The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.  This is the third of five posts this week on women in philosophy.  “How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?”  “It depends what you mean by ‘change’…”  That joke pokes gentle fun at a popular caricature: the chin-stroking grey-beard, with his fetish for word-meanings, his practical irrelevance and his philosophy that “leaves everything as it is,” as Wittgenstein said. The caricature is misleading, for philosophy also prides itself on its capacity to ask hard questions and challenge prejudice. Socrates was executed for stirring up trouble. Descartes began his “Meditations” with a rousing call to “demolish completely” a long-standing edifice of falsehoods — to uproot our “habit of holding on to old opinions,” and look at the world with fresh, unbiased eyes.  That radical power has inspired many women in philosophy, and much political work. The English philosopher Mary Astell wrote irreverently, in 1700, that an opinion’s age is no guide to its truth, that “a rational mind” is not made for servitude, and that a woman’s obligation to a man “is only a Business by the Bye”— “just as it may be any Man’s Business and Duty to keep Hogs.” From Descartes’s idea that we are essentially thinking beings she deduced a conclusion too daring for her peers: colleges for women. Husband-keeping is like hog-keeping: a contingent duty, not what a woman is made for. Many women have, like Astell, found in philosophy a source of joyful challenge and liberation, fascinating in its own terms, with illuminating consequences for life and the social world. Given philosophy’s ambitions, we might fondly expect a profession especially free from bias and welcoming to those targeted by prejudice. That hope is somewhat hard to square with its dearth of women.  There are many possible explanations. Bias is harder to notice than Descartes expected, being unconscious, near-universal and more readily revealed in the psychologist’s lab than by the “natural light of reason.”  There is the effort of juggling work and family life (but why philosophy, more than other disciplines?). There are startling reports of sexual harassment, at “What it’s Like to be a Woman in Philosophy” (Worse than other fields? —who knows, but it should be better!). Some have looked to gender norms for an explanation, supposing that if “men are from Mars,” they thrive better in our martial debating culture (but why philosophy, more than economics?). Some have, more plausibly, invoked a “perfect storm” of diverse factors (see Louise Antony, “Different Voices or Perfect Storm: Why Are There So Few Women in Philosophy?”).  Read previous contributions to this series.  That caricature of Philosophy must be partly to blame: the “man of reason” pictured as a serious, high-minded Dumbledore. For some nice correctives, see the site Looks Philosophical). When a field is group-stereotyped, outsiders often feel less welcome. They often perform less well when something triggers group-awareness. Stereotype threat can make anyone, from white athletes to black students, underperform, when appropriately primed. Philosophy itself may be a source of priming influence, with its mostly male line-up for reading lists, conferences and teachers (see Jennifer Saul on the psychological biases affecting philosophy).  Philosophy is often introduced through its history, beginning with Socrates, who banished the weeping women, as prelude to the real business of philosophizing. Other banishments followed, so it can be tempting to see an unbroken all-male succession, as course lists (including my own) still testify. That part too is misleading. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, in her notable correspondence with Descartes, offered the most enduring objection to Descartes’ dualism: How can immaterial mind and material body interact? She is puzzlingly absent from standard editions that include his contemporary critics. Maria von Herbert provoked a deep question for Kant: is moral perfection compatible with utter apathy? She is puzzlingly absent from the latest Kant biography and her letters survive elsewhere for their gossip value (sex! suicide!). With omissions like these we let down philosophers of past, present and future. We feed the stereotype, and the biases Descartes despised.  One more joke then: “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?”  “It’s not the light bulb that needs changing.”  Rae Langton is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Newnham College. She taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2004 to 2012. Her most recent book, “Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2009.
Before drinking the hemlock, Socrates banished the weeping women so the men could be left to philosophize. Other banishments followed.