Women in the History of Philosophy

Worldwide, pre-nineteenth-century philosophical works by women are almost entirely undocumented. However, this fact has so far caused little concern to the vast majority of authors, even those who wrote the most comprehensive histories of world philosophy. Due to a predominantly masculine perspective in the discipline, the exclusion of women from the canon of the history of philosophy continues to this day. This tendency has also affected attempts to reconstruct, document, and integrate “non-Western” philosophical traditions into global discourse, attempts which have been under way since the 1980s. A contemporary revision of the canon of the history of philosophy, however, cannot take place solely from an intercultural or global perspective; it must also address and correct patriarchal structures of exclusion in all regions of the world. The paper discusses the specific challenges of reconstructing the history of women philosophers outside Europe.