Twentieth Century Women Philosophers 1 страница

14. Twentieth Century Women Philosophers

MARY ELLEN WAITHE

If this final chapter of this final volume of A History of Women Philosophers seems unduly long it is only because so many of the twenty- nine women about whom brief profiles are here presented indeed deserve a chapter of their own. It gives me some satisfaction to say what I could not have said with respect to the earlier volumes in this series, namely that there are simply too many women who made significant contributions to philosophy in this century to accord each a chapter of her own. And even in this chapter of “also rans” I have had to cull and choose, omitting some of the more recently-deceased such as Dorothy Emmet, Pepita Haezrahi, Susanne Langer, and my own teacher May Brodbeck, whose works are more accessible than the works of others. I have opted instead, for inclusion of a wide range of generally now-forgotten women philosophers who were well-known in their day, and whose interests in philosophy were varied, as well as a number who are well known, but not well known as philosophers. In addition, I have included a few who published only one or two articles in philosophy, and in some sense had a marginal role in its recent development. I have tried to give the reader what I think is the flavor of women’s presence in the professional field of academic philosophy, as well as in popular philosophical writing outside the academy.

In the Appendix to this Volume is a list of those women who pub-lished philosophical writing during this century, whom I believe to be deceased, and whom I have not profiled in this volume. In most cases, their philosophical writings are listed in the Bibliography. In every case, I have collected some archival information about them. Many of the names can be found in Ethel Kersey’s valuable work: Women Philosophers, a Biocritical Source Book. The Appendix also includes names of several Polish women philosophers whose names came to my attention through Linda Lopez McAlister, the editor of the feminist

A History of Women Philosophers/Volume 4, ed. by Mary Ellen Waithe, 299-380. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

philosophy journal, Hypatia. Professor McAlister passed along to me a draft manu-script by Professor Elzbieta Pakszys of A. Mickeiwicz University in Poznan (Poland). Unfortunately, that manuscript arrived too late for consideration for fuller treatment here of its named subjects. Readers will perhaps have knowledge of other women who lived and wrote at the turn of the century. Some of those subjects, who perhaps can be said to have lived most of their professional lives in the nineteenth century, will be included instead in a second edition to Volume 3 of this series. The women are presented here in chronological order of birth.

Where date of birth is unknown, I have estimated it at floruit twenty- five years prior to a woman’s first publication or the first public record of her membership in a philosophical association. As stated in the Introduction to this volume, I have wanted this series to be a history, and to me that meant at the very least that it included only those women philosophers who were deceased, whose productivity as philosophers had come to an undeniably full stop. Unfortunately, there are many for whom dates of death could not have been wrung out of the usual source materials. Although I have had the benefit of research assistance from a competent and enthusiastic staff, nevertheless, it is not the size staff that would permit, for example, searches through public records of birth and death, or correspondence with institutions at which a subject had studied or taught. In determining that a woman philosopher is, in a colloquial sense, “history” I have sometimes resorted to making an ad hoc assumption (which in some cases will be wrong) that a century is the longest lifetime that one usually gets. So when there is a date of birth or a floruit that is at least a century old, I have felt rather comfortable in assuming that my subjects are at the most, centenarians. This assumption has not always been warranted as I know that some women philosophers including Ellen Bliss Talbot have surpassed this mark, and several others including Antoinette Brown Blackwell (see Volume 3 of this series) have lived until their mid- or late-nineties.

1. Sophie Willock Bryant: 1850-1922

Details about Bryant’s early education and background are sketchy. From her publications under the style “Mrs. Sophie Bryant, D.Sc.”1 we may assume that she was married. The 1917 membership list of the Aristotelian Society identifies an “Elsie Bryant” as a recently elected member. Whether the latter was Sophie’s daughter, another relative, or was not related is not known. 

Sophie Bryant received a Doctorate in Sciences from London University before the turn of the century. She served as Headmistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls for many years. The title page of her work, Moral and Religious Education (1920) identifies her as “D.Sc., D.Litt. Late Headmistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls....” Whether an honorary Doctorate in Literature was conferred on her upon her retirement, or whether the second doctorate was an earned degree, I have not been able to ascertain. Similarly, that title page also indicates that Bryant authored Educational Ends, and Studies in Character. I have been unable to confirm the existence of either publication. On the frontispiece, no mention whatsoever is made of her other philosophical works: on logic and mathematics,2 on meta-physics3 and psychology.4 From a review of Bryant’s written works in philosophy we see her to have a primary interest in ethics, particularly, in the area of moral education. Her interests in philosophy extended beyond ethics and included such diverse subjects as the logic of algebra,5 and of mathematics’ relation to logic,6 issues of moral psychology, philosophy of mind and theories of moral personality.7 Many of her early publications were on the subject of moral character and the moral emotions.8 Bryant’s “The Relation of Mathematics to General Formal Logic,” explores what she claimed was a good deal of the fruitfulness of Boole’s idea that the language of mathematics is the most perfect form of the universal language of thought, and that general logic is a quantityless mathematics. Arithmetic, she describes as

