## **SpringerBriefs in Philosophy**

**Erika Ruonakoski**

**Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy**

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Erika Ruonakoski

# Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy

Erika Ruonakoski Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland

ISSN 2211-4548 ISSN 2211-4556 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Philosophy ISBN 978-3-031-16669-3 ISBN 978-3-031-16670-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16670-9

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### **Acknowledgements**

This publication was written as the intellectual output of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership, Gender and Philosophy, initiated by Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (University of Iceland, coordinating university), Martina Reuter (University of Jyväskylä), Tove Pettersen (University of Oslo) and Antje Gimmler (University of Aalborg). These philosophers formed the project's academic board and developed the original idea of the book, as well as planning the content and teaching of the related summer schools, which were held in each country in 2016–2017. The exchange between the board members and myself guided my writing process in its early stages, and I am particularly grateful for their comments on the manuscript. During the project, I shared my office with Reuter at the University of Jyväskylä, which resulted in numerous discussions on the work in progress and joint involvement in various events. What is more, Reuter's previous work on the underrepresentation of women in philosophy laid the groundwork for the questionnaires we prepared to gather data about students' experiences of learning philosophy.

I am also indebted to Thorgeirsdottir and Eyja Margrét Brynjarsdóttir for inviting me to the Feminist Utopias conference in Reykjavík and Skálholt in the spring of 2017. This extremely inspiring conference allowed me to get feedback about our project and to discuss it with researchers who shared similar interests. I am equally thankful to Elsa Haraldsdóttir for taking such excellent care of the numerous practicalities of the project, and, above all, for being such a trustworthy friend in our shared adventures during the summer schools.

On behalf of the project I would also like to thank Óskar E. Óskarsson from the Icelandic Centre for Research for making our Erasmus+strategic partnership run smoothly and Pia Søndergaard for diligently arranging the practicalities at the University of Oslo. In addition, I wish to thank all the visiting lecturers of the summer schools: Virpi Lehtinen, Donata Schoeller, Ásta Sveinsdóttir and Charlotte Witt, who taught in Reykjavík; Sandrine Bergès, Marguerite Deslauriers and Sara Heinämaa, who taught in Jyväskylä; Henrik Jøker Bjerre, Robin May Schott, Ole Ravn and Pauline Stoltz who taught in Aalborg; and finally, Sarah Clark Miller and Anna Smajdor, who taught in Oslo.

During one of the most intense work periods pertaining to this book, I spent 3 weeks in Olot, Catalonia, in the autumn of 2017, invited to the Faber Residency during its special theme of feminism. I thank the director of the residency programme, Francesc Serés, for his hospitality and friendliness, and my co-residents Sameena Azhar, Bipasha Baruah, Mary Condren, Jenn Diáz, Kate Good, Susie Hammond, Raisa Jurva, Kathleen McNerney, Viktoriia Panova, Klara Regnö, Fina Sanz, Marta Roqueta and L. Ayu Saraswati for the inspiring conversations we had during our residency. I am also grateful for the intellectual exchange and walks I was able to have with yet another co-resident, the author Patricia de Souza, who unfortunately passed away only a couple of years after our residency.

Auli Dahlström, whose group I belonged to during my pedagogical studies, opened up for me a new dimension in thinking about teaching and learning. Margaret A. Simons, with her warmth and genuine interest in others, regardless of their academic rank, has taught me more about generosity than perhaps any other individual. Tua Korhonen reminded me to exercise caution with claims about ancient Greek texts and helped me to analyse the background of a particular passage attributed to Phintys. In addition, my philosopher colleagues in Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Saara Hacklin, Anniina Leiviskä, Olli-Pekka Moisio and Jussi Saarinen, have been helpful when discussing my ideas pertaining to the book. I particularly want to thank Martta Heikkilä, Susanna Lindberg, Irina Poleshchuk and Janne Vanhanen for commenting on the chapter "The Historical Situation" in our seminar and for helping me to see the whole manuscript with fresh eyes. Sanna Tirkkonen has generously shared her views on good and inclusive practices of teaching philosophy, whereas a sound walk organised by Vanhanen inspired a part of my discussion pertaining to embodiment in learning processes. Likewise, the support and interest of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers such as Olli Aho, Heidi Elmgren, Tiia-Mari Hovila, Sari Hietamäki, Olli-Pekka Paananen, Milla Rantanen, Jaakko Vuori and Minna-Kerttu Vienola have been important to me.

In 2017–2022, I had the opportunity to present my work in several occasions, including the Philosophy Research Seminar and Genders through Time conference at the University of Jyväskylä, and Silent History—Women Philosophers in Finland, an event organised by the Finnish Society for the History of Science and Learning, Philosophical Society of Finland and Association for Women and Feminist Philosophers in Finland. I am extremely grateful for all the discussions we had on those occasions and for the participants' comments, and I particularly want to thank Ella Kemppi and Markku Roinila for their input in the organisation of the latter event. I am likewise grateful to the active members of the Centre for Practical Phenomenology, with whom I have been able to try alternative ways of arranging scholarly events in the field of philosophy.

Most of all, I wish to express my gratitude to all the students of the Gender and Philosophy summer schools, as well as to all my students at the University of Jyväskylä, for sharing their views with me and for the experience of learning together. I hope that you will find some of your concerns covered in this work and that it can, perhaps, inspire you in your own teaching practices in the future. I also want to thank my family: my husband Juhani and our sons Rainer, Väinö and Joel. Juhani has most often been the first to learn about the twists and turns in the writing process. His attentiveness and encouragement have been an invaluable support to me.

The writing of this book was for the most part funded by the Erasmus+programme of the European Union. The extensions of my contract by the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy (University of Jyväskylä) made it possible for me to delve into this project more profoundly, and for this, I am grateful to Heinämaa, Mika Ojakangas, Reuter and Mikko Yrjönsuuri. The finishing touches to the manuscript were put during my projects *Despair and Time* and *Indirect Philosophy as a Form of Resistance*, which both enjoyed the generous funding of the Kone Foundation. I would like to thank all the involved individuals and organisations for their support, without which the finishing of this book would not have been possible.

### **Contents**

### **Abbreviations**

### **Chapter 1 Introduction: Equality, Inclusion and Alienation in Learning Philosophy**

**Abstract** When we are talk about the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, what do we mean, and what kind of data do we have on it? Why is the low percentage of women and other minorities in philosophy a problem? Are there specific mechanisms of discrimination that contribute to women and minorities opting out of philosophy?

#### **1.1 Why Does the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy Matter?**

Over the past decade, professional women philosophers have increasingly voiced their discontent and disappointment about the persistent underrepresentation of women and racial, ethnic and gender minorities in the field of philosophy. This concern stretches much further into history, and the underrepresentation itself is as old as Western philosophy. In our days, the underrepresentation of women and other minorities still encompasses all levels of academic philosophy, from students to those involved in teaching.

When this concern is raised, this immediately begs the question whether it matters how many women practise philosophy. After all, opting out and choosing another field may be wise, as far as economic possibilities and even emotional rewards are concerned. What is more, we witness a similar disproportion in many other fields, such as nursing or engineering, without necessarily thinking twice about it. It is possible to argue, however, that a more even gender distribution could be for the good of the development of even these fields: diversity as such can be seen as beneficial, as it can bring new questions with it, or different ways of looking at familiar questions. Would not philosophy also benefit from attracting more students with diverse gender identities, as well as from different ethnic and economic backgrounds? Is it possible that the homogeneity of the staff and student body leaves philosophy outside many of the developments that enrich the rest of the humanities? This is the justification of what is beneficial for philosophy itself (see e.g. Friedman 2013, 32–36). Even if groups were underrepresented because their members have more interesting study paths to follow, we can still regret this absence as a loss to the discipline of philosophy.

Another justification points towards what is beneficial to women and minorities themselves. Learning philosophy can be beneficial to the currently underrepresented groups in a number of ways: (1) it can be highly enjoyable, (2) it develops the student's capacity for critical in-depth analysis, and (3) as professional philosophers, women and members of other minorities can take part in the analysis and development of philosophical approaches rather than just apply them. Such participation implies, in turn, intellectual and social influence.

Finally, and perhaps most self-evidently, we can ask what is just towards women and other minorities in philosophy. It is hard to question the justness of creating a learning and working environment in which nobody feels alienated because of their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race or social background. If the absence of such an environment is one reason for the underrepresentation of women and other minorities, then one can consider the current state of affairs as unsatisfactory and requiring change. What is more, an organisation that claims to be committed to justice and equality is simply inconsistent, if it allows unjust structures to persist.

A great deal has already been written on the topic of women's underrepresentation in philosophy. For the most part, the discussion deals with the situation of professional women philosophers in the academic community. Linda Alcoff's *Singing in the Fire: Stories of Women in Philosophy* (2003) is a collection of women philosophers' reminiscences of the problems they have faced in their careers. Katrina Hutchison's and Fiona Jenkins's (eds) (2013) *Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?*  discusses widely the situation of women in philosophy, with a detailed analysis of the gendered aspects of implicit bias, stereotype threat and microinequities. Michael Brownstein's and Jessica Saul's (eds) *Implicit Bias and Philosophy*, volumes 1 and 2, (2016a, b) investigate the psychological and ethical aspects of implicit bias in philosophy, covering, for instance, the themes of rationality, knowledge, structural injustice and moral responsibility. Among the numerous articles that deal with the problem of discrimination and the essentialist tendencies of some approaches to women's situation in philosophy, we can mention Louise Antony's "Different Voices or Perfect Storm: Why Are There So Few Women in Philosophy?" (2012) and Anne Leuschner's "Why So Low? On Indirect Effects of Gender Bias in Philosophy" (2019). Helen Beebee's and Jennifer Saul's report *Women in Philosophy in the UK* (2011) and its recent update (2021) are, in turn, significant and compact resources for statistics, actions, initiatives and recommendable practices. In addition to these publications, a number of empirical surveys on women's underrepresentation in philosophy majors have come out in the past years (see Sect. 1.2).

As all of these publications demonstrate in their own way, women's underrepresentation in professional philosophy is intertwined with the learning and teaching of philosophy. In the remainder of this introduction, I discuss the data provided by empirical research as well as some of the viewpoints suggested by analytic philosophers to deal with the issue of underrepresentation. The overall focus of this volume, however, is not on professional women philosophers but on where the seeds of the issue are sown, in the situations faced by women students of philosophy and in the pedagogical responses to the potentially alienating elements in those situations.

The concepts of "situation" and "alienation" are the most central to my discussion of women students' marginal position in philosophy (see Sect. 2.3). There appears to be something in the practice and public image of philosophy that is experienced as more alienating by the underrepresented groups than by most of the White—and supposedly heterosexual—males, who form the overwhelming majority of students and staff. The goal of the study is to identify the sources of alienation on the basis of earlier empirical and philosophical research, and to examine how teaching and learning practices could contribute to making philosophy more welcoming towards women and other minorities, as well as towards those who belong to the White and male majority but still experience a similar alienation.

The title of the book, *Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy*, refers to the situation of women as both included in and alienated from the male-dominated field of philosophy, as well as to inclusive practices in philosophy teaching. In other words, my focus is on women, even though I consider race, class and other possible sources of students' alienation from philosophy. Despite the fact that philosophy as a discipline is now much more welcoming towards women than it was, for instance, in the 1960s (see Simons and Ruonakoski 2021), their situation is still different from that of men, according to whose interests and social styles the practices of the philosophical community have been formed over its long history.

