ABSTRACT
To change the philosophical canon we must first identify tacit assumptions of the canon, and consider the ways in which women were written out of the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century. To successfully redress the injustice of excluding women from European intellectual history, we need to recognize (1) that the questions that dominate current philosophy and its history are not the only central philosophical questions; and (2) for many, and especially for women, philosophy was not an idle intellectual exercise but rather addressed questions that were very much alive in the contexts in which they were writing. Our histories of philosophy would be more inclusive if we moved from a philosophical canon dominated by a set of figures to one that was framed by a set of questions. These questions are both timeless questions and we pose them in a particular place and historical context.