... the pure synthetic science a priori, neither a condition of expe-rience nor a consequence, but co-incident in origin with experience as a mode of apprehension most powerful for the reduction of expe-rience to system in a science of measurable relations.9

Class logic, such as that of Venn, she describes as

... at the opposite extreme of experience. It is the whole of things - the total concrete universe - and the operation is the selection from it of things belonging to a given type. The result of the selection is the class of things which, like the original subject-matter itself, is an object surpassing apprehension, a concrete total to be analyzed.10

After analyzing general symbols of algebraic operation, general and special laws of algebraic operation, and symbolic propositional forms she 

defines the logic of inference in terms of propositional equivalence and the assertion or denial of consistency.11 This is where she claims that there is great practical value in Boolean logic: it bridges the gulf between logic and algebra in an important way. The logic of probabilities

... exemplifies the conception belonging to general logic of quality [existence, universality, class] and [mathematical] quantity com-pounded in operation.12

At the end of the paper, she urges also, the adoption of the language and symbolism of logic for geometric calculations, particularly for working out problems of n-dimensionality.

In an unconvincing, and brief symposium paper in 1895, “Are Psychical States Extended?”13 Bryant urges that psychical states are extended, or,

... as I would prefer to put it, extension is a quality - the essential quality -of a certain well-marked class of psychical states or objects. This answer has been given on the ground that our universe of dis-course is psychological, and that, therefore, by extension, we should mean that which the psychologist rather than the physicist means by extension, i.e., the form under which the external world is apprehended in the individual experience.14

Bryant was also critical of James’ views on the nature of the emotions. In “Professor James on the Emotions,”15 she offers accounts of empirical evidence which, she claims either clearly refute, or call into question James’ accounts of the emotions. Bryant takes issue with James’ view that emotions co-exist with the physical symptomatology or expression of them as a reaction to stimuli. Quoting James:

If we fancy some strong emotion... and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of perception is all that remains.16

Grief, she claims, commonly has profound somatic effects. In time those physical symptoms abate, but that does not mean that the grief has been “cured.” Indeed, 

... although in one sense the grief survives the bodily reaction, it does not survive as an actual emotion, but only as a predisposition to the recurrence of the emotion on the lively memory of the circumstances from time to time, and when the emotion does recur it is the bodily disturbance that recurs, and it is as before.17

Indeed, Bryant says later on, the sympathetic emotions are extensions of our own emotional states to someone else, whose emotions we imag-inatively substitute for and feel as our own. These views appear to be a further development of her own views on sympathy and antipathy developed in a paper by that name and published in Mind that same year.18 Still further in her criticism of James, Bryant argues that the more “objective” emotions, such as the experience of beauty, pathos, etc. are often almost entirely intellectual in nature, unaccompanied by intense physical states in one who experiences them.19

In “Self-Development and Self-Surrender” she addresses the questions whether self-development is a moral duty, and whether self-surrender (self-abnegation) is a necessary means toward the fulfillment of that duty. She argues that:

... instead of that idea of duty to self in which good people have sometimes tried to believe,... it is a duty to be and to keep one’s self in the highest possible state of [moral] efficiency.20

It is a duty to society, owed by members. As such, there is a duty to “surrender one’s will and judgment” to appropriate moral influences, in the sense of seeking out appropriate moral influence. Bryant does not argue for a denial of conscience, rather for allowing one’s moral conscience to develop to its fullest by seeking the moral influence of good persons. In this way, the natural inclination towards weakness of the will and frailty in judgment can gradually be overcome through training oneself to utilize the considered moral judgment of others and by being open to rationales and arguments they offer.