Some attempts have already been made to improve the situation of women and other minorities in philosophy. Different countries and universities have taken different measures, which makes assessment of the overall situation difficult: some have renewed their policies on hiring practices, others are focusing on the inclusiveness of the syllabus, and so on. Recommendations that advance gender parity are extremely important, of course, and one of the book's objectives is precisely to identify the relevant non-discriminatory practices that can be implemented at the departmental level. An equally important objective, however, is to help readers recognise that the other's experience always remains hidden from the view of the explorative philosophical gaze—not only in its immediacy but also in its singular situatedness. Consequently, the problems I am able identify may differ from those seen by a person who has a different background—for instance, a different gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or social class. In fact, the problems of the other can be invisible to me simply because I never encounter our "shared" environment in the way that the other does. The volume therefore advocates the recognition of one's "not-knowing" as an important ethical and pedagogical goal, one that allows change to go deeper than the level of administrational necessity, which is often adhered to only half-heartedly. In this spirit, I hope to appeal to the imagination of those of us who teach philosophy, especially in higher education, and to provide some tools that might help readers analyse the power dynamics in the classroom. I also suggest ways in which the diversity of students could be addressed in the teaching of philosophy.

The motivation of this volume being practical in the described sense, I have taken the liberty to integrate discussions from different theoretical perspectives in it: phenomenology, analytic philosophy, empirical research and psychoanalytic theory. As background research for the book, a small-scale survey on students' experiences of studying philosophy was conducted, and interviews were made with a number of philosophy students and professionals of philosophy from various countries (see Chap. 4). The book incorporates many pedagogical ideas of the philosophers who designed and organised the experimental summer schools in the Gender and Philosophy project. While the discussion on the summer schools and their pedagogical input is necessarily coloured by my own pedagogical leanings, there remains a certain polyphony in these sections that hopefully enriches the work. As for the interviews and survey, I have likewise wanted to highlight opinions that are not necessarily identical with my own, but help us get a broader understanding of possible ways of interpreting the aspect of gender in philosophy.

Questioning the styles of interaction in learning and teaching philosophy inevitably leads to questions about the nature of philosophy itself. What are the aspects of philosophy that we find valuable and worth preserving, and what are those that we should, perhaps, dispense with, to make room for more inclusive practices of philosophy? What is the future of philosophy like? How do we actively create this future—or is it enough to carry on the tradition? These questions are, of course, without unequivocal answers, but at the same time relevant to all practitioners of philosophy, whether or not they engage in teaching.

All in all, I have approached the question of learning and teaching philosophy by investigating the philosophical basis of that learning and teaching. While the volume at hand includes practical pedagogical suggestions and guidelines, I have written it as a philosopher who invites fellow philosophers to investigate the question of gender and pedagogical choices in all their complexity. That the topic is approached predominantly from the viewpoint of existential phenomenology is perhaps most visible in how the themes of situatedness, temporality, intersubjectivity and embodiment are treated in the book, as well as in the chosen concepts. I elucidate the power relations in the learning environment and demonstrate how women and men come to occupy different possibilities in a seemingly egalitarian setting. Drawing from Simone de Beauvoir's vision of the development of gender, I discuss the different aspects of situations of students and the teaching staff. In addition, I examine the formation of alienation from philosophy among students, suggesting that their experiences of belonging and alienation are formed in a complex process in which philosophy is never "pure" but always structured in a historical and social context. In the following section, I consider underrepresentation from the viewpoint of empirical research, returning to more general pedagogical and conceptual questions in Chap. 2.

#### **1.2 Data on the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy**

For most people working in the field of philosophy today, the underrepresentation of women and other minorities in it should be evident. When one peeks into a classroom or a meeting room of a philosophy department or participates in a conference, it is not unusual to witness what looks like an overwhelming preponderance of White male students. During the past decade, quite a few empirical studies dealing with the issue have emerged. The data comes primarily from the English-speaking countries, and problematically, does not allow direct comparison even between those. In the British data, we can see a steady decline in the proportion of women from the undergraduate students (46%), the graduate students (37%) and PhD students (31%) to staff members with temporary (28%) and permanent jobs (24%) (Beebee and Saul 2011, 8). The figures from Australia tell us that while in 2001–2008 as many as 61% of students taking introductory courses in philosophy were women, only 44% of those graduating with a philosophy major and 41% of those with a PhD were women (Bishop et al. 2013, 235–236). These figures still seem rather high in comparison to the UK, but among staff, the tendency is similar: in 2009, women comprised only 28% of the faculty (Bishop et al. 2013, 232).

Some quantitative studies have been conducted on gender parity in philosophy in the United States (e.g. Paxton et al. 2012; see Bishop et al. 2013, 246). However, the low percentage of respondents makes it difficult to generalise the results. For this reason, I only refer to a result obtained at the University of Oklahoma by Heather Demarest et al.: on introductory courses to philosophy, women are 51% of students, but in more advanced courses, only 37% of students. In 2003, the proportion of women in full-time philosophy faculty positions was only 17% (Demarest et al. 2017, 525).

These trends are indicative of the situation in the Nordic countries, even though no large-scale study has been done (see, however, Reuter 2015). Generally speaking, philosophy differs significantly from the other humanities that tend to be femaledominated, and more closely resembles mathematics, physics and engineering in that all of these fields are male-dominated. Across different countries and universities there is a significant drop in the percentage of women students between introductory courses and more advanced ones. This result is often interpreted as indicative of a possibility to foster gender balance by how philosophy is taught.

In an American study, Morgan Thompson et al. (2016) examined the possible motivators of women's opting out. They looked into seven different aspects of this: (1) identification with philosophy, (2) perceived instructor fairness, (3) perceived student respect, (4) comfort of speaking in class, (6) beliefs about field-specific ability and (7) beliefs about gender and race gap. One of their findings was that the students' perception of the proportion of women on the syllabus had an influence on whether women were willing to continue in philosophy or not. (Thompson et al. 2016, 16.) Even though the results remain fairly inconclusive overall, the researchers argue that there is a significant difference in how women and men experience their belonging to the field, to the disadvantage of women. As for methods of teaching and learning, Thompson et al. (2016, 18) suggest that women are less likely to enjoy thought experiments as a method of practising philosophy, and that therefore a wider variety of teaching methods could be of use to attract more women students to major in philosophy. In addition, highlighting the relevance of philosophy to a wider range of problems might make it more interesting to women.

A similar result is obtained by Demarest et al. (2017). The researchers argue that two attitudes predict continuation in philosophy, namely "feeling similar to the kinds of people who become philosophers" and "enjoying thinking about philosophical puzzles and issues" (Demarest et al. 2017, 526–527). Women are less likely to hold these attitudes than men. The researchers suggest that having more women instructors or more women authors on the syllabus may not be the only way to tackle the issue of "feeling similar", for at least in some cases it may be enough to point out the counterstereotypical characteristics of a historical philosopher to make room for diversity and to provide objects of identification. As for enjoying "philosophical puzzles and issues", women were less likely than men to hold this attitude in the beginning of an introductory course, but the likelihood to do so dropped even lower during the term. (Ibid., 529–531.)

As the researchers admit (Demarest et al. 2017, 530), the way they formulated the question was somewhat problematic, because the emphasis on "philosophical puzzles" reinforces the idea of philosophy as a game that works through thought experiments. In other words, the formulation directs the respondents' attention to a specific mode of practising philosophy. However, in an environment in which philosophy is practised mainly in a manner that detaches it from the everyday concerns and works with thought experiments, a low interest in "philosophical puzzles" can understandably predict discontinuation.

In their survey on women's opting out from philosophy at the University of Sydney, Dougherty and others found that there may be pre-university factors that have an effect on women's low likelihood to identify themselves with the discipline. According to them, a gender schema may be operating that is very difficult to undo by increasing the number of female lecturers (I use "lecturer" here as a concise term for university teaching staff) or making changes in the teaching methods. However, the researchers point out that women's choices of disciplines should be examined on a larger scale, because they do not choose between philosophy and nothing, but philosophy and other disciplines, many of which apparently fascinate a good part of women students more than philosophy does (Dougherty et al. 2015, 471; see also Reuter 2015, 16–17).

In another study, Debbie Ma et al. (2017) demonstrate that women are more likely than men to view the discipline as masculine and less likely to identify with it, and that there is a correlation between these two things: the women who think that philosophy is "a masculine field" have difficulties identifying with it. Male students' perception of the field as masculine, however, does not correlate with their likelihood to continue in philosophy. In contrast to Dougherty et al., Ma et al. suggest that it is possible to influence the gender disparity in philosophy through a pedagogy that does not reinforce the view of philosophy as a masculine discipline.

Without a doubt, there are many other variables that may have an effect on women students opting out of studying philosophy. Experiences of philosophy (if any) while in upper secondary school, the public image of philosophy and even the location of the university are likely to have an impact.1 For instance, 50% of the applicants accepted to study moral philosophy at the University of Helsinki were women in 2016, when students still started directly as majors in a specific subject.2 At the same time, a smaller Finnish university further from the capital, the University of Jyväskylä, had a significantly lower percentage of accepted women applicants (12%) and a yet lower percentage of women applicants in philosophy all in all, regardless of the fact that its emphasis in the history of philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory might be considered more attractive to women than the focus on analytic philosophy at the University of Helsinki. This suggests that the location of the university may play a role. Before the reasons behind these differences are investigated empirically, it is anybody's guess whether they can be explained by the quality of teaching of philosophy in upper secondary school in different areas, by women's preference for more secure choices in education outside the metropolitan area, by the metropolitan area's attractiveness to women, or by something else. In any case, the impact of location cannot alone explain the general underrepresentation of women in philosophy. Especially when students choose their major only after taking introductory courses in several subjects, the actual teaching of philosophy at the university level and the ways of interacting in the classroom will have more influence on students' choices.

#### **1.3 Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Harassment**

During the past few years, there has been a lot of discussion about harassment and discrimination within philosophy.3 This discussion preceded the second and more

<sup>1</sup> Whether philosophy is an obligatory subject in upper secondary school and its equivalents varies from one European country to another. French and Finnish students of upper secondary school (*lycée*, *lukio*) are expected to learn philosophy, whereas in the UK, for instance, it is optional.

<sup>2</sup> This information can be found in the database of the Statistics Finland, the Ministry of Culture and Education and the Finnish National Agency for Education. https://vipunen.fi/en-gb/university/ Pages/Hakeneet-ja-hyväksytyt.aspx. Accessed 19 April 2022.).

<sup>3</sup> For instance, the blog *What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?* collects and publishes the recollections of harassment and discrimination experienced by women students and members of faculty. https://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com. Accessed 31 March 2022. The reported incidents range from situations, in which women's input is ignored, to sexual assaults. The blog currently has a sister blog *What We're Doing About What It's Like*, which deals with the institutional and individual responses to problems for women in philosophy. https://whatweredoingaboutwhatit slike.wordpress.com. Accessed 31 March 2022.

global rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017,4 which, within a very short time, radically changed not only the debate on sexual harassment but on the way gender relations are addressed and understood, and how all forms of harassment are dealt with.<sup>5</sup> What is more, in the years following the rise of the #MeToo movement more research has been done on sexual harassment in academia. The movement has certainly had its impact within philosophy, adding to the ongoing discussion of gender relations and harassment in the field and making it, perhaps, at least a bit easier for students and faculty to speak up about harassment.

