Hipparchia's Choice : An Essay Concerning Women and Philosophy

Is the history of philosophy the history of masculine texts and male problems? Is the position of women in philosophy a question of exclusion by men rather than, as some suggest, of a hypothetically immanent femininity"? Is "The Second Sex" a work of philosophy and what can it teach us about the relation of philosophy to experience? How to be a woman philosopher, and a conceptually adventurous woman is a question which dissolves distinctions between biography, history, politics and philosophy. Michele le Doeuff takes on the history of philosophy to question its gender and to question the social and legislative conclusions to which its formulations have led us. In four parts, "Hipparchia's Choice" is a work of rare irreverance and unimpeachable seriousness. It points the way to a philosophy accountable to history, to feminism, to society and to intelligibility.