Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, and Feminism. By
Jane Duran. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2006. 308
pp. $64.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.
Searching for evidence of women's presence in the canon of
philosophy, I found that the Cambridge Companion Series, an extensive and
prestigious set of 110 volumes offering the “most convenient and
accessible guides to the major philosophers available” (from their
Website), has only two such volumes devoted to women philosophers. The
Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt was published in 2000, The
Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir in 2003. Jane Duran, in
contrast, has found eight women philosophers to study (seven in addition
to Beauvoir), and her book offers a rich introduction to important themes
in the work of Hildegard of Bingen, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor Mill, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and Simone
de Beauvoir.