 In EU Directive 2002/73/EC sexual harassment is defined as a situation "where any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature occurs, with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". How the specific acts of sexual harassment are defined varies from one country to another. According to the Finnish Equality Act, for instance, sexual harassment can be expressed by "sexually suggestive gestures or expressions, indecent talk, puns and comments or questions referring to body parts, clothing or private life, pornographic material, sexually suggestive letters, emails, text messages or phone calls, physical contact, suggestions or demands for sexual intercourse or other kinds of sexual activity, rape or attempted rape".6

Gender-based harassment is defined in the Finnish Equality Act as "unwanted contact that is not of a sexual nature but which is related to the gender of a person, their gender identity or gender expression, and by which the person's psychological or physical integrity is intentionally or factually violated and an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive atmosphere is created". Gender-based harassment is expressed by "degrading the individual's gender, gender identity or gender expression", or by "workplace and school bullying, when this is based on the victim's gender".7 However, it is important to see that in an American consensus study report by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), for instance, gender-based harassment is defined as one form of sexual harassment, the other two being unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion (NASEM 2018, 48).

Legislation gives its own answers to how sexual harassment should be understood, but how individuals in different countries understand it does not necessarily

<sup>4</sup> As it is well known, the #MeToo movement was initiated in 2006 by Tarana Burke to empower sexually assaulted women of colour through empathy. The idea was to post the words "me too" on social media to support assaulted women. In 2017, Alyssa Milano reintroduced the concept as a way raise consciousness of the magnitude of the problem of sexual harassment.

<sup>5</sup> Most importantly, it has become less stigmatising for victims of sexual harassment and assault to speak out. At the same time, the #MeToo movement has been criticised of reaffirming the idea of gender as binary and women as victims.

<sup>6</sup> See the Finnish Act on Equality between Women and Men, Equality Act, 27. https://julkaisut.val tioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/75131/Act\_on%20Equality\_between\_women\_and\_men\_ 2015\_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed 31 March 2022.).

<sup>7</sup> Ibid.

correspond with the legal definitions. According to a survey (2017) that dealt with data from seven European countries, namely Germany, the UK, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, there appears to be a consensus among the respondents in all of these countries in that if a man touches a woman's bottom or offers her his sexual services, this is sexual harassment (94–97% agree in the first scenario, 86– 92% agree in the second one), whereas the scenario in which a man tells a woman a sex joke or looks at her breasts finds more understanding in Germany and Denmark than in the UK, France and Finland.8 In Germany only 35% of the respondents thought that telling sex jokes was sexual harassment, and in Denmark the percentage was even lower, 17%, in stark contrast to the figures of the UK (69%), France (53%) and Finland (67%). Respectively, only 29% of Germans and 26% of Danes considered looking at a woman's breasts as sexual harassment, compared to 50% of respondents in the UK, 51% in France and in 47% Finland.9

In the past few years, sexual harassment in higher education has been the topic of numerous studies, but it is fairly difficult to compare their results, and the differences between countries are remarkable. According to a systematic review of highly cited research papers in scientific journals, the exposure to sexual harassment in higher education "varies between 11 and 73 per cent for heterosexual women (median 49 per cent) and between 3 and 26 per cent for heterosexual men (median 15 per cent)" (Bondestam and Lundqvist 2020, 403). For now, there is little research on sexual harassment or gender harassment in philosophy specifically. For this reason, it is difficult to estimate exactly how common sexual harassment is within philosophy, how philosophy compares with other fields, and what the differences between different countries or departments are. One thing is clear, however: sexual and gender harassment do exist within philosophy, even if they may not be a part of the everyday interaction in the classroom, among students and at the department.

Of course, heterosexual cis women are not the only targets of sexual and gender harassment; heterosexual men and sexual and gender minorities can be targeted, as is becoming increasingly clear thanks to the increased readiness of individuals to speak out about their experiences. Many cases may still remain hidden, however, due to the fact that the targets may experience the incidents too hurtful or shameful to discuss them openly. It is also possible that they do not expect to be believed, or they may consider their case as unique rather than symptomatic of a larger problem. As the targets are often young women who have very little power, they may choose not to risk their career development by speaking out.

<sup>8</sup> Yougov.de, Lisa Inhoffen, "Sexuelle Belästigung gegenüber Frauen: Wo fängt sie an und wo hört sie auf?" https://yougov.de/news/2017/11/09/sexuelle-belastigung-gegenuber-frauen-wofangt-sie/. Accessed 31 March 2022.  They also found a similar characteristic in the Danish attitudes towards sex jokes as did the more international study mentioned above: Danish university students were less likely to interpret them as sexual harassment than non-Danish university students (Guschke et al. 2019).

<sup>9</sup> Ibid.

In interview, Black women philosophers also suggest that the stereotype of Black women as maids or prostitutes affects how they are viewed by other staff members (Allen 2008, 170–172; see also Hill Collins 2009, 142–145 and Dotson 2012). This phenomenon of sexualisation is not limited to Black women philosophers, for it has been demonstrated that women of different minorities are often sexualised (Shimizu 2007). It is as if some applied a different set of rules on how to act towards women in their ingroup and outgroup. Of course, young women can be said to be sexualised also as a group: they are the objects of most of the inappropriate behaviour.

In addition, trans women, trans men and genderqueer individuals face other kinds of challenges in academia. As transgender individuals often have to endure harsh attitudes and rejection by people close to them as well as by strangers, diverse problems may accumulate in their lives, so that they may not make it to academia at all. Once in academia, their gender identity may be misrecognised, or they may be offended on its basis. Sometimes people are pressured to state their "actual" gender. Needless to say, for those who belong to many marginalised groups, that is, for instance, for Black trans women, the situation may be quite fraught despite the seemingly liberal attitudes in academia.<sup>10</sup>

On the basis of the NASEM report, sexual and gender minorities are more likely than other individuals to encounter gender-based harassment, as are those individuals who question gender norms in their behaviour or appearance. More precisely, lesbian or bisexual women, and women who endorse gender-egalitarian beliefs, or who are considered "masculine", encounter gender-based harassment at higher rates than other women. Similarly, transgender, petite or gay men experience more genderbased harassment than other men (NASEM 2018, 27). According another American study, 75.2% of undergraduate students who belonged to the TGQN group (those identifying as transgender, genderqueer, non-conforming, questioning, or as something not listed on the survey), reported being harassed. The percentage of harassed cis female undergraduate students was also alarmingly high, 61.9% (Cantor et al. 2017, xvi).

Having been harassed does not presuppose that this occurs on a daily basis, of course, but even so, harassment should be taken seriously and acted against in and outside the classroom (see e.g. Meyer 2008). In addition to the overt forms of harassment and discrimination there are subtler discriminatory mechanisms, such as implicit bias, stereotype threat and micro-inequities. These are introduced in the following section.

#### **1.4 Subtle Mechanisms of Discrimination: Implicit Bias, Micro-Inequities and Stereotype Threat**

Implicit bias, micro-inequity and stereotype threat are originally psychological and sociological concepts that are used to describe those marginalising phenomena that

<sup>10</sup> On the difficulty of researching transgender theory in academia, see Grearey 2016.

are difficult to address precisely because of their "invisibility". In philosophy, these issues have been discussed in detail in Katrina Hutchison's and Fiona Jenkins's (eds) (2013) *Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?* New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Implicit bias refers to unconscious biases that affect our ways of perceiving and evaluating people from the targeted groups. Implicit bias affects individuals of all genders, which means that even other women tend to evaluate the achievements of women more negatively than they would if they thought they were evaluating men's achievements. For instance, the same curriculum vitae can be assessed as better and the person behind as deserving of a higher salary, if the name at the top of it is male (Moss-Racusin et al. 2008; Saul 2013, 41). This said, it does not appear to be the case that implicit bias could always be found in assessments (see Birch et al. 2016). Yet the existence of implicit bias in academia has been demonstrated by a number of studies (e.g. Moss-Racusin 2012; Steinpreis 1999), and although these have not targeted philosophers specifically, there is little reason to presume that philosophers would be freer from implicit bias than other academics (see Saul 2013, 43–44).

Another mechanism of subtle discrimination is that of micro-inequities. These are "small harms" such as disrespectful gestures, being ignored or singled out on the basis of characteristics such as sex, race or age. It has been suggested that when they accumulate over time, they can result in low self-esteem and poor career success. The target and the perpetrator may both be unaware of the continuum of micro-inequities that they are involved in and that may slowly undermine the target's chances of a satisfactory career in the extremely competitive field of philosophy. (Brennan 2013, 184–185.) Unsurprisingly, micro-inequities are intimately connected to implicit bias: we are more likely engage in them, if we are implicitly biased against individual members of targeted groups.11

According to Samantha Brennan, the flip side of micro-inequities is the genius treatment received by some. She argues that academics may "detect" budding geniuses on rather flimsy grounds, and that the heightened expectations and good career opportunities faced by the chosen ones may in fact produce their good performances. (Brennan 2013, 185.) In a like manner, negative expectations can affect the performance of targeted individuals negatively.

As the phenomenon of stereotype thereat shows, this may not even require any belittling attitudes on the part of the members of the dominant group. When individuals of a stigmatised group are preoccupied with fears of confirming the stereotypes about their group, they often do worse in their tasks than they would otherwise. Jennifer Saul argues that stereotype threat can be provoked simply by visual reminders of the group's underrepresentation in the field. In philosophy, situations like this occur easily, for instance, when a woman is presenting her work to an allmale audience in a room decorated with pictures of male philosophers. (Saul 2013, 41–42, 46–47.)

<sup>11</sup> For a general discussion on the measures that can be taken to make the atmosphere of a department more welcoming towards women, see Brennan and Corless (2009).

The problem with these subtle mechanisms of discrimination is that they are difficult for all parties to detect. Even if the targets identify these mechanisms at some level, they may be inclined to accuse themselves of paranoia. After all, they are not consistently harassed, and often they can only fathom the different kind of treatment some of their peers receive. The perpetrators, on the other hand, may consider themselves as enlightened people who embrace the ideals of equality and justice. It may be very hard for us to understand our own contribution to a culture of such subtle inequities, especially if we come from a privileged background.

The good news is that there are many ways to loosen the hold of the described inequities, and some of these are easy to put into action. For instance, we can make sure that the web pages and promotional videos of the discipline do not present the students and faculty in a narrow way (i.e. according to the White, male, ablebodied norm). Adding pictures of women philosophers, Black philosophers and Asian philosophers on the wall, to complement the row of White male philosophers, is a gesture that does not tax the department budget too heavily.

Even so, the example at hand brings us to the core of the resistance of philosophy towards change. We may be generous and fair in principle, but when we are asked to redefine philosophy to include "the others", we tend to become less generous. This generosity does not necessarily exist even between Western philosophers of different philosophical leanings: what the other is doing, is not philosophy at all, or at best a caricature of philosophy.

Philosophy is precious to us philosophers, something we want to protect and cherish. At the same time, we tend to live within a very specific form of it, becoming habituated with its modes of thought and preferred questions, and the cultural heritage it carries. It is precisely this form of philosophical life that we wish to protect. For this reason, while we may be ready to increase diversity in the student body and staff, this readiness depends on the form of philosophical life that the persons in question have adopted as theirs. This policy shuts out those who might challenge the dominant views about philosophy, its limits and most central questions.

