Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc.

＂To be a philosopher and to be a feminist are one and the same thing. A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place.＂-from Hipparchia’s Choice

A work of rare insight and irreverence, Hipparchia’s Choice boldly recasts the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the post-Derrideans as one of masculine texts and male problems. The position of women, therefore, is less the result of a hypothetical ＂femininity＂ and more the fault of exclusion by men. Nevertheless, women have been and continue to be drawn to ＂the exercise of thought.＂ So how does a female philosopher become a conceptually adventurous woman? Focusing on the work of Sartre and Beauvoir (specifically, his sexism and her relation to it), Michèle Le Doeuff shows how women philosophers can reclaim a place for feminist concerns. Is The Second Sex a work of philosophy, and, if so, what can it teach us about the relation of philosophy to experience? Now with a new epilogue, Hipparchia’s Choice points the way toward a discipline that is accountable to history, feminism, and society.

Michèle Le Doeuff is a director of research in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She is also the author of The Philosophical Imaginary and The Sex of Knowing.