This thesis studies the figure of the female intellectual and its conceptualizations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany and the Dutch Republic. The thesis focuses on two women intellectuals, namely the Dutch polymath turned radical pietist, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) and Germany’s first female Doctor of Medicine and a fierce advocate for women’s education, Dorothea Christiane Erxleben (1715-1762).
The main part of the thesis consists of four research articles that, in different ways, address the question of the formation of a female intellectual identity during the early modern period. Article I challenges the common misconception that gender roles progress throughout history towards an ideal of freedom and equality. Instead, I argue that a regression took place in the course of the eighteenth century where specifically the ideal of female intellectuality changes
dramatically from focusing on gender-neutral traits such as learnedness and academic skill to emphasizing traditionally feminine virtues such as modesty, piety, and domesticity. This argument is based on an analysis of entries on Anna Maria van Schurman in the German catalogues of learned women.
Van Schurman is also the focal point of Article II, which questions the ‘standard narrative’ of her present-day reception. The article argues that there is a considerable discrepancy between the way van Schurman researchers present her life and van Schurman’s own account from her autobiography Eukleria or Choosing the Better Part (1673); while scholars emphasize her continual
commitment to her intellectual studies, van Schurman stresses the radicalism of her transformation, her devotion to the Labadist cause, and her disdain for her past life as a public intellectual. The article criticizes this widespread tendency to distort her own narrative and argues that the anti-intellectual elements in her thinking should have a more prominent role in her reception.
Article III goes on to critically assess the way, in which the historiographical term ‘Radical Enlightenment’ results in the exclusion of female thinkers, using Dorothea Erxleben as a case study. The article develops a new methodology that makes it possible to identify radical elements in Erxleben’s philosophical and early feminist dissertation Rigorous Investigation (1742). Finally, it argues that, using this framework, Erxleben can be considered a radical thinker. With Article
IV, the thesis returns to Anna Maria van Schurman, engaging with her unforgiving criticism of metaphysics. The article argues that there are remarkable similarities to be found between her arguments and current deflationist critiques of mainstream analytic metaphysics. After a systematic comparative analysis, the article closes with a discussion of possible ways to
encapsulate van Schurman’s critique in contemporary terms.
The four articles are preceded by an introductory chapter, which presents the common narrative of the thesis, connecting the articles through a shared objective and guiding research questions. The introduction also contains a comprehensive review of relevant literature, situating the thesis within the broader field of feminist history of philosophy. A section on methodology
explains and justifies the research methods applied in the thesis, which include critical discourse analysis, archeological and genealogical analysis, and rational reconstruction. Finally, the dissertation closes with some concluding remarks, summing up the overall results of the thesis, as well as making suggestions for future research.