The Forgetting of Gender and the New Histories of Philosophy

Abstract This chapter responds to a cluster of interlocking questions regarding feminist history of early modern philosophy: (1) Which early modern women deserve places in our histories of philosophy? (2) Can gender be “epistemically significant”? (3) Are Descartes’s conceptions of mind and reason gender neutral? The answer to (1) is contained in what the author elsewhere refers to as “feminist Geistesgeschichte”: a narrative that, counterfactually, would have been the dominant narrative had there not been systematic misogyny at work. In response to (2), the chapter urges caution: choice of subject matter might be determined by one’s “standpoint,” but it is dangerous to maintain that philosophical strategies…