Women Philosophers Volume I

Education and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Dorothy G. Rogers

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350070615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

Illuminating a significant moment in the development of both American and feminist philosophical history, this book explores the pioneering thought of the women in the early American Idealist movement and outgrowths of it in the late-nineteenth century. Dorothy Rogers specifically examines the ideas of women who entered philosophical discourse through education and social activism. She begins by discussing innovative educators, some of whom were members of the influential Idealist movement in St. Louis, Missouri in the eighteen-sixties and seventies. She then looks at the ideas and impact of women who were independent scholars and social and political activists. Throughout the volume, Rogers explores how Idealist thought developed, matured, and was transformed over time – across lines of race, culture, and socio-economic class. Several of the women discussed were ardent feminists and activists: Mary Church Terrell, Anna C. Brackett, Grace C. Bibb, Ana Roqué, Ellen M. Mitchell, Lucia Ames Mead, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Luisa Capetillo. By providing exciting new insights into the work of these early women philosophers and introducing the next generation of women who shared the same ideals and influences, Rogers deftly elucidates the genealogy of women's thought as it developed across North America.

1

Introduction

Women, Diversity, and Philosophy in North America

The Project

This book grows out of a core conviction that philosophy has lacked both gender diversity and cultural diversity for far too long. As a result, branches of thought that have been disproportionately populated by women and minorities in North America—pedagogical theory, philosophy of religion, feminist thought, critical race theory,¹ social/political reform theories, and philosophies of relationship (maternal love, altruism, and care)—have been underrepresented in the discipline. In the interest of not only enriching philosophy but also providing a more comprehensive and accurate account of its development, we need to seek diversity and aim for inclusion. This task requires attending to intellectual, social, and political history. In fact, I maintain that attention to the larger social/political context is essential to thorough philosophical work. One could say that philosophy without intellectual history is empty and without social/political history is blind. Our first step must be to recognize how very masculine and Eurocentric the philosophical tradition has been. Our next step must be to ask why.

In discussions of philosophy, from ancient times to the present, why don’t we include women and cultural minorities? When we discuss the pre-Socratics, why do we do so without including women in the Pythagorean school—of whom there were several? Why are the pedagogical insights of Aristotle, Locke, and Rousseau accepted as deeply philosophical, while discussions of education by Margaret Mercer or Susan Blow have remained on library shelves? Why has Machiavelli’s egoistic understanding of governance been lauded as a critical moment in political thought, while Christine de Pizan’s communitarian ideals and Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s calls for justice have been ignored? Why are the so-called proofs of God’s existence still bandied about in philosophy of religion texts, while cosmos-shattering ideas about God in relation to race and gender in the late twentieth century are often absent from anthologies?

As I undertook a revision of my initial work on the first women in philosophical idealism in the United States, a reviewer’s observation brought me to a screeching halt: “I notice that this work does not include racialized women.” This led to my own self-reckoning. How could I have done this? I’d committed the very same error that I have found so vexing: the omission of voices outside “mainstream” philosophy. Why had I included only European-American women in my original work? Because I wanted to explore women’s understanding of the public/private split—the notion that men are meant for the world of business and politics, while women are meant for hearth and home—and I was working with a relatively narrow definition of philosophy. The public/private split had its earliest origins in Aristotle, was absorbed into popular culture in the early modern period, and was reinforced by Hegel in the nineteenth century.² I wanted to explore what women in that era had to say about their role and rights in relation to the split. In order to do so properly, my advisor and I determined that I would have to find nineteenth-century women who read Hegel. He soon pointed me in the direction of the St. Louis neo-Hegelians, and my research was underway.³

