WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

The history of 19th century European philosophy is often told exclusively as a history of male voices – as a story ‘From Kant to Hegel’, ‘From Hegel to Marx’ and so on. By contrast, the voices of women philosophers (such as Karoline von Günderrode, Bettina von Arnim or Clara Zetkin) are rarely remembered, and even less frequently taught. This course aims to change that. Reading a wide array of texts written by women intellectuals of the time, we will aim to understand their philosophical contributions to German Idealism (e.g. Günderrode and Arnim), Feminism (e.g. Zetkin and Hedwig Dohm) and classical Socialism (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg). We will also examine their relationship to, and, more importantly, their critique of the work of some of their male counterparts (such as Fichte, Schelling, Marx and Nietzsche). Finally, we will consider why these women's voices have been so frequently neglected – and why it is, from a contemporary philosophical standpoint, worthwhile to discover them again.