Abstract
This paper explores the idea of philosophical fortuna (fortune) in relation to the study of women philosophers of the past. Tracing a philosopher’s fortuna involves examining the reception of her philosophy across time in the context of changing philosophical debates, and the reworking of philosophical ideas in new and different circumstances. I argue that focusing on philosophical fortunae offers a means to reassess the realities of exclusion and marginalization of women philosophers, and to strengthen their claims to be admitted as full members of the community of philosophers. I conclude with a consideration of Mary Hays’s Female Biographies to this process.
The history of philosophy will be written many more times in terms of emerging themes and theories; in terms of the interests and concerns of thinkers yet to come; and in terms of new information and insights about the past. (Popkin 1999, p. xvii).
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Notes
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- 2.
Alanen (2004).
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Notable examples are The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Schmitt et al. (1988), and The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Garber and Ayers (1998). For more adventurous new history of philosophy see Laerke et al. (eds.) (2013), Condren et al. (eds.) (2006). And for feminist history of philosophy, see Alanen and Witt (eds.) (2004).
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O’Neill (2007), p. 20.
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Merchant (1980). Merchant deserves credit for a greater degree of historical specificity than was customary at that time, particular, for trying to take account of currents of thought unfamiliar in philosophical history (Hermetic and alchemical thought).
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Burke and Jacob (1996).
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Hutton (2015).
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cf. Ruth Edith Hagengruber’s observation that, “The history of philosophy as a whole is … a record of inclusions and exclusions, of forgetting and rediscovering,” Hagengruber (2015), p. 1.
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O’Neill (1998).
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See Hutton (2014).
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See for example Broad (2006).
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Since Conway’s book was published anonymously, her authorship was not picked up by the biographical anthologies on which Hays depended for her sources (e.g. Ballard and Biblioteca feminaeum). Hays did publish a separate appraisal and appreciation of Mary Wollstonecraft.
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Hutton, S. (2020). “Context” and “Fortuna” in the History of Women Philosophers: A Diachronic Perspective. In: Thorgeirsdottir, S., Hagengruber, R. (eds) Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44421-1_3
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