PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Amalia Holst

On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education

Andrew Cooper

$141.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Oxford University Press
09 November 2023
This edition offers the first English translation of Amalia Holst's daring book, On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education (1802). In one of the first works of German philosophy published under a woman's name, Holst presents a manifesto for women's education that centres on a basic provocation: as far as the mind is concerned, women are equal partakers in the project of Enlightenment and should thus have unfettered access to the sciences in general and to philosophy in particular.

Holst's manifesto resonates with the work of several women writers across Europe, including Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Germaine de Staël. Yet in contrast to the early works of feminism we celebrate today, her book had little success. Its reception confronts us with a darker side of the German Enlightenment that, until recently, has been neglected. Holst sought to unearth the gendered nature of the fundamental concepts of the Enlightenment--including vocation, education, and culture--which enabled men to establish the subordinate status of women by philosophical means. However, her argument was scorned by male reviewers, who denied the very possibility of a woman philosopher.

With an introduction by Andrew Cooper, and translations of biographical material and early reviews, this edition provides students and scholars of German philosophy with a timely resource for developing a richer understanding of their field, and general readers with a powerful early feminist text that reveals the opportunities and difficulties facing women philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Edited by:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 222mm,  Width: 143mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   410g
ISBN:   9780192845948
ISBN 10:   0192845942
Series:   British Society for the History of Philosophy:New Texts in the History of Philosophy
Pages:   224
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Acknowledgements Introduction Note on Translation On The Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education Preface 1: Does Higher Education of the Mind Contradict the Proximate Calling of Woman as Wife, Mother, and Housewife? 2: Woman Considered as Wife 3: The Educated Woman as Mother 4: The Educated Woman as Housewife 5: On the Education of Woman in the Unmarried State Appendix 1: Biographical References Appendix 2: Reviews of Holst's Work Bibliography

Andrew Cooper is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is author of The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant's Critique of Judgment and the Project of Aesthetics (2016) and Kant and the Transformation of Natural History (2023), and has published numerous articles on Kant, post-Kantian philosophy, and philosophy of science.

Reviews for Amalia Holst: On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education

"This excellent translation makes Amalia Holst's important and powerful book available to English-speaking readers for the first time, greatly advancing the recovery of German women philosophers. Andrew Cooper's superb introduction situates Holst in the context of German Enlightenment debates about the purpose of education and the vocation of woman, and carefully compares Holst's position to those of her male and female contemporaries. The book will be invaluable reading for all those seeking to recognise women's contributions to nineteenth-century philosophy. * Alison Stone, Lancaster University * Andrew Cooper's seamless translation of Amalia Holst's On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education is cause for celebration. In this work, Holst makes crucial contributions to the ""vocation debates"" of the eighteenth century, and offers insightful and penetrating critiques of her male contemporaries, who, in contrast to Holst, repeatedly argued that women were not fit for philosophical education. Her insightful and penetrating critiques reveal the extent to which these apparently enlightened thinkers were not able to fulfill the goals of the Enlightenment. And Holst seeks to do just that. This work is bound to transform the ways we teach and research this crucial moment in the history of philosophy, challenging us not only to expand the philosophical canon but also to rethink trusted philosophical premises and arguments. * Dalia Nassar, University of Sydney *"


See Also