Women Philosophers Heritage Collection
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Edited by:
Ruth Edith Hagengruber
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Together with:
Antonio Calcagno
The Women Philosophers Heritage Collection presents a comprehensive and significant selection of writings from women in the history of philosophy and science since antiquity. Publications include a contemporary English translation, annotations, and introductions on the author, the work, its context, and its methodology. Furthermore, the introductory commentary contextualizes the significance of the work in its time and beyond in the history of philosophy. An extensive list of literature on author and text provides additional valuable information.
The volumes are indispensable resources for all interested in the history of philosophy—the novice as well as the researcher in women philosophers. The books will contribute to include women philosophers in the philosophy and humanities canon.
This is the first full-text English translation of a seminal book within the phenomenological movement.
The work was orginally published in 1922 in Edmund Husserl’s yearbook Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, and has had a wide impact on work in phenomenology (Husserl, Heideger, Stein) and social ontology. Gerda Walther broaches the topic of social ontology, i.e., a study of social communities. She carries out this task by using the phenomenological method, that is, a study of the first-person (both singular and plural) experience of being a part of a community, what it feels like internally (and its constitutive elements), how it relates to other individuals or other communities, and how unifications between individiuals and communities or between communities take place.
The book is an important contribution to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity or the study of social ontology. Social ontology has been an important and fruitful field of research in contemporary social theory, cognitive science, and other disciplines. It will be a crucial contribution to current research.
Eliza Fowler Haywood (c. 1693–1756) was a prolific writer, actress, a widely connected scholar, a critical philosopher, and economist. Her contributions to moral philosophy and economics provide a clear view of early 18th century English society.
The second volume of the philosopher and economist’s Memoirs… focuses more closely on the political, strategical failures of the English ministries as mediators between the Sovereign and the people, examining the accompanying decadence and moral decline of the English population. At the core lies Haywood’s observation that women are the first to suffer from the consequences of societal and financial crises.
300 years after its first publication in 1724, this comprehensive edition of Eliza Haywood’s Memoirs… makes accessible a fundamental utopian text. Illustrating the threat of moral decline in financial crises, Haywood’s sharp critique of a government ignoring the needs of its own people remains compelling today.
Eliza Fowler Haywood (c. 1693–1756) was a prolific writer, widely connected actress and critical philosopher. Besides her contributions to moral philosophy and economics, she provides noteworthy insights into early eighteenth-century English society. Haywood’s precise critique of a government ignoring the needs of its most vulnerable citizens remains compelling today.
Her two-volume utopian work Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1724) is a mythological re-telling of the many problems facing early eighteenth-century England. In the first volume, Haywood discusses the economic and financial crisis brought about by England’s South Sea Bubble and interweaves it with her philosophical argument of genuine love and the corruption wrought by greed and lust.
The second volume will be published in 2025.
This is the first translation into English of early phenomenologist Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Metaphysical Conversations, originally published in 1921. Conrad-Martius was one of Husserl’s first students, an important part of the Göttingen Phenomenology Circle and mentor to Edith Stein, Jean Héring, and other early phenomenologists. The present volume provides the full German and English texts of the conversations, a phenomenological discussion of the nature of the human, examining the nature of body, soul, and spirit, and drawing distinctions between plants, animals, humans, and various other beings. The volume also includes two important essays on phenomenology, in which Conrad-Martius distinguishes between the phenomenological approaches of Husserl, Heidegger, and the more ontological approach of the Göttingen school of phenomenology. She is critical of Husserl’s "transcendental" and Heidegger’s "existential" approach. The conversations illustrate her use of the phenomenological method for fundamental investigations into the nature (or Wesen) of things.
Helene Druskowitz (1856–1918) was the first German-speaking women to acquire a PhD in philosophy. She explored free will, religion, metaphysics, and feminism. In the four small books presented in this volume, she discusses previous attempts to replace religion (esp. Comte, Mill, Feuerbach, Lange, Nietzsche, Duboc, Düring, and Salter), advocates replacing religion with knowledge-based worldviews, proposes a dualism between matter and transcendent reality, and argues for moral responsibility without free will.
The paperback edition includes the English translations and a comprehensive introduction. The hardcover edition, which includes the English translations, a comprehensive introduction, and the German text, is available here:
As a radical feminist, Druskowitz advocated for gender segregation and women-led societal reform, even proposing human extinction as a moral imperative. Her ideas on male dominance and environmental degradation anticipated later eco-feminist thought. Though not widely recognized in her time, Druskowitz’s work offers valuable insights into feminist philosophy, eco-feminism, and discussions on free will and criticisms of religion, providing historical context for these ideas’ evolution in the 20th and 21st centuries.
