Description

As a young woman growing up in Iowa Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions Who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academicthe first step she believed to becoming a selfdetermined person living a life of the mind What she didnt realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities as well as the culture surrounding it would slowly grind her down through its misogyny its harassment its devaluation of women and their intellect Where were the women philosophers One day Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Mashams name The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke Masham wrote about knowledge and God and the condition of women Mashams work led Penaluna to other women philosophers Mary Astell who made a living writing philosophy Catharine Cockburn a philosopher novelist and playwright and the betterknown Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote extensively in defense of womens minds Together these women rekindled Penalunas love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness In How to Think Like a Woman Penaluna blends memoir biography and criticism to tell the stories of these four women weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy Funny honest and wickedly intelligent this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally