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How to Think Like a Woman

Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind

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How to Think Like a Woman

By: Regan Penaluna
Narrated by: Angie Kane
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About this listen

As a young woman growing up in Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we, and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academic—the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What she didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers?

One day, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge and God, and the condition of women. Masham’s work led Penaluna to other women philosophers: Mary Astell, who made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women’s minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna’s love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness.

In How to Think Like a Woman, Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of these four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.

©2023 Regan Penaluna (P)2023 Dreamscape Media
Philosophers Women Funny Women Philosophers
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I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BOOK

I loved the style of writing and the stories told it’s an absolute must read masterpiece.

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Moving and urgent

This book is a wonderful, an accessible and urgent contribution to the huge task of making women visible in history. Women philosophers were there, always, but they have constantly been made invisible. The reassurance that women have always thought, always struggled, always resisted the confines of misogynist culture can only empower anyone hoping to push the possibilities of human thought today. By including her personal experience the writer, bravely, allows the lay reader to comprehend her arguments and histories emotionally, cementing them into understanding . The reader is DREADFUL but don’t be put off. The power of the words survived. However this was read in a dull monotone with the reader sometimes clearly surprised by the twist the sentence she was attempting had made. She also mispronounced a lot of words, not an elitist quibble when the word in question is actually the name of one of the philosophers commemorated here, Cockburn. Maybe only Scottish listeners will balk at that though. Overall this is an education of the best kind, easy, engaging and empowering.

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