Sophie Bryant was an early member of the Aristotelian Society and of the Mind Association. In 1895 she, Muirhead, and Stout led a sym-posium for the Society on whether psychic states were extended.21 At around this time, we see a cluster of philosophical issues interesting her. First, there are the metaphysical issues facing the then emerging area we now call philosophy of mind: the nature of psychical phenomena, the ontological status of mental states (whether mental states are also 

physical states).22 Second, there are the moral issues raised by these and related questions. “What is the relationship between self-consciousness and moral responsibility?”23 Is morality anything different than character development? If so, how can moral behavior be taught?24 Her book Moral and Religious Education25 addressed the relationship between religious indoctrination, devotional practice, and moral education. In an article appearing in the precursor to the contemporary journal Ethics Bryant addressed competing concerns about the idea that the teaching of morality was a function of the virtuous state. Moral and Religious Education is written, as the author indicates, “in the belief that, in order to produce the best result over the widest area, the teaching of morality through the development of religious faith and its teaching by direct appeal to self-respect, reason, sympathy, and common sense are both necessary.”

Issues of political philosophy and the nature of the just state con-cerned Bryant also. In 1908 with “the great war” brewing in Europe, Bryant, Stout and W. D. Ross gave a Symposium before the Aristotelian Society on the subject of “The Place of Experts in a Democracy.” Bryant’s contribution was a discussion of the platonic concept of aristocracy in the modern state.26 Over the course of her professional career, Bryant’s work became more and more applied: philosophy written for educators, or for political scientists.

Her 1923 work, Liberty, Law and Order Under Native Irish Rule21 was reprinted nearly fifty years following its original issue. In it she synop- sizes and analyzes the development of ancient Irish legal philosophy from the Christian revision of the ancient Senchus Mor law under the guidance of St. Patrick. Early in the work she analyzes the concept of “fosterage” the appointment of a father responsible for the education and training of the child. Bryant analyzes conflicts between duties of natural and foster fathers towards children, and conflicting responsibilities of natural and foster fathers for crimes committed by children while in “fosterage.” Bryant applies her analysis to how ancient Irish law might assist in resolving contemporary issues. In this regard, she looks at landlord-tenant law, women’s rights to family business and to property created through marriage, social contracts and concepts of competency to enter into contracts, tribal rule, taxation, universal health care, community and public property law, law of torts, and the educative function of law. Bryant’s view was that ancient Irish law was philosophically sound, that it incorporated positive moral law, was itself morally praiseworthy 

and, in the interests of women, children and indigents was socially progressive.

Although her doctoral degree was in science, Sophie Bryant had broad interests in philosophy: from highly technical aspects of mathematical and algebraic logic, to philosophy of law, to ethics and social philosophy. She was a prolific writer in these areas, and was well known and well- regarded in philosophical circles. Despite the highly theoretical and therefore academic level of her philosophical and mathematical acumen, and despite the breadth of her interests in philosophy and higher mathematics, Sophie Bryant’s professional life was spent educating pre-college age children.

2. Julia Henrietta Gulliver: 1856-1940

Julia Henrietta Gulliver was in the first class of the newly founded Smith College. She received her B.A. in 1879. She was awarded her Ph.D. from Smith College in 1888. Her senior thesis, “Psychology of Dreams”, was published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (April 1888).28 In it, she discusses dreaming in terms of the total separateness of mind and body. The conclusion reached is that sleep is a function of the body and dreaming is a glimpse of what the freed soul may be. Gulliver did post-graduate study at the University of Leipzig from 1892 to 1893.

Gulliver’s career began in the 1890’s as the Department Head of Philosophy and Biblical Literature at Rockford Female Seminary in Rockford, Illinois. She worked at Rockford for two years before travelling to Europe to study with Wilhelm Wundt. She later translated part of his Ethics?9 Gulliver returned to Rockford (now a college) and became its president for 17 years (1902-1919).

Gulliver published only one book (which I have not seen) Studies in Democracy. An article, “The Substitutes for Christianity proposed by Comte and Spencer” applied Spencer’s test of evolution to Comte’s positivism and Spencer’s Cosmic Philosophy and Christianity. Gulliver tested Spencer’s law of evolution by treating it as universally valid when applied to religious systems. Gulliver proposed to show that Comte and Spencer both developed theories that were defective. Gulliver concludes that Christianity alone meets the needs of the world.30 Very little is known about Gulliver’s later years except that she died on July 25, 1940. 

3. Helen Dendy Bosanquet: 1860-1925

Helen Dendy was the child of the Unitarian minister the Reverend John Dendy of Manchester.31 She became a well educated woman, having received the LL.D. at St. Andrews. Her interests included philosophy of mind, logic, psychology, ethics, political philosophy and social theory. These interests culminated in two full-length works on the family and on social work. She read at least German and French well enough to review philosophy books written in those languages and for many years published reviews in Mind.32 Dendy’s interests in philosophy can best be understood from a brief survey of the chronology of her few written works in philosophy.

