Empowerment and Interconnectivity

Toward a Feminist History of Utilitarian Philosophy Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Publish Date: 11/29/2012
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Page Count: 224 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-05814-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-271-05815-3

Hardcover Edition: $59.95Add to Cart

“Empowerment and Interconnectivity is an important, finely reasoned, politely radical book that will be widely discussed. It makes a persuasive case that histories of philosophy need to be reconceived to ‘fit’ feminist philosophy rather than the other way around. Centering on methodological analyses, the book both honors and revitalizes a philosophical heritage of justice-seeking feminists no longer marginalized, even erased, from ‘patrimonial’ histories.” —Elizabeth K. Minnich, founding member of the Society for the Study of Women Philosophers

“Catherine Villanueva Gardner’s work provides a careful analysis of feminist philosophers in the utilitarian tradition. Fresh readings of old canonical favorites—Bentham and Mill—are complemented by the resurrection of long-forgotten philosophers—Anna Doyle Wheeler, Frances Wright, and Catharine Beecher. The book is more than an erudite expansion of the canon providing a gender-sensitive analysis of writings by marginalized women authors. It maps a central criterion for developing a properly feminist history of philosophy: namely, empowerment. Just how does a particular author and set of texts actually free women to participate more broadly in society?” —Reverend John J. Conley, Loyola University

“Empowerment and Interconnectivity is a wonderful exemplar of how to identify and interpret feminist theorizing in the history of philosophy. Using the empowerment of women as her interpretive lens, Gardner spells out the limitations of traditional approaches, crafts incisive analyses of often overlooked nineteenth-century feminist philosophers such as Catharine Beecher and Frances Wright, and demonstrates how to read a range of genres—including domestic advice manuals—for their philosophical significance. Writing with clarity and grace, Gardner gives us a thoughtful, imaginative guide for doing feminist philosophy reflectively and responsibly.” —Marilyn Fischer, University of Dayton

“This is a well-written and interesting book that offers a new approach to 'forgotten' and traditionally categorized feminist philosophy that requires, and begins to develop, a sophisticated theoretical apparatus. It will make a significant contribution to current feminist philosophy and, for sufficiently open-minded philosophers, to innovative ways of reading historical texts by utilitarian thinkers, the import of which is clearly philosophical despite their often having been written in styles unfamiliar or even puzzling to the makers and adjudicators of canonicity. In short, it breaks new ground and does so in an engaging way. Readers will find much to discover and much to reconsider.” —Lorraine Code, York University

“In addition to its theoretical proposals, Empowerment and Interconnectivity makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of several nineteenth-century feminist philosophers, bringing some of them to our attention as philosophers for the first time.” —Charlotte Witt, University of New Hampshire

Feminist history of philosophy has successfully focused thus far on canon revision, canon critique, and the recovery of neglected or forgotten women philosophers. However, the methodology remains underexplored, and it seems timely to ask larger questions about how the history of philosophy is to be done and whether there is, or needs to be, a specifically feminist approach to the history of philosophy. In Empowerment and Interconnectivity, Catherine Gardner examines the philosophy of three neglected women philosophers, Catharine Beecher, Frances Wright, and Anna Doyle Wheeler, all of whom were British or American utilitarian philosophers of one stripe or another. Gardner’s focus in this book is less on accounting for the neglect or disappearance of these women philosophers and more on those methodological (or epistemological) questions we need to ask in order to recover their philosophy and categorize it as feminist.

Catherine Villanueva Gardner is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Contents

Introduction: Empowerment and Interconnectivity

1 Wheeler and Thompson: The Appeal and the Problem of Empowerment

2 Catharine Beecher and Writing Philosophy for Women

3 Frances Wright: Interconnectivity and Synthesis

4 Tea and Sympathy with John Stuart Mill

Conclusion and Next Steps

References

Index