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Abstract
This essay seeks to retrace, retrieve, recover, and reclaim the voices of women thinkers and philosophers throughout the history of Indian philosophy. The aim is to initiate a discussion on the conventional and ‘malestream’ character of established knowledge in philosophy. We focus on a few women thinkers to underline the fact that by acknowledging and elevating their previously erased and marginalized works, an alternative, and enriched, trajectory of the entire philosophical corpus of Indian thought is possible. To create a slice of such an alternate trajectory, we discuss the contributions of Ṛṣikās (women sages), Sarojini Naidu, and Jaishree Odin in the ancient, modern, and contemporary domains of Indian philosophy to argue and underline that these otherwise erased and absent women are thinking-beings actively involved in the give and take of philosophical progress in the Indian context.
Abstract
One of the most conspicuous features of the Gorkhaland movement is the development of a strong sense of community that has subsumed many diverse voices within the dominant discourse of ethnicity. However, such ethno-nationalism is also problematic as it often results in the erasure of intersecting identity markers such as class, caste, and gender. In addition, the exclusive nature of the over-encompassing Nepali or Gorkha identity has led to harmful consequences for marginalized groups, particularly the lower castes. This paper thus brings to the fore alternative voices and perspectives, particularly those of women who come from the margins of caste society or who have been labelled as ideological adversaries. This paper further illustrates their unique experiences and perspectives, which are often ignored in mainstream discussions about the social reality of the Gorkhaland movement.
Abstract
This essay tries to reflect on the least digestible aspects of the well-known poet and fiction writer Kamala Das / Surayya’s thought. It seeks to examine her foray into politics in the light of the history of the discursive shaping of modern gender in Kerala on the one hand, and of feminist thought that has sought to revalue love as a virtue in public life on the other. I seek to read her repeated calls to infuse politics with love as part of an attempt to articulate an ‘affective politics’. I focus on three aspects of her writing that have been sources of ‘interpretative trouble’ for literary criticism in Kerala: self-love, love for the Masculine Other, and ‘love for the people’. What results is an imagining of politics strikingly similar to feminist imaginations elsewhere, which does encourage us to re-examine Das’s self-professed anti-feminism.
Abstract
In this paper I compare various aspects of the philosophies of Frances Power Cobbe and Karl Marx, with a focus on their arguments regarding religion and science. I argue that while these two philosophers begin from radically different ideological standpoints, they still share fascinating areas of overlap that deserve attention and can shed new light on aspects of each of their philosophies. This paper is heavy on evaluation as a tool to recover the ignored philosophy of Cobbe, showing that her works have value despite their omission from the traditional philosophical canon. I argue that by comparing Cobbe as a neglected figure to a well-known figure such as Marx, not only do we gain insight into the complex ideas of Cobbe by choosing a well-known foundation on which to base our analysis, but at the same time we also establish her relevance to modern discourse.
Abstract
In this article I analyze the different historiographical models that have contributed to the ‘interpretative heritage’ of Anne Conway. I argue that, due to the current state of scholarship on the history of women philosophers, the main mission of this scholarship is to increase the interpretative heritage of their works in general and of Anne Conway in particular. For this purpose, it is necessary to apply a pluralistic perspective regarding models. A pluralist perspective would argue that there are different historiographical models that apply to the study of the text and that each model, even the failed ones, increases the interpretative heritage. In this sense, I identify six main models used in the study of Conway’s Principia and propose that the sixth, the contextual/eclectic model, is more fundamental for the study of Anne Conway because it assists us in laying the foundations for other more restricted or specialized models.
Abstract
In 1798 Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822) appended her eight Lettres sur la sympathie to her translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In recent years her Lettres have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but interpretative errors, resulting from considering selections in isolation, have slipped into readings of de Grouchy’s work that undermine her originality and the unity of her views regarding ethical theory. The purpose of this paper is to correct prior readings and to properly recover Sophie de Grouchy’s voice for the philosophical canon. Topics include the origin of sympathy, the significance of pleasure and pain in de Grouchy, sympathy and social relations, the role of reason and sentiments in our moral disposition, and mislabeling de Grouchy’s philosophy. In all, de Grouchy grounds her complex ethics and political philosophy in sympathy, reason, reflection, and human dependency in an overarching vision of humanity that is hopeful and optimistic.
Abstract
The first part of this paper investigates the purpose, methodological approach, and fundamental thesis of Du Châtelet’s theory of simple beings. The paper shows that ‘simple beings’ in Du Châtelet is a theory concerned with the understanding of extended bodies. The second part of the paper shows that her theory of simple beings, while it has important roots in both Leibniz and Wolff, is remarkably different from theirs. Thus, contrary to a common thread in the literature, Du Châtelet’s theory of simple beings does not commit her to an ontology that can be equated with that of Leibniz or Wolff. Instead, her theory of simple beings is faculty-centred and draws a fundamental and novel distinction between the phenomenal realm of the senses and ‘real’ substances, which can only be grasped through the understanding.