The Sex of Knowing

On the Outskirts of the Canon: The Myth of the Lone Female Philosopher, and What to Do about It

“…One of the great unsung (and, to be fair, as yet unverified) scandals of the history of philosophy is the possible plagiarism of Suchon by Rousseau, which is hinted at by Michèle Le Doeuff in The Sex of Knowing . Suchon's arguments that “rational self‐education, personal autonomy and an emphasis on conscience are goods in themselves, for all and not just as they apply to women,” in part derived from her own experience as an autodidact (Stanton and Wilkin , liv) and seem like a most probable influence on Rousseau's educational writings (Le Doeuff , 45). Moreover, Le Doeuff notes that during the time Rousseau was most likely to have come across Suchon's books—in Madame de Warens's library at Les Charmettes—his writings had a distinct feminist flavour, suggesting that women were not free because of “the tyranny of men” and promising to bring to light the role played by women in “the Republic of letters” (Le Doeuff , 44, 46)…”

“…Mary Wollstonecraft devoted much of her philosophical energy both to arguing against Rousseau that women were essentially different from men and to showing that applying his educational model to women would both improve women's condition and benefit society as a whole (Reuter ). Perversely, Le Doeuff notes, it is because Wollstonecraft embraced Rousseauvian arguments on education and applied them to women that she was accused of imposing masculine values on women (Le Doeuff , 44). In other words, a philosophical theory that started with a woman was hijacked by a man, was identified with him, and was then deemed unsuitable when another woman attempted to appropriate it.…”

“…Le Doeuff , 45–46. Le Doeuff suggested, in conversation in 2014, that she was on the brink of beginning a more systematic investigation of the matter.…”

After Cursing the Library: Iris Murdoch and the (In)visibility of Women in Philosophy

“…Although it may be argued that it is in the nature of biography to reveal the most intimate facts, it should not be overlooked that men's and women's sexuality have rarely been considered in the same way. As Le Doeuff shows in The Sex of Knowing , there has been and still is an imaginary in operation that links women's intellect to their sexuality: whether it is that intellectual women are called bluestockings, or that research shows educated women to lead more or less troubled sexual lives than uneducated women, or that education for women is evaluated on its interference with or improvement of women's chastity, and so on (see Le Doeuff 2003, esp. 125–35; Woolf 1957, 51–52).…”

‘I Knew Jean-Paul Sartre’: Philosophy of education as comedy

“…She also gives an example of the power of laughter to silence feminist critique. In Le Doeuff (2003) she describes being part of a group at the Sorbonne, which was preparing a section on English philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for a philosophical encyclopedia. They were checking through the list of those to be included, when she noticed that Wollstonecraft was not there.…”