Silvia Conti

This book promotes entirely new insights into women’s contributions to the history of philosophy and boasts papers spanning the centuries from Antigone until twentieth century phenomenology, covering fields from logic to mysticism, stretching from Brazil to Early Modern Europe. The book is of interest for all scholars and students of the history of philosophy, but especially for those who are interested in women philosophers and in new narratives in the history of philosophy. The book is representative of the immense scope of academic discussion women were involved in over the centuries as well as their varying styles and methods. It features papers in logic and in mysticism, presents papers on female authors in Antiquity and in the twenty-first century and it includes papers on phenomenology and analytic philosophy. The chapters consider philosophical positions in literature and drama, in letters and in classical philosophical treatises, ensuring this book contributes significantly to research on the individual women authors, who are all to date still understudied figures.

I investigate the mystical female voice that runs through the philosophical-moral reflection of Iris Murdoch. Despite her ambiguous position on feminism, I argue that Murdoch’s philosophical production is crossed by a mystical feminine echo, inherited from Simone WeilSimone Weiland Julian of NorwichJulian of Norwich, which allows the evasion of a limited, rationalist, vision of philosophy, traditionally hostile to many women philosophers. For this purpose, I analyse the strong objections that Murdoch raises to two apparently distant trains of thought, logical positivismLogical positivismand existentialismExistentialism, due to their same liberal conception of the individual. I show that Murdoch’s criticism of liberal subjectivity is aimed at the affirmation of a more inclusive and realistic anthropologicalAnthropological paradigm, which places emphasis on human reflexivity and emotionality. I consider Murdoch’s redefinition of the human being according to an ethics of vision, a moral pilgrimage from illusion to realityReality, as the expression of the mystical excess of a typically feminine word which overcomes the intellectualistic attitude of Western philosophy. I claim that Murdoch engages in a critical reinterpretation of Simone Weil’s concept of attention and Julian of Norwich’s mystical lexicon of the true existenceExistence of evil and joy in contemplation of reality, in order to fully describe the otherwise ineffable richness of human experience.