GENIUS FORUMS

This thread is for analysis of the ideas of female philosophers of the last hundred years. Feminists have been encouraging women to achieve whatever they like, so we should find in the female philosophers of the last hundred years, a clear(er) expression of the values of women. If we find it is distinct from what male philosophers have offered before the last hundred years, then that should clearly indicate how feminine and masculine psychology is different.

The most notable philosophical text, and some aphorisms, should be an adequate sample of their thought.

Best philosophers of the female sex, last 100 years.

I'll start with Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946). Coincidentally, the anniversary of her death is tomorrow. Taking quotations from Wikipedia, and a sample of "Tender Buttons" (next post):



* "I do want to get rich, but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich."
Boring, mediocre.

* "A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears".
Terse, cryptic, and accurate. It's about imagination and an intuitive feel for the timelessness of imagery.

* "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense".
Weak but has a seed of truth.

* "Hemingway, remarks are not literature".
Self-contradictory.

* "I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich".
Boring, mediocre.

* "America is my country, but Paris is my hometown".
Boring, mediocre.

* "You are all a lost generation".
Weak, with a seed of truth.

* "It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true".
A stronger statement, yet fades into nothing.

* "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose".
Same sort of thing: a seed of truth, but ambiguous about meaning.

* "To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write".
Ditto.

* "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle".
Ditto.

* "There is no there there." [re: Oakland, CA]
She's toying with annihilism, which is false, yet she believes it is true.

* "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."
She didn't like annihilism.

* "I have made it [white electric light] but have I a soul to pay for it."
She regressed into superstition.

* "Affectations can be dangerous."
She liked danger.

* "Everything is so dangerous that nothing is really very frightening."
She got bored.

* "If it can be done, why do it ?"
Still weak, because while it's a good question, it probably means she was a lazy thinker.

Excerpt from Tender Buttons next, and conclusion about what Stein's strongest idea and greatest value was.

Here are a few women philosophers who I believe exhibited "some" degree of rational thought: However, their quantity of occurrence is evidently less than male philosophers, and their psychology is probably a bit more masculinized than your typical female. However, these women are still considered much more interesting in conversation than your typical brute male who is satisfied watching football, drinking beer, and mowing his lawn every Sunday...

"The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment."
Celia Green

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
Ayn Rand

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Ayn Rand

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Ayn Rand

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Ayn Rand

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
Ayn Rand

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Ayn Rand

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.
Ayn Rand

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.
Ayn Rand

"There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual."

Vimala Thakar

“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell”

Simone Weil

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life”

Simone Weil

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached”

Simone Weil

“We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.”

Simone Weil

“In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.”

Simone Weil quotes

Stein's "Tender Buttons" is all the same style of stream-of-consciousness writing. Anyone interested can find a portion of it here.

My analysis of Gertrude Stein strongest idea and greatest value:

She realised by using stream-of-consciousness writing that language could be reassembled freely, and that concepts were arbitrarily created. She had an intuitive grasp of the boundary-lessness of the Infinite, where associations can be made between any things at all. However, she wrote copious amounts of literature in that same style, which means she couldn't make the leap to realise that ordinary conceptual associations show the same boundary-lessness. This means Stein was more attached to appearing to be original and having an interesting reputation, rather than truth.

It has to be said that her strongest idea was weaker than its expression by the likes of Billy Connelly, or David Byrne, but on the plus side, she can claim originality as she wasn't borrowing from other writers. She was influenced strongly by artists, and others in her 'salon' culture. She had fairly strong visuo-spatial thinking ("A writer should write with his eyes"). She also stands out because she was publicly lesbian, when it was by no means politically correct. This does indicate that she valued individuality and living as Nature determined. Nevertheless, she wasn't prepared to give her all to Nature... So, although she may seem to have set an example for the emancipation of women, she only reinforced their egotism by cramping her truthfulness.

-------

Here's a rough list of the next in chronological order:

Anna Akhmatova
Margaret Mead
Evelyn Reed
Ayn Rand
Simone de Beauvoir
Raya Dunayevskaya
Betty Friedan
Kate Millett
Celia Green
Onora O'Neill
Tenzin Palmo
Shulamith Firestone
Elizabeth Grosz
Drucilla Cornell
Naomi Klein

---Anyone is free to add to the list, and post quotes, excerpts and analysis, as Ryan has already done.


KJ

Amendment: I take back that Stein's strongest idea was her originality in writing stacks of stream-of-consciousness stuff. The basic idea of the freedom of language was already well-known in the eighteenth century. Going to the trouble of demonstrating it, is little more than a celebrity stunt.

