Vivienne Rowe

The history of philosophy, as it is taught in universities, is a history of exclusion. The standard narrative moves from Plato to Aristotle, through Descartes and Kant, to Wittgenstein and Rawls-a line of thinkers who were, almost without exception, men. This book argues that the canon was not naturally formed but actively constructed, and that its construction required the systematic exclusion of women whose work was philosophically significant.
The question is not whether women philosophers existed; they did. The question is why their work was forgotten, and what that forgetting cost.