Is Philosophy Androcentric? - by Iddo Landau (Paperback)

About the Book

In this book, Landau looks at the titles question and concludes that none of the arguments for viewing philosophy as pervasively androcentric ultimately stands up to rational scrutiny, while the ones that show it to be nonpervasively androcentric do not undermine it in the way that many critics have supposed: Philosophy emerges, in almost all of its parts, as human rather than male, and most parts and aspects of it need not be rejected or rewritten.

Book Synopsis

In Is Philosophy Androcentric?, Iddo Landau contends that none of the arguments for viewing philosophy as pervasively androcentric ultimately stand up to rational scrutiny, while the ones that show it to be nonpervasively androcentric do not undermine it in the way that many critics have supposed. "Philosophy emerges, in almost all of its parts," he concludes, "as human rather than male, and most parts and aspects of it need not be rejected or rewritten."

Review Quotes

"Iddo Landau has written a focused and clearly organized book in which he investigates the extent to which Western philosophy is androcentric."

--Sharon Crasnow Philosophy Reviews

"'Feminist philosophers' will buy this book in great volume and attack it with abandon because, in spite of principled objections to the adversarial method, most 'feminist philosophers' in the English-speaking world are real philosophers, trained in the adversarial method, who, in spite of pious claims to the contrary, really like beating up on people. This is red meat."

--Harriet Baber, University of San Diego

"This fine book provides a carefully and closely argued critical examination of the argument that philosophy is androcentric. Treating both analytic and continental traditions, the book is written clearly enough to be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses, but it is also well worth reading by scholars in the field."

--Sara Worley, Bowling Green State University

About the Author

Iddo Landau is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa.