Deborah Boyle
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3683628 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Deborah Boyle |
| NOMBRES | Deborah |
| APELLIDO | Boyle |
| FIRMA | BOYLE D |
| AFILIACIONES | College of Charleston |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2975-2268 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 15 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 19 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 15 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2004 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Joanna Baillie on Sympathetic Curiosity and Elizabeth Hamilton's Critique
Scholars working on recovering forgotten historical women philosophers have noted the importance of looking beyond traditional philosophical genres. This strategy is particularly important for finding Scottish women philosophers. By considering non-canonical genres, we can see the philosophical interest of the works of Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), who presents an account of “sympathetic curiosity” as one of the basic p…
Reply to Manuel Fasko’s discussion of Mary Shepherd
Through his careful reading of my book, Manuel Fasko has identified four points in Mary Shepherd: A Guide where I make claims about Shepherd’s views but do not say much, or anything, about the deep
Jean Marishall on the Plight of the ‘Old Maid’
Although some early modern women philosophers wrote critiques of marriage, few wrote about unmarried women’s difficult conditions. One exception was Scottish writer Jean Marishall (fl. 1760–89). Among her suggestions for a ‘very great amendment, in our minds and morals’ in her Series of Letters (1789), Marishall briefly analyses the problems facing singlewomen and proposes a creative remedy. This paper examines her analysis, situating it in the b…
Elizabeth Hamilton on Race, Religion, and Human Nature
Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has a strikingly egalitarian account of gender in her novels and philosophical writings, where she professes to be offering an account of human nature in general. This paper examines whether she has a similarly egalitarian account of race, and shows that she does not. Hamilton distinguishes between what she calls ‘the Christian nations of Europe’ and non-Christian groups; she clearly assigns different character and …
Mary Shepherd
This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd’s two books. Chapters 1–4 cover the arguments in the Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd’s primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. …
Feminism and Early Modern Philosophy
This chapter offers an account of the history and central issues in feminist philosophical engagements with early modern philosophy. The chapter describes a “first wave” of feminist scholarship on early modern philosophy, beginning around the 1990s, that involved examining the work of canonical male philosophers from a feminist perspective, as well as a “second wave” that focuses on the early modern women philosophers themselves. Projects involve…
Mary Shepherd and the meaning of ‘life’
In the final chapters of her 1824 Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Lady Mary Shepherd considers what it means for an organism to be alive. The physician William Lawrence (1783–1867) had recently presented a theory of life that historian Stephen Jacyna has labelled ‘immanentist’. Shepherd’s critique of Lawrence’s arguments reveals a specific application of her own anti-Humean causal theory and shows her own affinities with the ‘transce…
Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers as a philosophical text
Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has not so far been considered a philosopher, probably because she wrote novels and tracts on education rather than philosophical treatises. This paper argues that Hamilton’s novel Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) should be read as a philosophical text, both for its close engagement with William Godwin’s moral theory and for what it suggests about Hamilton’s own moral theory and moral psychology. Studies of Mem…
Elizabeth Hamilton on Sympathy and the Selfish Principle
In A Series of Popular Essays (1813 ) , Scottish philosopher Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) identifies two ‘principles’ in the human mind: sympathy and the selfish principle. While sharing Adam Smith's understanding of sympathy as a capacity for fellow-feeling, Hamilton also criticizes Smith's account of sympathy as involving the imagination. Even more important for Hamilton is the selfish principle, a ‘propensity to expand or enlarge the idea of…
Expanding the Canon of Scottish Philosophy
Lady Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) argued for distinctive accounts of causation, perception, and knowledge of an external world and God. However, her work, engaging with Berkeley and Hume but written after Kant, does not fit the standard periodisation of early modern philosophy presupposed by many philosophy courses, textbooks, and conferences. This paper argues that Shepherd should be added to the canon as a Scottish philosopher. The practical reaso…
Margaret Cavendish on Perception, Self-Knowledge, and Probable Opinion
