How to Think Like a Woman
Regan Penaluna entered academia with aspirations of becoming a philosopher and joining the ranks of others who live a life of the mind, exploring life's deepest questions. What she found was misogyny, deeply embedded not just in the halls of her universities, but in the very area of study she loved. She found herself contending with both the male gaze, but also the "male glance"--a consistent ignoring and devaluing of her work as a philosopher. When she came across a reference to Damaris Cudworth Masham, a contemporary of John Locke, she embarked on a mission to unearth the voices and philosophies of other women of the mind.
Here she examines Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft, both their lives and philosophies, which can't be separated in the telling because of the many obstacles each faced as women attempting to join conversations dominated and gate-kept by men. I am not a student of philosophy and wasn't sure how this book would work for me, but I was surprised to find myself fascinated. Penaluna is a fantastic storyteller, and she weaves her own story into the narratives of the lives of these women, as well as their philosophies, some of which are littered with internalized misogyny, but are also by necessity often focused on the wrong-headed inferior status of women in society.
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Publisher’s Description
From a bold new voice in nonfiction, an exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential 17th and 18th century feminist philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and her predecessors who have been written out of history, and a searing look at the author’s experience of patriarchy and sexism in academia
As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician, the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers?
One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge and God, and the condition of women. Masham’s work led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell, who moved to London at age twenty-one and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women’s minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna’s love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness.
In How to Think Like a Woman, Regan Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of these four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy as well as her own search for love and truth. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.
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