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Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences Volume 24 General Editor Shahid Rahman (Lille, UMR 8163) Managing Editor Juan Redmond (Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile) Area Editors Argumentation and Pragmatics Frans H. van Eemeren (Amsterdam) Zoe McConaughey (Lille, UMR 8163) Tony Street (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge) John Woods (British Columbia/King’s College) Argumentation and Rhetoric Gabriel Galvez-Behar (Lille, UMR 8529) Leone Gazziero (Lille) André Laks, (Princeton/Panamericana) Ruth Webb (Lille, UMR 8163) Decision Theory, Mathematics, Economy Jacques Dubucs (IHPST-Paris 1) Karine Chemla (CNRS, SPHERE UMR7219, Université de Paris) Sven Ove Hansson (Stockholm) Cognitives Sciences. Computer Sciences Yann Coello (Lille) Eric Gregoire (CRIL-Lens) Henry Prakken (Utrecht) François Recanati (ENS, Paris) Epistemology and Philosophy of Science Gerhard Heinzmann (Nancy) Sonja Smets (ILLC, Amsterdam) Göran Sundholm (Leiden) Logic Michel Crubellier (Lille, UMR 8163) Dov Gabbay (King’s College) Tero Tulenheimo (Lille, UMR 8163) Political Science and Sociology Jean-Gabriel Contamin (Lille) Franck Fischer (Rutgers) Josh Ober (Stanford) Marc Pichard (Lille, MESHS-Nord Pas de Calais) Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning (LAR) explores links between the Humanities and Social Sciences, with theories (including decision and action theory) drawn from the cognitive sciences, economics, sociology, law, logic, and the philosophy of science. Its main ambitions are to develop a theoretical framework that will encourage and enable interaction between disciplines, and to integrate the Humanities and Social Sciences around their main contributions to public life, using informed debate, lucid decision-making, and action based on refection. • Argumentation models and studies • Communication, language and techniques of argumentation • Reception of arguments, persuasion and the impact of power • Diachronic transformations of argumentative practices LAR is developed in partnership with the Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société (MESHS) at Nord - Pas de Calais and the UMR-STL: 8163 (CNRS). This book series is indexed in SCOPUS. Proposals should include : • A short synopsis of the work, or the introduction chapter • The proposed Table of Contents • The CV of the lead author(s) • If available: one sample chapter We aim to make a frst decision within 1 month of submission. In case of a positive frst decision, the work will be provisionally contracted—the fnal decision about publication will depend upon the result of an anonymous peer review of the complete manuscript. The complete work is usually peer-reviewed within 3 months of submission. LAR discourages the submission of manuscripts containing reprints of previously published material, and/or manuscripts that are less than 150 pages / 85,000 words. For inquiries and proposal submissions, authors may contact the editor-in-chief, Shahid Rahman at: [email protected], or the managing editor, Juan Redmond, at: [email protected] More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11547 Isabelle Chouinard • Zoe McConaughey Aline Medeiros Ramos • Roxane Noël Editors Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Editors Isabelle Chouinard Zoe McConaughey Philosophy Department, Université de Université de Lille, UMR 8163 Savoirs Montréal Textes Langage Montreal, Canada Lille, France Centre Léon Robin, Sorbonne Université Philosophy Department Paris, France Université du Québec à Montréal Montreal, Canada Aline Medeiros Ramos Philosophy Department, Université du Roxane Noël Québec à Montréal Faculty of Philosophy, Montreal, Canada University of Cambridge Cambridge, United Kingdom Department of Philosophy & Arts Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières Trois- Rivières, Canada ISSN 2214-9120 ISSN 2214-9139 (electronic) Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning ISBN 978-3-030-73189-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73190-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73190-8 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword I was a graduate student by the time I had my frst chance to take a class with a female professor. In college, I had double-majored in Classics and Philosophy, and while both departments were full of wonderful faculty members, all of them were men. At the time, I barely noticed this—I was more struck by how few of my fellow classmates were women. In upper-level seminars, I was often the only “girl” in the class, and everyone would turn in their seats to see my reaction when the authors we were reading made pronouncements about women. One particularly egregious pas- sage in Hesiod’s Works and Days sparked a running joke: Hesiod warns young men that attractive women only talk to them for their storehouses—so for the rest of the semester, whenever I was chatting with one of the guys in the class, another one was likely to lean over and whisper loudly: “You know she’s just after your barn, right?” My classmates weren’t making fun of me—in fact, they made it clear in a num- ber of ways that they liked and even respected me. If anything, they were trying to show their solidarity by laughing at how ridiculous they thought Hesiod’s claim was. But I was the only person in the class that particular joke applied to, and it always reminded me that I was the “Other” in that context. Rather than being the exception, that experience became really more of the rule. In my senior year, for instance, a famous logician came to give a talk. I had just been accepted into the graduate program at Cornell, and I was looking forward to talking with the (male) speaker, whose work I admired. The auditorium was packed with students from several neighboring schools; as I squeezed past knees to reach the seat a friend was saving for me, I heard two guys whispering and realized they were talking about me. “She is kind of cute,” one of them said. “Right!” the other one laughed—“A ‘phi- losopher babe’.” I spent the talk intensely aware of their scrutiny. Afterwards, they both came up to talk to me. “So,” one asked with a grin, “are you in a philosophy class?” When I straightened up and replied rather stiffy, “Actually, I’m going to grad school for it in the fall,” the only response I got was a surprised, “So, do you enjoy philosophy, then?” Yes, in fact I do enjoy philosophy! But I’m not sure I would still be in the feld if it weren’t for the group of women I became friends with in grad school. Although only two of the twenty-some professors on the philosophy faculty were women (and v vi Foreword only one of those two was tenured), almost half of the students in the graduate pro- gram identifed as women, and the difference that made to my experience was immense. It wasn’t so much that it was a big deal to me to have other women around—it was more that it fnally felt like it wasn’t a big deal for ME to be around. A friend of mine calls this the Rule of Three. When there’s just one of you, she says, you become the representative for your entire demographic. When there are only two of you, one of you becomes the “good” representative for your demographic and the other gets labeled “bad” in comparison. When there are three or more of you, however, the dynamics shift and you start to get to be a real person. All of this is to say that the representation of women matters in the history of philosophy, and not—as the editors of this volume rightly note—because there is some sort of magical ‘essence of femininity’ that “yields a privileged access to some kind of special philosophical stance.” The central reason this volume exists is sim- ply to help counteract the under-representation of women in existing scholarship in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy. Philosophy is an inherently com- munal enterprise, and the isolation of any person or group is counter-productive to that enterprise. The isolation of fully half the human species should seem particu- larly worth attempting to overcome. I can imagine potential readers expecting a book written, edited, and reviewed entirely by women to focus on the thoughts of ancient and medieval women, and/or to offer feminist critiques of the theories of men from those periods. In my opinion, the fact that this book doesn’t do this is one of its greatest strengths. The goal of this volume is to increase female representation in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy; it is not a set of essays on ancient and medieval women philosophers, or a work in the history of feminist philosophy.
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