When Regan Penaluna is sitting in her graduate philosophy class, her visiting professor speaks openly about how women do not have the mental fortitude for philosophy. Caught in the moment, instead of protesting, she internalizes the remarks. Searching for a thesis, she finds connections to prominent women philosophers in history.

Damaris Cudworth/Lady Marsham, Mary Astell, Catherine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft all inspire her to redouble her efforts and help these neglected philosophers find new light. "Why have women been given intelligent souls if they cannot improve them?" (Astell) If men are born free, why are women slaves?

All these women wrote at a time when less than a quarter of women could even write. Yet, their writing would rival Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and many others who would lay the foundation of modern thought and American Democracy. In their rediscovery, she discovered her own motivation, completed her degree, left her husband, and wrote this book. A journey of discovery, these inspirational philosophers get a well-deserved review.

Favorite Passages:
This book tells the story of how I lost myself in philosophy and then, through my discovery of these early feminist philosophers, found a path back to myself. Despite the centuries that separated us, we were united by our love of philosophy and our frustration, sorrow, and anger. What does a woman do when she’s told that she doesn’t belong or that she’s not as smart as a man because of her sex? Some let it roll off their backs, knowing their worth regardless of what they’re told. I admire these women, but I’m not like them. I can’t maintain that level of equanimity. I struggle, I doubt, but above all, I need answers—or at least attempts to explain what is happening to me and why. In this, I feel a kinship with these four philosophers.

To help her readers see women anew, she borrowed language from the new science. She wrote that women were unaccustomed to thinking for themselves and were in an important sense indistinguish- able from automatons. They move and speak, but they are mostly following orders from without and have an “unthinking mechani- cal way of living.”55 Here she invoked Descartes’s division of reality into two substances: the mind, which is immaterial and thinking, and matter, which is its opposite—material and unthinking. These substances were governed by different laws, and the motion of mate- rial things was due to physical forces, whereas the activity of mind was rational. For Astell and many other early modern philosophers, reason was essential to freedom. To follow the commands of some- one else was to be not truly free. A person must earn her own path to salvation. But Astell argued that women lived as if they were only matter in motion, as if they were just “Machins” devoid of mind.56

This reminds me of something the philosopher Irigaray once said. She asks what a philosophy of woman’s nature would look like that didn’t derive from the belief that women are inferior and des- tined for motherhood: “But to what reality would woman correspond, independently of her reproductive function?”113 It’s an open ques- tion and one that Astell was also motivated by centuries ago. Astell’s answer was that a woman’s sex should not be her defining feature if she does not want it to be, because humans are foremost rational persons. Even if a woman were to participate in a traditional female role, it should not be because of necessity but rather because she freely chose to do so. A sentiment that—despite her conservatism in other areas—is strikingly modern.

A friend wrote that in Astell’s final moments of life, she asked to have her coffin placed next to her bed and to be alone, contemplating the afterlife.

She saw the minimal investment in her intellect as symptom- atic of a cultural force inhibiting the minds of women. In these early years she didn’t set forth a path to freedom for women. Instead, she absorbed this oppression and then spun it out into a description of the world as suffocating and harmful to women’s intellects; it was a place where women would live and die, vulnerable and without much control over their own thought.

It’s often a tougher path for a woman, because society can be a hostile place for her to cultivate her subjectivity. It was true in the seventeenth century, and it was true for me. Maybe, then, the com- mon experience of being a woman in philosophy is to be effaced: your feelings, your opinions, your presence, your life, your works, your impact are belittled, glanced at, or ignored. The psychological hurdles are one reason why today there are fewer women than men in graduate programs across many disciplines, and even fewer who rise to the top of their class, and why some women seem to come into their own at a slower rate than men. Only years later, when men have outpaced most women in their careers, will women begin to discover how they nearly snuffed themselves out. Just like I was doing. I took Masham’s recommendation to be: Do not retreat. A woman’s path to self-knowledge requires her to risk losing herself to find herself.


Art, philosophy, and literature tell us a different story. That the brief time we are here matters, that it is meaningful and contains beauty. We’ve learned to talk to ourselves in this expansive and dark vacuum to keep ourselves company, so that we can transcend our finite, perplexing condition—if not in fact, then in our imaginations. We’ve learned to free ourselves—if only for the duration of a poem, an equation, a book, a prayer—from our despair.

