How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna Reveals Eye-Opening Truths About Forgotten Female Philosophers

Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Live a Life of the Mind. In “How to Think Like a Woman,” author Regan Penaluna embarks on a captivating exploration of the long-neglected realm of female philosophers. This powerful book sheds light on the groundbreaking ideas and extraordinary lives of women thinkers who have been largely erased from the philosophical canon. Prepare to be inspired and have your perspective transformed as Penaluna skillfully weaves together biography, analysis, and cultural critique.

Dive into the pages of “How to Think Like a Woman” and discover a hidden history of profound insights from brilliant female minds. This thought-provoking read will challenge your assumptions and ignite your intellectual curiosity. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to expand your understanding of philosophy and women’s vital contributions to the field.

Genres

Personal Development, Philosophy, Education, Biography, Women’s Studies, Feminism, History, Gender Studies, Cultural Criticism, Intellectual History, Politics, Social Science

“How to Think Like a Woman” shines a spotlight on the overlooked and underappreciated female philosophers throughout history. Regan Penaluna presents in-depth profiles of four remarkable women – Damaris Cudworth Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft – situating their ideas and experiences within the cultural and intellectual landscape of 17th and 18th century England.

Through meticulous research and engaging prose, Penaluna brings these philosophers to life, detailing their struggles against the patriarchal constraints of their time and their bold contributions to metaphysics, religion, ethics, and early feminist thought. She delves into their groundbreaking ideas on topics like the nature of the self, women’s education, marriage, and political rights.

Penaluna also widens her lens to critique the systematic exclusion of women from the philosophical canon and examines how gendered assumptions continue to shape the field today. She argues persuasively for the importance of recovering and reassessing the work of these female philosophers, demonstrating how their insights enrich and complicate our understanding of key philosophical questions.

Review

“How to Think Like a Woman” is a masterful work of intellectual history that combines rigorous scholarship with passionate storytelling. Regan Penaluna’s writing is erudite yet accessible, guiding readers through complex philosophical concepts while vividly depicting the personal triumphs and challenges of her subjects.

The book’s greatest strength lies in its ability to make these long-forgotten philosophers feel utterly relevant and vital to contemporary debates. Penaluna draws thought-provoking connections between their ideas and modern feminist philosophy, making a compelling case for their ongoing significance.

At times, the wealth of historical detail can feel slightly dense, but Penaluna’s lively prose and clear explanations keep the narrative engaging throughout. Her critiques of the gendered biases within philosophy are sharp and incisive, adding an important layer of analysis to the biographical accounts.

Overall, “How to Think Like a Woman” is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophy, women’s history, or the enduring struggle for gender equality in intellectual life. Penaluna’s book is a clarion call to reshape the philosophical canon and a powerful testament to the minds of women past and present.

Introduction: A personal and historical journey through philosophy’s gender problem

How to Think Like a Woman (2023) is an exploration of one woman’s journey to reclaim her love of philosophy in the face of a male-dominated canon. Interweaving memoir with the biographies of four extraordinary seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women philosophers, this inventive meditation challenges the foundations of traditional philosophical thought and envisions a more inclusive future for the discipline.

The world of academic philosophy has a woman problem. Despite lofty ideals of pursuing universal truths, the field has long devalued and excluded women’s voices.

This Blink to How to Think Like a Woman is a powerful blend of memoir, biography, and philosophical inquiry that recounts author Regan Penaluna’s own journey – from her disillusionment with the discipline to her discovery of a hidden tradition of feminist philosophy dating back centuries.

By weaving a personal story together with the lives of four remarkable women philosophers, this Blink will challenge the way you think about thinking itself.

Philosophy’s woman problem

Imagine being a talented young woman passionate about life’s big questions. You discover philosophy in college and are captivated by its depth and elegance. Determined to pursue it as a career, you embark on a PhD program, only to find yourself gradually worn down by the sexism ingrained in the field.

