicity and gender.
It has been claimed by some that women are less comfortable than men in inhabiting the cold, analytical space, in which philosophy exists.
Others claim that in contemporary philosophy there is too much focus on the history of Western philosophy-eg.
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein and others, and not enough of Asian, African or Native American ideas about the nature of the mind.
But there is a history of women philosophers running through the ages.
Female philosophers of the Vedic period in India include Ghosha, Lopamudra , Maitreyi and Gargi.
Gargi, a Vedic prophetess, famously bamboozled male Verdic philosophers at a philosophic congress
with the question " The layer that is above the sky and below the Earth, which is described as
being situated between the Earth and the sky and which is indicated as the symbol of the past,
present and future, where is that situated ?"
Hypatia, the daughter of the philosopher Theon, was a famous teacher, mathematician and
astronomer who developed new-Platonism at Alexandria from AD 400 to her death in 415!
She was so well-known that correspondence addressed only to 'The Philosopher' is said to have
reached her.
Hypatia is thought to have taught ideas relating to different levels of reality and human ability to
understand them.
Hildegard of Bingham, a German Abbess (1098-1179) one of the greatest female figures of the medieval era, founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Elbingen in 1165, she was a fine
composer, a visionary , a phophet-known as The Sibyl Of The Rhine-and a pioneer who wrote
practical books on biology , botany,medicine, philosophy and the arts.
Ordo Virtutum is an early example of the liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality
play.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English feminist and egalitarian, associated with Thomas
Paine and William Godwin(her husband).
The Vindication Of The Rights Of Men(1790) she argued against the slave trade.
A Vincication Of Rights Of Women(1792) was an early feminist tract, and she opposed the monarchy,
the church, the military and marriage, which she described as 'legal prostitutiins'
She died after giving birth to the future Mary Shelly.
Ayn Rand(1905-1982) was a Russian born novelist a philosopher who emigrated to America in 1924.
Beloved of the conservative rights, she developed a philosophy of individualism she called objection
(A philosophy for living on Earth!) and she is known for her philosophical novels, The Fountain Head
(1935) and Atlas Shrugged (1957),
Simone de Beauvoir(1908) is one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.
Beauvoir developed an education in traditional philosophy (she wrote a thesis on Leibniz) into more
radical explorations of feminism and existence.
Her seminal work was The Second flower in which she argued that women have been held back
throughout history by the perception that they are a 'deviation' from the male norm.
She insisted that this as an assumption that must be broken if feminism were to succeed. Simone de Beauvoir, Emma Goldberg and Rosa Luxembourg
Quote by Ayn Rand
''When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality
to be our final arbiter; If I am right, he will learn;
If i am wrong, I will; one of us will win,
but both wil profit''
Daily Mail Tuesday, 13th September 2016
Answers to correspondents
Compiled by Charles Legg
PROOF IT ISN'T A MAN'S WORLD
Are there any female philosophers ..
The history of philosophy -the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, Reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline - predominantly white and predominantly male, and topics deemed important by the discipline tend to ignore race, ethnicity and gender.
It has been claimed by some that women are less comfortable than men in inhabiting the cold, analytical space, in which philosophy exists.
Others claim that in contemporary philosophy there is too much focus on the history of Western philosophy-eg.
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein and others, and not enough of Asian, African or Native American ideas about the nature of the mind.
But there is a history of women philosophers running through the ages.
Female philosophers of the Vedic period in India include Ghosha, Lopamudra , Maitreyi and Gargi.
Gargi, a Vedic prophetess, famously bamboozled male Verdic philosophers at a philosophic congress
with the question " The layer that is above the sky and below the Earth, which is described as
being situated between the Earth and the sky and which is indicated as the symbol of the past,
present and future, where is that situated ?"
Hypatia, the daughter of the philosopher Theon, was a famous teacher, mathematician and
astronomer who developed new-Platonism at Alexandria from AD 400 to her death in 415!
She was so well-known that correspondence addressed only to 'The Philosopher' is said to have
reached her.
Hypatia is thought to have taught ideas relating to different levels of reality and human ability to
understand them.
Hildegard of Bingham, a German Abbess (1098-1179) one of the greatest female figures of the medieval era, founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Elbingen in 1165, she was a fine
composer, a visionary , a phophet-known as The Sibyl Of The Rhine-and a pioneer who wrote
practical books on biology , botany,medicine, philosophy and the arts.
Ordo Virtutum is an early example of the liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality
play.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English feminist and egalitarian, associated with Thomas
Paine and William Godwin(her husband).
The Vindication Of The Rights Of Men(1790) she argued against the slave trade.
A Vincication Of Rights Of Women(1792) was an early feminist tract, and she opposed the monarchy,
the church, the military and marriage, which she described as 'legal prostitutiins'
She died after giving birth to the future Mary Shelly.
Ayn Rand(1905-1982) was a Russian born novelist a philosopher who emigrated to America in 1924.
Beloved of the conservative rights, she developed a philosophy of individualism she called objection
(A philosophy for living on Earth!) and she is known for her philosophical novels, The Fountain Head
(1935) and Atlas Shrugged (1957),
Simone de Beauvoir(1908) is one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.
Beauvoir developed an education in traditional philosophy (she wrote a thesis on Leibniz) into more
radical explorations of feminism and existence.
Her seminal work was The Second flower in which she argued that women have been held back
throughout history by the perception that they are a 'deviation' from the male norm.
She insisted that this as an assumption that must be broken if feminism were to succeed. Simone de Beauvoir, Emma Goldberg and Rosa Luxembourg
Quote by Ayn Rand
''When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality
to be our final arbiter; If I am right, he will learn;
If i am wrong, I will; one of us will win,
but both wil profit''