Recipient organisationUniversity of ExeterSource-published name: University of Exeter
Funding£1.3M
PeriodJul 2023 — Jul 2028
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Seventeenth-century women wrote philosophy in poems, periodicals, and scribbled notes in book margins—genres that standard histories of philosophy routinely ignore. CultPhil argues that this narrow focus on formal treatises has systematically erased women’s contributions to early modern thought. The project examines four European regions—France, England, Italy, and the Dutch Republic—across three strands: the unconventional genres women used, the transnational networks through which their work circulated, and the contested identity of the female philosopher itself. By reconstructing the sociological conditions—restricted education, limited access to scientific domains like natural philosophy, and cultural assumptions about female intellect—that shaped both women’s writing and its later invisibility, the project aims to produce a more accurate, inclusive account of philosophy’s past. This is fundamental humanities research. If successful, it will not change a manufacturing process or a medical diagnostic. It will change how scholars understand the history of ideas—and, in doing so, challenge the canon that still shapes university curricula and public assumptions about who counts as a philosopher.
View original technical description
Where are the women philosophers in the history of philosophy? This is not a new question, nor has it been left unaddressed; however, CultPhil proposes a new way of responding to it that will transform our understanding of the history of philosophy. Focussing on seventeenth-century Europe, the project investigates what I am calling 'cultures of philosophy' to produce a more inclusive, contextually-defined approach to women's philosophical writing from the period. Such cultures include genres not usually considered to be philosophical (such as periodicals, salon poetry, marginalia); the circulation and exchange of philosophical writing by women; transnational dynamics of authority and collectivity; and ideas about the identity of a female philosopher. Exploring these cultures will a) allow us to move beyond reliance on the philosophical treatise as the main principle for inclusion in the canon, and b) enable analysis of the sociological conditions of learning that were both restrictive and enabling for women writers. The project argues that those conditions-from education to the problem posed by the female intellectual-shaped both philosophical writing by women and the processes that have rendered that writing less visible. As part of the project's comparative approach, it will examine four case studies, France, England, Italy and the Dutch Republic, across three research strands. The first strand looks at 'Genres', and, to maximise analysis, concentrates on the sub-discipline of natural philosophy, the domain closest to science and most inaccessible to women. The second strand, 'Exchanges', takes a transnational approach to women's knowledge production and its historiography. The third strand, 'Identities', analyses the figure of the female philosopher. CultPhil aims to understand how sociological conditions inflected philosophical writing by women; to interrogate processes of historiographical invisibility; and to challenge the philosophical canon.
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