Consequently, making philosophy more inclusive may imply negotiations about the nature of philosophy. Kristie Dotson has argued that this transformation presupposes the following changes: (a) increasing the visibility and impact of underrepresented groups by hiring more people from these groups as staff, and (b) increasing diversity in the curriculum, so that questions that are of particular interest to the philosophers and students of the underrepresented groups are covered (Dotson 2012, 17). The problem is that even if steps towards this direction are taken, the work of the new hires may remain isolated from the general development of the discipline.12 Positive discrimination can also raise doubts about the competence of scholars belonging to the underrepresented groups.13

<sup>12</sup> Dotson discussed this idea in her keynote lecture "On the Value of Challenging Philosophical Orthodoxy: A Tale of Two Careers", in the conference *Feminist Utopias: Transforming the Present of Philosophy*, in Reykjavík, 30 March 2017.

<sup>13</sup> There are numerous reports by American women philosophers at the site *What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?* on complaints about how they got their position "only because they are women".

Change may be quite slow or non-existent when there are no real incentives for hiring individuals from underrepresented groups in academia. In Finland, the Equality Act of 1986 makes it possible for organisations to voluntarily use positive discrimination. This does not appear to produce results: it does not raise the percentage of women in the hired staff. (Husu 2007, 98.) The situation might be improved by endorsing a diversity of philosophical traditions in the curriculum and staff appointments, but, at least at the surface level, this goal appears to be in contradiction with the politics of education that demands departments to create recognisable profiles, in other words, to focus on specific themes and approaches. Acknowledging the situation, however, can help develop profiles that acquire depth through specific subthemes, for instance by intersecting with disability, feminist or Black studies. In other words, the problem does not have to remain unresolved: it is possible to combine specialisation and inclusiveness.

#### **1.5 The Structure of the Book**

By now, I have provided an overall discussion of the theme of women's underrepresentation in philosophy, especially among philosophy students, summarising a number of empirical studies on the question. Chapter 2 discusses the role of pedagogical choices and philosophical conceptualisations in questioning and undoing power hierarchies. More precisely, I introduce some of the approaches and goals within feminist pedagogy in general and in the Gender and Philosophy summer schools, which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. In addition, I elucidate the concepts of "situation" and "alienation", which provide the framework for the rest of the book.

Chapter 3, "The Historical Situation", is the first of three chapters that describe and analyse the different aspects of the philosophy student's situation. In this chapter I demonstrate how subjects—in this case philosophy students—should always be understood as subjects in time, who project themselves towards the future while being rooted in a specific historical soil. After a phenomenological discussion of temporality, I describe and criticise Michèle Le Dœuff's psychoanalytically informed idea of the erotico-theoretical transference of women in philosophy. I also investigate the student's relationship to the philosophical canon, analysing the possibilities of intimacy in the reading experience as well as those of idolatry, or the cult of the genius. I demonstrate why bringing forward the work and ideas of women predecessors is important, and propose a transformation in how the history of philosophy is considered: the historical ground should not consist of only the White and male canon, through which the history of philosophy is usually narrated, but also of the less-known voices of women and people of colour, through which another kind of historical "we" could be formed. Through a discussion of an experimental summer school titled Feminist Thought in Historical Perspective, I illustrate how the voices of women philosophers can be integrated into the discussion of the history of philosophy.

While the background survey and interviews inform all of the book, the student perspectives provided by them are elucidated particularly in Chap. 4, "The Affective, Social and Bodily Situation". The chapter starts with a discussion of the emotional situation of students especially on women students' passion for and alienation from philosophy. I then analyse the significance of students' class and ethnic background for studying philosophy, demonstrating that, apart from the gender-related alienation, many other kinds of alienations can manifest themselves in the insecurities of philosophy students. In addition, I examine the tendency of philosophy teaching to distance itself from all the factual differences in embodied existence in favour of universalisation, and consider the possibility to teach from the viewpoint of the senses, engaging the body as a unity of the senses. I also demonstrate how the questions of the "disembodiment" of philosophy and of the tendency to shut feelings outside philosophical discussions were tackled in the summer school titled Philosophy of the Body by means of focusing practices, thinking "from the body". In contrast, the summer school titled Feminist Political Philosophy included feminist analyses of violence, perspectives of the Global South and intersectionality, psychoanalytic theories, and discussions of universalism and difference, using problem-based learning as its pedagogical point of departure.

Chapter 5, "The Moral Situation", explores the possibilities of feminist ethics in teaching philosophy and the ways in which it can deal with power struggles in the classroom. In this connection, I discuss the concept of generosity as it is conveyed in Beauvoir's philosophy and in Debra Bergoffens's analysis of it (1997). These philosophers describe generosity as an attitude towards the other that accepts the other's freedom and allows the other to freely take or leave the gift that is offered to them. Furthermore, I demonstrate that care and generosity could and very often do act as ethical points of departure in teaching philosophy, and that cultivating these helps pass them on to new generations of philosophers. The chapter ends with a discussion of an experimental course on Care Ethics and Conflicts, in which students were invited to examine and discuss how experience, reason and emotion played a part in our moral reasoning.

The concluding chapter summarises the insights of the earlier chapters and suggests some possible questions for empirical research on the underrepresentation of women and other minorities in philosophy. In addition, I provide a checklist about the minimal requirements for teaching philosophy inclusively. This makes it easy even for the hastiest reader to think through better practices of teaching philosophy. Chapter 6 ends with a discussion of the political reality in which philosophy is taught, evaluating the possibilities for resistance in the context of diminishing resources and asking how we can act against the currents of politics of austerity, extreme competitiveness and precarisation of academic work. In addition, I discuss the possibilities of philosophy in crisis situations, and the philosophy class as a stronghold of intellectual freedom.

During the time I have worked on the manuscript of this book, we have experienced two globally significant events with pedagogical consequences. The first is the second rise of the #MeToo movement since 2017. The questions raised by the movement led me to discuss sexual and gender harassment in more detail in the introduction than had initially been my intention. The second globally significant event is the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Due to the pandemic, universities moved most of their teaching online. In terms of pedagogical possibilities and choices, the change is enormous and one that is likely to continue to have an effect on post-pandemic education. Remote learning benefits some students but appears to be detrimental to the majority in a situation in which informal face-to-face interaction is scarce. Whether or not this development has gendered effects, remains to be seen. While I was unable to provide an in-depth discussion in the context of this publication, I would venture to suggest that for the most part, the discussion of gender, situatedness and alienation can be adapted to different learning platforms without too many complications. Other ongoing crises, such as climate change and wars, are not discussed at length, even though I do acknowledge that they challenge the future-orientation of young people in particular and thereby have a significant effect on learning situations.

Finally, I want to address the criticism that my emphasis on the genders "woman" and "man" may generate. To focus on women does not mean that I would deny the reality of the gender spectrum, which includes genders such as "genderfluid", "agender" and "uncertain". Nor do I challenge the fact that in some instances a genderfluid or nonbinary person, for instance, can be misinterpreted as a woman, which can occasionally make it problematic to make generalisations about the genders of groups of people. For practical reasons, however, I have had to restrict the focus of my study to the underrepresented group that is most visible in philosophy and in the empirical studies I discuss in the book, namely people who identify themselves as women. In this definition, I include both cis and trans women. This said, I acknowledge that the experiences of cis women and trans women can differ in significant ways. The specific experience of the latter is discussed in Chap. 4. 14

One central issue in the book is the relationship between power and freedom. Often philosophical education is considered as intrinsically liberating—but is it? When and why does it create hierarchies and alienation? Are power hierarchies unavoidable in education? In what follows I highlight the ways in which feminist pedagogy has tackled the issues of power hierarchies and diversity.

<sup>14</sup> The category of cisgender refers to those who identify with the gender defined for them in birth, and usually also express themselves according to that gender. The term cis woman (or cis female), then, would refer to those who identify themselves with the gender "woman" defined for them in birth, and usually express themselves according to this gender. (About the formation and use of the term, see e.g. Enke 2012.) These definitions have sometimes been seen as problematic, because individuals may experience different levels of estrangement from the social category of women depending on the situation, even if they do not challenge their categorisation as women as such. Yet I believe that although these terms do not account for all the nuances of the lived reality of gender identities, they will go through a similar normalisation over time as the term "heterosexual". The latter term acquired its current meaning only in 1934, when Karl Maria Kertbeny paired it off with the term "homosexual" in order to refer to those, who are attracted to individuals of the "opposite" sex (e.g. Herzer 1985). The introduction and acceptance of the term of the term "cisgender" brings about a change of paradigm in how we interpret gender identity: no longer in terms of normality and deviance but in terms of diversity.

#### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 2 Undoing Power Hierarchies**

**Abstract** What alternatives have been created within feminist pedagogy to question power hierarchies and to make teaching more inclusive? What approaches were adopted in the Gender and Philosophy summer schools in order to achieve these goals? After discussing these questions, I demonstrate how the concepts of "alienation" and "situation" can be used to analyse power dynamics and the framework they provide to the rest of the book.

#### **2.1 Feminist Pedagogy**

The idea of education as a powerful tool for change is not new. Plato suggested the idea that the right kind of education allows both women and men make full use of their talents and help create the ideal state. Later many women thinkers from Christine de Pizan (1405/1999) to Catharine Macaulay (1790/2014) voiced the idea that it is impossible learn about the real intellectual potential of women without providing them an education that is as good as that of men. Also Mary Wollstonecraft (1792/2000) argued that giving women a rational education will allow them to contribute to the activities of the society in a more comprehensive manner.

When thinking through the question of inclusion in the teaching of philosophy, one of the most obvious reference points are those of feminist pedagogy. For feminist pedagogy, the idea of change through education—the ideals of liberation and empowerment—has been essential. This is no wonder considering that the roots of feminist pedagogy are in the feminist movement and in feminist theorisation. Another important source for feminist pedagogy has been critical pedagogy, which has critical theory as its starting point and is described as a pedagogy of liberation. Here Paulo Freire's thinking and especially his *Pedagogy of the Oppressed* (1970/1972) have been influential. The work of bell hooks, such as her famous *Teaching to Transgress*  (1994), is influenced by Freire. Freire advocates dialogical learning, which is meant to enable members of the oppressed groups to get their voices heard. They share their experiences, become aware of their possibilities as political agents, and finally, act for their own liberation. These ideas are shared by many feminist theorists. In fact the

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2023

E. Ruonakoski, *Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy*, SpringerBriefs in Philosophy,

feminist practice of consciousness raising, which became widely known in the late 1960s, has been compared to and sometimes equated with Freire's conscientisation (*conscienzaçao*) or critical consciousness. At the same time, his lack of concern for gender issues has been criticised (see e.g. Luke and Gore (eds) 1992).

All in all, the different trends in feminist pedagogy have followed the shifts in feminist theory. Consciousness raising was primarily a technique of radical feminism, according to which the society was, inherently, a patriarchy and women its oppressed class. Consciousness raising groups were a way of learning about what it is to be a woman, and how personal and private experiences were related to the social reality. The sharing of experiences was a basis for political action. In a way, the later Internetbased feminist movements such as #MeToo can be seen as followers of consciousness raising groups, with the difference that now the personal experience is not shared only among peers but made public.

Another technique of feminist pedagogy that shares some features with consciousness raising is memory work. While consciousness raising had its roots in the New York of the 1960s, memory work is a method invented by a German sociologist and philosopher, Frigga Haug, in the 1980s. Memory work, which is likewise practised in a group, involves writing about specific memories followed by reciprocal commenting on them. The idea is to question the boundary between subject and object of research: the group is a group of co-researchers. The task is to learn about social structures through the memories of individual women (Haug et al. 1987; Onyx and Small 2001).

