ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the contributions of both Luise Adelgunde Viktorie Gottsched (1713–1762) and Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1725–1782) to the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy. In spite of the unconventional character of Gottsched’s and Unzer’s texts, and the assorted difficulties in discerning the hand of the author, a distinctive philosophical agenda comes to light in the cases of both of these women, a result that only underlines the importance of expanding our conception of the genre of philosophical text and the methods through which philosophical thought is enacted. In particular, what comes to light in Unzer’s case, as well as in Gottsched’s translations, is a commitment to a conception of philosophical activity as responding to an essential human desire to know and to develop one’s inherent capacities (especially, but not only, moral capacities), and it is this that motivates both to make philosophical cognition and the tools for philosophical investigation not just accessible to women, but on the whole less abstruse, more applicable to the world, and deeply interconnected with other areas of learned and literary endeavor.
