What is the use of thinking, quipped Michel Foucault, if one cannot think differently? How right that is! Why bother with a liberal arts education at all unless your goal is to experience the world in multiple ways? And what better discipline or course of study helps to achieve this goal than philosophy?

Working with students on a voyage of discovery, the joint research takes us into some ignored and forgotten philosophy texts of the 17th and 18th centuries. These texts help us open up to new ways of thinking not merely because they are relatively unknown, but because they were all written by women whose voices time has otherwise assigned to oblivion. Women in those centuries were denied all access to any formal education and were either self-taught or home or convent schooled by parents, husbands, or other women. In many countries, they had no more political rights than did children, and their futures were mostly limited to marriage and family or the convent. Yet a few extraordinary women did manage to break the silence and express their thoughts in books, letters, and pamphlets that did influence their contemporary male philosophers. Yet, their names today are still not so widely known. There certainly are different ways of thinking, different ways of doing philosophy; what were their ways?

Together, students and I discover texts – many out of print since the turn of the 18th century – and we pore through them. What are these women saying? To whom are they saying it? To what are they reacting? Is there a new way of seeing the world that they present to us? Working both one on one and in a group, we discuss these other ways of experiencing life with the final goal of sharing our research with the greater public so that others may likewise be inspired to continue to see the world as did these long forgotten philosophers. Conference presentations and publications will be one mark of success.

To date, my protégés – Karl Kyler and Jessica Hamilton – and I have looked into the works of Duchess of Newcastle Margaret (née Lucas) Cavendish (1623-1673); Viscountess Anne (née Finch) Conway (1631-1679); Gabrielle Suchon (1631-1703); Lady Damaris (née Cudworth) Masham (1659-1708); Mary Astell (1666-1731); and Mary (née Wollstonecraft) Godwin (1759-1797). It is as exciting for me as it is for them to discover these old, forgotten texts and begin to expose them to the air, so to speak, and let them breathe again. The students experience the thrill of research and discovery, and I hope that future conference presentations and publications will serve as the final proof that undergraduates, too, can do fruitful and novel research, expanding their own minds and sharing this with others.

Our projects and progress to date include an analysis of Anne Conway’s major work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, through the eyes of Asian philosophy; a new transcription of Masham’s Discourse concerning the Love of God (out of print since the turn of the 18th century) with introduction, annotations, and bibliographic material underway; and the preparations of the first English translation of Suchon’s Treatise on Morality and Politics (along with introduction, annotations, and other useful indices).