Scholarly interest in Margaret Cavendish's philosophical views has steadily increased over the past decade, but her epistemology has received little attention, and no consensus has emerged; Cavendish has been characterized as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as presenting an alternative epistemology to both rationalism and empiricism, and even as presenting no clear theory of knowledge at all. This paper concludes that Cavendish was only a modest ske…
Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom
Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female natur…
Fame, Virtue, and Government
This paper offers an account of Margaret Cavendish's moral and political philosophy. In some respects Cavendish's theoury echoes Hobbes. However, although Cavendish agrees with Hobbes that morality is based on self-interest, she holds that morality derives from our natural desire for public recognition, not the desire for self-preservation. Via the desire for fame, self-love can motivate people to pursue virtue, which, for Cavendish, means establ…
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy Deborah Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Until about twenty-five years ago, the standard assessment of Margaret Cavendish's philosophical work was typified by Virginia Woolf's remarks: "It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy."1 Recent st…
Mary Shepherd (Elements on women in the history of philosophy)
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy Deborah Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Until about twenty-five years ago, the standard assessment of Margaret Cavendish's philosophical work was typified by Virginia Woolf's remarks: "It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy."1 Recent st…
Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom
Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female natur…
Margaret Cavendish on Perception, Self-Knowledge, and Probable Opinion
Scholarly interest in Margaret Cavendish's philosophical views has steadily increased over the past decade, but her epistemology has received little attention, and no consensus has emerged; Cavendish has been characterized as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as presenting an alternative epistemology to both rationalism and empiricism, and even as presenting no clear theory of knowledge at all. This paper concludes that Cavendish was only a modest ske…
Fame, Virtue, and Government
This paper offers an account of Margaret Cavendish's moral and political philosophy. In some respects Cavendish's theoury echoes Hobbes. However, although Cavendish agrees with Hobbes that morality is based on self-interest, she holds that morality derives from our natural desire for public recognition, not the desire for self-preservation. Via the desire for fame, self-love can motivate people to pursue virtue, which, for Cavendish, means establ…
Expanding the Canon of Scottish Philosophy
Lady Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) argued for distinctive accounts of causation, perception, and knowledge of an external world and God. However, her work, engaging with Berkeley and Hume but written after Kant, does not fit the standard periodisation of early modern philosophy presupposed by many philosophy courses, textbooks, and conferences. This paper argues that Shepherd should be added to the canon as a Scottish philosopher. The practical reaso…
Elizabeth Hamilton on Sympathy and the Selfish Principle
In A Series of Popular Essays (1813 ) , Scottish philosopher Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) identifies two ‘principles’ in the human mind: sympathy and the selfish principle. While sharing Adam Smith's understanding of sympathy as a capacity for fellow-feeling, Hamilton also criticizes Smith's account of sympathy as involving the imagination. Even more important for Hamilton is the selfish principle, a ‘propensity to expand or enlarge the idea of…
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy
Margaret Cavendish's Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy Deborah Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Until about twenty-five years ago, the standard assessment of Margaret Cavendish's philosophical work was typified by Virginia Woolf's remarks: "It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy."1 Recent st…
Fame, Virtue, and Government
This paper offers an account of Margaret Cavendish's moral and political philosophy. In some respects Cavendish's theoury echoes Hobbes. However, although Cavendish agrees with Hobbes that morality is based on self-interest, she holds that morality derives from our natural desire for public recognition, not the desire for self-preservation. Via the desire for fame, self-love can motivate people to pursue virtue, which, for Cavendish, means establ…
Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom
Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female natur…
Margaret Cavendish on Perception, Self-Knowledge, and Probable Opinion
