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The first English translation of Amalia Holst's daring manifesto for women's education, originally published in 1802. It 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.
List of contents
- 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
About the author
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.
Summary
The first English translation of Amalia Holst's daring manifesto for women's education, originally published in 1802. It 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.
Additional text
Could there be a more relevant and much-needed book in eighteenth-century philosophy than Andrew Cooper's translation of Amalia Holst's On the Vocation of Woman to Higher Education (1802)? Holst argues for women's right to education and, in effect, takes to task the aspirations of a whole generation of Enlightenment thinkers. If the right to education is reserved for a segment of the population (male individuals), can we then say that the Enlightenment is committed to the uplift of the human being as such? Cooper's introduction to Holst's work is thorough, clear, and engaging; it provides a superb induction to Holst's important contribution and its relevance today. This text is a "must" for anyone interested in the philosophy of education, the critical potential of Enlightenment thought, and the politics of gender in recent history.
