It's easy to judge with hindsight but even by the standards of 1978, the BBC's decision to call a series about great living philosophers Men of Ideas, despite it featuring a woman in Iris Murdoch, can only be seen as a case of everyday sexism. Yet the series has been acclaimed as a rare piece of programme-making which wasn't afraid to deal with abstract issues in a way that assumed, as host Bryan Magee put it, "only interest and intelligence" on the part of viewers.
What should we do with Men of Ideas now? I bought a copy of the book accompanying the series in a second-hand book shop some years ago and its title stares down at me from the shelf like a guilty conscience. Does it need to be “cancelled”?
More seriously, what is to be done with the books next to it? Immanuel Kant verbalised the racist assumptions of his day. Friedrich Nietzsche joked about whipping women. George Berkeley – the sainted Trinity College Dublin philosopher – owned slaves.
Obnoxious views
Is the work of such thinkers diminished by certain obnoxious views that they held?
Suki Finn has been grappling with this and related questions while editing a new book Women of Ideas, which goes on release today (April 22nd). The title is a direct response to the former BBC series and features interviews with 30 women that originated on the popular Philosophy Bites podcast. Contributors include Mary Warnock on public philosophy, Martha Nussbaum on disgust, Onora O’Neill on consent and Patricia Churchland on neuroscience.
Finn is a lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is on the executive committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK. She was previously involved in the society’s Irish counterpart while working on a research project in Dublin. She talks further about the book and the thorny problem of revisionism as today’s Unthinkable guest.
Things may have improved somewhat for women in philosophy, as a number of the people you interviewed testify in the book, but do certain intellectual prejudices linger? If you take, for example, Jean Paul Sartre or Michel Foucault they are generally presented as universal philosophers whereas, say, Simone de Beauvoir or Judith Butler are perceived as primarily philosophers for women.
Suki Finn: “Yes, I do think that intellectual prejudices linger, especially unconsciously. For example, just consider the women philosophers you’ve cited, as they specifically are well known for their work on gender – but, of course, women work on many other topics too!
“It is seemingly harder to bring to mind names of philosophers who are women that are not sidelined as philosophers who write about women, for women.
“There are two important points which speak to this prejudice: 1. philosophy of gender and feminist philosophy are not solely by and for women, they are by and for everyone, and impact on everyone; 2. philosophers who are women do not solely work on the philosophy of gender and feminist philosophy, they work in all areas of philosophy. As such, women philosophers are not philosophers for women.
“I remember at the start of my career considering whether I, as a feminist, ought to specialise in feminist philosophy. While I do indeed now engage with feminist philosophy, I am firmly of the opinion that I, as a feminist, ought to specialise in any area of philosophy that I like – as I do in metaphysics and logic.
"Philosophers who are women are philosophers first, and incidentally women, yet the prejudice comes from taking them to be women first, and incidentally philosophers, as described by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting in discussing the reception of their recent book The Philosopher Queens."
Has male domination led to certain issues being neglected from inquiry? It seems there is very little the great “men of ideas” have to say about domestic work, for example.
"I think you are right, that male domination has led to the neglect of certain topics in philosophy. For example, my recent work at the University of Southampton was on a European Research Council-funded project called Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy which was the first major project of its kind.
“Now, the metaphysics of pregnancy is of great importance, not only to pregnant metaphysicians, but to all of us, given that we are all the result of a pregnancy. But many areas of mainstream analytic philosophy, like metaphysics, are fairly new to considering pregnancy, and it is my hypothesis that the origins, as well as the fundamental approaches, of metaphysics – or rather, philosophy more generally – could partially explain this.
“A feminist, woman-centred – or rather human, not man-centred – world of philosophy is still only in its early stages of the making, and philosophy still has a lot further to go in order to come to terms with its history and assumptions. Ideas – and the lack thereof – about pregnancy grew out of the positions of men of privilege, and those men used their analyses to justify those positions – a never-ending and vicious echo-chamber. But when women, people with different understandings of pregnancy as a state and possibility, enter the discussion, the analysis of pregnancy shifts.”
Some of the great thinkers – including Hume, Berkeley and Kant – are being reappraised today in light of their views on race and gender. Such prejudice may make them less appealing characters but does it diminish the importance of their philosophical work?
“This is a very topical and difficult question, and you will find that different people give different answers. Personally, I think it does diminish the importance of their work. This is because I take a holistic approach to appraising a theory as being inextricably embedded within the thinker’s wider framework. I doubt that a theory – or a part of a theory – could be isolated in such a way that it does not get infected or influenced by other aspects of the framework.
“There is also the philosophical notion of ‘moralism’ – which is used within the field of aesthetics – that states that something’s (aesthetic) value is at least partially determined by its moral value. I think this can be applied more broadly, such that a theory’s value is impacted by its moral value – in that way, morality becomes a theoretical virtue. As such, theories that incorporate racist or misogynistic viewpoints are less good theories than those which do not.”
Can you tell me a bit about your own research? You’re drawn to metaphysics, which dare I say, is a relatively unfashionable area! I wonder is that part of the appeal – in that contemporary philosophy has neglected certain topics, or fields of inquiry, that you believe are worthy of greater attention?
“I had no idea metaphysics was unfashionable! Unfashionable to whom though, I wonder . . . As with another area I am drawn to and specialise in – logic – the stereotypical experts in these fields are old white men. This, I think, leads to certain fields of philosophy being unfashionable – or maybe more accurately, unattractive – to specific groups of people who might assume that they are not the right sort of person to engage, or do well, in it. And then that only serves to reinforce who is working within which areas.
“This is known in the pedagogical literature as ‘stereotype threat’. I have a lot of experience being the only woman in the room at philosophy events that have a focus on metaphysics or logic. Thankfully, that did not put me off. I am drawn to the areas because they seem to get to the very heart of philosophical puzzles, in that I find many problems can boil down to something metaphysical or logical; that is a controversial thing to think, by the way!
“I love how basic and fundamental logic is, for example, because it underwrites all argument, no matter what the argument is about. Without logic, there would be no way to philosophise about anything. And with metaphysics being the study of reality, the topic of it seems to cover everything.”
Women of Ideas: Interviews from Philosophy Bites edited by Suki Finn is published by Oxford University Press
