Amalia Holst: on the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education

Amalia Holst: on the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education
Author: Andrew Cooper
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2023-08-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192845942

This edition offers the first English translation of Amalia Holst's daring book, On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802). In one of the first works of German philosophy published under a woman's name, Holst presents a manifesto for women's education that centres on a basic provocation: as far as the mind is concerned, women are equal partakers in the project of Enlightenment and should thus have unfettered access to the sciences in general and to philosophy in particular. Holst's manifesto resonates with the work of several women writers across Europe, including Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Germaine de Staël. Yet in contrast to the early works of feminism we celebrate today, her book had little success. Its reception confronts us with a darker side of the German Enlightenment that, until recently, has been neglected. Holst sought to unearth the gendered nature of the fundamental concepts of the Enlightenment--including vocation, education, and culture--which enabled men to establish the subordinate status of women by philosophical means. However, her argument was scorned by male reviewers, who denied the very possibility of a woman philosopher. With an introduction by Andrew Cooper, and translations of biographical material and early reviews, this edition provides students and scholars of German philosophy with a timely resource for developing a richer understanding of their field, and general readers with a powerful early feminist text that reveals the opportunities and difficulties facing women philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Amalia Holst

Amalia Holst
Author: Andrew Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781009161275

Amalia Holst's trailblazing book On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802) dropped a bomb on the German speaking states-a bomb that failed to detonate. In one of the first works of philosophy in German published under a woman's name, Holst declares that it is time a member of the female sex spoke out about the plight of women in Germany. Despite her bold attempt to ignite a new movement of women's education, her book was harshly reviewed by male critics and thrust into obscurity. This Element presents the first comprehensive study of Holst's writings, unearthing their striking contribution to philosophy's growing awareness of the social conditions of human freedom. The force of her argument, and the difficulties she encountered, reveal the ambiguous character of the German Enlightenment and prompt us to reconsider what can be salvaged from it.

The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition

The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition
Author: Kristin Gjesdal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 801
Release: 2024
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190066237

This Oxford Handbook celebrates the work of trailblazing women in the history of modern philosophy. Through thirty-one original chapters, it engages with the work of women philosophers spanning the long nineteenth century in the German tradition, and covers women's contribution to major philosophical movements, including romanticism and idealism, socialism, and Marxism, Nietzscheanism, feminism, phenomenology, and neo-Kantianism. It opens with a section on figures, offering essays focused on fifteen thinkers in this tradition, before moving on to sections of essays on movement and topics. Across the volume's chapters, essays examine women's contributions to key philosophical areas such as epistemology and metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, ecology, education, and the philosophy of nature.

Leibniz: General Inquiries on the Analysis of Notions and Truths

Leibniz: General Inquiries on the Analysis of Notions and Truths
Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0192895907

New Texts in the History of Philosophy Published in association with the British Society for the History of Philosophy The aim of this series is to encourage and facilitate the study of all aspects of the history of philosophy, including the rediscovery of neglected elements and the exploration of new approaches to the subject. Texts are selected on the basis of their philosophical and historical significance and with a view to promoting the understanding of currently under-represented authors, philosophical traditions, and historical periods. They include new editions and translations of important yet less well-known works which are not widely available to an Anglophone readership. The series is sponsored by the British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP) and is managed by an editorial team elected by the Society. It reflects the Society's main mission and its strong commitment to broadening the canon. In General Inquiries on the Analysis of Notions and Truths, Leibniz articulates for the first time his favourite solution to the problem of contingency and displays the main features of his logical calculus. Leibniz composed the work in 1686, the same year in which he began to correspond with Arnauld and wrote the Discourse on Metaphysics. General Inquiries supplements these contemporary entries in Leibniz's philosophical oeuvre and demonstrates the intimate connection that links Leibniz's philosophy with the attempt to create a new kind of logic. This edition presents the text and translation of the General Inquiries along with an introduction and commentary. Given the composite structure of the text, where logic and metaphysics strongly intertwine, Mugnai's introduction falls into two sections, respectively dedicated to logic and metaphysics. The first section ('Logic') begins with a preliminary account of Leibniz's project for a universal characteristic and focuses on the relationships between rational grammar and logic, and discusses the general structure and the main ingredients of Leibniz's logical calculus. The second section ('Metaphysics') is centred on the problem of contingency, which occupied Leibniz until the end of his life. Mugnai provides an account of the problem, and details Leibniz's proposed solution, based on the concept of infinite analysis.

The Tragedy of Philosophy

The Tragedy of Philosophy
Author: Andrew Cooper
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438461909

In The Tragedy of Philosophy Andrew Cooper challenges the prevailing idea of the death of tragedy, arguing that this assumption reflects a problematic view of both tragedy and philosophy—one that stifles the profound contribution that tragedy could provide to philosophy today. To build this case, Cooper presents a novel reading of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. Although this text is normally understood as the final attempt to seal philosophy from the threat of tragedy, Cooper argues that Kant's project is rather a creative engagement with a tragedy that is specific to philosophy, namely, the inevitable failure of attempts to master nature through knowledge. Kant's encounter with the tragedy of philosophy turns philosophy's gaze from an exclusive focus on knowledge to matters of living well in a world that does not bend itself to our desires. Tracing the impact of Kant's Critique of Judgment on some of the most famous theories of tragedy, including those of G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Cornelius Castoriadis, Cooper demonstrates how these philosophers extend the project found in both Kant and the Greek tragedies: the attempt to grasp nature as a domain hospitable to human life.

Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction

Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Patrick Gardiner
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2002-02-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019160447X

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. It describes his reaction to the ethical and religious theories of Kant and Hegel, and it also contrasts his position with doctrines advanced by men like Feuerbach and Marx. Kierkegaard's seminal diagnosis of the human condition, which emphasizes the significance of individual choice, has arguably been his most striking philosophical legacy, particularly for the growth of existentialism. Both that and his arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief are critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kierkegaard has influenced contemporary thought. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Public Vs. Private

Public Vs. Private
Author: Robert N. Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0190644575

Americans choose from a dizzying array of schools, loosely categorized as "public" and "private." How did these distinctions emerge, and what do they tell us about the relationship in the United States between public authority and private enterprise? Challenged by the rise of Catholic and other parochial schools in the nineteenth century, states sought to protect the public school monopoly through regulation. Ultimately, however, Robert N. Gross shows how the public policies that resulted produced a stable educational marketplace, where choice flourished.

Hegel's Conscience

Hegel's Conscience
Author: Dean Moyar
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2011-04-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195391993

This book provides a new interpretation of the ethical theory of G.W.F. Hegel. The aim is not only to give a new interpretation for specialists in German Idealism, but also to provide an analysis that makes Hegel's ethics accessible for all scholars working in ethical and political philosophy. While Hegel's political philosophy has received a good deal of attention in the literature, the core of his ethics has eluded careful exposition, in large part because it is contained in his claims about conscience. This book shows that, contrary to accepted wisdom, conscience is the central concept for understanding Hegel's view of practical reason and therefore for understanding his ethics as a whole. The argument combines careful exegesis of key passages in Hegel's texts with detailed treatments of problems in contemporary ethics and reconstructions of Hegel's answers to those problems. The main goals are to render comprehensible Hegel's notoriously difficult texts by framing arguments with debates in contemporary ethics, and to show that Hegel still has much to teach us about the issues that matter to us most. Central topics covered in the book are the connection of self-consciousness and agency, the relation of motivating and justifying reasons, moral deliberation and the holism of moral reasoning, mutual recognition, and the rationality of social institutions.

Locke Among the Radicals

Locke Among the Radicals
Author: Daniel Layman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2020-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190939095

Capitalism in the western world is currently facing a crisis of legitimacy in the face of growing inequality. But many forget that the global, capitalist world as we know it today emerged largely during the industrial revolution. Four remarkable thinkers of the long nineteenth century, the Lockean radicals--Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, John Bray, and Henry George--responded to the horrid and rampant economic injustices at the time by picking up the loose ends of Locke's property theory and weaving them into two competing strands. Each strand addressed problems of liberty and equality then emerging from industrial capitalism, but each did so in a different way. As Daniel Layman argues, in one camp, Hodgskin and Spooner, libertarian radicals, argued that the world of resources is common to all people only in the negative sense of being originally "unowned" by anyone. According to them, there are no just grounds for state redistribution except to correct past injustices, and governments are typically little more than thieving and oppressive gangs. In the other camp, Bray and George, egalitarian radicals, held that all people have a positive claim to share equally in the world's resources. According to them, states should ensure, through redistributive taxation and other progressive policies, that our institutions respect this common right. Locke Among the Radicals tells the forgotten story of the Lockean radicals and the crucial role they played in addressing problems latent in Locke's theory. Layman argues persuasively that some of the radicals' insights provide a blueprint for a form of liberal distributive justice possible to achieve today.