Western philosophy has long excluded the work of women thinkers from their canon. Presenting Women Philosophers addresses this exclusion by examining the breadth of women's contributions to Western thought over some 900 years. Editors Cecile T. Tougas and Sara Ebenreck have gathered essays and other writings that reflect women's deep engagement with the meaning of individual experience as well as the continuity of their philosophical concerns and practices. The collection also brings to light the philosophical importance of little-known work by such writers as Mme de Sabl and Mme de Condorcet. In the late twentieth century, more and more women are studying and teaching philosophy.
Nonacademic women are also concerned with important philosophical questions.
In doing so, we wondered if there were women philosophers before the twentieth century whose writing could help fulfill our need for what we felt was missing. We began to seek them and dig their work out of its undeserved obscurity. Slowly we uncovered accounts of experiences and perspectives of great value to us. In this book we have welcomed reflections on modes of expression that are different from men's conventional modes of writing philosophy. One contributor finds genuine philosophy in the insight of a woman mystic.