The long nineteenth-century—the period beginning with the French Revolution and ending with World War I—was transformative for women philosophers in German-speaking countries and contexts.

The epoch spans romanticism and idealism, socialism, Nietzscheanism, and phenomenology: philosophical movements we most often associate with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marx—but rarely with women. Yet women philosophers made significant contributions to these movements, challenged them or expanded them in crucial ways, and spearheaded debates about their social and political implications.

While today their works are less well-known than those of their male contemporaries, many of these women philosophers were widely-read and influential in their own time. Their contributions shed important new light on nineteenth-century philosophy and philosophy more generally: revealing the extent to which various movements which we now regard as distinct were at one time connected, even joined, and demonstrating the degree to which philosophy can transform lives and be transformed by lived experiences and practices.

By highlighting the works of these women, this project aims to engage directly with their ideas, uncover their influence, and investigate their historical and philosophical significance. To achieve this, we have edited two volumes. The first, Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition makes available to English-language readers—in many cases for the first time—the works of nine women philosophers: Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, Bettina Brenano von Arnim, Hedwig Dohm, Clara Zetkin, Lou Salomé, Rosa Luxemburg, Edith Stein and Gerade Walther.

The second is the Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition, which expands beyond these nine women, and includes thirty-one newly commissioned chapters that cover women’s contributions to philosophical movements (Enlightenment, romanticism and idealism, Marxism and socialism, feminism, Nietzscheanism, phenomenology and neo-Kantianism), areas of philosophy (from epistemology and metaphysics, to the philosophy of nature, philosophy of economics, social and political philosophy and the philosophy of science) and specific philosophical topics (including ethics and ecology, art and education).

Both volumes begin with the generation of the late Enlightenment and early Romantic figures, move on to the rise of socialism and the feminist movements of the mid-nineteenth-century, and conclude in the early Twentieth Century, with the phenomenological movements. Through these volumes, we hope to extend investigation of understudied or forgotten figures in the history of philosophy and inspire further research on the nineteenth century and beyond!

– Kristin Gjesdal & Dalia Nassar