The concerns of feminism have broadened to cover the issues of different marginalised groups, including sexual, gender and ethnic minorities, as well as women of colour. The introduction of the term "intersectionality"1 in the late 1980s by Kimberlé Crenshaw was particularly important to the development of feminist pedagogy, for it facilitated the understanding that the marginalisations of different groups can affect each other, and, in particular, how one person may be marginalised in a number of ways (see also Hill Collins 2009, 15, 138–145). This implies that in a classroom, lecturers should develop their sensitivities towards minority students and find practices that allow an atmosphere of trust to develop and different viewpoints to become expressed (e.g. Caporale-Bizzini and Richter Malabotta (eds) 2009). The theory of intersectionality has gradually gained a more and more prominent position in feminist pedagogy, and, despite some criticisms, it remains central. In this book, questions related to intersecting marginalisations are discussed primarily in Chap. 4.

Initiatives have been taken to engage meditative and body awareness practices such as mindfulness in learning, and attention has been paid also to how space and the way it is used contribute to the learning situation and issues of hierarchy in the classroom (e.g. Asher 2003; Thompson 2017; Schalk et al. 2017). One of the most recent influences comes from posthumanism, which has led theorists of education to

<sup>1</sup> The term "intersectionality" was coined already in 1989, but it was only with third-wave feminism that it achieved its status. Kathryn T. Gines has traced the earliest expressions of proto-theories of intersectionality to the 1830s, in, for instance, Maria Stewart's pamphlet (1831) and Anna Julia Cooper's collection of speeches (1892), in which she discusses the particular position of Black women as outsiders to the debates on both gender and race (Gines 2011, 276).

consider the relevance of non-human agents for learning processes (e.g. Radomska 2013; see also Jokinen and Rautio 2016). Both body awareness practices and the relationship to non-human nature in learning philosophy are discussed in Chap. 4, in the context of the summer school held in Reykjavík.

To be sure, feminist pedagogy has not developed separately from other pedagogical trends. In fact, quite a few of its methods are used outside feminist pedagogy, which is understandable in the light of the current popularity of the student-centred approach. For instance, memory work is also used in social pedagogy.

Another issue that has become topical in the context of feminist pedagogy is trigger or content warnings, which were originally used by bloggers to flag content about sexual violence. The aim is not to warn everybody about all potentially challenging content but to take traumatised audience members into account. For them, presumably, facing such a topic might cause physical symptoms, in which case it could be helpful for them to prepare themselves, or to have the choice to leave the room before the situation gets too difficult to bear. It has been suggested that content warnings function as a code, signalling that traumatised individuals are taken into account.

It remains unclear, however, what the right policy would be from the point of view of students. Some researchers argue against the beneficial effect of trigger warnings on students (e.g. Sanson et al., 2019).2 For now, many lecturers use trigger warnings by choice, and in the United States many universities demand that their faculty use trigger warnings so as to avoid lawsuits. In philosophy, a wide variety of subfields are unlikely to deal with emotionally distressful content, but others handle topics such as torture and sexual violence that require the lecturer to adopt a policy regarding trigger warnings. It is good to keep in mind that there are other ways to create a safe and open atmosphere in the classroom, such as a discussion of ethical concerns in the beginning of a course.

How does inclusive teaching of philosophy then relate to the broader context of feminist pedagogy? Surely there is no one correct way of teaching philosophy any more than there is one correct way of teaching anything else, for the "right" methods of teaching tend to depend at least partly on the personalities of individual lecturers. This said, it is clear that feminist pedagogy can at the very least sensitise the teaching staff to the question of the other: how do I as a lecturer relate to the other that is different from myself in terms of gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, social class, able-bodiedness, and so on? Is it my task to teach the students to conform to a tacit norm or to provide possibilities for the diversity of students to learn as themselves? This is a theme particularly prominent in bell hooks's *Teaching to Transgress*. One of hooks's concerns is how Black students have to adapt to the White norm in mixed schools, whereas in Black schools they are allowed a history of their own, a learning environment that supports them in their

<sup>2</sup> Megan Sanson et al. (2019) are concerned that the widespread adoption of trigger warnings may further increase anxiousness in students. It is argued that if trigger warnings encourage avoidance behaviour in people with symptoms of PTSD, they are actually harmful in the long run. Benjamin W. Bellet et al. (2018) likewise suggest that trigger warnings increase anxiety towards allegedly harmful written material and that they reinforce the idea of trauma survivors as vulnerable.

particular situatedness. Without advocating gender separatism in philosophy, I will be discussing the needed strategies to allow women and other minorities find their roots and understand their specific situation within philosophy, rather than giving into feelings of alienation and rootlessness.

Another thing that feminist pedagogy draws attention to are the power struggles, power structures and hierarchies in the classroom. As I demonstrate in Chap. 5, these struggles are constantly present and observable. To be sure, many of the methods and exercises of feminist pedagogy can be imaginatively applied to the teaching of philosophy. Yet it is good to acknowledge that in disciplines that focus on power relations, such as gender studies, or education itself, it may be easier than in philosophy to motivate the spending of a considerable amount of time on reflection of the learning process, or exercises such as the privilege walk,3 or listening, dancing, improvisation, voice and sound work. In Chap. 4, however, I discuss ways to integrate such exercises in the philosophy class, suggesting that they can be applied fruitfully when the topic of the course supports their use.

Even if the demands of philosophical discourse can at times appear intimidating, for many students the philosophy class is also a kind of safe space, in which to concentrate on intellectual work and thinking together. Conversely, exercises that aim to empower students by engaging their emotions or call for sharing sometimes painful experiences have their own challenges. For this reason, if an experimental approach is taken, it is a good idea to inform the students before the course starts, and to specify the methods clearly in the course description and introduction. This gives the students time to prepare themselves, or to opt out. It is even better if, during the course, students can from time to time choose what type of approach is taken in the class. Even here, however, it should be acknowledged that a group decision can have alienating elements within it: now the dissenting individual feels alienated from the rest of the group rather than from the educational setting dictated from above. In other words, even if feminist and critical pedagogies offer a lot of tools for undoing power hierarchies and for involving the whole body-subject, they cannot entirely eliminate the feelings of not-belonging.

<sup>3</sup> In the beginning of the privilege walk the participants stand in a row, and then, depending on their experiences and following the facilitator's instructions, take steps forward or backward. For instance: "If you are white, take a step forward." The idea is to concretise the way privileges work in life, giving you a head start in comparison to the less privileged. The problem is, of course, that the participants can find themselves in a vulnerable position, sharing a lot of information about themselves with people they may not know very well. For an explanation and critique of the privilege walk, see Meg Bolger's "Why I Don't Facilitate Privilege Walks Anymore and What I Do Instead" (2018). https://medium.com/@MegB/why-i-dont-won-t-facilitate-privilege-walks-any more-and-what-i-do-instead-380c95490e10at. Accessed 4 April 2022.

#### **2.2 Gender and Philosophy Summer Schools**

The Gender and Philosophy project organised four experimental summer schools on feminist philosophy.4 The summer schools were held in four Nordic countries— Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Norway—in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The idea was to experiment with inclusive pedagogies that would be particularly suitable for teaching philosophy. Students were recruited especially in the involved four universities: University of Iceland, University of Jyväskylä, Aalborg University and University of Oslo. Yet some students came from other universities and countries, mainly from Europe and North America, finding information about applying to the summer schools through the diverse networks of the organisers.

The summer schools were all rather different, starting from the number of participating students: the summer schools in Reykjavík, Jyväskylä, Oslo and Aalborg had respectively thirty, forty-one, twenty and twenty-four participants. All four summer schools had a clear female majority: women made up 79% of all the students. The students were expected to have a good background in philosophy. Most of them were master's students, but doctoral students were included. Some of the students attended several of the summer schools.

The order the summer schools are presented in this volume corresponds with the order they were organised in, with the exception of the Icelandic summer school, which was the first one we organised but is presented here second. All in all, the summer schools took quite different pedagogical approaches. The Reykjavík Summer School experimented with body awareness practices, whereas the Finnish summer school integrated the history of feminist thought into the discussion of the history of philosophy. The Danish summer school aimed to provide the students with a clear method, project-oriented—problem-based learning (PO-PBL), as the framework that allows them to work independently and to create their own research questions. The Oslo Summer School addressed the question of inclusion from the perspective of care ethics, taking the different learning styles of students into account by making a variety of learning methods available.

In other words, the summer schools explored the learning and teaching of philosophy each in their own way, pedagogically addressing the questions central to feminist philosophy such as the mind–body split, power hierarchies, the absence of women in the philosophical canon, and the dichotomy between reason and emotions. The summer schools are discussed in more detail at the end of the next three chapters. Before we consider the different aspects of students' situation in these chapters, however, and to better understand the question of inclusion and exclusion, it is necessary to examine the very concepts of "situation" and "alienation" as they are discussed in the history of philosophy.

<sup>4</sup> The website of the project can be found here: https://genderandphilosophy.weebly.com. Accessed 4 April 2022.

#### **2.3 Concepts of "Situation" and "Alienation"**

In *Being and Nothingness* (1943), Jean-Paul Sartre discusses the concept of situation at length, arguing that freedom only exists in a factual situation that includes one's past, one's spatial place, environment and mortality (2003, 503–573). Beauvoir elaborates on the concept of situation to describe the embodied existence of girls and women in *The Second Sex* (Beauvoir 2008; 2010; see also Beauvoir 1960, 562–563; 1984, 548–549; and Kruks 1998, 51; Ruonakoski 2015, 47–48; 2017, 336–342). According to her, it is within a social, cultural, historical, economical, psychological and bodily situation that a child grows into a woman, a man or a person whose identity does not easily fit into these categories, and embraces or rejects "feminine" or "masculine" attributes and modes of behaviour (Beauvoir 2008; 2010).

For many feminist readers the idea of situatedness may first bring to mind stand-point theory, represented by Nancy Hartsock's and Sandra Harding's work. In stand-point theory situatedness is understood first and foremost as epistemological: marginalised groups are thought to be socially situated in such a manner that they have a more realistic view of the power dynamics than others. In the phenomenological–existentialist tradition, situation is understood in reference to the totality of existence; yet it would be artificial to separate these two views of situation sharply from each other. Both Beauvoir's and Hartsock's philosophies are influenced by G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy and include ideas that bear a resemblance to W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of double consciousness. The concept refers to the consciousness of oppressed subjects—in Du Bois's case Black people—who must be able to observe themselves not only from their own perspective but also from the perspective of their oppressors (see e.g. Du Bois 1964).5 Hartsock refers to this idea in her discussion of the epistemically privileged vantage point of women in patriarchy (Hartsock 1998, 27, 243).

According to Margaret Simons, Du Bois's racial theory and his concept of double consciousness influenced Beauvoir indirectly through the work of Richard Wright (Simons 1999, 176).6 This parallel would be visible in her analysis of woman as the secondary and inessential subject, who can become an accomplice in her own subjection, when she accepts man's perspective to her as the primary one (Simons 1999, 176–178). All in all, double consciousness can be seen as a form of alienation, for it presupposes an unwanted distance to oneself, which is mediated through the other's gaze.

<sup>5</sup> Du Bois writes: "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." (Du Bois 1964, 16–17.).

<sup>6</sup> For the connection between Sartre, Beauvoir and Wright, see also Gines 2010.