This was not only Penaluna’s experience but also that of innumerable women in philosophy throughout history. From ancient Greece to the Age of Enlightenment and beyond, male philosophers have consistently undervalued and disparaged women’s intellectual abilities. Aristotle referred to women as “deformed males,” while Hegel compared them to plants, asserting their inability for rational thought. Even Hume and Kant, known for their skepticism in other areas, accepted women’s inferiority as a given.

This exclusion extended beyond theory – women were denied access to universities and scholarly discourse. The rare few who managed to educate themselves were met with derision and patronization from their male counterparts.

Philosophy remains a male-dominated field hostile to women even in modern times. Sexual harassment, lack of mentorship, and casual sexism pose obstacles at every stage. Women’s philosophical contributions and feminist perspectives are dismissed as peripheral or unserious. Penaluna recalls not encountering a single female philosopher in her undergraduate curriculum.

The consequence is a self-perpetuating cycle – the scarcity of women philosophers is seen as evidence of women’s inability to philosophize. Young women entering the field internalize these stereotypes, losing faith in their own capabilities.

As Penaluna confronted her own self-doubt throughout her academic journey, she observed how the few women in her program were silenced and marginalized. Desperate for inspiration, she turned to the archives, hoping to uncover a lineage of women philosophers. What she discovered astonished her – women thinkers had been present all along, concealed within the margins of the male-authored canon.

In the seventeenth century, Mary Astell argued for the equal capacity of women’s minds for virtue and reason. Damaris Masham formed her philosophy in deep intellectual exchanges with John Locke. Mary Wollstonecraft, an eighteenth-century British philosopher, was another proto-feminist advancing women’s rights. Catherine Cockburn wrote about the struggle to reconcile motherhood and intellectual life. Through the works of these female philosophers, Penaluna found a language to comprehend her own experiences and renew her sense of belonging in philosophy. Their legacy proves that women are not merely capable of philosophy – they are vital to the discipline.

Mary Astell: A champion of female education

If you were a young woman in the seventeenth century, brimming with curiosity about life’s profound questions, you were also confronted with a world that refused you the chance to explore them. This was the reality for Mary Astell, who, despite all odds, became one of the first English feminist philosophers.

Born in 1666, Astell received an uncommon education for a girl, thanks to her progressive uncle. However, when he passed away, she faced a future of domestic toil, with no prospects for marriage due to her family’s diminishing finances. Determined to continue her studies, the 22-year-old Astell took a bold step – sewing her meager savings into her dress, she boarded a carriage for London to attempt to earn a living through her writing.

In her most renowned work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Astell passionately argued for women’s right to education. She envisioned an all-female college where women could nurture their minds, free from the constraining influence of men. Reason, she maintained, was essential to the soul, and women had an equal right to cultivate their God-given intellect.

Astell’s ideas sent tremors through the male intellectual establishment. With wit and erudition, she dismantled the arguments of prominent male philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Milton, revealing the inconsistencies in their notions of freedom and equality. True liberty, she asserted, meant allowing women to choose their own path, whether as wives, mothers, or scholars.

Centuries later, Astell’s words struck a deep chord with Penaluna as she grappled with finding her place in the male-dominated world of academic philosophy. Like Astell, Penaluna’s confidence was eroded by the casual sexism she faced from professors and peers. One professor, for example, suggested that women might be less intelligent than men, explaining the scarcity of female philosophers.

Drawing inspiration from Astell, Penaluna found comfort and motivation in the community of female friends and scholars she cultivated. Yet she also recognized certain moral blind spots in Astell’s philosophy – particularly her neglect of lower-class and non-white women. Painful as it was to acknowledge, Penaluna recognized the same unexamined privilege and prejudice within herself. In engaging with Astell’s legacy, she came to understand her personal philosophical journey as inextricably connected to the broader struggle for women’s equality – a struggle that demanded ongoing self-reflection and growth.

Astell’s story invites us to reflect on what it takes for women to carve out spaces for intellectual flourishing in the face of patriarchal oppression. The life of the mind is not a male prerogative but the birthright of all curious souls courageous enough to claim it.

