Women Philosophers and the Cosmological Argument: A Case Study in Feminist History of Philosophy

Author(s):  
Marcy P. Lascano
2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Rudolph ◽  
Roman Seidel

AbstractThe Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.


Hypatia ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-180
Author(s):  
Penelope Deutscher

How might we locate originality as emerging from within the “discrete” work of commentary? Because many women have engaged with philosophy informs (including commentary) that preclude their work from being seen as properly “original,” this question is a feminist issue. Via the work of selected contemporary French women philosophers, the author shows how commentary can reconfigure the philosophical tradition in innovative ways, as well as in ways that change what counts as philosophical innovation.


Author(s):  
Andrea Reichenberger

The following article describes a pilot study on the possible integration of digital historiography into teaching practice. It focuses on Émilie Du Châtelet’s considerations of space and time against the background of Leibniz’s program of analysis situs. Historians have characterized philosophical controversies on space and time as a dichotomy between the absolute and relational concepts of space and time. In response to this, the present case study pursues two aims: First, it shows that the common portrayal simplifies the complex pattern of change and the semantic shift from absolute-relational concepts of space and time to invariance and conservation principles. Second, against this background, I present the Online Reading Guide on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, a teaching and research project designed to help navigate Du Châtelet’s Institutions physiques (1740/42). This project makes Du Châtelet’s important text visible to a broad audience and allows for a more critical and deeper view on classical topics of the history of philosophy and science in a more accessible way than traditional introductions.


Written by twenty expert women in philosophy and representing a diverse and pluralistic approach to philosophy as a discipline, this book engages girls and women ages sixteen to twenty-four, as well as university and high school educators and students who want a change from standard anthologies that include few or no women. The book is divided into four sections that correspond to major fields in philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics—but the chapters within those sections provide fresh ways of understanding those fields.Every chapter begins with a lively anecdote about a girl or woman in literature, myth, history, science, or art. Chapters are dominated by women’s voices, with nearly all primary and secondary sources used coming from women in the history of philosophy and a diverse set of contemporary women philosophers. All chapters offer the authors’ distinct philosophical perspectives written in their own voices and styles, representing diverse training, backgrounds, and interests. The introduction and prologue explicitly invite the book’s readers to engage in philosophical conversation and reflection, thus setting the stage for continued contemplation and dialogue beyond the book itself. The result is a rigorous yet accessible entry point into serious philosophical contemplation designed to embolden and strengthen its readers’ own senses of philosophical inquiry and competence. The book’s readers will feel confident in knowing that expert women affirm an equitable and just intellectual landscape for all and thus have lovingly collaborated to write this book.


2021 ◽  
pp. 6-9
Author(s):  
Rebecca Buxton ◽  
Lisa Whiting ◽  

This history of philosophy is a history of men. Or at least, that’s how it has been told over the past several hundred years. But, over the last few decades, we’ve begun to see more and more recognition of women philosophers and the huge impact that they have had on the course of our discipline. There have always been philosophers who happened to be women. Hypatia of Alexandria was known by her contemporaries simply as The Philosopher, and hundreds of young men travelled from throughout the region to attend her public lectures. Philosophers who happen to be women, then, are nothing new. But our failure to recognise them as full contributors to the subject makes them appear to us as something of a surprise. A result of this is that women are often remembered as women first: they are seen more as women than they’re seen as philosophers.


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