Preface

Many philosophers who write about women, in any branch of philosophy, will have been asked, at some point, to contribute “a chapter.” It could be a book about a particular historical movement, or about a problem in ethics, a collection of papers on aesthetics, or philosophy of biology, but the title will be the same: “feminist perspectives on X.” Often, that chapter is placed at the end of the volume, almost as an afterthought. Over the past ten years or so, the contributors to this volume have been developing their thought and expertise on women’s contribution to the development of republican thought in the history of political philosophy. Some of us have had the time and opportunity to publish longer pieces on individual women, ideas, periods of history. Others have mostly stuck to the trusty “chapter” model. This book is here to put all these chapters together, not as a light dessert after a series of solid manly courses, but as the satisfying main course for readers who think women philosophers can and should be taken as seriously as their men counterparts, and would like to know what a women’s republicanism, overall, might look like.