Women in philosophy

Despite women participating in philosophy throughout history, there exists a gender imbalance in academic philosophy. This can be attributed to implicit biases against women. Women have had to overcome workplace obstacles like sexual harassment or having their work overlooked or stolen by men. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the field of philosophy as well. Minorities and Philosophy (MAP), the American Philosophical Association, and the Society for Women in Philosophy are all organizations trying to fix the gender imbalance in academic philosophy.

In the early 1800s, some colleges and universities in the UK and US began admitting women, producing more female academics. Nevertheless, U.S. Department of Education reports from the 1990s indicate that few women ended up in philosophy, and that philosophy is one of the least gender-proportionate fields in the humanities. Women make up as little as 17% of philosophy faculty in some studies. In 2014, Inside Higher Education described the philosophy "...discipline's own long history of misogyny and sexual harassment" of women students and professors. Jennifer Saul, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, stated in 2015 that women are "...leaving philosophy after being harassed, assaulted, or retaliated against."

In the early 1990s, the Canadian Philosophical Association claimed that there is gender imbalance and gender bias in the academic field of philosophy. In June 2013, a US sociology professor stated that "out of all recent citations in four prestigious philosophy journals, female authors comprise just 3.6 percent of the total." The editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy have raised concerns about the underrepresentation of women philosophers, and they require editors and writers to ensure they represent the contributions of women philosophers. According to Eugene Sun Park, "[p]hilosophy is predominantly white and predominantly male. This homogeneity exists in almost all aspects and at all levels of the discipline." Susan Price argues that the "canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that... still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender." According to Saul, philosophy, the oldest of the humanities, is also the malest (and the whitest). While other areas of the humanities are at or near gender parity, philosophy remains more overwhelmingly male than even mathematics.

History

While there were women philosophers since the earliest times, and some were accepted as philosophers during their lives, very few woman philosophers have entered the philosophical Western canon. Historians of philosophy are faced with two main problems. The first being the exclusion of women philosophers from history and philosophy texts, which leads to a lack of knowledge about women philosophers among philosophy students. The second problem deals with what the canonical philosophers had to say about philosophy and women's place in it. In the past twenty-five years there has been an exponential increase in feminist writing about the history of philosophy and what has been considered the philosophical canon.

In the May 13, 2015 issue of The Atlantic, Susan Price notes that even though Kant's first work in 1747 cites Émilie Du Châtelet, a philosopher who was a "...scholar of Newton, religion, science, and mathematics", "her work won't be found in the 1,000-plus pages of the new edition of The Norton Introduction to Philosophy." The Norton Introduction does not name a female philosopher until the book begins to cover the mid-20th century. Scholars argue that women philosophers are also absent from the "...other leading anthologies used in university classrooms." Price states that university philosophy anthologies do not usually mention 17th century women philosophers such as Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Lady Damaris Masham. Price argues that the philosophical "...canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that some say still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender." Amy Ferrer, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, states that "...women have been systematically left out of the canon, and that women coming in have not been able to see how much influence women have had in the field." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which was published in 1967, had "...articles on over 900 philosophers, [but it] did not include an entry for Wollstonecraft, Arendt or de Beauvoir. "[T]hese women philosophers were scarcely even marginal" to the canon set out at the time.

In the Aeon essay "First women of philosophy" in December 2018, the global historian of ideas Dag Herbjørnsrud writes about the many women philosophers of the Global South, and concludes: "Philosophy was once a woman's world, ranging across Asia, Africa and Latin America. It's time to reclaim that lost realm." Herbjørnsrud argues that women and philosophers of color were excluded from the philosophical canon by Kant, Hegel and their supporters.

Ancient philosophy

Some of the earliest philosophers were women, such as Hipparchia of Maroneia (active ca. 325 BC), Arete of Cyrene (active 5th–4th century BC) and Aspasia of Miletus (470–400 BC). Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes. Some scholars argue that Plato was impressed by her intelligence and wit and based his character Diotima in the Symposium on her. Socrates attributes to the (possibly fictional) Diotima of Mantinea his lessons in the art of Eros (or philosophical searching). Plato's final views on women are highly contested, but the Republic suggests that Plato thought women to be equally capable of education, intellectual vision, and rule of the city.