Also, women prior to her era were prolific letter- and journal-writers, and much practised in effusive streams of emotional writing. Probably her greatest accomplishment was turning women's letter-writing into something more intellectual. That's not disparaging it in any way; I think it may have helped slightly to turn some people's attention to the nature of consciousness. Not a huge contribution, but something.

Kelly: If we find it [work of women philosophers] is distinct from what male philosophers have offered before the last hundred years, then that should clearly indicate how feminine and masculine psychology is different.

Unspeakably skewed rationale. If anything, it is a triumph that a woman from or in this era could transcend the forces of socio-educational bias to produce substance of any kind. Those biases toward her pure immanence are still in place.

I think Ryan has caught you out in your effort set up this shooting gallery to scratch your misogynist itch - a real labor of love on your part, Kelly.

No, you need to be looking at male philosophers from the past hundred years as well, else I'll be inclined to conclude you are most willfully ignorant of conditions - conditions of the age; the evolution (or devolution, if you prefer) of human thinking; the living influences-upon, etc. Somehow I doubt you'd have Sartre or Russell or Heidegger or (hell's bells) Wittgenstein or Dennett, etc. etc. saying things to please you.

Myself, I find your activism refreshing, but you are wasting it in the wrong direction. Perhaps you are like the concrete shoes on your own gender, for it you don't sink them, your whole philosophical sense of self will come crashing down.

There is no work whatever to be done here, except in support of philosophy that counts on the inferiority of women to inflate its own ass.

There is, however, work to be done with living, breathing women and men in helping them both transcend.

jesus fucking christ, Kelly.

Pye,

I don't think there is any problem with my method. Females after "emancipation" compared to males before it. Would you prefer that we only look at the last fifty years, so as to give females a few generations of re-education, Pye? Or do you believe that the best female philosophers of, say, the last fifty years, haven't been doing exactly as they please, expressing the thoughts they think are most valuable?

Also, the best male philosophers in history have been discussed so often on this forum that it's superfluous to study their strongest ideas and values in this thread again.

Pye,

I think you need to disassociate yourself from the female sex. It'll clear your mind. Once you no longer see yourself as related to women, or men for that matter, you will see their psychology more objectively. You'll just see them as expressions of varying levels of egotism, which will be extremely illustrative for learning purposes.

KJ

Kelly: I think you need to disassociate yourself from the female sex.

You cannot transcend what you don't take on. "Disassociation" is not transcendence.

(again, the only rational justification for the persistence of mas/fem debating here, however paradoxical it is coming from forum founders who more or less declare themselves "transcendent buddhas" from the offing.)

but thanks for your advice just the same . . . .



edit: parenthetical comment

Every time you do a "transcending act", you are reliant on causation doing what it always does. So you repeat the same experience, never learning, always pretending you've arrived somewhere different.

It can be helpful to open the mind to this truth, to identify oneself temporarily with a psychological entity. If one feels incapable of leaving behind false ideas, then it can be useful to use a stepping-stone: an open-minded, rational, liberated kind of mindstate. That boosts one's willingness to think about Truth. The stepping-stone is still just causation, doing what it always does. Whether it does what you wish it to, really depends on how much wisdom that stepping-stone contains.

That is all I was suggesting.

"A man needs a woman's opinion like a bicycle needs a fish's." -Gloria Steinem

...wait, I think I messed that up.

Max wrote:What your exercise is indicating appears to be an affirmation that Men and Women are different, their values are different and their aims and aspirations are different.

It's more that I wish to find out more specifically what comes to the fore when women say what they want to say. What are they saying? What are their values? What are their ideas? What is their basic world-view?

At the same time you hint at a reconciliation of 'thought' between the sexes.

Not at all. I'm just trying to reveal clear evidence that psychology is sexually differentiable. I'm hinting at an array of psychological preparations.

the only way women can place themselves on an equal or higher footing with man, is to lift to a 'higher level' their creative and conceptual ideas

I'm not that fancy. Reasoning and truthfulness will do me.

Women hold the 'ultimate' key to their own liberation from bondage. This key is application of thought, expression of thought, manifestation of thought into reality, whereupon, women can show men their inherent genius, in a fair and competitive manner, or work towards a female dominated society, or remain in bondage.

There are two "things" that imprison feminine persons. One is indeed an emotional and intellectual dependency, usually by females on males. But any person who relies on others to clarify their thinking is feminine. So I wouldn't call working towards a female-dominated society, freedom.

The most important 'prison' to be freed from is lack of understanding about the nature of things. Even the more rational and truthful of males, like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and the like, are travelling often in its corridors; but virtually all females live their entire lives in it without the faintest clue. But only uncompromising rationality and truthfulness shed light on the nature of the ego, hence my championing of masculine psychology over the feminine.

