Feminist Philosophy - A Primer

Because society has historically silenced women’s voices, the history of philosophy is dominated by male voices. Too many philosophy textbooks either entirely leave out women who are philosophers or they tack on a brief mention of them almost as an afterthought.

Feminist philosophy has been a vibrant school of philosophy for several centuries, achieving central place in philosophical thought since the mid-1900s. The contents of this book are excerpted from How We Are and How We Got Here: A Practical History of Western Philosophy. In that book, a chronological survey of philosophy, I discussed feminist philosophy within its historical context. But feminist thought deserves its own book, and this is that book.

Feminism is an approach to the world and everything within it. Therefore, feminism has been applied to all aspects of philosophy and to an analysis of most past philosophers. Everything in the history of philosophy has been analyzed using the feminist philosophical approach.