Who are the great female "thinkers" and philosophers?

[The Groke]

why would you think it odd? she is really logical and extremely philosophical in all her interviews. her words too, are very philosophical. The triumph of a heart's lyrics are very wise. She's abstract though, and a bit too much for most people.

Oh just stop it you clown.

 

[The Groke]

Poor swarfy, posting drunken musings at a time when most of us are sober and bored

You could probably all take advantage of it if you were so inclined.




I am actually being genuine.


I think.


Yeah - I totally am.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Do you think then that the feminist movement hasn't evolved as it needs to, or that people have just become complacent and/or disinterested?

Both, and more.

Firstly, feminism has got an image problem. The right has successfully created an image of the hairy man-hating woman that pops into people's heads when they hear the word feminism. Feminism isn't about separatism, but that's how it's been re-created by those who fear it.

It follows that people don't know how to react to the questions feminism/gender inequality poses, because they either don't want to be tarred by the same brush as those bra-burning hairy freaks, or they'll just completely switch off and think it doesn't affect them because of images like SATC (from previous thread) or Spice Girls etc that proclaim loudly from Heat magazine "we've made it, girls, now let's go out and buy another handbag".

Feminism has been usurped by consumerism.

 

[The Groke]

Feminism has been usurped by consumerism.

At the risk of sounding glib again, hasn't everything?

(as guilty as the next man)

 

[Vintage Paw]

At the risk of sounding glib again, hasn't everything?

(as guilty as the next man)

Well, quite. But the 'glibness' of your comment has an air of 'so what's the point?' about it. Recognising what's attacking feminism (etc.) is the first step to doing something about it. Consumerism is the heavy armour surrounding and protecting capitalism.

 

[The Groke]

Well, quite. But the 'glibness' of your comment has an air of 'so what's the point?' about it.

Well yeah - hence the admission of glibness.

Recognising what's attacking feminism (etc.) is the first step to doing something about it. Consumerism is the heavy armour surrounding and protecting capitalism.

As a capitalistscumfatcat, this thread has taken a treacherous turn for me and I suddenly find myself tumbling off my (admittedly shakey) platform from which I have attempted to engage you all.



I best bail out whilst I still can and go back to my rum.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Well yeah - hence the admission of glibness.




As a capitalistscumfatcat, this thread has taken a treacherous turn for me and I suddenly find myself tumbling off my (admittedly shakey) platform from which I have attempted to engage you all.



I best bail out whilst I still can and go back to my rum.

It was interesting talking with you about it. Will you return post-rum? How have you found the discussion?

 

[The Groke]

It was interesting talking with you about it.

I enjoyed it too.

Will you return post-rum?

I always return post-rum, yet I fear my ability to participate in interesting and worthy discourse peaks at about 4 triple rum-and-cokes and then sharply falls away after the 5th.

It is a thin red line I traverse.

How have you found the discussion?

Better than I hoped for when I made the OP.

Goodnight Miss VP.

 

[cesare]

Do you think then that the feminist movement hasn't evolved as it needs to, or that people have just become complacent and/or disinterested?

Fatigued.

Capitalism and patriarchy are completely entwined. I don't see any realistic economic alternative to Capitalism, but there are two clear alternatives to patriarchy. Unfortunately, Capitalism won't allow either of them. The most you can hope to achieve are small steps.

 

[Cheesypoof]

Oh just stop it you clown.

Im serious!

sorry if my female philosopher doesnt fit into your pigeonhole

 

[girasol]

Im serious!

sorry if my female philosopher doesnt fit into your pigeonhole

Post modern philosophy?

I live by the ocean
and during the night
I dive into it
down to the bottom
underneath all currents
and drop my anchor
this is where I'm staying
this is my home

mmm, I don't know

 

[cesare]

Male philosophers only allow admitance to females thinking in a male way?

 

[Cid]

Diotima springs to mind, although she's not really known about (I suspect this is true of many female philosophers)... Hypatia maybe? Sappho for poetry. The Christian mystics generated a few, but obviously within the mystic tradition.

 

[Blagsta]

Emma Goldman? Rosa Luxemburg?

 

[Mrs Magpie]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/13/philosophy

 

[Cheesypoof]

Post modern philosophy?



mmm, I don't know

so you would judge whether someone is a philosopher by a couple of song lyrics?

Silly!!!

 

[hp66]

Feminism has been usurped by consumerism.

is this euro/westerncentric? what about other parts of the world, where one might argue that an increase in wealth/consumerism is leading to the (albeit constrained within a capitalist system) development of feminist action?

I'm thinking of the "Coalition of Pubgoing, Loose & Forward Looking Women and their Pink Chaddi campaign in India. It's perhaps not the best example, as they appear to be opposing fundamentalism in general rather than sexism per se, but you get the general gist...?

 

[hp66]

thanks for the link to the Mary Midgley article, Mrs. M; she's a patron of a small engaged buddhist order i briefly volunteered for, and has quite a presence. Doubt I'll get around to reading any of her actual writing, but i appreciate that she's actively doing stuff

 

[Jonti]

mmm, Mary "toothache is as real as teeth" Midgley ...