The earliest publication in philosophy by Dendy that we have iden-tified is an article, “Recent Developments of the Doctrine of Sub-Conscious Process,” which appeared in Mind in 1893. In this article she reviews recent developments in the newly emerging discipline of psychology which was as yet not the research and treatment discipline we know it as today. It still had close theoretical connections to work then being done in philosophy of mind, logic, philosophy of language and other sub-specialty areas in philosophy. In this respect, academic psychology closely analyzed concepts of consciousness, of personal identity, of self-awareness, of the nature of sensory experience, memory, etc. In this article, Dendy examines three different emerging theories of personality, all of which assume that a single consciousness, a person, is a plurality of distinct personalities. This school of personality theories was suggested by the immensely popular “psychical” research of the time that investigated empirical psychological data. First, she says are theories that personality

... appears to be identical with a “chain of memory”; and again it is implied, if not assumed, that a “primary,” “secondary,” or “subja-cent” consciousness es equivalent to a distinct and independent personality.33

But, she criticizes, this form of personality theory is not sufficiently well thought out, and fails to argue, as she says it must, in support of the claim that consciousness is identical to a chain of memory.

She then addresses a second version of the theory. On this account, she says, personality 

... results from the assumption of different “layers” of consciousness. Here the personalities exist contemporaneously, and we may again distinguish them according as they are known only as the supposi-tious accompaniments of physical events or manifest themselves in genuinely psychical phenomena.34

It is the third (and then most popular) version of personality theory that is for Dendy most fraught with philosophical difficulties. This is the theory that personality is

... successively independent trains of memory, where the break between one personality and another might be represented as a break in a straight line, rather than as a distinction between different planes.35

She criticizes this theory of multiple personality on the following grounds: first, she says, it is not sufficient to say that each “personality” has its own independent sensorium, memories, etc. and cannot access those of the other “personality.” It is clear, that at least under hypnosis, the alleged existence of these personalities has been brought out that very way: by having the same physical individual connect with and display the personalities in succession. That, she claims is not essen-tially any different than, for example, forgetting a multiplication table or a piece of poetry and being completely unable to recall them except under extraordinary provocative circumstances (if at all). In such a situation, we would not want to say that I had two personalities; rather, that I had suppressed memories and could not for the life of me recall them. It is rather, she claims, a matter of refocussing attentiveness so that inhibitions are overcome and chains of memory are accessible.

Is there, moreover, anything to be gained by this arbitrary division of Selves? Are we not tempted by it to exaggerate what are no doubt very striking deviations from the ordinary course of mental devel-opment, and to close our eyes to the fundamental unity underlying such deviations - perhaps all the more easily because it is so funda-mental. And, further, do not the facts of hypnotic suggestion themselves tend to show how close the connection really is between the groups of ideas which have been thus elevated into “personali-ties”?36 

Dendy then examines the psychic phenomenon of automatic action which had been used to prove the existence of multiple personality, summarizing the argument of those who hold the view:

... if the body carries out a series of systematic actions while the mind is occupied with thoughts having no reference to that series it is assumed that there must be a secondary consciousness to which the series is present and by which it is controlled. It is assumed, that is, that every physical change in the body must have its psychical coun-terpart somewhere.37

She points out the consequences: why not claim that every cell in the body has its own memory, and on that account, has its own personality? The mere presence of apparently independent chains of memory cannot be the entire conceptual foundation for a definition of personality. Dendy suggests instead that accidental association of ideas may account for all apparent instances of “unconscious mental processes.”38 She gives an example familiar to all of us: we are writing about logic and are searching for just the right word to convey our meaning, but the word won’t come to us. We get busy doing something else, and while dusting, move a law text:

Causal! That is the word I want. Am I to suppose an unconscious mental process, a second self, or some daemonic secretary at work underground and telephoning the word up just when he happens to find it, quite irrespective of my present needs and occupation, or even a purely mechanical interaction of ideas which happens to come to an end just here?... Not at all.39

The likelier, and simpler explanation, that accounts both for ordinary forgetfulness and extraordinary capacities (like automatic piano-play-ing, hypnotic recollection of events and ideas, etc.) is: (a) that there is a single unity of consciousness that constitutes a personality, and (b) that accessing chains of memories requires attentiveness to those memories which present consciousness is too confused, preoccupied or distracted to access without external assistance. Whether that assistance is provided by a chance encounter with related ideas, or by hypnotic suggestion is determined only by a difference in the degree of our inattentiveness.

