The World Needs More Women Philosophers
By Mary Moynihan
The world needs more women philosophers. The voices of women from ancient and modern times have been historically overlooked – and yet they have always been present. Philosophy is about how we see the world. It is about ethics and values, knowledge and justice, and how we view the principles of human existence. The voices of women are constantly challenging the patriarchal, biased constructs that currently try to control the world we live in, negative ways of existence that manifest war and hate rather than love and peace. We need the voices of women and diverse people working in the realms of philosophy to create new frameworks for understanding the human condition and the wide array of human experiences. Women offer philosophical ideas on subjects from patriarchy, ethics, and care, to gender, power, and corruption, exploring and opening up new ways to reflect on the diversity of human experiences.
During my lifetime, I have enjoyed reading John O’Donohue’s (1956–2008) philosophical works and reflections on Celtic spirituality. O’Donoghue was an Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher, and a native Irish speaker. His work is moving and powerful. I also enjoy the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022), a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and scholar, and the poetry of the Lebanese-American writer and poet Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931). What is missing in philosophical discourse is an equal reflection on the work of women philosophers.
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges was a radical French writer, playwright, scholar, social reformer, and a unique philosopher who published on a range of subjects, from women’s political and legal equality to tax reform and the redistribution of wealth. She spoke out against slavery and believed in equality for women, the rights of children born outside of marriage, and the rights of society to choose their own forms of government. Olympe was executed for her political writings when she was sent to the guillotine in the French Revolution in 1793.
In 2016, Smashing Times produced a digital book titled Women War and Peace. The book contains a powerful articled titled ‘Human Rights and Gender Equality’ by Edyta Pietrzak and Inga Kuzma (click here to read the article in full). I first learnt of Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) through this article. In 1791, de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, in which she demanded, among other things, granting women the right to education and equal property rights; the right to honours and positions, including those held by men; the right to join the army; and gender equality within the family.
According to the article:
The first article of the Declaration written by de Gouges proclaims that ‘Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights.’ The most famous sentence from the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen is: ‘Since a woman has the right to climb to the gallows, she should also have the right to climb to the tribunal.’
Mary Wollstonecraft
I would love to see every young person learn about Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), a prolific writer and author of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which were foundational texts for the establishment of modern feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft was a moral and political philosopher who argued for the right of women and girls to be educated, and for gender equality in society. Mary wrote within a framework of scientific and philosophical theories and held radical beliefs that located the rights and equality of women within the wider system of human relationships. In addition to calling for full independence for women, Mary spoke out against slavery as ‘an atrocious insult to humanity.’ Her bibliography is substantial, covering equality, politics, history, education, travel, and society across numerous books, pamphlets, novels, reviews, and articles.
Mary had two daughters, Fanny and Mary. Her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was the author of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a gothic philosophical novel. She married the English writer and Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), and when he drowned at the age of 29 in Italy, Mary went on to edit and publish several volumes of his work while raising their surviving child and completing a number of novels herself.
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher who, as a Jew, left Germany under the Nazi regime and eventually settled in the USA. She is known for her writings on totalitarianism, labour, and evil, famously coining the term ‘banality of evil’. She said that ‘the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.’
Her books include The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). The latter was based on her reports of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, where he was found guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ and hanged in 1961. She wrote about the dangers of making people ‘superfluous’ and the sense of loneliness that comes from a lack of rootedness or a sense of belonging. When a society starts to believe that some people are more important that others, danger follows. Society has to become a ‘thinking’ society in order to focus on what matters and how we treat each other. Arendt was an advocate of freedom of expression.
Arendt wrote that totalitarianism required widespread political apathy of ‘the masses’. The masses are large groups of people who feel socially and politically disconnected from government, religion, class, or shared interests, and feel excluded from meaningful engagement with political structures. However, even though the masses feel disengaged, they still have expectations of the state. When those expectations are not met, the passiveness of the masses turns to anger and hostility, which can be exploited by totalitarian leaders who reject democracy. The totalitarian leaders rouse the masses, exploiting their frustrations and encouraging a negative, often violent engagement with other political parties, political structures, and certain groups of people who are scapegoated. Arendt was writing in the aftermath of World War II, but her writings seem very prescient in today’s global political context.
