ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that the exclusion of certain types of philosophical writing from the dominant model can be traced back not just to its ideals and methods of assessment, but to its very foundations: the initial delineation of morality, or the view of the moral world, it begins from. The exclusion simply in itself should be a cause for concern, especially in light of the fact that the use of the excluded forms was historically prevalent among women philosophers. An examination of Catharine Macaulay's Letters on Education can show the reader that non-traditional forms such as letters—or even novels or poetry—cannot be automatically excluded from the domain of the philosophical on the grounds that the structure itself does not allow them to maintain or contain a sustained philosophical argument. A lack of recognition of the potential philosophical status of certain forms can mean that the significance for the philosophical content of certain works themselves can be lost.