I feel a real kinship with this author. I entered academia, or rather pursued my PhD at the same time I entered perimenopause, I felt like I was grappling with adolescence in a. time when my intellect was also being scrutinized. I had an advisor who took me to task, she didn't feel I should be publishing but rather focusing on my studies, engaging in discourse, when in fact my scholarship is more rooted in activism than discourse. I feared not passing my qualifying exams, and did only pass with a request for revisions, as Penaluna did, I thankfully, changed advisors to someone more generous, more interested in my work. But it still haunts me... the criticism, I too have wrestled with the demons of doubt and felt a serious injury when the advisor I had was also a woman, and perceived by many a feminist, a woman thinker, a MacArthur genius grant recipient, and yet here we were emulating this patriarchal dynamic. The quote that struck me the most, "Because the world makes it easy for a woman to choose self-diminishment—and often rewards her for it—I had to remain extra vigilant but not so aloof that I was risking nothing." There's a word for this now I guess "fawning." I have a terrible habit of ingratiating myself to predators, just the other day I was on a panel with an alumnae at the school I teach at, He said I must be so proud of myself being contracted with FSG, and I immediately said, "Well my advance was like nothing." Just like that. So quick to belittle myself.
Anywho. The world needs this book. I need this book. Thank you. This sounds strange but I would love for this book to be adapted into a film.

How to Think Like a Woman; Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind by Regan Penaluna was not for me, personally. I am still thankful that I got to read this!

I enjoyed this book to begin with, later on it lost its shine as it become more descriptive rather than letting me know about the philosophy they pioneered.

This is an important book, that does what the title promises: to show How to Think Like a Woman. The author does exactly that, focusing on four women philosophers who have been dangerously close to history's fringed cliffs over which the forgotten, never named plunge every day.

Her women heroes, from who she furiously and feverishly studies are these:

◼ Mary Astell, 1666 - 1731, England
◼ Damaris Cudworth Masham, 1659 - 1708, England
◼ Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 - 1797, England; and
◼ Catherine Trotter Cockburn, 1679 - 1749, England

While the author's admiration and wisdom gained from each of these shape her growth as a philosopher, she also pulls in many others, and often brings them forth to defend against male philosophers who rest comfortably and with no small amount of arrogance in their centuries' old easy chairs:

The female is like a "disabled male," [Artistotle] wrote. A "natural mutilation." One after another a similar view is presented. . .and where were the women? Everyone of those men had a mother, and likely sisters, daughters and life partners who were women, who would mind the kids, cows, and home fires. It is enough to get this reader's blood boiling and more than a little pissed off. And history marches on, with 98% of male philosophers writing the tomes that carry philosophy forward, busy writing that 2% of non-male philosopher voices into silence and obscurity. Grrgh.

When I started this read, all I wanted was to get that damned cover off that girl's head, free her head, eyes, ears and voice. At its end, I want a helluva lot more than that. We need a revolution that has sharper teeth and longer, deeper thinking than we've been using. I hear and receive the author's points, her questions answered and unanswered, her mind changed and unchanged. I appreciated her sharing of her own complex and ongoing life while she was actively engaged at the front in this philosophic battle and war. . .for isn't that truly how all wars are fought? Stolen time from lives being daily lived on all sides?

5 stars for taking the time out of fighting in that war, to report how it goes in the field.

*A sincere thank you to Regan Penaluna, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and independently review.* #HowtoThinkLikeaWoman #NetGalley

As someone who loved her philosophy classes in college and as someone who is married to someone with a philosophy degree, I was drawn to this book as soon as I read the title (and then even more so when I saw the cover). I know, I know, I know, I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but it's amazing! It does such a great job capturing the idea of this book in such a visceral way. It's haunting, and beautiful, and makes you want to just rip that covering off of the woman's head.

This want and anger I had looking at the cover resurfaced regularly while reading this book. I kept turning to my husband saying "WHAT?? Did you know he thought this? Said this? Did this?!" etc. etc. when Penaluna referenced many renowned male philosophers. I could also feel the frustration that Penaluna faced when learning about these ideas in mostly male-driven classes and then working in an almost exclusively male department. By the end of the book, I felt a little less hopeless about women in philosophy, but it is clear much more needs to be done in the way of inclusivity in this particular field of study.

