Women philosophers about this web site.

The women philosophers web site is owned and operated by Kate Lindemann, professor emerita of philosophy at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York.

Sometimes people ask why I started this site. There are 4 main reasons:

1. When I was an undergraduate and took my first philosophy course I was one of a small group of students who was entranced by the subject. One day in conversation after class the professor asked me what my major was. I replied that it was English but that I was thinking of changing to philosophy. He said that I could not do that. Among his reasons was , There are no women philosophers. Women can not do philosophy. Now this was the 1950's and what did I know? I assumed college professors were correct. I did not attempt to change my major. So one reason for this site is that I would not want any other woman interested in philosophy to think that "women can not do philosophy".
2. In the 1980's I had the privilege of meeting Sister Mary Christine Morkovsky, a multi-lingual scholar from Our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio, Texas. She was introducing Latin American Philosophy of Liberation to North America. I was working in feminist philosophy. We saw some commonalities and wrote a paper, "Latin American Philosophy of Liberation and North American Feminist Philosophy: Possibilities for Dialogue" which we presented at an International Congress of Philosophy in Bogata.

   My Spanish was rudimentary (The night before I left New York for Bogata, Professor Karen McCarthy, who was helping me with my part of the paper in Spanish said, "Kate, you are either very brave or you are loco". ) She was probably right. I was the only person at the meeting who was not fluent in Spanish. But I learned so much at that meeting! People were very kind and I met a number of Latin American Women Philosophers. I heard a paper about some women philosophers who lived before the Conquest. I came home thinking that most of what is taught in North American philosophy classes is really quite narrow in scope.

3. Some years earlier I had read Aegidius Menagius's work, Historia Mulierum Philosopharum translated by the brilliant scholar, Beatrice Zeller. This work, originally published in 1690, gave me the names of many women I had never heard of and it showed me that there was a time when Europe, like Ancient Greece (Diogenes Laeritus, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers ) acknowledged the work of women in philosophy.
4. The fourth impetus for this site came from Mary Ellen Waithe who in the 1980's posted to the SWIP discussion list seeking interest and contributions for the multi volume History of Women Philosophers . A massive and important work!

   I contacted Mary Ellen and did my small part in the project. After the work was published I taught courses in the History of Women Philosophers at Mount Saint Mary College. As in most of my courses in those years, I asked students to submit their term projects as web sites rather than term papers. (Yes, I taught HTML to those who needed it.)

   I began to dream of a web site about the History of Women Philosophers. No book can cover all the women in philosophy AND text books are really expensive - far too expensive for many students and scholars throughout the world. I wanted a web site that would be global in reach, that would include women of all cultures and times who were philosophers (lovers of wisdom ).

In 2005 I realized that I would never be able to do all the research. I decided to put some material on line. It might attract other scholars and contributors. My hope is that this site might be a place for students and faculty to findnew areas of thought; that some might publish new articles here (or send links to their online articles), that some new translations would be done and yes, we could even publish and distribute ebooks.

In that year I retired from full time teaching and I found SiteBuildITa company in Canada made it possible for me to start this web site in 2007.

My hope is that others will get interested in the work, will submit articles, information, do translations and/or ebooks manuscripts. And because I am financing this out of my retirement funds, I would be glad for any donations or for any philosophy department or publisher would want to advertise their works in or by women philosophers on the site.

Thank you for visiting the women philosophers web site. I hope you will find it so informative that you will wantto pass it along to others and get involved in helping it to continue.

Go to List of Women Philosophers

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