ABSTRACT
From the perspective of an American Black man in the generation after the end of the Civil War, W.E.B. Du Bois writes about the concept of “double-consciousness.” It is the perspective shared by all philosophers writing in early modern Europe who were not white, Christian, European men. Women philosophers and Black philosophers of the period share a space behind the veil of double-consciousness—“this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois 2015: 5). This chapter explores two different strategies used by Anton Wilhelm Amo and Mary Astell to continue their work from behind this veil—a kind of stoicism, and rhetorical techniques, respectively. Such strategies, intentional or not, were demanded by the experience of these philosophers for the continuation of their work. The alternative would be to effectively “quit all industry towards profitable knowledge” (Cavendish 1655: preface). The strategies discussed are far from the only possible ones: the varieties of these are part of what makes seeking “new narratives” in the history of philosophy so fascinating.