Damaris Masham: The woman behind the man

Throughout the history of Western philosophy, women have played significant yet often unacknowledged roles in the lives and work of renowned male thinkers. Socrates, for example, was married to Xanthippe, a woman 40 years his junior. Despite the age difference, Xanthippe challenged Socrates intellectually, with Socrates reportedly stating that he chose to marry her for this very quality.

Other philosophers had more problematic relationships with the women in their lives. Immanuel Kant maintained a lengthy correspondence with a young woman named Maria von Herbert, who sought his advice about her depression and expressed doubts about his moral philosophy. However, Kant dismissed her as an “ecstatical little lady” suffering from “curious mental derangement.”

These complex interactions reveal how even the most brilliant minds could be blinded by the misogynistic attitudes of their time, which failed to treat women as fully autonomous subjects.

Damaris Masham is a prime example of a woman who suffered under the constraints of a patriarchal society. Born in 1659 into the intellectual hub of Cambridge University as the daughter of renowned philosopher Ralph Cudworth, Damaris absorbed the lively debates of the philosophers who gathered in her home. But when she yearned to delve deeper into the discipline, she was discouraged by those around her.

Masham channeled her frustration into poetry, imagining a future in which women would be recognized as men’s intellectual equals. However, her life took a pivotal turn when, at the age of 22, she met the philosopher John Locke at a party in London. Their playful, intellectual correspondence blossomed into a complex relationship.

Locke became Masham’s mentor, encouraging her to tackle the great philosophical questions of the day. Yet their bond was charged with romantic longing – and when Locke failed to propose marriage, Masham reluctantly married someone else. As she struggled to find time for philosophy amid the demands of managing an estate and raising stepchildren, Masham confessed to Locke that “household affaires are the opium of the soul.”

Her fortunes changed when Locke moved into her home and she gained a live-in intellectual companion. Inspired by their discussions, Masham wrote her philosophical works, forcefully critiquing the misogynistic theories of thinkers like Nicolas Malebranche, who blamed mothers’ imaginations for “monstrous” births. Against philosophers who preached austere detachment, Masham argued that love for God’s creation – beginning with a mother’s love for her child – was the foundation of virtue and inquiry.

In her final treatise, Occasional Thoughts, Masham made her most passionate case for women’s right to intellectual freedom. The core problem, she argued, was not merely women’s exclusion from higher education, but the myriad ways society discouraged them from exercising their God-given reason. Masham called on mothers to cultivate this spirit of autonomous thought in their children – sons and daughters alike – planting the seeds for a more enlightened society.

Mary Wollstonecraft: The revolutionary feminist

Amid her growing disillusionment with academic philosophy, Penaluna discovered a kindred spirit in Mary Wollstonecraft. Immersing herself in the eighteenth-century philosopher’s fiery texts, she felt a jolt of recognition. Here was a woman who, centuries earlier, had wrestled with the same existential questions that consumed her: What does it mean to be a thinking woman in a world that undervalues women’s minds? How can one reconcile the desire for love and recognition with the pursuit of intellectual autonomy?

For Wollstonecraft, the answers lay in a lifelong battle against the forces of patriarchy. Born in 1759 to an abusive father and a submissive mother, she was determined from a young age to escape the fate of domesticity that entrapped most women of her time. Self-educated and fiercely independent, she carved out a precarious living as a writer in London, crafting polemical works that laid the foundation for modern feminism.

Wollstonecraft’s most renowned treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was a searing call for gender equality. In it, she dismantled the arguments of philosophers like Rousseau who saw women as inferior creatures, fit only for pleasing men. Women, she insisted, had the same rational faculties as men and deserved the same rights and freedoms – including access to education, political participation, and economic self-determination.

Yet, as Penaluna discovered, Wollstonecraft’s feminism was forged as much in the crucible of her turbulent personal life as through her philosophical writings. Time and again, she found herself torn between her hunger for love and her uncompromising commitment to her own intellectual and sexual autonomy. Her affairs with men like Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin forced her to grapple with the psychic costs of being a “female philosopher” in a society that saw such a creature as an aberration.

