ABSTRACT
Women often worked against their disadvantaged epistemic positions by writing in genres and by using methods that are less easily recognized by us today as philosophy. In this paper, I look at two case studies of philosophy being produced in genres that depart from the established methods of contemporary analytic philosophy. First, I examine Margaret Cavendish’s prefaces to the Physical and Philosophical Opinions, and how she uses methods that include autobiographical musings about her own lived experiences and anger at her unjustly discounted epistemic authority. These prefaces permit such passionate and pointed modes of expression, proving to be especially well-suited for conveying philosophical content in an age when women’s philosophical capacities were called into question. The second case study is Emilie Du Châtelet’s translation of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. Du Châtelet’s theories and method of translating permit us to see translation as a genre that women can engage with to produce original philosophy. Together, these two case studies underscore the importance of our reading broadly in our history to acknowledge that philosophical questions are interrogated in a wide range of genres using methods beyond rational analysis and argumentation.