Yet my use of the concept of alienation is informed by a wider array of philosophical perspectives. The term is, of course, quite loaded, due to the fact that it has been used in numerous ways in the histories of philosophy, sociology and psychology. One of the divisive issues has been whether alienation should be viewed as a universal human condition or as a historically, socially and psychologically defined state. Even in the works of Hegel, whose discussion on alienation (*Entfremdung*, *Entäusserung*) had an impact on later generations of philosophers, one can allegedly find two conceptions of the generalisability of the concept. In his earlier writings, Hegel relates alienation to a specific historical moment (his own time and its practice of Christianity),<sup>7</sup> but later he reformulated his theory suggesting that alienation was an integral part of human existence and happens through work. In other words, in their work human beings create objects that express human life, but as human beings themselves change in the process of work, at some point the objects of their work no longer coincide with their purposes, and they cease to recognise the object world as brought into existence by themselves. Karl Marx, instead, argued that alienation is created by the capitalist production system, in which workers cannot identify with the product of their work. (See e.g. Gouldner 1980, 177–181; Lukács 1975, 19; Taylor 1980, 23–41.) Later thinkers, such as Sartre, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, embraced the idea of alienation as a permanent state of human existence: the self is split, unable to reach the wholeness which it nonetheless seeks.<sup>8</sup>

According to my hypothesis, women in philosophy are susceptible to experiencing a specific form of social alienation, which has been described as "a sense of incongruence" and "dissonance" by feminist critics (Allen et al. 2008, 164, 177, 185; Dotson 2012, 13–14). This alienation cannot be reduced to the inevitable alienation from the self, nor is it likely that it would be entirely tied to the economic system, considering that women have occupied a marginal position in philosophy ever since the days of Ancient Greece. With its ideology of constant competition and aspiration to produce more "results" with fewer resources, the recent educational politics has definitely made academic work increasingly precarious. Even so, it adds just an extra layer to the aforementioned sense of incongruence.

It is important to acknowledge that this alienation is not total. Philosophy as an art of thinking and as a possibility to ask fundamental questions is not what women students of philosophy and professional philosophers appear to feel alienated from. Should we then assume, following Hegel's second scenario, that philosophy *as a profession with specific social structures*—as distinct from to philosophy as radical

<sup>7</sup> At that point Hegel argued that in comparison to the religious life of Ancient Greece, the Christian religion of his time represented an empty and alienated cultural form, which its practitioners follow under pressure, without a free engagement that would make the religion living (see Taylor 180, 23–41).

<sup>8</sup> According Lacan, self-alienation is a necessary state for every human being, one that cannot be avoided: in its initial attempt to find its unity in the other, the self is fundamentally split. Sartre likewise argued that there is something profoundly dislocated in human existence, a fundamental gap between one's attempt to achieve a fixed identity and one's inability to stop the movement of transcendence. Finally, the same view of alienation as the permanent state of the human being can be found at the core of Derrida's philosophy (see Skempton 2010).

questioning and an art of thinking—has evolved past the phase in which it was the expression of the lives of its practitioners, and has become a hollow form which they no longer identify with? The problem is, of course, that the form may appear hollower to some than to others. Despite the fact that some women students and professional women philosophers adjust to the discipline without a problem, it may, indeed, be more typical of women than of men to seriously question the practices and limits of philosophy itself, for women were never the ones who primarily created those practices and limits. This imbalance is at the very core of the questions posed in this book.

#### **References**

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### **Chapter 3 The Historical Situation**

**Abstract** How does the history of philosophy affect the situation of women students in the field today and how has that situation changed over the years? From the very early days of philosophy, there have been women with either indirect or direct access to philosophical education. The fact that women are interested in philosophy and want to study it has received some attention even in the texts attributed to ancient philosophers, such as Plato and Phintys. However, ever since those days, women have remained a minority within philosophy and their position in it has been fairly precarious. To analyse the perpetuation of women's marginalisation in philosophy, I introduce Le Dœuff's idea of the erotico-theoretical transference and discuss the cult of genius. In addition, I scrutinise the temporal and pedagogical meaning of having women predecessors in philosophy, and suggest ways of integrating such predecessors in the curriculum. The chapter ends with the goals and outcomes of a related experimental summer school titled Feminist Thinking in Historical Perspective.

### **3.1 The Historical Roots of Women's Inclusion and Alienation in Philosophy**

The discussion on women's philosophising started in ancient Greece. Some passages in Plato's *Republic* (fourth century BCE), are the best-known example, but, interestingly, a fragment of text attributed to the ancient woman philosopher Phintys takes a stand on the issue:

While many people perhaps think that it is not appropriate for a woman to philosophise, just as it is not appropriate for her to ride horses nor to speak in public, I think that some activities are peculiar to men, some to women, and that some are common to women and men, some are more appropriate for men than women, and some are more appropriate for women than men.1 (Phintys, translation I. A. Plant in Plant 2004, 85).

Even though the larger whole of the extant fragment leaves the author's conclusion of the right relationship between women and philosophising somewhat open, the text

<sup>1</sup> The original Greek text can be found in Johannes Stobaeus's *Anthologie* 4.23.61; 4.23.61a.

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2023

E. Ruonakoski, *Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy*, SpringerBriefs in Philosophy,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16670-9\_3

is usually interpreted as an early defence of women's access to philosophy. While the identity and even the gender of the author remain uncertain, this text demonstrates that the question of women's philosophical capacities and whether they should learn it was discussed quite early in the history of philosophy, in this case possibly in the third century BCE.2

Philosophy was practised and learnt predominantly by upper-class males and prospective leaders of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, but some philosophical schools, such as the Pythagoreans or Plato's Academy, did accept female members. As it is well known, Socrates argues in *The Republic* that as different natures are distributed evenly among men and women, also women should be able to become guardians (455e), and the same things should be taught to men and women (451e). In reality, women's philosophical education could not be taken for granted. Sometimes women came to enjoy this education indirectly, through their family members,3 and many of the women philosophers of Antiquity were, in fact, wives and daughters of male philosophers (see e.g. Castner 1982). Of some female students Diogenes Laertius writes that they dressed as men, in order to escape becoming hetairas (DL 3.1.46).

Not all students of philosophy were from the upper class: Epicurus is said to have been joined in his philosophical studies by Mys, a person he enslaved (DL 10.3), and for some philosophical schools, such as the Cynics, poverty was an ideal, which led some members to give away their fortune. Of the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus (55– 135 CE) was, in fact, originally an enslaved person, who later obtained his freedom and founded a philosophical school.

The role of women is described in a fairly similar manner in the few extant texts attributed to ancient Greek women philosophers, all Pythagoreans (Theano, Perictione, Phintys, Melissa, Aesara, and Myia), as well as in many of the Greek male philosophers' texts. It is debated whether this is because the views of male and female philosophers are actually similar or because the texts attributed to women were

<sup>2</sup> There is very little reliable information about the ancient Greek female philosophers, but allegedly Phintys was a Spartan-born female philosopher, who lived as a member of a Pythagorean community in Italy. According to Kathleen Wider (1986), she lived in the third century BCE. Mary B. Fant and Maureen B. Lefkowitz argue that the text was in fact written as a rhetorical exercise by a later male Pythagorean, and that it was erroneously attributed to Phintys, an earlier female philosopher (Fant and Lefkowitz 1982, 208n). Mary Ellen Waithe, however, accepts Stobaeus's claim that Phintys was a fifth century philosopher and actually wrote the fragment attributed to her (1987, 73). Whichever the case, the author's differentiation between what is appropriate, what is common and what is peculiar or natural leads the author to state that intellect and courage are common to both women and men, whereas they are more natural to men, and moderation is more natural to women. The fragment does not tell us much about the author's conclusion on women and philosophy, but it can be deduced that the author links philosophising with the virtue of intelligence. In other words, philosophising may not be as natural to women as it is to men, but it is not inappropriate for women to philosophise. In accordance with the Pythagorian teachings, the author appears to insinuate that a philosophical education helps women to attain their greatest virtue, namely moderation (*sophrosyne*), which was one of the Greek cardinal virtues. Aspiring to this virtue appears to be reconcilable with philosophising, which is why philosophising is appropriate for women.

<sup>3</sup> The Cynic philosopher Hipparchia (350–280 BCE), for instance, accessed philosophy first through her brother, who attended a philosophical school, and only later got to know the Cynic philosopher Crates, who subsequently became her husband. See DL 6.7.96–98.

written pseudonymously by male philosophers.4 According to the text attributed to Phintys, it is particular to a woman to keep house, stay indoors and look after her husband, while the vilest thing she can do is to mix "with men outside the family" and to give birth to "bastards". In contrast to this, men's natural tendencies, political activity and public speaking, cannot be reduced to loyalty to their wives or family. Apart from the case of Hipparchia (350–280 BCE), who abandoned all comforts of life to live with Crates in the streets in the way of the Cynics, and Aspasia of Miletus (c. 470–410 BCE), who is depicted in conflicting ways but appears to have had a lot of influence in her time, most anecdotes about ancient women philosophers as well as the handful of remaining texts attributed to women would place them in a docile and self-effacing outgroup. Even in Plato's utopia, where philosopher women do not confine themselves to childrearing and housekeeping activities, these women are "handed over" to the men philosophers to produce new individuals of excellence (*Rep*. 458c, 459d). According to Plato, Socrates also claims that women are weaker than men in everything they do (*Rep*. 451e, 455d–e).

It should be noted, however, that even though the extant fragments attributed to women philosophers are scarce, this does not mean that some of the ancient women philosophers would not have been influential and well-respected in their own time. According to a contemporary historian, the astronomer, mathematician and Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia (355–415 CE), whose writings have not survived to our days, made "such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time".<sup>5</sup>

It would seem, then, that while it is not impossible for a woman to attain a high status in of the community of philosophers, women as a group have remained on the margins. From this perspective, it is hardly surprising that Pythagoras's philosophical school—which allowed female members—was, in fact, called a brotherhood. In the case of this particular school, the connotation of religious orders or secret brotherhoods is not totally mistaken, as it had a leaning towards mysticism and entering it required participating in a rite of initiation. Yet the idea of brotherly interaction or even rivalry is not far removed from, for example, Plato's dialogues, be it as it may that Socrates's superior position remains largely unchallenged.

It can still be asked why philosophy has maintained the form of a fairly homosocial and ethnically homogenous community. After all, many fields that used to be maledominated, such as medicine, are no longer so, and even riding horses6 and speaking

<sup>4</sup> In Melissa's (third century BCE) letter to Clearata, the author emphasises the importance for women to act moderately and to obey their husbands, which is why the letter has been suspected of being written pseudonymously by a male author (Plant 2004, 81). In contrast, even if the text attributed to Myia was hardly written by Theono's and Pythagoras's daughter Myia (c. 500 BCE), it would seem to be written by a woman, given the detailed descriptions of breastfeeding and advice on how to choose a nurse for a baby (Plant 2004, 79–80).

<sup>5</sup> Socrates of Constantinople: *Ecclesiastical History*. Even if the ancient Greek culture does appear rather restrictive of women's space in society, female poets, such as Sappho and Anyte, were spoken of admiringly in the works male authors (see e.g. Meleager, *AP* 4.1).

<sup>6</sup> In countries such as Sweden, France and the United States, the overwhelming majority of riders are nowadays women (Hedenborg 2007; Lagier 2009; White 2003).

in public, mentioned in Phintys's text as quite inappropriate for women, have become perfectly acceptable for women in Western countries, at least for now. What appears to differentiate philosophy from these activities, however, is the persistence of its masculine stamp.

