Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich.

Online at historyof Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, As Rational as You, Elizabeth of Bohemia.

In an influential essay published in 1997 under the title Disappearing Inc.,

Eileen O'Neill pointed to what she called the pressing,

mind-boggling, possibly scandalous, fact, that women were at that time almost entirely absent

from standard histories of early modern philosophy. This, despite the profusion of early modern

women who did do philosophy, many of whom were prominent in their own day.

In the essay, O'Neill offers a variety of explanations for this exclusion, ranging from

sexist assumptions on the part of intellectual historians to changing fashions that led away

from certain topics and styles in philosophy.

But she also points to a more straightforward factor, the ink may not have appeared in the first

place, at least not under the names of the authors. Women often chose to publish anonymously.

Men did that too, of course, but it was an especially tempting option for a woman author,

wary of provoking opposition, outrage, or contemptuous dismissal. And then some women were unwilling to see their

ideas in print at all. After Descartes' death in 1650, his friend, Shanute, asked Princess Elizabeth

of Bohemia for permission to publish the letters she had written to him. She refused to allow it,

with the result that, for more than 200 years, only Descartes's

side of the correspondence was available.

It was not until her letters were rediscovered and published in the 1870s that scholars

gained access to them.

And thank goodness, because they document the ideas of one of Descartes' most perceptive

...