This paper considers strategies for incorporating the work of recently recovered women philosophers in the history of philosophy. In addition to advocating for continued archival research, I argue that while the conservative strategy of weaving women into our existing history of philosophy might have short term value other strategies may have more long-term traction. I suggest that we might shift the questions we take as framing philosophical inquiry to align with those questions many women thinkers have taken as compelling. I also suggest that modeling philosophy, and so too the history of philosophy, as a good conversation can afford women thinkers’ voices, as well as those of many others, occasions to be heard. We need to learn how to converse well with figures from our philosophical past, just as we aim to converse well with our contemporaries.
Keywords
early modern philosophy, women philosophers, historiography of philosophy, conversation, philosophical questions