To further push back against Burgess’ and Soames’ claims that we ought not to have conversations like the one Smith started, I believe we find a similar example if we turn to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). That such an influential work on such fundamental issues could be discussed almost exclusively in the history of feminist thought can also be explained in terms of Kukla’s (2014) notion of discursive injustice. That is to say, Wollstonecraft’s speech acts were not given appropriate uptake as philosophical assertions and arguments. Rather, they have been taken to be “merely” political with an intended audience of only women or, perhaps, only feminists. Given that Wollstonecraft was working on issues central to modern philosophy and was, more consistently than Kant, extending Kantian principles in moral, social, and political philosophy, this is unfortunate. Building off of O’Neill (1998), in future work I hope to argue that this resulted from an explicitly sexist “purification of philosophy” between 1780 and 1830, just as Park (2013) has shown this period of historiographical work to have been explicitly racist.
Furthermore, Wollstonecraft (1792) should be of particular use to analytic philosophers because of her enlightenment thinking and her strong focus on logic and reason. Some of her principle arguments look something like the following:
P1: All humans have reasoning capabilities.
P2: If all humans have reasoning capabilities, then all persons can possibly attain virtue.
P3: If all persons can possibly attain virtue, then we should give each person what’s needed to attain virtue.
SC1: If all humans have reasoning capabilities, then we should give each person what’s necessary to attain virtue. (P2, P3, Hypothetical Syllogism)
P4: If we should give each person what’s necessary to attain virtue, then we must educate women as well as men.
SC2: If all humans have reasoning capabilities, then we must educate women as well as men. (SC1, P4, Hypothetical Syllogism)
C: We must educate women as well as men. (P1, SC2, Modus Ponens)
and
P1: The most wisely formed society is the one whose constitution is based on the nature of humanity.
P2: The nature of humans is to be reasoning beings.
C: The most wisely formed society is the one whose constitution is based on reason.
These are powerful arguments for the utility of, and frameworks for thinking about, a liberal arts education involving analytic philosophy. It would be helpful to a better discipline of philosophy to bring these into the canon.
Pushing back further yet, something like what I’ve argued has happened with women like Marcus and Wollstonecraft with respect to discursive injustice has happened to people of color and those outside of the Western world quite frequently as well. John Mohawk, in talking about academic work on the Haudenosaunee, has said “[m]any professionals in this field operate on an expectation that rational thought is found only in the West” (Mohawk 1986, xv). Peter K. J. Park has established that many historians have done this with respect to philosophers from Africa and Asia as well.
For instance, Dietrich Tiedemann (1748–1803) wrote a history of philosophy that contains only Western philosophers by denying that any non-Western thinker’s assertions counted as philosophical. Wilhelm Tennemann (1761–1819) did similarly but, instead of faulting non-Western reasons, concepts, and experiences, Tennemann held that non-Western thought cannot be counted as philosophical because of its attachment to political interests. Kant, himself, gave lectures that supported a wholly Eurocentric history of philosophy based on the claim that demonstration and pure reason are not found outside of Europe. Again, this is problematic for a great number of reasons. Of particular concern to analytic philosophers, though, is that one of the topics I believe we get a much better picture of from all of Marcus, Wollstoncecraft, the Peacemaker of the Haudenosaunee, and others excluded by these histories is the relationship between logic and ethics. It is to this topic that we turn in chapter 2.
NOTES
1. While these matters will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 2, this appearance of “man” and “woman” provide an important opportunity to make clear how I will use a number of related, but importantly distinct terms. In particular, “male,” “female,” and “intersex” will be used as terms for sexes. “Man,” “woman,” and “transgender” will be used as terms for genders. “Masculine,” “feminine,” and “androgynous” will be used for gender roles, norms, and expressions.
2. It should be noted that there are only four pages in the books which mention Marcus—two times in which her name appears in a list along with others, once in which this very debate is mentioned as a “nasty controversy” (Soames 2003b, 353), and once in which it is admitted that a lack of discussion of formal logic and Marcus’ role in it is part of “an undeniable gap in the story I have told” (Soames 2003b, 462). In fairness to Soames, it should also be mentioned that he says here that he hopes to return to this story in future work. This was echoed in Volume 1 of his new series on the history of analytic philosophy, where he says “[l]ooking one step beyond to Volume 3, I plan to discuss the struggle for modal logic involving, among others, C. I. Lewis, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Rudolf Carnap, and the young Saul Kripke” (Soames 2014, 632).
3. It should also be noted that Soames’ reasoning for not giving Marcus any credit with respect to the necessary a posteriori might be inconsistent with his giving Kripke some of the credit he receives. Part of his reasoning here is that Marcus should not be seen as contributing to this doctrine because she sees the relevant modal concepts (e.g., tautology, analyticity, necessity, a priority, etc.) as more connected than they ought to be. This is certainly true. Of course, Kripke also sees these as more connected than they ought to be when he stipulates that “something which is analytically true will be both necessary and a priori (That’s sort of stipulative.)” (Kripke 1980, 39). As Gillian Russell (2008) has shown, one can be a full-fledged New Theorist of Reference and recognize that there are contingent analytic (e.g., “I am here now”) and analytic a posteriori (e.g., “Muhammad Ali is Cassius X”) truths. Since a full development of how this can be is outside of the scope of this chapter and Smith’s discussion of the necessary a posteriori is clearly mistaken, this point is relegated to an endnote. That said, for those who are interested in some of the relevant background, please see the discussion on analyticity in chapter 5 or any of Russell (2010, 2011, 2014).
4. For what it is worth, I also consider myself to be somebody who subscribes to NTR—I accept all of T1–T6, I was a student of David Braun (also referenced by Smith as one of the important proponents of the view), I adopted the framework of gappy propositions in LaVine (2016a) (needed to deal with empty names on NTR)—but also do not accept the causal historical theory of reference.
5. Furthermore, whether or not Marcus made this move, there are straightforward ways in which T4 can be helpful to T6—the view that there exist necessary a posteriori truths. Once we have Frege’s Puzzle and the necessity of identity with respect to proper names, the