Ancient eastern philosophy

In ancient philosophy in Asia, women made many vital contributions. In the oldest text of the Upanishads, c. 700 BCE, the female philosophers Gargi and Maitreyi are part of the philosophical dialogues with the sage Yajnavalkya. Ubhaya Bharati (c. 800 AD) and Akka Mahadevi (1130–1160) are other known female thinkers in the Indian philosophical tradition. In China, Confucius hailed Jing Jiang of Lu (5th c. BCE) as being wise and an example for his students, while Ban Zhao (45–116) wrote several vital historical and philosophical texts. In Korea, Im Yunjidang (1721–93) were among the most notable women philosophers during the enlightened mid-Chosŏn era. Among notable female Muslim philosophers are Rabia of Basra (714–801), A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah of Damascus (died 1517), and Nana Asma’u (1793–1864) from the Sokoto Caliphate of today's Nigeria.

Some notable female philosophers of this era include:

• Ban Zhao (c. 45–116 AD)^D2
• Xie Daoyun (before 340 AD – after 399 AD)
• Gargi Vachaknavi (7th century BC)

Ancient western philosophy

In ancient Western philosophy, while academic philosophy was typically the domain of male philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, female philosophers such as Hipparchia of Maroneia (active ca. 325 BC), Arete of Cyrene (active 5th–4th century BC) and Aspasia of Miletus (470–400 BC) were active during this period. Unfortunately, we don't know how many female authors ever existed in Ancient Greece, the Hellenistic period or the Roman age, as most of the ancient literature is forever lost (up to 99%).

In the Roman Empire, empresses and female members of the aristocracy, or knights class, were frequently protectors of male and female artists. Hypatia (AD 350 – 370 to 415) was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy.

Some notable female philosophers of this era include:

• Theano of Croton (6th century BC)
• Aristoclea of Delphi (6th century BC)
• Perictione (5th century BC)
• Sosipatra of Ephesus (4th century AD)
• Nicarete of Megara (flourished around 300 BC)
• Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi) (2nd century BC)
• Catherine of Alexandria (282-305 AD)
• Phintys (3rd century BC)
• Ptolemais of Cyrene (3rd century BC)
• Aesara of Lucania (3rd century BC)
• Diotima of Mantinea (appears in Plato's Symposium)
• Pompeia Plotina (2nd century AD)

Medieval philosophy

Medieval philosophy dates from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD to the Renaissance in the 16th century. In this age, it was common as well for prominent women belonging to the aristocracy to defend and finance intellectuals.

Some notable woman philosophers of this era include:

• Aedesia of Alexandria (5th century AD)
• Heloïse of Argenteuil (c. 1100–1164), French philosopher, advocate of adequate education for nuns
• Dobrodeia of Kiev (1108–1131)
• St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)
• Catherine of Siena (1347–1380)
• Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430)
• Tullia d'Aragona (c. 1510 – 1556)
• Moderata Fonte (1555–1592), critic of religion, feminist
• Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653)

Modern philosophy

The 17th century marks the beginning of the modern philosophy era, which ended in the early 20th century. During the 17th century, various women philosophers argued for the importance of education for women and two women philosophers influenced René Descartes and during the early part of the 18th century, two women philosophers commented on John Locke's philosophy. Laura Bassi (1711–1778) was the first woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field. Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) demanded that French women be given the same rights as men, a position also taken by Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) in her essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) in her essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). During the 19th century, Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) criticized the state of women's education and Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858), Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) and Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) called for women's rights. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) argued that women were oppressed by an androcentric culture. Near the start of the 20th century, Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was the first woman to become president of the American Philosophical Association. Women thinkers such as Emma Goldman (1869–1940), an anarchist, and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), a Marxist theorist, are known for their political views. Influential contemporary philosophers include Edith Stein (1891–1942), Susanne Langer (1895–1985), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), Mary Midgley (1919–2018), Philippa Foot (1920–2010), Mary Warnock (1924–2019), Julia Kristeva (born 1941), Patricia Churchland (born 1943) Martha Nussbaum (born 1947) and Susan Haack (born 1945).

17th century

• Marie de Gournay (1565–1645) was a critic of religion, proto-feminist, translator and novelist who insisted that women should be educated.
• Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) was a multilinguist known for her defense of female education.
• Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680) influenced many key figures and philosophers, most notably René Descartes, who she corresponded with. She questioned Descartes' idea of dualism, or the mind being separate from the body, and his theories regarding communication between the mind and body.
• Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) was a philosopher and writer who addressed gender, power, manners, scientific methods, and philosophy.
• Anne Conway (1631–1679) was an English philosopher whose work, in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists, was an influence on Leibniz. Conway's thought is original as it is rationalist philosophy, with hallmarks of gynocentric concerns and patterns, and in that sense it was unique among seventeenth-century systems.
• Gabrielle Suchon (1632–1703), French philosopher of education
• In early colonial Latin-America, the philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95) was known as "The Phoenix of America".
• Damaris Cudworth Masham (1659–1708) was an English philosopher, proto-feminist, and advocate for women's education.
• Mary Astell (1666–1731) was an English feminist writer and rhetorician known for advocacy of equal educational opportunities for women, which earned her the title of "first English feminist." Her most well known books outline her plan to establish a new type of educational institution for women.