The question then arises: are women as a group simply incompetent or generally uninterested in philosophy? I would argue that there is nothing inherently gendered about the practice of philosophy as wonder, doubt, dialogue, critique, and a shared quest for truth and wisdom. As long as philosophy operates in this mode, it holds a promise of the freedom and power of thought and appears valuable to those who appreciate these things. In other words, I disagree with those who argue that, as a conceptual discipline, philosophy is inherently misogynist. Another aspect of philosophy, however, is related to a claim for ownership of knowledge, expertise and authority. In this game those, who feel more insecure about their entitlement to be heard, can have difficulties in getting recognition for their own points of departure and interests. As we will see, Le Dœuff argues that the perpetuation of women's marginality in philosophy depends on the idea of the philosopher as someone who possesses knowledge.

#### **3.2 The Perpetuation of Women's Marginality**

In *The Philosophical Imaginary*, Le Dœuff proposes a psychoanalytic discussion on the development of women's position in the history of philosophy. She argues that due to their long-lasting exclusion from academia, women failed to develop an independent relationship to philosophy. Typically, a woman's love for theory was transferred to a male philosopher, who adopted the role of a teacher, to the extent that the woman's relationship to philosophy was totally mediated by that one philosopher. This shift is what she calls "erotico-theoretical transference" (Le Dœuff 1989, 104).<sup>7</sup> In the spirit of, Hipparchia (350–280 BCE) married her teacher Crates (365–285 BCE), Héloïse (c. 1098–1164) was associated with her teacher Abelard (1079–1142), Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia (1618–1680) with René Descartes (1596–1650), and even Beauvoir (1908–1986), who already had an access to university education, with a student slightly her senior, Sartre (1905–1980) (See Le Dœuff 1989, 100–120).

Le Dœuff insists that it is not the presence of women students that diverts the master–disciple relationship towards the instinctive realm, nor is the discussed transference only the product of women's historical exclusion from universities. Rather, philosophical didactics itself "tends to take the form of a dual transference relationship". According to LeDœuff, male students of philosophy are also likely to experience their own version of the erotico-theoretical transference, to the extent that they may emulate the clothing styles of the object of their admiration (Le Dœuff 1989, 105–106).

<sup>7</sup> For a detailed discussion of Le Dœuff's ideas and a comparison between them and Luce Irigaray's philosophy, see Lehtinen (2007).

Le Dœuff argues, however, that in the past centuries, women's relationship to philosophy was characterised by a different form of lack than men's. After becoming disappointed with their advisors, men students of philosophy came to realise that their lack is of the radical kind that the Other cannot complete. This philosophical lack is the true starting point of philosophy and leads them to new questions, a re-evaluation of the philosophical tradition, and new ideas. For women students, who were only amateurs, being shut outside universities, the situation became problematic. Their lack remained of the ordinary kind, that can be fulfilled by the all-knowing master (Le Dœuff 1989, 105–107).

In Le Dœuff's view, the desire of a student can be redirected towards theory and the whole field of philosophy only within the institutional framework. She argues that even now, when women students can, in principle, enjoy the same institutional support as men, they still move very prudently within philosophy, carefully examining the work of past philosophers, often conforming with the demands of the academic life to every detail. At the same time, they have difficulties in performing as the possessors of true knowledge, which is something that, according to Le Dœuff, still characterises the role of the philosopher. Nevertheless, she argues that rather than criticise women's ways of doing philosophy, we should give up the ideal of philosophy that leaves no room for lack of knowledge. She also suggests that the subject of philosophy should not be seen so much as a master who knows, a solitary all-knowing subject. Instead, we could see philosophy as a collective enterprise which leaves space for not-knowing (Le Dœuff 1989, 116–127).

Le Dœuff undoubtedly exaggerates the extent to which the relationship of women philosophers to philosophy was mediated through their lovers, and how derivative their thinking was. Even if Le Dœuff's description of this relationship was read loosely as a description of falling in love with philosophy without being able to transcend the mediating role of one male philosopher, rather than as descriptions of clearly erotic relationships between individuals, it can be argued that she overlooks the diversity of women's relationships to their advisors. In cases like those of Hypatia, Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) and Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653), the father's role was important, and one can only assume that the encouragement of a father can have a function rather different from that of a lover, a husband or even a distantly admired teacher. Possibly the father's appreciation and support for the daughter's intellectual endeavours could strengthen her self-esteem and facilitate her entrance into a male-dominated field. Close relationships with fathers and brothers could also initiate women in the tacit rules of social interaction between men. Even Le Dœuff's paradigmatic example, Hipparchia, was not only Crates's lover but had entered philosophy through her brother.8

Respectively, the difficulty of women to enter the field of philosophy could partly be explained more simply than by Le Dœuff's hypothesis of different kinds of desires, namely by the aspect of homosociality within the field. On the basis of this homosociality hypothesis, in a group that consists of mainly individuals of one gender, the behavioural patterns of that gender would tend to become the norm, whereas the

<sup>8</sup> DL 6.7.96–98.

individuals of the minority would feel a pressure to adapt to the norm. In the case of women philosophy students and professional women philosophers, this would imply assimilating the role of the "good guy". One's ability and willingness to take on this role would then predict social success and continuation in the field whereas an inability or unwillingness to adhere to the norm would predict alienation and opting out. On the other hand, homosociality as the more or less unconscious desire to bond with individuals of the same gender rather than with other genders could also explain how the boundaries of philosophy are at the same time porous and resistant. Depending on the situation and the proportion of women among the participants, the tacit rules of interaction can vary a great deal, and hence women's experiences of inclusion can likewise vary a great deal within the same community.

In any case, Le Dœuff's conclusion about the needed transformation is sound. For the practice of philosophy to become more inclusive and, in fact, more philosophical, philosophy should be seen more in terms of a continuously evolving process of thought rather than as mastery. Young women become enthralled by the open-ended quest that philosophy purports to be in the first instance, but many of them experience discomfort when they realise that in order to "make it" in philosophy, they have to fight for speaking space and repeatedly demonstrate their learnedness, argumentative skills and possession of knowledge. From their perspective there is something selfdefeating in the philosophical enterprise: it promises dialogue and freedom of thought but often produces hierarchies and silencing.

In what follows, I examine the role of the philosophical canon and a phenomenon connected closely to it, namely the cult of the genius, in learning philosophy. The problem of this aspect of philosophy will be analysed in some detail. I start my discussion from the more rewarding side of being in a relationship to the canon, namely the patient labour of thinking with the other that philosophy students are encouraged to pursue.

#### **3.3 Dealing with the Tradition: Intimacy and Idolatry**

In philosophy, more than in many other fields, the tradition is mediated through a discussion of a canon, that is, texts from the history of philosophy that are deemed central or epoch-making. That the canon is quite homogenous in terms of the gender and ethnicity of the authors is a question that has been implicitly present in the preceding considerations of women's marginality. This phenomenon is connected to another equally problematic one, the cult of the genius. I argue that the mediation of the tradition through canonical texts is not merely problematic but can be seen as one of the distinctive features of philosophy. That we might need to allow for a plurality of canons does not imply that we should or could cut the ties of philosophy with its past. Philosophy involves a dialogue across millennia, and in its ability to provide a link to historical others it resembles some other disciplines, such as literature studies or history. What is specific to philosophy, however, is the role that the texts and their authors take. Even though a study of those texts produces information about their authors and their intellectual context, very often philosophers are motivated by the possibilities of dialogue and of obtaining a better understanding of issues that the historical philosopher discusses.

In the process of reading and studying the texts, the authors become important interlocutors to the readers, be the latter students or researchers. As I have argued elsewhere, following Beauvoir, there is a specific intimacy to the reading experience: the other—the author, the narrator, the text—speaks to the person reading, and yet the reader is the one who acts to bring these words to life. Indeed, a particular kind of intersubjectivity exists within the reading experience, one that involves both passivity and activity on the part of the reader: the words written by the other guide the reader's attention and take the place of one's own "inner speech", yet without the act of reading and the reader's own imaginative input the letters would remain mere black marks on white background. In other words, while reading, we adopt the voice of the other as our own, sharing, in part, its intentionality. At the same time, the voice of the other remains foreign to us: it speaks to us within us, activated by us, but the only control we exert over it is the control over starting and ceasing to read (See Korhonen and Ruonakoski 2017, 30–33, and Beauvoir 1965, 1979, 2011a and 2011b). Even so, we can disagree and pause to think of alternative ways of dealing with the issues the author is addressing. The alteration between the activity of reading and reflective pauses is, in fact, how the philosophical dialogue works during the reading process. Perhaps more than in the case of reading fiction, we engage in a movement between activating the words of the author, developing an affective stance on them—one of disbelief, acceptance or of a happy recognition—and pauses to formulate the beginnings of possible counterarguments.<sup>9</sup>

Indeed, philosophical writings are not read mainly because they provide "facts" but because they help us think by engaging both our affective and reflective abilities. It is a mistake to read Hannah Arendt because she tells us "facts" about how the Nazis came to power or even "facts" about the nature of the totalitarian; instead, one should read *The Origins of Totalitarianism* (1951/2017) in order to learn to think about totalitarianism with her. This is precisely the liberating aspect of reading

<sup>9</sup> Literary theorists typically distinguish the experience of reading literary fiction and more scholarly texts. From Aristotle's *Poetics* on, theorists have formulated in different ways the idea that, unlike scholarly texts, literary texts—or in Aristotle's case "mimetic" texts—are not expected to make arguments (see e.g. Beauvoir 2011a and 1979). Likewise, reading fiction is said to differ from reading scholarly texts because it involves participation in a multitude of different perspectives. I have argued that while these descriptions do point towards some important features of literature, the distinction between literary and other texts may not be altogether clear-cut. Even scholarly texts can involve something like successive perspective changes, when the author moves from discussing views of their own to those of others, and then returns to criticism or affirmation of the other's view (Korhonen and Ruonakoski 2017, 203n). A lot could be said about the possibility and nature of "inner speech" and about whether the reader's interlocutor should be described as the author, the implied author, the narrator, or the text as such, but within the framework of this book it is not possible to dwell on these issues. See, however, Merleau-Ponty's discussion on thought and expression (2012, 188–9; 1998, 212–14), Iser (1980) for a discussion of the act of reading, Niederhoff for a narratological discussion of perspective and focalisation (2011a, b), and Schmid (2013) for the question of the implied author.

philosophical works: not learning *what* to think but engaging critically in an inner dialogue with someone who has already produced an analysis of particular topic, learning *to* think with the other more rigorously and more creatively than you would be able to do all by yourself.

I have discussed the issue of reading philosophical works at some length in order to show how much feeling can be invested in this act, and what kind of liberating power it has. Yet there is a flipside to this affective–intellectual process: the author becomes the object of an adoration similar to fiction authors, and, with the institutional support to the philosophical canon, acquires the cloak of genius. In other words, the very human need to be in contact with another human on an intellectual level, together with the cultural demand for academic trailblazers as sources of inspiration, paradoxically contributes to the production of a demigod. Given the scarcity or virtual non-existence of women philosophers in the canon, this phenomenon is particularly problematic from the viewpoint of women students.

What do we then mean by "a genius"? To be sure, the meaning of the word has changed radically over time. Christine Battersby, the author of *Gender and Genius* (1989), argues that the current conception of the genius was born only in the eighteenth century, with the Romantics, when the two concepts of "genius" (Lat. *genius*) and "ingenious" (Lat. *ingenium*) amalgamated. In Roman Antiquity, the word *genius* first referred to a male household spirit, and it was associated with the *paterfamilias*, the male head of a household, but later each free male was considered to have from his birth a genius, which represented his potential virility and life-giving force. (Battersby 1989, 52–53). *Ingenium*, on the other hand, referred to natural abilities or inborn talent.

