Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-192) and index.

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 Introduction
Preliminaries
The Exclusion
The Dominant Model of Moral Philosophy
Philosophical Genre and the Dominant Model
Five Forms, Five Philosophers
2 Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on Education: What Constitutes a Philosophical System
Biography
Letters on Education
The Problems of the Epistolary Form
Macaulay’s Work
The Argument for Women
The Second and Third Parts of Letters on Education
The Argument of Letters on Education
Conclusion
3 Allegory and Moral Philosophy in Christine de Pisan’s The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pisan
The Book of the City of Ladies
The Situation of Women
Women and Moral Agency
The Question of Marriage
The Prudent Woman
The Problem
The Allegorical City
The Need for Allegory
Problems with the City
Conclusion
4 Mary Wollstonecraft and the Separation of Poetry and Politics
Wollstonecraft’s Corpus
The Second Vindication as an Enlightenment Treatise
The Second Vindication Is Not a Work of Enlightenment Philosophy
Principles of Form and Expression
Form and Sensibility
True Sensibility
The Philosophical Role of Sensibility
Conclusion
5 George Eliot and How to Read Novels as Philosophy
Eliot’s Work
Comte, Spinoza, and Eliot
How to Read Eliot
The Centrality of Sympathy in Eliot’s Novels
Philosophy
Conclusion
6 Knowing and Speaking of Divine Love: Mechthild of Magdeburg
Biography
Women and Writing
The Problem of Authority
The Authorship of God
Morality and Experience
The Forms in the Flowing Light
Conclusion: Contingencies
7 Conclusion
Philosophical Genre and the Boundaries of Philosophy
A Few Comments on Content
References
Index

Long considered ?non-philosophical,? the letters and novels of women like Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, and George Eliot have often been omitted from the canon of the Western philosophical tradition. This unfortunate omission is corrected here through Catherine Villanueva Gardner's thorough discussion of the philosophical importance of their work. Gardner also looks carefully at why letters and novels have been considered this way since they are so prevalent in the work of women in general. Gardner argues that the devaluation or exclusion of certain forms of writing is connected to the biases that underpin the Western ethical tradition. This book is critical reading for courses in introductory philosophy and women's studies.