18th century

• Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679–1749) published her first major philosophical work, A Defence of Mr. Lock[e]'s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1702, at the age of 23. Much of the scholarly interest in her writing centres on gender studies.
• Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. She translated and commented on Isaac Newton's work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. She criticized John Locke's philosophy and emphasizes the necessity of the verification of knowledge through experience. She also theorized about free will and on the way to do metaphysics.
• Laura Bassi (1711–1778) was an Italian philosopher and physicist who was the first woman in the world to earn a university chair in a scientific field of studies. She received a doctoral degree from the University of Bologna in May 1732, the third academic qualification ever bestowed on a woman by a university, and the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe. She was the first woman to be offered an official teaching position at a university in Europe.
• Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791) was an English historian and writer. She attacked Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, calling it "a poison...". In her 1790 Letters on Education, she argued along the lines that Mary Wollstonecraft would do in 1792, that the apparent weakness of women was due to their mis-education.
• Im Yunjidang (1721–1793) was a Korean writer and neo-Confucian philosopher.
• Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience. She was an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male–female inequality. She was executed by guillotine by the Revolutionary Tribunal because her views were deemed seditious.
• Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the sexes—that women, like men, had the capability of intellectual accomplishment and should be able to achieve economic independence. Among many other influential pieces, her landmark essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" paved the way for new thoughts and ideas proposed by other feminist writers of the century. The essay predated Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which was published in 1792.
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. She is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her most famous and influential work, she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

19th century

• Nana Asmaʼu (1793–1864) was a Nigerian poet and political writer, who supported the education of women.
• Marianna Florenzi (1802–1870) was an Italian marchioness (in Italian marchesa). Née Marianna Bacinetti, she was a writer, philosopher and translator of philosophical works. She was also known by her married name of Marianna Florenzi Waddington. She had a literary education and devoted herself to reading philosophical works and hosting cultural gatherings and salons. She was one of the first female students, studying natural sciences at the University of Perugia in the first half of the 19th century. She translated Leibniz's Monadology into Italian and also promoted the spread of works by Kant, Spinoza and Schelling (whose work Bruno she also translated) in Italian. Politically, she supported Italy's national-movement and in 1850 published Some reflections on socialism and communism, which (like many of her other works) ended up on the church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
• Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was an English social theorist and political writer, often cited as the first female sociologist. However, her work ranges more widely than this; she wrote books and essays on philosophy, religion, society, history, politics, literature, biography, and many other forms. In Society in America, she criticised the state of women's education, stating that the "intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction" of access to education; she urged women to become well-educated and free. She also savagely criticised America for the contradiction between its liberal principles and its then practice of slavery.
• Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858) was a philosopher and women's rights advocate. In John Stuart Mill's autobiography, he claimed she was the joint author of most of the books and articles published under his name. He stated that "when two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in common it is of little consequence, in respect of the question of originality, which of them holds the pen." Together, they wrote "Early Essays on Marriage and Divorce", published in 1832. The debate about the nature and extent of her collaboration is ongoing.
• Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was an American journalist, critic, philosopher and women's rights advocate. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. She was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cite Fuller as a source of inspiration.
• Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) was a very well-known writer on philosophical and religious subjects in Victorian Britain, as well as a feminist and leading animal welfare campaigner. She was an intuitionist in ethics, a critic of Darwin and atheism, and addressed the full range of philosophical topics including philosophy of mind, aesthetics, history, death and personal immortality, and moral theory. In 1863, she set out a philosophical case for animal rights.
• Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) was the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the United States. She was a well-versed public speaker on controversial issues such as abolition of slavery and she sought to expand women's rights. In 1873 Blackwell founded the Association for the Advancement of Women.
• Frances Julia Wedgwood (1833–1913) published from the 1860s to 1890s on the metaphysical, religious, and ethical implications of Darwin's theory of evolution; arguments for women's rights and suffrage; Biblical criticism; a large-scale account of the development of 'the moral ideal' across world civilisations; and Judaism's central contribution to European civilisation. Her works include The Moral Ideal in 1888.
• Victoria, Lady Welby (1837–1912) was a self-educated English philosopher of language. She published articles in the leading English language academic journals of the day, Mind and The Monist. She published her first philosophical book, What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance in 1903, following it with Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources in 1911. Welby's concern with the problem of meaning included (perhaps especially) the everyday use of language, and she coined the word significs for her approach. Welby's theories on signification anticipated contemporary semantics, semiotics, and semiology.
• Vernon Lee (1856–1935) is best known for her many writings on aesthetics, including Belcaro (1881), 'Art and Life' (1896), and 'The Beautiful' (1913). She was associated with the aestheticist movement in the 1880s but went on to criticise it and reconnect beauty with goodness. She also wrote on ethical, religious, and political topics, including vivisection, evolution, atheism, and utilitarianism. She experimented with forms that straddled the boundary between philosophy and literature.
• Constance Naden (1858–89) defended induction in science, argued for atheism, and put forward the metaphysical system she called 'hylo-idealism', on which we can know only our own ideas and nothing outside them, yet these ideas are merely the products of our brains reacting to physical stimuli.
• Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914) was a Czech-Austrian pacifist and novelist. In 1905 she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Suttner's pacifism was influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant, Henry Thomas Buckle, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoy praised Die Waffen nieder!).
• Helene von Druskowitz (1856–1918) was an Austrian philosopher, writer and music critic. She was the second woman to obtain a Doctorate in Philosophy, which she obtained in Zürich. She usually published under a male alias because of the predominant sexism of the era.
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was an American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer and social reformer. Her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" became a bestseller. The story is about a woman who suffers from mental illness after three months of being closeted in a room by her husband. She argued that the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society. Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an androcentric culture. She argued that women were the underdeveloped half of humanity. She believed economic independence would bring freedom and equality for women.

Early 20th century

• Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was an American philosopher and psychologist. She was also the first woman to become president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association. Calkins studied psychology under William James and studied at Harvard University, which allowed her to attend courses but refused to register her as a student, because she was a woman. She published her doctoral dissertation in 1896, and Harvard's Department of Philosophy and Psychology recommended that she be granted her PhD, but Harvard's president and board refused, as she was a woman. The president believed women should not study with men. James was astonished at the university's decision, as he described her performance as "the most brilliant examination for the Ph.D. that we have had at Harvard." She published four books and over one hundred papers in her career in psychology and philosophy. She was also an avid supporter of women's rights and an advocate of women's right to vote.
• Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. She was viewed as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by critics as an advocate of violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism.
• Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent. While Luxemburg defended Marx's materialism dialectics and his conception of history, she called for spontaneous grass roots-based class struggle.

Contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. Some influential women philosophers from this period include:

• Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. Anscombe's 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics. Her monograph Intention is generally recognised as her greatest and most influential work, and the continuing philosophical interest in the concepts of intention, action and practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from this work. Mary Warnock described her in 2006 as "the undoubted giant among women philosophers" while John Haldane said she "certainly has a good claim to be the greatest woman philosopher of whom we know".
• Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-born American assimilated Jewish political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." Her works deal with the nature of power, and the subjects of politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. The Hannah Arendt Prize is named in her honor.
• María Zambrano (1904–1991) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist known for developing razón poética ("poetic reason") — a philosophy that integrated reason with poetry, imagination, and dreams. Forced into exile during the Franco dictatorship, she wrote prolifically across four decades abroad before returning to Spain in 1984. In 1988, she became the first woman to receive the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest literary honor in the Spanish-speaking world.
• Susanne Langer (1895–1985) was an American philosopher of mind and of philosopher of art, who was influenced by Ernst Cassirer and Alfred North Whitehead. She was one of the first women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. Langer is best known for her 1942 book entitled Philosophy in a New Key. It argued that there is a basic and pervasive human need to symbolize, to invent meanings, and to invest meanings in one's world.

• Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. De Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
• Patricia Churchland (born 1943) is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984.
• Dorothy Emmet (1904–2000) was a Commonwealth Fellowship at Radcliffe College, where she was a pupil of A.N. Whitehead. From 1932 to 1938 she was a lecturer in philosophy at King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (now the University of Newcastle), having beaten A.J. Ayer as a finalist for the job. She joked that the profession owed her one, since Ayer went on to a distinguished career at University College London. Emmet went from Newcastle to the University of Manchester, first as a lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion and then as Sir Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy. She was head of Manchester University's philosophy department for over twenty years. With Margaret Masterman and Richard Braithwaite she was a founder member of the Epiphany Philosophers, and Editor of Theoria to Theory. Emmet was also President of the Aristotelian Society 1953–1954. Between 1966 and 1976 she paid a number of visits to Africa as an examiner and consultant on courses in philosophy in the universities of Ifa and Ibadan, Nigeria. Emmet was a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, which has specialized in students from non-traditional backgrounds. Her books include Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism (1932) and The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (1945).
• Philippa Foot (1920–2010) was a British philosopher, most notable for her works in ethics. She was one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics, inspired by the ethics of Aristotle. Her later career marked a significant change in view from her work in the 1950s and '60s, and may be seen as an attempt to modernize Aristotelian ethical theory, to show that it is adaptable to a contemporary world view, and thus, that it could compete with such popular theories as modern deontological and utilitarian ethics. Some of her work was crucial in the re-emergence of normative ethics within analytic philosophy, especially her critique of consequentialism and of non-cognitivism. A familiar example is the continuing discussion of an example of hers referred to as the trolley problem. Foot's approach was influenced by the later work of Wittgenstein, although she rarely dealt explicitly with materials treated by him.
• Susan Haack (1945-2026) was a distinguished professor in the humanities, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami. She earned her PhD at Cambridge University. She had written on logic, the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Her pragmatism followed that of Charles Sanders Peirce. Haack's major contribution to philosophy was her epistemological theory called foundherentism, which was her attempt to avoid the logical problems of both pure foundationalism (which is susceptible to infinite regress) and pure coherentism (which is susceptible to circularity). Haack was a fierce critic of Richard Rorty. She was also critical of the view that there is a specifically female perspective on logic and scientific truth and was critical of feminist epistemology. She held that many feminist critiques of science and philosophy were overly concerned with 'political correctness'.
• Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was an English moral philosopher. Midgley was a senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, and is known today for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. Midgley strongly opposed reductionism and scientism, and any attempts to make science a substitute for the humanities—a role for which it is, she argued, wholly inadequate. She wrote extensively about what philosophers can learn from nature, particularly from animals. The Guardian described her as a fiercely combative philosopher and the UK's "foremost scourge of 'scientific pretension.'"
• Mary Warnock (1924–2019) was a British philosopher who worked in ethics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of mind. She also wrote on existentialism. From 1984 to 1991, Warnock was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. Warnock studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1984. She delivered the Gifford Lectures, entitled "Imagination and Understanding," at the University of Glasgow in 1992. She has written extensively on ethics, existentialism, and philosophy of mind.
• Ayn Rand (1905–1982) developed a philosophical system she named Objectivism, which affirms objective reality and advocates holding reason as absolute. In ethics, Rand championed rational egoism and individualism. In politics, she advocated for individual rights and capitalism. In esthetics, she upheld romanticism. Rand regards Aristotle as her sole major philosophical influence.
• Giannina Braschi (born 1954) is a Latina philosopher from Puerto Rico who writes on decolonialization, "feardom", enculturation and immigration, and the contradictions of Puerto Rican citizenship.
• Susan Hurley (1954-2007): wrote on practical philosophy as well as on philosophy of mind, bringing these disciplines closer together. Her work drew on sources from the social sciences as well as the neurosciences, and was be broadly characterised as both naturalistic and interdisciplinary.
• Linda Martín Alcoff (born 1955) is a Latina philosopher from Panama who coedited Stories of Women in Philosophy. Her subjects spans decolonial practices and the salience of racial identify.

Other notable philosophers include:

• Grete Hermann (1901–1984)
• Alice Ambrose (1906–2001)
• Sofia Vanni-Rovighi (1908–1990)
• Simone Weil (1909–1943)
• Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–1987)
• Jeanne Hersch (1910–2000)
• Iris Murdoch (1919–1999)
• Ruth Barcan Marcus (1921–2012)
• Mary Hesse (1924–2016)
• Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–2020)
• Cora Diamond (born 1937)
• Marilyn Frye (born 1941)
• Julia Kristeva (born 1941)
• Genevieve Lloyd (born 1941)
• Onora O'Neill (born 1941)
• Nancy Cartwright (philosopher) (born 1944)
• Nancy Fraser (born 1947)
• Martha Nussbaum (born 1947)
• Barbara Cassin (born 1947)
• Rebecca Goldstein (born 1950)
• Christine Korsgaard (born 1952)
• Avital Ronell (born 1952)
• Susan Hurley (born 1954)
• Judith Butler (born 1956)
• Ruth Hagengruber (born 1958)
• Nancy Bauer (philosopher) (born 1960)
• Tamar Gendler (born 1965)
• Ilaria Brocchini (born 1966)
• Alice Crary (born 1967)
• Rahel Jaeggi (born 1967)