Adding to the list:

Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Marilyn McCord Adams, Alice Ambrose, G.E.M. Anscombe, Hannah Arendt, Babette Babich, Annette Baier, Antoinette Brown, Judith Butler, Mary Whiton Calkins, Nancy Cartwright, Christine de Pizan, patricia Churchland, Helene Cixous, Philippa Foot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emma Goldman, Marjorie Grene, Susan Haack, Agnes Heller, Mary Hesse, Jennifer Hornsby, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Susanne Langer, Michele Le Doeuff, Rosa Luxemburg, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Mary Midgley, Ruth Millikan, Iris Murdoch, Nancey Murphy, Martha Nussbaum, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Rosemary Radford Ruether, L. Susan Stebbing, Edith Stein, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Baroness Mary Warnock, Simone Weil, Lady Welby, Dorothy Maud Wrinch.

And Camille Paglia and Susan Blackmore. For those interested, I'll be whacking my critiques into the "Reasoner's Library" on this page: 1900-1999.

Incidentally, I like Camille Paglia's explanation for why there are so few female philosophers - because philosophy collapsed with the arrival of feminism. It's the old chestnut: philosophy is dry, disconnected, navel-gazing intellectual masturbation that has nothing to do with everyday life. But this silly view only arose because women fell in love with men with grand visions, profound and obtuse thinking, and otherworldly views... and men were addicted to the adoration not philosophy. Would it be the case that Paglia sees this woman-worship as the only philosophy?

Paglia says that while there aren't any female philosophers, there are female thinkers, concerned with "practical, personal matters", who are "not captive[s] of abstraction" and always keep their eyes on "society and its evolution". Of course, they have to be in touch with reality - the latest chocolate catalogues, the latest diets...

Article here: The "thinking woman's" women.

Camille Paglia wrote:Philosophy once claimed to provide a rigorous method to search for the meaning of life, and it was a precious substitute for dogmatic religion. But in modern times, religion among the educated classes in Europe and North America has lost ground, and intellectuals are neglecting the basic human need to find answers. Philosophers are now at the margin. Philosophy has shrunk in reputation and stature - it's an academic exercise.

This reminds me of something.

Confucius wrote:In ancient times learning was for the sake of oneself, whereas now learning is for the sake of others.

Mozi wrote:The sage kings of ancient times took great pains to honor the worthy and employ the capable, showing no special consideration for their own kin, no partiality for the eminent and rich, no favoritism for the good-looking and attractive.

Congratulations are in order: Camille Paglia has joined the ranks of traditional Chinese philosophers that worshiped the ancients.

I'm quite positive there have been things as stupid as post-modernism infecting philosophy right from the beginning. Solipsism, Scholasticism, etc....

Where this seems to go, as I look at it, is to a decision on the part of women, in collaboration with 'liberated' men, to work to get women out of the reproductive cycle. What we really need, for women to 'advance' (seemingly in Kelly's as well as Pye's view though they appear to differ), is to break out of entrapment in reproduction. Everything depends on such a wheelbarrow. If children can be gestated by man-monitored machines, and if reproduction is enlightened and level-headed eugenics, then we can work in the direction of equalizing men and women. We can smooth out the differences, maybe even make men smaller or women bigger, but equally as strong. Then, with proper conditioning, both in vitro and post vitro, we can begin to raise up a human class where gender differences do not apply! We truly are a malleable species, that is in fact what it means to be human. The difficult part is that this project can only be carried on by willing participants, and they will obviously be an elite. Transcendence, almost by definition, is constructed on a platform, in this case, of other human beings and the material substrata.

I suggest therefor that we collect eggs and sperm from willing participants here, and since we don't have a machine that will gestate for us, that we find a surrogate: to give birth the New Man and Woman! Fathered by sages, fructified in prepared female material, and gestated by a surrogate-servant (with manly, masculine, reasoning qualities), we can begin here and now what will surely be humankind's next step!

I select Ryan as the proto-father...and all we need now is the proper female...but she cannot be named, oh no, she must come forward and offer herself to this project! Then, we'll need to elect a surrogate to raise up the embryo. We will also have to form a sort of commune to raise up the New Men and Women.

We could call it 'New Sparta'...or perhaps...'Emile's Place' (after Rousseau).

Then, on to transcendence! I can barely contain my excitement!

It's no use working on those sorts of details. There is such a thing as psychology (what drives you, your values, your deep beliefs about the world). So, that is the level we need to look at. Behaviour flows on from one's psychology.

This is a very dangerous area, so I'm not surprised that so few people are thinking about it.