What I found at that time was a relatively small collective of white women in the United States who drew on German idealist thought, primarily as related to education, and who represented many “firsts” on the North American continent: Susan Elizabeth Blow, early childhood education theorist, was the first person to successfully put in place an ongoing and publicly funded kindergarten program in the United States. She was also one of the first women to serve as director of a public education program in a large city (1873–84). Anna Brackett, feminist and proponent of professionalizing teacher education, was one of the first US women to serve as principal of a secondary school (1863–72). Grace C. Bibb, also a feminist and teacher education advocate, was one of the first women in the United States to serve as dean of a college at a public university (1879–84). Ellen Mitchell, another feminist and primarily an independent scholar, was one of the first women in the United States to teach philosophy at coeducational universities (1890–92; 1898–99). Lucia Ames Mead was among a core group of women who were the first to read and discuss the ideas of Kant on international peace and arbitration, and urge for the implementation of those ideas in public life (1899–1935). Marietta Kies and Eliza Sunderland (now discussed in volume two) were among the first ten women in the United States to earn doctoral degrees in philosophy from any university (in 1891 and 1892, respectively).

It is clear that some of these women knew each other quite well. Blow, Brackett, and Mitchell were all active in St. Louis, Missouri, between 1867 and 1872, for instance. Brackett, Mitchell, Ames Mead, Kies, and Sunderland attended some of the same salons and summer school programs, referred to each other’s work, and/or corresponded. Each of these women also knew the man who is often considered the leader of the early philosophical idealist movement in the United States—William Torrey Harris (1835–1909).

Yet, following search after search, I unearthed no evidence that any of these individuals developed relationships across the harsh racial and cultural divides that existed in the United States in the last third of the nineteenth century. Susan Blow provided kindergarten training to at least two African American women, but does not seem to have maintained a relationship with either of them, as she did with other students. Blow’s father and uncle were staunch abolitionists. In the 1850s, her uncle purchased the freedom of at least two slaves and was said to have helped fund Dred Scott’s lawsuit for his freedom. An extended family member of Anna Brackett, William Greenleaf Eliot, a liberal Unitarian minister in St. Louis, harbored a runaway slave and engaged in a standoff with local officials, rather than deliver him back into forced servitude. Yet, none of these women appear to have discussed the evils of slavery in writing, helped combat racism, or contributed to Reconstruction efforts following the Civil War. The world they lived in was fully segregated, and they appear to have accepted this as the status quo.

Without any clear links between this original group of thinkers and communities of color, I then cast a wider net. Thanks to recovery of the writings of African American women by Henry Louis Gates in the Schomburg Collection,⁴ I had already accessed work by women of African descent and had sought out writings by women of Native American and Latina heritage as well. So, I retrieved the notes and copies of documents in my files and went to work. I looked for women of color who, even if not directly linked to the early idealist movement in the United States, had studied philosophy in the nineteenth century. What I learned shouldn’t be surprising: If it was uncommon for women of European descent to study, translate, and/or discuss the works of men in the philosophical canon in the nineteenth century, it was even more uncommon for women of color to have done so. The barriers and biases that existed throughout much of North America in that time were too great for many women of color to overcome. After earnest and lengthy searches, my options were either to accept the exclusion of diverse voices in philosophy—and contribute to it by leaving my list of women philosophers unchanged—or to further question that exclusion and challenge the Eurocentric bias in the discipline. For me the decision was obvious: Continue to challenge. Continue to aim for inclusion.

My goal shifted now to including women across races and cultures throughout the continent (“America” including more than simply the United States, as my editor diplomatically noted) who shared intellectual and social/political interests, goals, and ideals that were the same or similar to the group I’d originally researched twenty years ago. These are also women of many “firsts”—Mary Church Terrell and Josephine Silone Yates were the first African American women to study and promote kindergarten education in the United States; Emma Johnson Goulette was the first Native American woman to do the same. Fanny Jackson Coppin was the first woman of African descent to serve as principal of a secondary school in the United States. Dolores Correa and Rita Cetina, leaders of the first wave of feminism in Mexico, were the first proponents of normal school training for women in their country. Ana Roqué, also a feminist, was the first woman to become principal of a normal school and teach at a university in Puerto Rico. Maria Stewart, a proponent of racial uplift through spiritual renewal and women’s advancement, was the first African American woman to author a book on social/political theory. E. Pauline Johnson, a Mohawk woman in Canada, was an advocate for indigenous and women’s rights at the end of the nineteenth century. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the first thinkers/activists to develop a critical race theory in and through her campaign against vigilante justice in the United States. Luisa Capetillo was a feminist and one of the first female labor activists in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Criteria for Inclusion

When confronting the absence of women in philosophy, in my view our first question needs to be: Why are there so few of them? The next is: Why include these women and not others?