Scholarly interest in Margaret Cavendish's philosophical views has steadily increased over the past decade, but her epistemology has received little attention, and no consensus has emerged; Cavendish has been characterized as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as presenting an alternative epistemology to both rationalism and empiricism, and even as presenting no clear theory of knowledge at all. This paper concludes that Cavendish was only a modest ske…
Expanding the Canon of Scottish Philosophy
Lady Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) argued for distinctive accounts of causation, perception, and knowledge of an external world and God. However, her work, engaging with Berkeley and Hume but written after Kant, does not fit the standard periodisation of early modern philosophy presupposed by many philosophy courses, textbooks, and conferences. This paper argues that Shepherd should be added to the canon as a Scottish philosopher. The practical reaso…
Feminism and Early Modern Philosophy
This chapter offers an account of the history and central issues in feminist philosophical engagements with early modern philosophy. The chapter describes a “first wave” of feminist scholarship on early modern philosophy, beginning around the 1990s, that involved examining the work of canonical male philosophers from a feminist perspective, as well as a “second wave” that focuses on the early modern women philosophers themselves. Projects involve…
Mary Shepherd and the meaning of ‘life’
In the final chapters of her 1824 Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Lady Mary Shepherd considers what it means for an organism to be alive. The physician William Lawrence (1783–1867) had recently presented a theory of life that historian Stephen Jacyna has labelled ‘immanentist’. Shepherd’s critique of Lawrence’s arguments reveals a specific application of her own anti-Humean causal theory and shows her own affinities with the ‘transce…
Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers as a philosophical text
Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has not so far been considered a philosopher, probably because she wrote novels and tracts on education rather than philosophical treatises. This paper argues that Hamilton’s novel Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) should be read as a philosophical text, both for its close engagement with William Godwin’s moral theory and for what it suggests about Hamilton’s own moral theory and moral psychology. Studies of Mem…
Elizabeth Hamilton on Sympathy and the Selfish Principle
In A Series of Popular Essays (1813 ) , Scottish philosopher Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) identifies two ‘principles’ in the human mind: sympathy and the selfish principle. While sharing Adam Smith's understanding of sympathy as a capacity for fellow-feeling, Hamilton also criticizes Smith's account of sympathy as involving the imagination. Even more important for Hamilton is the selfish principle, a ‘propensity to expand or enlarge the idea of…
Mary Shepherd
This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd’s two books. Chapters 1–4 cover the arguments in the Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd’s primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. …
Elizabeth Hamilton on Race, Religion, and Human Nature
Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has a strikingly egalitarian account of gender in her novels and philosophical writings, where she professes to be offering an account of human nature in general. This paper examines whether she has a similarly egalitarian account of race, and shows that she does not. Hamilton distinguishes between what she calls ‘the Christian nations of Europe’ and non-Christian groups; she clearly assigns different character and …
Mary Shepherd (Elements on women in the history of philosophy)
Joanna Baillie on Sympathetic Curiosity and Elizabeth Hamilton's Critique
Scholars working on recovering forgotten historical women philosophers have noted the importance of looking beyond traditional philosophical genres. This strategy is particularly important for finding Scottish women philosophers. By considering non-canonical genres, we can see the philosophical interest of the works of Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), who presents an account of “sympathetic curiosity” as one of the basic p…
Reply to Manuel Fasko’s discussion of Mary Shepherd
Through his careful reading of my book, Manuel Fasko has identified four points in Mary Shepherd: A Guide where I make claims about Shepherd’s views but do not say much, or anything, about the deep
Jean Marishall on the Plight of the ‘Old Maid’
Although some early modern women philosophers wrote critiques of marriage, few wrote about unmarried women’s difficult conditions. One exception was Scottish writer Jean Marishall (fl. 1760–89). Among her suggestions for a ‘very great amendment, in our minds and morals’ in her Series of Letters (1789), Marishall briefly analyses the problems facing singlewomen and proposes a creative remedy. This paper examines her analysis, situating it in the b…
Philosophy (14 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment (9 obras) · Historical Philosophy and Science (7 obras) · Sociology (7 obras) · Philosophy (5 obras) · Psychology (5 obras) · Art (4 obras) · History (4 obras) · Psychoanalysis (4 obras)