The Sex of Knowing

Michele Le Doeuff is a leading French philosopher and an important feminist thinker. This text provides a comprehensive account of her views. 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 readers on a provocative journey through the great texts and authors of the past and present from Plato and Descartes to Evelyn Fox Keller and Kate Millett.