To make sense of our humanity requires not just science but poetry. 'Poetry', for Midgley, is defined not in its everyday sense, but is rather a description of all that is not encompassed by natural science – philosophy, history, sociology, politics, literature and so on.

from Kenan Malik's review of "Science And Poetry"

and, from the amazon review of that book,

Science, according to the received wisdom of the day, can in the end answer any question we choose to put to it -- even the most fundamental questions about ourselves, our behavior and our cultures. Many go as far as to claim that science is all we need to explain the world. But for Mary Midgley, science, while undeniably a key element in this quest, can never be the whole story as it cannot truly explain what it means to be human. In this typically crusading work, universally acclaimed as a classic on first publication, she powerfully asserts her corrective view that without poetry (or literature, or music, or history, even theology) we cannot hope to understand our humanity. Reading this remarkable book, which draws equally on both the great artists and poets for its inspiration, the reader is struck by both the simplicity and power of her argument and the sheer pleasure to be gained from reading one of our most accessible philosophers.

 

[cesare]

mmm, Mary "toothache is as real as teeth" Midgley ...
and, from the amazon review of that book,

I take it that you're not that keen on her?

 

[Jonti]

Science and Poetry is one of my favourite books, as it happens.

I take it you are clueless?

... what are we to make of the remark by two prominent physicists that "a physicist is an atom's way of knowing about an atom?" She uses that as a classic example of folie de grandeur and adds: "It should surely be obvious that, if the universe is the kind of thing capable of knowing or wanting to know anything, it can do this on its own, and does not need help from physicists."

from Andrew Brown's guardian review

Heh!

 

[cesare]

Science and Poetry is one of my favourite books, as it happens.

I take it you are clueless?Heh!

Probably. Men like you make the world go round

 

[Jonti]

What's the problem, cesare?

You seem extraordinarily bitter and judgmental. Prejudiced, even.

 

[ymu]

I take it you are clueless?Heh!

wtf?

You expressed yourself ambiguously. I thought you were criticising her too.


She completely misunderstood the Wald quote by the way. She's actually making exactly the same point as is made in the quote itself. Physicists are made of atoms - so when physicists study atoms, atoms are studying themselves. This is, of course, the only way (we know of) that atoms can study other atoms because, as she correctly but redundantly points out, atoms in general couldn't give a shit and if they did they wouldn't need help from a physicist. (No, they'd need to build physicist - duh!)

I'm sure she's wonderful, but that's an appalling straw man she picked on there.

 

[Jonti]

I fail to see the ambiguity in my drawing peoples attention to the simplicity and power of her argument and the sheer pleasure to be gained from reading one of our most accessible philosophers.

 

[Jonti]

wtf?

You expressed yourself ambiguously. I thought you were criticising her too.


She completely misunderstood the Wald quote by the way. She's actually making exactly the same point as is made in the quote itself. Physicists are made of atoms - so when physicists study atoms, atoms are studying themselves. This is, of course, the only way (we know of) that atoms can study other atoms because, as she correctly but redundantly points out, atoms in general couldn't give a shit and if they did they wouldn't need help from a physicist. (No, they'd need to build physicist - duh!)

I'm sure she's wonderful, but that's an appalling straw man she picked on there.

I don't think I was ambiguous, but it is a major problem with textual communication, so caution is certainly justified.

Physicists are also made of quarks and leptons, but that doesn't mean it's either true or useful to say a physicist is a quark or lepton's way of studying itself. If people said such things as a kind of poetical fancy, that's all very well.

MM, it seems to me, is taking physicists to task for thinking such a fancy to be literally true.

 

[ymu]

MM, it seems to me, is taking physicists to task for thinking such a fancy to be literally true.

It is literally true. It's just not a remotely useful truth and is what passes for a joke in physics. She's educated enough to understand the point it's making, ignorant enough not to realise that it's making that point, and arrogant enough to conclude that physicists therefore don't understand the ideas behind it properly themselves.

Not good. Not good at all.

 

[cesare]

What's the problem, cesare?

You seem extraordinarily bitter and judgmental. Prejudiced, even.

Maybe I am extraordinarily bitter and judgmental. You seem fairly confident in showing me where I'm wrong. Show me how I can redeem myself.

 

[Jonti]

I'm not going to stick up for everything MM says in "Science and Poetry". To my mind, she rather flunks her cause by not arguing the case that it is human freedom of action (however limited) that sets the course of our lives apart from the blind mechanisms of atoms.

Many a true word is spoken in jest. The effect of the "joke" is to say one is "nothing but" an assemblage of quarks and leptons/atoms/molecules/whatever. MM's point is exactly that such a view is inadequate.

When the police baton charge a demonstration, there is more going on than assemblages of atoms charging other assemblages of atoms. That way of looking at things gives no useful understanding about what's really happening in terms of people's perceptions and fears, in terms of the issues that caused the demonstration in the first place.

 

[Jonti]

Maybe I am extraordinarily bitter and judgmental. You seem fairly confident in showing me where I'm wrong. Show me how I can redeem myself.

snide too