Skipping the intriguing gendered developments of these concepts through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and entering the Age of Enlightenment, we come to see that Immanuel Kant conflated the concepts in his influential *The Critique of Judgement* (1790; see Battersby 1989, 76): "*Genius* is the innate mental aptitude (*ingenium*) *through which* nature gives the rule to art" (2007, 136, §46).10 Kant underlines that genius is a natural gift, a talent that differs from dexterity (*Geschicklichkeitsanlage*), which was, according to Battersby, earlier associated with *ingenium*. For Kant, genius is opposite to the spirit of imitation and characterised primarily by originality (Kant 2007, §46–47; Battersby 1989, 43–51, 76–77). He is aware of the etymology the word, and describes the workings of the genius, as if nature itself worked through a man:

Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how *the ideas* for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would enable them to produce similar products (Kant 2007, 137, §46).

<sup>10</sup> The beginning of the German original of §46 reads as follows: "*Genie* ist das Talent (Naturgabe), welches der Kunst die Regel gibt.

True enough, Kant discusses genius in the context of great art, but Arthur Schopenhauer, who proclaimed himself a Kantian (and a man of genius), discussed genius in a larger scope, as a category of superhumans. For Schopenhauer, geniuses were also characterised by solitude:

The same reason indeed accounts for the peculiar inclination of all men of genius for solitude, to which they are driven by their difference from the rest, and for which their own inner wealth qualifies them. For, with humanity it is as with diamonds, the extraordinarily great ones alone are fitted to be solitaires, while those of ordinary size have to be set in clusters to produce any effect (Schopenhauer 1907, 251).<sup>11</sup>

In Schopenhauer's philosophy the celebration of the genius as a virile force, which nonetheless incorporates feminine sensitivities, is conflated with a clearly misogynist discussion of women's capacities (see Battersby 1989, 107–111). However, it is difficult to see how the category of the philosopher genius—which Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche12 were perhaps the keenest to represent—could even in principle accommodate women, given that the Romantic idea of genius which we have inherited was built on the idea of male life-giving force. According to Battersby, it has often been the case that male thinkers have specifically argued against the possibility of the female genius (1989, 3–4).

Indeed, the idea of the solitary philosopher genius seems to accommodate poorly women thinkers and those of different minorities, who may fail to see themselves as legitimate heirs to the tradition. Occasionally one can witness among White male students a kind of affectionate mocking attitude towards the "big names" in philosophy, as if Aristotle and Heidegger were their big brothers who they make fun of but at the same time admire and feel supported by.

In philosophy seminars, there exists a pressure to say something "smart" that demonstrates that you already have a good command of philosophy and that you are able ask the "right" kind of questions. It is difficult to say how much the varying ways in which students respond to the situation—from apparent arrogance to verbosity and refraining from speech—reflect their attempts to hide their uncertainties and the tacit expectations of the role of the philosopher. Yet for some of the women students these expectations and the general atmosphere of seminars may very well belong to the alienating aspects of philosophy.

<sup>11</sup> The English translation, *On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and On the Will in Nature*, includes two essays, which were published in German under the titles *Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde* (1813) and *Über den Willen in der Natur*  (1836).

<sup>12</sup> According to Carl Pletsch, Nietzsche's life demonstrates that "genius is a role that needs to be learnt and nurtured" (1991, 15).

In the mythical imagination, the solitary hero philosopher is seen to sacrifice bourgeois comforts and even their own mental health for a rigorous pursuit of an inner truth, as manifested by the popularity of the legends of Schopenhauer's supposed dysthymia, Nietzsche's syphilis-related confusion, Ludwig Wittgenstein's tendency to depression and his entertainment of suicidal thoughts, or Simone Weil's supposed pseudo-anorexia (see e.g. Hannan 2009, Margulis 2004, Peters 2019, Oxenhandler 1994).13 The idea of the philosopher as a lone wolf can be actually harmful, when it dominates the way students conceive their future possibilities and the most profitable actions. Philosophy majors may think that to be taken seriously or to achieve their own ideals, they should dedicate their lives to philosophy, that is, always put philosophy first and more mundane pursuits second. In reality, functioning relationships with their peers can be equally or more important for their ability to be creative in philosophy and to enjoy studying it.14

If this is the case, philosophy students who find support in like-minded peers or generous supervisors, will be more likely to feel "at home" in philosophy and less likely to let any difficulties send them off the rails. It takes a lot of determination to continue in a competitive field when there is neither social support nor financial reward in view. In addition, the idea of the philosopher's work as a solitary struggle can have repercussions for how professional philosophers act in the role of leaders and teachers.

If we are not happy with the idea of genius as it has been described above, should we then reject it altogether? Rejection of this idea may be easier said than done, for it cannot be denied that being recognised as beyond compare in one's field remains one of the alluring qualities of the genius, and ultimately, a ticket away from the seeming futility of existence.15 In reality, though, attaining a high standard in one's field may not be so much a question of innate talent, as the Romantics would have had it, but one of practice and perseverance (see Berliner and Eyre 2018). Yet even perseverance is not enough, if you do not find the right people with whom to discuss and develop your ideas, and to support you—who help you flourish.

After all, the cult of genius obscures the character of philosophy as a collective endeavour and emphasises the person instead of the work. As is frequently repeated, philosophy is dialogue. We discuss ideas that belong to a tradition; we try to understand that tradition and the views of others as best we can even when we wish to

<sup>13</sup> While it is problematic to diagnose historical figures after their death, the described psychological problems, real or unreal, make an important part of the legends of these philosophers. Dysthymia refers to chronic depression, which may include feelings of hopelessness, fatigue and low selfesteem. Pseudo-anorexia is an eating disorder that a patient can develop in order to deny the reality of a supposedly more uncontrollable disease. Simone Weil is known to have refused to eat during her illness, which precipitated her death.

<sup>14</sup> To be able to say something more definitive about the matter, an empirical study would be in order. These considerations are based on my discussions with philosophy students, the background study for this volume and other unpublished surveys.

<sup>15</sup> In her introduction to *Genius: The History of an Idea*, Penelope Murray argues that a genius is generally understood to be an individual with exceptional gifts, who nonetheless differs from people who are simply talented (1989, 1).

overcome that tradition. We also ask for our peers' comments and counterarguments for whatever new ideas we are able to develop. Philosophy is a collective effort in the sense that it requires a community of thinkers who believe in the importance of doing philosophy and who, across millennia, strive for clarity and a better understanding of reality. True enough, at the same time it is the effort of individuals, who often need solitude in order to engage in this dialogue with their full capacity and who enjoy working alone. In this context, what should we make of the category of genius?

Battersby's solution is not to discard genius altogether but to discard the Romantic idea of it as a solitary man, who resembles a "mad" person but at the same time embodies a virile force of life, and expresses utmost originality. In her view, the task of feminists is to change the definition of genius and to bring out women geniuses. And in fact, during a workshop in which the cult of genius was being discussed, a woman colleague exclaimed: "Don't we all want to be geniuses?" Perhaps this question could be transformed into the form: "Don't we all want to achieve individual brilliance in our thinking?" In that case, the answer is probably "yes". We do not do philosophy to be bad or mediocre thinkers, such as those inferior interlocutors of Socrates, who get it so wrong before he helps them out.

Brilliance is something that we can achieve in philosophy through a long and loving engagement in thinking, discussing and writing. Achieving it does not require being placed higher than others in the intellectual hierarchy, but rather succeeding in a more limited endeavour. From the perspective of temporality, the satisfactory moments of "achieving brilliance" in one's work are not the moments in which others applaud the finished work, for, from the philosopher's viewpoint, the work in question exists in those moments mainly as a past engagement. When the philosopher's living engagement with the topic has already ceased to exist, however, the readers may find a promise of their own future possibilities in the finished work.16 For the author, the philosopher, the actual satisfaction comes in the moments of insight, often after a long period of seemingly going in circles or of inefficiency, or the moments of flow, when philosophical thinking seems relatively effortless and appears to hold a lot of promise: it opens up towards a limitless future. These moments can be shared with others, or they can appear as the outcome of inspiring conversations. To be sure, recognition of one's work is important, too, and in a positive scenario, it can re-enliven the work for the author. Often this recognition exists as a celebration of a work that has already been left behind by the philosopher and represents a gap between the author and the readers.

It may be helpful to analyse brilliance in philosophical writings precisely through their abilities to position us temporally. If a work opens up new possibilities for the reader, if it transforms their relationship to their own future, the work is likely to appear to the reader as brilliant. This way of understanding brilliance as a kind of transformative force is somewhat—but not completely—relativistic, because, depending on the reader, different works have this power, and even the same reader

<sup>16</sup> Again, my analysis of temporality and intersubjectivity relies on Beauvoir's discussion of them in *Pyrrhus and Cineas* (2003; 2004).

experiences the same work differently depending on when they read it. This implies that some flexibility could be inherent in the constitution of canons.

The analysis reveals that the relationship of philosophy students to the canon, or to the part of that canon that they choose to familiarise themselves with, consists of a specific intimacy brought about by the act of reading itself, a dialogue over time (the phenomenon of "thinking together"), and, in optimal cases, a new set of intellectual and experiential possibilities opened up by those works. I suggest that even if we may retain something of the Romantic conception of "genius" and even though the institutional solidification of a specific canon legitimises a conception of certain thinkers as heroic and superior, we should not ignore the future-opening aspect of different philosophers' work that contributes to their adoration through the thankfulness it inspires. To help students analyse their relationship to the canon rather than just live it prereflectively, their teachers should explicitly address all of these aspects of engaging with the tradition.

Perhaps precisely because the concept of genius has decreased in value over the past decades, we seem to have attained the situation in which a woman or a person of colour or a person belonging to a gender minority can be seen as "a genius". Even though it is difficult to raise anyone of one's contemporaries as a genius, many women philosophers – Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Martha Nussbaum—seem to have already reached a status which would allow them to be later viewed as "women geniuses", if their ideas are later deemed central to the narrative of the history of philosophy, and they are not written out of this, which has often been the fate of women philosophers. Many of the posthumanist thinkers are also women and may be fathomed to acquire this position someday.

Some philosophers, however, suggest that there are objective reasons why Aristotle is in the canon and others like Butler should not be. According to Donald Phillip Verene, for instance, there are actually only four important philosophers— Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel—whose works the rest of Western philosophy only comments on and responds to (Verene 2018, 7). Philosophy that puts social criticism first and creates a "surrogate" canon of gender, race and ethnicity, would endanger the core of philosophy and give up imagination and history of philosophy for the benefit of politics. In comparison to Plato and Aristotle, thinkers such as Butler would fail to manifest a complexity of thought and "greatness"—they supposedly only have "one principal idea" (Verene 2018, 15).

It may very well be that the demand that a philosopher's work need be both deep and broad in scope for it to be accepted into the canon makes it quite impossible for contemporary academic philosophers to ever gain this acceptance, for in the current state of science politics, specialisation is mandatory. Even so, the work of Butler and other contemporary philosophers can hardly be reduced to "one principal idea". Regardless of the constitution of the future canon or canons, it should be clear that the discussion of the existing canon can be combined with a discussion of more alternative texts. In any case, it is rare that any philosopher would be simultaneously be an expert in Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, not to mention a wider canon, which means that for each of us, our understanding of the field always remains uneven, in some aspects thorough and in others superficial.

As I have suggested, historical philosophical texts, despite their problems, open up a future to their readers. In what follows, I consider yet another empowering potential of the past: the power of a historical "we". To this end, the next section deals with the role female predecessors in philosophy.

#### **3.4 Why and How to Raise Awareness of Early Women Philosophers**