Amalia Holst: On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-19-284594-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 142 mm x 211 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

Reihe: British Society for the History of Philosophy:New Texts in the History of Philosophy

This edition offers the first English translation of Amalia Holst's daring book, On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802). In one of the first works of German philosophy published under a woman's name, Holst presents a manifesto for women's education that centres on a basic provocation: as far as the mind is concerned, women are equal partakers in the project of Enlightenment and should thus have unfettered access to the sciences in general and to philosophy in particular.

Holst's manifesto resonates with the work of several women writers across Europe, including Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Germaine de Staël. Yet in contrast to the early works of feminism we celebrate today, her book had little success. Its reception confronts us with a darker side of the German Enlightenment that, until recently, has been neglected. Holst sought to unearth the gendered nature of the fundamental concepts of the Enlightenment--including vocation, education, and culture--which enabled men to establish the subordinate status of women by philosophical means. However, her argument was scorned by male reviewers, who denied the very possibility of a woman philosopher.

With an introduction by Andrew Cooper, and translations of biographical material and early reviews, this edition provides students and scholars of German philosophy with a timely resource for developing a richer understanding of their field, and general readers with a powerful early feminist text that reveals the opportunities and difficulties facing women philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cooper, Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 19. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Geschichte der Pädagogik, Richtungen in der Pädagogik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Feminismus, Feministische Theorie

Über Autor(innen)

Andrew Cooper is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is author of The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant's Critique of Judgment and the Project of Aesthetics (2016) and Kant and the Transformation of Natural History (2023), and has published numerous articles on Kant, post-Kantian philosophy, and philosophy of science.