For the next several years, Helen Dendy Bosanquet published in 

Mind reviews of a variety of books which have as their common thread, her interest in philosophical psychology. Through these reviews, we see reflected her own interests in concepts of consciousness and selfidentity and the relationship of those concepts to a view of human social action.

Apparently, her first published book review was of a German book by Paulson on the history of philosophy,40 followed by a review of Maurice Blondel’s philosophical psychology.41 She is very critical of both works, but highly complimentary of the German book by Sigwart, Logik,42 and reviews it twice.43 Sigwart addresses a variety of episte-mological and psychological aspects of thought and knowledge, e.g., causal inference, consciousness, historical explanation, etc. But during this period of the early and mid 1890’s Dendy’s interests remained primarily in philosophy of psychology,44 in particular regarding questions of personal identity and the nature of conscience. We can see this interested reflected in her review of Robertson’s book on the development of conscience.45 Here, her primary interest is in the roles played by reason and sentiment in moral judgment: the rational and emotional aspects of moral conscience. She critically evaluates Robertson’s account of immediate knowledge (recognition) of the morally good and of evil, as well as his discussion of the nature of moral law and its status in conscience. The last review to be written under her own name was on Emile Boutroux’ concept of natural law.46 That review appeared in late 1895, so we can assume that her interests were already beginning to tend toward social and political philosophy.

Prior to their marriage in 1895, Helen Dendy and Bernard Bosanquet (a philosopher at Oxford) had both been active leaders in the Charity Organization Society, as was Bernard’s brother Charles. Following her marriage, Dendy published under the name Bosanquet. Her interests evolved from the earlier focus on the nature of personal identity and consciousness and other psychological questions, toward an interest in ethics, especially, the nature of conscience, free will and determinism, natural law, moral psychology, and social theories, such as the social philosophy and social psychology of Baldwin,47 and the social and economic philosophy of the German philosopher Stein.48 Her analysis of socialist and utopian ideas appeared in (what I believe, but have not been able to confirm, was) a jointly authored work Strength of the People*9 Given these interests, it is perhaps natural that she would gradually tend toward more applied social ethics issues, in particular those concerning the status of women and children. She takes a particularly positive attitude towards 

a German work on the psychology of woman (written by a man), although she is critical of parts of it. Her review opens with:

Perhaps one of the most curious psychological differences between man and woman is the fact that while men are never weary of “studying” woman, and publishing treatises about her, no woman, so far as I am aware, has ever attempted to study “man,” and the day is probably far off when a treatise on the Psychology of “man” as distinct from “woman” will appear. This is perhaps because it is assumed that man represents the normal mind about which all Psychologists are engaged, in which case of course there is nothing to explain, while woman represents a deviation which calls for special explanation. The truth would perhaps be better represented by assuming that the normal mind of the psychological textbook is neither male nor female, and that man and woman both deviate from it in certain assignable respects.50

Bosanquet’s critical attitude toward masculist theories notwithstanding, she holds traditional views about women. For example, in this review she accepts the view that women have a lesser capacity for abstract thought.51 In The Family52 she claims that accounts of matriarchal soci-eties are overstated. She supports limitations on women in industrial employment, and the authority of the male as head of household. She views the family as the quintessential social unit, without which society would crumble. She claims that the economic needs and contributions of families are under-appreciated by society, and urges a proper acknowl-edgement of the social and economic contributions made by mothers. In “The Intellectual Influence of Women,”53 she supports the view that the “domination” by women of university life in state colleges in the western United States accounts for reduced scientific investigation at those institutions, while the exclusion of women from the eastern states’ ivy league colleges accounts for the higher quality of academic scien-tific output there. Yet, the article urges the English to recognize women’s intellectual potential and the valuable contributions that women, given the opportunity, can make to society. It closes with an appeal for expanding post-graduate opportunities and fellowships for women.

Bosanquet’s “English Divorce Law and the Report of the Royal Commission” analyzes some technical aspects of prospective reforms to divorce law and criticizes those aspects of the proposed reforms that would tend to dissuade women from seeking reconciliation with their 

husbands, or from seeking alcoholism treatment for their spouses (or themselves) and make it easier to legally separate and then divorce than it would be to work to reconstruct a sound marriage. Her argument is based on her concept of the commitment made by marrying, a commit-ment that the new law in effect says, according to Bosanquet, is not one that society takes seriously. Nevertheless, for prolonged abandonment, cruelty, non-support and other serious grounds, Bosanquet feels that marriage should be disoluble. She argues that the present system is discriminatory against poor and uneducated women by making divorce too expensive, and the bureaucracy that administers it too difficult for uneducated women to have reasonable access to.