The most obvious answer to the first question—why the supposed shortage of women philosophers—is this: Philosophy has developed with a masculine and Eurocentric bias. There have been plenty of women in philosophy since ancient times, and there has been a good deal of research about them in recent decades.⁵ The second reason for women’s exclusion is that the term “philosopher” has been limited to either traditional canonical figures in the history of the Western masculine tradition or formally trained academics. Thus, a lack of access to intellectual centers of power has led to far fewer female voices across races and cultures in philosophical discourse. In the United States, women were not admitted to the majority of colleges and universities until the 1870s. Canada and Mexico were a decade or so behind, admitting women to formerly all-male institutions in the 1880s and 1890s. One exception throughout North America: normal schools, established to teach pedagogical theory and practice—an area of academic inquiry that was populated by women. However, elite colleges and universities in all three countries did not admit women until well into the twentieth century.

Historical trends are an additional factor contributing to a supposed absence of women in philosophy. The first trend: With increasingly formal forms of education in the nineteenth century, the study of philosophy became less of an avocation and more of a professional enterprise that required specialized training. Philosophy soon came to be housed solely in a college or university. The second trend: Over time, discussions that were once considered elements of “philosophy” became their own independent and equally professional areas of study. These were areas of study that women were often attracted to, such as aesthetics, anthropology, pedagogy, psychology, religion, and sociology. This, combined with the increased professionalization of intellectual life, meant that other areas of inquiry that appealed to women, like feminism, womanism, and critical theories about race and culture, were set aside or ignored in academic philosophy. The third trend: Very early in the nineteenth century, women were “tracked” into specific areas of study that were often related to care-taking practices—primary education and nursing are prime examples. Women who studied education often thrived on developing pedagogical theory as an outgrowth of their practical work, but discussion of their ideas took place almost solely within education circles. Women who beat the odds and studied philosophy at an advanced level (whether formally or informally) and published their ideas often clustered into specific branches of the discipline—most often pedagogy, but also ethics/moral theory, social/political philosophy, or philosophy of religion.

The question of which women to include in a study like this one is related to a larger question: Who can be called a “philosopher”? This question has long been a point of inquiry in the discipline. Some consider thinkers like Voltaire, Alexander Hamilton, Marx, and Emma Goldman philosophers. Others dismiss them, saying Voltaire is a “philosophe,” Hamilton a “political thinker,” Marx an economist (and a sloppy one at that), and Goldman only an “activist,” not a “thinker.” This question has troubled me as a feminist who has dedicated many years to research on women in the field. In part it is a matter of content and method; in part it is a matter of genre.

Genre is the easier of the two matters to address. Generally speaking, I prefer to examine and discuss expository writing that aims to posit a theory or advance a perspective: essays, lectures and speeches, commentary, or analytical narratives. Because women were often socialized to be conciliatory, a style that involves argumentation is not a requirement. Women whose academic training or personal style was Western/masculine tended to employ argument. Anna Brackett, Ellen Mitchell, Lucia Ames Mead, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett are cases in point; none of these women seem to have feared verbal combat. But women like Margaret Mercer and Maria Stewart shied away from argument. Stewart draws on a religious prophetic tradition, and her writing reads more like a plea, with prayers interspersed in some cases. Mercer writes as a kindly teacher, using moral suasion as she guides her readers through the text. For the most part, Frances Jackson Coppin simply explained her pedagogical techniques, rather than making a case for their implementation. Hers is the only case in which I’ve included an approach to scholarship that is more narrative than analytical. I have done so because she was living and working at the intersection of pedagogical developments, racial/cultural advancements, and feminist/womanist explorations. And in this sense, her work can and should be an alyzed as pedagogy by a woman of color for people of color in her era. There are parallels among other women in this volume, across race, class, and culture. In my view we can learn a great deal from Coppin, and others like her, today.

