Where are the Women Philosophers?

I have long been accused of fetishizing the ideals of dead white men. It’s difficult not to be when studying philosophy, especially on any introductory level. Unfortunately, for most of human existence, history has been interpreted, written, and survived by the victors. The written word has always been precarious, even for the most influential people (It’s assumed only 31 of an estimated 200 works of Aristotle have survived), and only recently have we been able to have access to almost all published bodies of work from modern thinkers. However, the pendulum is quickly swinging back as we enter a digital dark age.

The prevalence of dead white men in philosophy does not mean philosophy is not a worthy endeavor for women, nor does it mean women are not natural philosophers. I would go so far as to argue that women have been doing most of the philosophizing throughout history, they just didn’t have the privilege of writing it down.

To pull from the first line of any intro to philosophy textbook, the simple definition of philosophy is the love of wisdom stemming from the root words philos, love, and sophia, wisdom. What this really means, however, is that before there were 8am required intro classes, there were ordinary people who took time to think about a good, structured, meaningful, life. These people, overall, were women. I have little physical evidence of this because the outcome of thinking about a good life is, hopefully, living a good life. The evidence we do have of women philosophers is found in robust family lives and healthy children.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a friend about her baby who just turned five months. Between cooking dinner and watching the baby monitor, she told me that he has recently discovered his gag reflex, an apparently very important milestone I had never even considered was something that needed discovering, and she would be starting introduce food into his diet after six months. She would be starting with sweet potato puree.

As someone without children, the foresight into what food she would be feeding her child in a month was wildly intriguing to me. Why sweet potato? She listed off several reasons, low allergen risk, high nutrients, easily digestible, sweet enough to encourage further food exploration. She had put notable time into researching and thinking about something I could not tell you if I had in my kitchen or not at this very moment.

I imagine she will not write this down. Instead, at six months, her baby will try sweet potato puree and all the time she spent pondering will now be spent on the next food, the next theory, the next milestone. An endless cycle of questions only answered by an ordinary action in the future until she has raised a full human who will impact the world positively or negatively, in part due to his first food being sweet potato puree. Sweet potato puree is a worthy endeavor.

Another instance, my mentor raising a preteen daughter who has started her period. She has had the same conversation for the past four months. I’m sorry you don’t feel well, you still have to go to school. Yes, it is unfair, make sure to take your midol. No, I can’t pick you up from school. Yes, we can have your favorite meal for dinner. I’m reminded of similar conversations I had with my mother at twelve. Conversations that have been going on for centuries, unwritten but never unimportant. Women don’t force their daughters to go to school or do chores or play sports during their periods because ‘that’s the way life is.’ They do it because it’s important. They do it because they are consciously and intentionally raising capable, strong, and resilient women. There’s no book titled On preteen menstrual cycles: an analysis of sending your daughter to school on her period. At least I don’t think there is. In the internet age, there may be articles or forums, but these are simply taking the place of the age old tradition of asking your community. In reality, each mother is considering her life, how it was handled when she was a child, how she would do it differently, and trying her best. She does not, upon successful execution, write a book on it. It is an inherently lived philosophy.

Further than women being the more prevalent philosophers, I would argue, historically, women’s lives have been better shaped to consider philosophical ideals due to what Aristotle describes as leisure. This is not the leisure we are familiar with today, the “doom-scrolling,” ignoring the world and all it’s problems, drinking the night away type leisure. This is active, noble leisure. Edith Hall writes in her book, Aristotle’s Way,

“The objective of work is usually to sustain our lives biologically, an objective we share with other animals. But the objective of leisure can and should be to sustain other aspects of our lives which make us uniquely human: our souls, our minds, our personal and civic relationships. Leisure is therefore wasted if we do not use it purposively.”

For centuries, women’s work was a type of noble leisure. The monotonous acts of walking miles to get water, washing dishes, or wringing laundry created space for mind to wander while lightly focused on a task at hand. Study after study have found that mind wandering (the new scientific term for daydreaming) creates more creative, intentional, and fulfilled individuals. When we are overly focused on a task at hand, it’s difficult to conceptualize how that task might impact the future, or how we might go about a task differently in the future. However, we seem hell-bent on removing time consuming, repetitive tasks.

Without combining what should be two articles into one, I’ll briefly touch on the automation of human experience. First, this is not a condemnation of women joining the workforce. That is a proven overall good, it would be wildly hypocritical of me, and it would crush my inner child who dreamed of nothing more than making power points and wearing heels every day. And really, this is not an overall condemnation of anything. Like anything, moderation and intentionality is key. The laundry machine and dryer literally saved lives. No more pneumonia from washing clothes in the cold and no more mutilations from wringing clothes (perhaps a tragic irony that wringers were known as ‘manglers’ in Europe). However, in today’s over-automated landscape, what intentional leisure are you participating in that makes a dishwasher a necessity for your humanity? Because for years, the only thing an automatic dishwasher has saved me from was time alone with my thoughts in favor of time bombarded by someone else’s.

My worry is that the further we remove mundane repetitive tasks from our lives, we risk removing the mind wandering that is essential for philosophy. However, this is not a call to junk your dishwasher or pick back up the laundry wash board. Instead, it’s an ask to remain intentional with your day dreaming. Make time to be alone with your thoughts. Go on a walk, do a puzzle, paint by number, or maybe just do the dishes. You’re in the class of the world’s most important philosophers, act like it.