Reading Wollstonecraft’s unfinished novel Maria, which laid bare the emotional scars of a woman struggling to reconcile her desires with her principles, Penaluna felt a sense of kinship across the centuries. She saw how the trauma of female oppression could breed self-doubt and loathing. But she also glimpsed the liberating power of righteously channeled anger – empowering women to break free from the cage of societal expectations.

To think like a woman, Wollstonecraft teaches us, is to think against the grain of a male-dominated culture – to question every assumption, challenge every norm, and imagine a radically different way of being. Though her life was tragically cut short by complications from childbirth, Wollstonecraft’s legacy endures as a beacon for future generations of feminists.

In Wollstonecraft’s dazzlingly original blend of philosophical argument and personal confession, Penaluna found a model for her own intellectual and creative awakening. And in Wollstonecraft’s unflinching honesty about the pleasures and perils of living as a free-thinking woman, she discovered a reflection of her deepest self – a portrait of the feminist as a young revolutionary.

Catherine Cockburn: A mother and a thinker

Discovering the legacy of female philosophers shaped Penaluna’s identity as an academic. It also guided her through personal crises, including her decision to leave a troubled long-term marriage. But soon after finding a new partner, Penaluna encountered a fresh challenge: raising children.

Becoming a mother was a transformative experience that raised profound questions about the tension between intellectual ambition and maternal duty. Immersed in the exhausting, all-consuming work of caring for a newborn, Penaluna found herself grappling with feelings of resentment and guilt, envious of her husband’s ability to leave for work each day without the burden of parental ambivalence.

In her quest for philosophical insight into the challenges of motherhood, she turned to the forgotten works of Catharine Cockburn. Born in 1679, Cockburn defied the constraints placed on women’s minds from a young age, writing poetry, novels, and plays that asserted women’s capacity for reason and advocated for their right to education. Her groundbreaking works, including Love at a Loss and The Revolution of Sweden, subverted traditional gender roles and championed the ideal of the free-thinking woman.

Yet it was in Cockburn’s private letters, written during the 17 years she retreated from public life to raise her children, that Penaluna found the most resonant reflections on the conflict between intellectual freedom and maternal responsibility. In fictional correspondences between female friends, Cockburn explored the shared oppression of women and the salvation to be found in mutual support. Her missives revealed a mind still very much alive and grappling with philosophical questions, even as she outwardly devoted herself to the duties of housewifery.

Cockburn’s letters to her niece and son further illuminated her struggle to balance self-assertion with social expectation. To her niece, she offered guidance and intellectual encouragement while unapologetically defending her own work and reputation. To her son, she penned an impassioned “Letter of Advice” urging him to treat women as equals – grounding her feminist ethics in the belief that reason and benevolence were core to human nature.

In Cockburn’s equivocal example, Penaluna found solace and inspiration. This was a woman who embraced the full complexity of her identity as both mother and thinker, who refused to subordinate her own happiness to the demands of duty, and who saw the fight for women’s freedom as a systemic imperative.

While Cockburn offered no perfect solution to the dilemma of intellectual ambition and motherhood, her life and works show that the very act of grappling openly with these issues is a vital form of philosophical reflection. As the mother of feminist thought, Cockburn provides a model for everyone striving to be a philosopher, a parent, and, above all, a person in their own right.

Conclusion

Women are a vital part of the philosophical tradition. Despite facing systemic exclusion and sexism, female thinkers like Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Catharine Cockburn have made groundbreaking contributions to the field, challenging the patriarchal assumptions of their male peers and asserting women’s right to intellectual freedom.

In the lives and works of these forgotten female philosophers, Penaluna found a model for reclaiming women’s place in the history of ideas – not by seeking admission to the traditional canon, but by reimagining it altogether. Ultimately, thinking “like a woman” emerges as a vital form of resistance against the forces that would diminish women’s minds and lives.

About the author

Regan Penaluna is a writer, editor, and philosopher who holds a master’s degree in journalism and a PhD in philosophy. Her feature writing has been recognized by the Atlantic as one of “100 Exceptional Works of Journalism,” and her debut book, How to Think Like a Woman, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice.