3 Women Philosophers of the Enlightenment | Education & Society - JSTOR Daily

Benjamin Winterhalter, JSTOR Daily‘s features editor summarizes, They shaped the history of Western philosophical thought. It's past time to recognize their contributions.

Emliie du Châtelet, Anne Conway, and Mary Wollstonecraft
via Wikimedia Commons/© National Portrait Gallery, London/Getty

“This world has always belonged to males,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her 1949 book The Second Sex. The same, sadly, may be said of the canon of Western philosophy and of the composition of academic philosophy departments, even today. No online listicle can hope to form a complete (or really even adequate) accounting of the profound contribution of women thinkers in shaping the trajectory of the Enlightenment, perhaps especially not one written by me, yet another male philosophy graduate. Nevertheless, no history of Western philosophical thought would be complete without these three women.

Anne Conway (1631-1679)
Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is a highly original work and one well ahead of its time...

Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) 
According to the philosopher Ruth Hagengruber, Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet, was concerned with no less than “the re-examination of the Bible, the rewriting of Newtonian physics, and also with outlining a new methodology for philosophy and science.”...

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) 
Mary Wollstonecraft, perhaps the best known woman philosopher of the Enlightenment, experienced firsthand the social upheaval that was the French revolution. 
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Source: JSTOR Daily