Arendt believed that the way to overcome this is to engage those who feel disconnected and lonely, to revitalise politics by reaching out and building connections and solidarity, so that people feel connected to each other and feel a responsibility to wider society because they are supported. This, to me, is common sense: running a country with a set of ethics and values that put people first, and not economic interests or self-centred, wealth-oriented greed.
In The Human Condition, Arendt writes about the harm inflicted on human beings when doing is more important than thinking, and when people are defined mainly by their jobs, becoming working machines in a society that puts economic profit above people’s equality, security, and happiness. She equally saw the damage that may arise when technology threatens people’s livelihoods. Arendt said that ‘personal or moral responsibility is everybody’s business.’ Arendt focuses on how we value humanity and the importance of treating all human beings equally, with human welfare prioritised over profit or power.
Simone Weil
Another interesting woman was Simone Weil (1909-1943), a French political activist, social philosopher and mystic who was active in the French Resistance during World War II. During her short life, she died aged 34, Weil gave up a live of privilege and working as a teacher to work in factories and wrote about the relationship between ordinary people and the state, the nature of knowledge and the damage of industrialisation to the human spirit. She wrote that ‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.’ In her book The Need for Roots she identified uprootedness or a lack of rootedness as damaging to people’s lives due to a lack of connectedness to the land, to the past, to community, spirituality and to each other. Weil, like many philosophers referenced in this article condemned the economic exploitation of ordinary workers and called for compassion for those who are most vulnerable in society. You can read The Need for Roots – To a declaration of Duties Towards Mankind by Simone Weil with a preface by TS Eliot, on the internet archive here.
bell hooks
Other great women philosophers are bell hooks, (1952-2021) a radical professor, author, activist and cultural critic who wrote about progressive feminism and the connections between race, gender and class. Her original name as Gloria Jean Watkins and she took the pen name bell hooks after her maternal great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks. bell hooks wrote her name in lowercase to signal that she wanted to take attention away from her identity and have it on her ideas.
hook’s first book was Ain’t I am Woman: Black Women and Feminism and she wrote over 70 works, winning the US National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. hooks believed you made an impact by ‘talking back’[1] and ‘she desired that all people, female and male, be liberated from sexist patterns, domination and oppression.’[2] One of her books All About Love: New Visions called on feminists, educators and artists to ‘approach their work with love and purposefulness’. [3]
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was an American intersectional feminist, warrior, civil rights activist, writer, and poet whose work mixes the personal with the political. Through her work she bore witness to oppression, sexism, sexual and spiritual awakening, and race. Lorde described herself in many different ways to emphasise the fact that women are multi-faceted and complex and cannot be boxed in. She encouraged others to express their own power from within and to blend the personal with the political. As Lorde said herself, ‘your silence will not protect you’ (also the title of a book of poetry, speeches and essays). Lorde was central to many liberation movements and activist circles, including second-wave feminism, civil rights, Black cultural movements, and struggles for LGBTQ+ equality. In particular, Lorde’s poetry is known for the power of its call for social and racial justice, as well as its depictions of queer experience and sexuality.
There is a picture of Lorde taken by Robert Alexander of Getty Images. The photograph shows Lorde standing and staring directly at the camera. Beside her is a large blackboard and written on the blackboard in chalk are the words ‘Women are powerful and dangerous’.
Lorde recognised the power of the self within creative work as a way forward for political and social transformation and that for real change to happen there has to be not just dreaming but also action. In her writings and poetry Lorde urges us to speak out and to bear witness: ‘What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?’ An ancient power and a genuine sense of self echoes through the writings of Audre Lorde. She was an extraordinary poet and her work expresses a range of emotions and a profound sense of what it means to be human in all its glory, vulnerability, brutality and love. As part of my ‘Powerful Women in the Arts’ series, I have written about the life and work of Audre Lorde and for more information on Audre, see here.
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum (born 1947) is a modern-day philosopher who advocates for feminism, religious tolerance and the importance of emotions in civic and political life. Nussbaum sees vulnerability as a key part of being human, which I agree with. For me, being open to your own vulnerability is a key part of being an artist and being human. Nussbaum encourages us to accept our fragility and to be open to uncertainty and a willingness to be exposed, that vulnerability and uncertainty are key parts of the human condition. She says that ‘to be a good human is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.’
She highlights the paradox of the human condition where on the one hand we have a capacity to be vulnerable and to be open to trusting others which may lead us to being hurt, but to close ourselves off and avoid being hurt is to avoid being in touch with ourselves, to be open to your vulnerability and uncertainty of life keeps you in touch with the softness of your own soul. As she says, to be closed off to this is to deny your basic humanity. Nussbaum argues for emotions in politics in relation to love and compassion which can lead to a better society for all and for the education system to be about nurturing citizens who are imaginative, compassionate and emotionally intelligent and not just there to be good workers in the economic system.
Other interesting women philosophers are Sapho (c. 630-570BC), an ancient Greek lyric poet and philosopher; Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine nun, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic and found of scientific natural history in Germany; Angela Davis (9144-present), an American philosopher, political activist and academic; and the poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014), who is considered a philosopher of life.
Some quotes by Angelou include, ‘Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently’; ‘Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else’; ‘If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude’ and ‘we may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated’. She saw success as ‘liking yourself, liking what you do and likig how you do it’, and very importantly said that ‘If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.’ A well-known observation by Angelou is that ‘people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’ and she believed that ‘The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.’
Narges Mohammadi
Finally I want to refer to Narges Mohammadi who is currently in solitary confinement in Iran. She is an Iranian human rights activist and a winner of the Nobel Peace prize in 2023 for her activism against the oppression of women in Iran. Narges is primarily known as a human rights activist, journalist and author whoever her work and writings often reflect on philosophical concepts regarding freedom, justice and human dignity
Narges has been unjustly imprisoned by the Iranian regime, spending over ten years of her life in prison and was again arrested in December 2025. In February 2026 she was given additional unjust prison sentences totalling seven years and is currently in prison and confined to solitary confinement. She has committed no crimes and has consistently spoken out for freedom and human rights. Her trial was described by the Narges Foundation as a ‘sham’ and her imprisonment is a crime committed by the Iranian authorities, highlighting the oppressiveness of the regime in its control of the Iranian people.
Narges has written essays, articles, a book, and social media campaign materials on issues of human rights and personal freedoms. ‘The More They Lock Us Up, the Stronger We Become’ (included in the November 2023 edition of the Smashing Times Newsletter) is an essay on the paradox of finding strength within oppression. Narges has written about her beliefs in freedom and justice and how these beliefs cannot be destroyed by oppression, writing that ‘thoughts and dreams don’t die’.
In a letter from prison in 2023 she wrote that, ‘Women were the first, greatest, and most oppressed victims of religious despotism, but they were also the most steadfast, indomitable, and influential social force, and in recent protest and revolutionary movements, they have been at the forefront as the most advanced and radical forces . . .We, women, believe that fear, terror, and storms can never shake and tremble the mountains.’
In this article I have written about a small number of women philosophers. There are many more and each woman, in their own unique way, expands on what philosophy is and can be. Many of these philosophers are voices that speak to the uniqueness and sacredness of the human spirit and the importance of treating all people with a sense of dignity and respect.
Note: We are supporting calls by the Narges Mohammadi foundation asking the world to not forget political prisoners and detained protesters amidst the current war in Iran and to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Narges Mohammadi and all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, reminding the world that it must not remain silent in the face of this crisis. In these critical hours, the release of all political prisoners and the protection of every human life behind bars is a moral and humanitarian necessity that demands immediate action from the international community.
You can learn more about Narges Mohammadi and send a letter of support through
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/narges-mohammadi
[1] https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/bell-hooks
[2] https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/bell-hooks
[3] https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/bell-hooks
Image credit: Rey Seven
Mary Moynihan (she/her) is an award-winning writer, poet, theatre, and film-maker, and a creator of art and photography. Mary is Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, and Artistic Curator for the annual Irish Arts and Human Rights Festival.