Make Room for More Voices in Philosophy

In her new book, How to Think Like a Woman, the journalist Regan Penaluna zooms in on four overlooked female philosophers. Focusing on them is valuable not just because of the luminosity of each one’s thinking but also because of the argument implicit in such a choice: that women have an indispensable role to play in the male-dominated field of philosophy, Sophia Stewart wrote last week.

One’s understanding of the world is invariably shaped by one’s experience in it, so when only certain people become philosophers, the resulting canon is correspondingly narrow and warped, Stewart continued. Some of the most exciting revelations in philosophy have come from efforts to include new voices. For example, the women in Penaluna’s book laid the groundwork for modern feminism. Another consequential development came when the rebellious and anti-authoritarian thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte argued that philosophy should be accessible to the masses, Andrea Wulf writes in her book Magnificent Rebels. Fichte’s ideas, particularly his assertion that all people have free will, are still foundational to virtually all modern Western thought.

With a wider pool, enlightenment could come from anywhere. For example, many Americans got their introduction to moral philosophy not at a college seminar but on television, by watching The Good Place. The sitcom guides viewers through some of the most famous names in the discipline: One episode title in the last season ingeniously twists the French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “Hell is other people” into something much more tender that might be seen as the show’s overall message—help is other people.

Kids are another source of unexpected profundity. Their natural curiosity, if taken seriously, can guide adults through philosophical quandaries, as Scott Hershovitz demonstrates when he follows his own children down this path in the book Nasty, Brutish, and Short. And these early ruminations, if nurtured, can lead to even more wisdom later on. Just look at the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s intense dedication to the value of individual freedom, which, if her autobiographical novel Inseparable is any indication, has roots in her childhood.

Acknowledging the value of such diverse philosophical contributions can be humbling. Doing so involves admitting that intelligence doesn’t always look like what we thought it did. But it can also be a freeing reminder that there is so much left to learn—and so many places to learn from.

What We’re Reading

Illustration by Matt Chase / The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; “Mary Wollstonecraft,” John Opie, 1790–91.

Philosophy’s big oversight

“If philosophy is concerned with the nature of human existence, then a canon dominated by men, to paraphrase Joanna Russ in her 1983 book How to Suppress Women’s Writing, is not just incomplete but distorted.”

Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty

Where our sense of self comes from

“When the French revolutionaries declared all men equal, they promised a new social order founded on freedom and the power of ideas. Philosophy left the ivory tower and provoked ordinary people to action. Words and ideas could change the world more fundamentally than could weapons and monarchs.”

NBC

The Good Place was a metaphor all along

“The NBC sitcom disguised itself as one thing (a comedy about a woman who accidentally got into heaven) before revealing that it was actually something else: a comedic appraisal of philosophy, morality, and the meaning of life.”

Oliver Munday / The Atlantic

Why kids make the best philosophers

“Every kid—every single one—is a philosopher. In fact, they’re some of the best around.”

Denise Bellon / AKG images

The philosopher who took happiness seriously

“Inseparable foreshadows a core idea in de Beauvoir’s fiction, as well as her philosophical writing to come: an ongoing, conscious practice of—or negotiation for—freedom by every individual.”