I have not included women who worked within creative genres—poets, dramatists, novelists—simply because I find it difficult to work with poetic forms, allegory, parable, and the like. I know many very rigorous scholars who have done excellent scholarship on philosophers—male and female—who wrote in creative genres, however, and I hold their work in high regard.⁶

There is a close connection between genre and opportunity. As noted earlier, and in any number of works discussing the history of women in intellectual and professional life, women’s academic and professional options were extremely limited prior to the twentieth century. We often acknowledge this situation in the abstract but do not (it seems to me) adequately challenge and interrogate what it means for our understandings of philosophy—past, present, and future. If half of the women in this volume were unable to attend college, or even normal school—which was indeed the case—how did this shape their career paths? Among the twenty women discussed here, twelve worked as educators at some point in their careers, the majority of them teaching young children. Nine were social activists, journalists, or both. Just five taught at a college or university: Grace Bibb (University of Missouri), Francis Jackson Coppin (Institute for Colored Youth; now Cheyney University), Ellen Mitchell (University of Denver; Syracuse University), Ana Roqué (University of Puerto Rico), and Mary Church Terrell (Wilberforce University). Yet the obstacles women faced affected more than career development. The social placement of these women led nearly every one of them to focus primarily on social/political matters in their published work—education, justice, women and gender equity, and war/peace. Which women ventured beyond one of these areas of inquiry? Susan Blow, whose central interest was in pedagogical theory, also discussed epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics. Ellen Mitchell maintained a balance between her two main interests: feminism and the history of philosophy. Maria Stewart’s primary concern was with social justice issues, which she often discussed in and through religion. Margaret Mercer came the closest to matching traditional expectations of a philosopher, discussing epistemology, moral theory, and philosophy of religion in an early academic text. The fact that all but one of this subset of four women were of European descent speaks volumes. Perhaps the correlation between a person’s cultural placement and an affinity for “mainstream” (masculine) Eurocentric philosophy is greater than we might have guessed.

So then, in this study, I have included public intellectuals, social reformers, political activists, and/or editors and journalists, who generally did not have opportunities to study philosophy formally. In many cases, their ideas first appeared in short-form publications—newspaper articles, booklets, pamphlets, and published speeches—rather than hefty tomes, precisely because women and minorities did not always have access to the circles in which intellectuals gathered, discussed ideas, then published, and promoted “important” work. Short-form publications were a main avenue for the exchange of ideas in public life, without the need for access to these elite networks. As Felix Matos observed in his discussion of Luisa Capetillo, women outside the dominant culture produced short-form publications out of necessity, but it also allowed them to demonstrate “political and class [or cultural] solidarity” and is “an example of marginalized subaltern writing” that is worthy of attention.⁷

My colleagues in philosophy may suggest that I have cast the net too wide. These women might better be appreciated as women of ideas or social theorists, but not “philosophers,” per se. Yet, I propose to explore their ideas and consider including them so as to transform philosophy.⁸ Social ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• About the cover
• 1 Introduction: Women, Diversity, and Philosophy in North America
• 2 Pedagogy, Philosophy, and “Spiritual Motherhood”: Susan Blow, Mary Church Terrell, Josephine Silone Yates, Emma Johnson Goulette
• 3 Feminist Philosophers/Educators: Anna Brackett, Grace Bibb, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Ana Roqué
• 4 Audacious Women!—Four Independent Scholars: Margaret Mercer, Maria Stewart, Pauline Johnson, Ellen Mitchell
• 5 Feminist Activists/Theorists: Lucia Ames Mead, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Luisa Capetillo
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright