Michele Le Doeuff is a leading French philosopher, and one of the most important feminist thinkers writing today. "The Sex of Knowing, Le Doeuff's most significant work to date, provides a comprehensive account of her views. This is the first English translation of her inspiring book. Le Doeuff's target is the continuing tendency to think that men are more rational, more analytic than women, a tendency that persists in spite of our thinking we know better. She argues that the conceptual links between "masculinity" and "rationality" are deeply rooted in the public imagination and institutions of learning, and continue to have devastating effects on what women are able to achieve. To shed light on the depth and persistence of the problem, Le Doeuff leads us on provocative archeological journey through the great texts and authors of the past and present from Plato and Descartes to Evelyn Fox Keller and Kate Millett in search of the origins and extent of a set of contemporary reflexes that hold misogynistic thinking in place both in the larger society, and within science and philosophy. An ambitious and highly persuasive book, "The Sex of Knowing received widespread critical attention in the French press. Lorraine Code and Kathryn Hamer's superb translation is sure to have a similar impact on English speaking audiences everywhere.

Introduction 1.Cast-Offs 1.1 How Intuition Came to Women 1.2 Woman as an Object of Discourse: An Inquiry Into Categories 1.3 Values/Countervalues 1.4 Knowledge and Power 1.5 Anti-Intellectualism 1.6 Essays on Original Sin 1.7 A Knowing Subject in Process 1.8 Coherences 1.9 Divine Plato? 1.10 Eve's Awakening/Apollo's Ruling: Two Banquets Juxtaposed 2. Renaissances 2.1 The Intermittent Existence of Women Doctors 2.2 A Cognitive Norm 2.3 Knowing by Dreaming? Object Versus Objectification 2.4 Construction of an Object or Definition of a Field? 2.5 Lady Trotula 2.6 Being as One is Perceived 2.7 Legal Counsel on Strike 2.8 Verum Index Sui 2.9 Interlude 2.10 Masculine Foreclosures of Knowledge 2.11 Epikleroi 2.12 Three Headscarves 2.13 The Jailer's Catechism 2.14 A Little Learning 2.15 The Judgement of Christine 3. An Epistemology of Hope 3.1 Take An Aspirin 3.2 An Offensive Philosophy, but to Whom? 3.3 Sciences, Humanities, and Philosophy 3.4 Finalities 3.5 The Alchemy of the Word 3.6 Phallomelancholia or Gay Science? 3.7 Duplicities 3.8 Neutrality 3.9 Factual Violence/Ideational Violence 3.10 Visions 3.11 The Liberal Experience 3.12 Saint Scholastica 3.13 A Woman and a Man in Philosophy 3.14 The Admirable Essay 3.15 Equality, Difference, or Divergence? 3.16 Corporations Epilogue Notes Index