Thinking About the Home

Why should philosophers think about the home? The answer seems obvious: because home is central to human life and development. It keeps us alive, allows us to grow into ourselves, to develop relationships with others, and to function in the world, outside the home. Our question should really be: Why don’t philosophers think about the home? And this book is my answer: they do, or at least women philosophers thought about the home. This is likely because, in the past, women had a closer relationship with home, often responsible for it, and confined in it. So I ask: What did these women philosophers think about the home, its work, its constraints? And though I do try to find out what we can learn from them, I will not look for a final lesson, something that we can all agree on about the meaning or value of the home. Rather, this work is about facilitating philosophical thinking about the home, from the point of view of women, whose central or chosen occupation was to think. Going into this book looking for a unified account or theory would definitely be a mistake. But if you like the idea of listening to voices from the past, women’s voices, and think you can use their thoughts as a springboard for your own, then I hope you will enjoy this book.