While reading, I found that I loved hearing about Penaluna's personal life and found that her writing style was much more enjoyable during her memoir-ish sections. When discussing the four women philosophers, the book read more like a somewhat mundane historical book report. Her personal story was compelling and heartbreaking. It was maddening the amount of misogyny she faced throughout her academic career. When reading the philosopher sections, they were almost <i>too</i> historical and not philosophical enough. I felt like I had read four mini biographies and had barely scratched the surface of their philosophies. I understand that their lives greatly shaped how they viewed the world, and how their backgrounds led each of these different women to become philosophers in the first place. However, I wish Penaluna would have given us even more about what they were writing and thinking and why they were so important to her.

All said, this was an interesting read. Was it interesting enough to recommend to all of my friends? Probably not, but it was compelling enough. 3.5 stars rounded down.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Press for the advance reading copy!

How to Think Like a Woman fills a hole in the history of philosophy and is at the same time an intriguing memoir. Regan Penaluna's touch as a writer is sure, and she strips the artifice from centuries of academic tradition. Any student of philosophy interested in restoring balance to the teaching and practice of this discipline will want to read Penaluna's book, and students in any field of study who feel lost or undervalued in academia will come to understand that originality and intellectual curiosity can more than make up for indifference and calcification.

I really liked this book and it’s a great addition to my store, as philosophy is such a male dominated section. This fills a need for more female voices to be heard and does so in an engaging way.

A memoir in which Regan Penaluna, a female philosopher, shares how four historical female philosophers (hard to find in the overwhelmingly male and sexist philosophy world) shaped her life and views.

I was hoping for wonderful tidbits of advice and to gain new outlooks on the world around me, but instead How to Think Like a Woman read like a textbook biography with the smallest morsels of Penaluna’s life, which was just not personal enough for me. If I was a student looking for a compelling and modern, but still academic source for a term paper it would be golden though.

I took a philosophy class in college and I wish I could say it was more memorable. It was only an intro to philosophy but I imagined the class to have more opportunities to explore concepts that I knew and end up questioning and debating. Instead, we focused on the main male philosophers and spoke about matter. I remember feeling deflated and regretting having picked a nine am class. I wish instead that I took a class from Regan Penaluna. I loved learning about these four women and about Penaluna’s own experiences. I will preface by saying that this is and I don’t think should be an overnight read. You get a lot of history from Penaluna, giving context to these four woman philosophers not solely their philosophies and facts. With all this information they should be given space and time to settle in your mind.

This book follows along while Penaluna talks you through her life, her studies of philosophy and how throughout it she found these four women philosophers who ended up changing her life. There were many quotes that stood out to me (and that I have highlighted and noted in a notebook) yet this is the one that has stuck and I will leave with you. It is from one of the philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft, “Do not retreat. A woman’s path to self-knowledge requires her to risk losing herself to find herself. I will go further, and affirm, as an indisputable fact, that most of the women, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational creatures, or shewn any vigour of intellect, have accidentally been allowed to run wild”.

Thank you to Regan Penaluna, NetGalley, and Grove Atlantic.

This was a hard book to get into, and once I put it down it was hard to pick back up. But once you get going with it and allow yourself to be lost in it, the book is a feminist, historical treat. Very unlike anything else out there right now.

I have received an audio ARC of this book and will be leaving my full review on that copy.

Thank you so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this, but didn't love it. I really appreciated Penaluna's frankness throughout the book, her willingness to examine herself and her beliefs and connect them to these women philosophers' ideas. I also found the women philosophers she discussed to be interesting, though the nature of the book means that we couldn't get as in-depth a look at them as I wanted. Overall enjoyable but I wish this had been more memorable for me.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the eARC!

This was a brilliant and interesting read, both in its concept and writing. I really liked the writing style, and the interesting information imparted. The cover is also very eye-catching, and the title is bold and catchy.

The book is more personal as the author — a fellow woman thinker herself — shares the stories of these four women intellectuals and weaves their narratives into reflections of her own personal life. What’s so important about this book is that it doesn’t just focus on women in the philosophy field or the academe in general; the author also shares the philosophy of these women in regards to traditional roles such as being a wife and a mother, and how these roles sometimes — or often times — come into conflict with their identity as scholars in an age where philosophical ideas were prolific. The book is not only educational, but reflective even of our own personal experiences as women, no matter what our fields are, whether academe, philosophy or even beyond such fields.

How to think like a woman: Goodreads/Net galley review

This book was such a treat. I went into this one blind only with the notion of a beautiful cover and a feminist premise of How to Think Like a Woman is a dedication to the female philosophers forgotten intentionally by time and academia.

In the time and space where hidden voices are being pushed to the forefront, this is another niche that is inevitably important in feminist works. Penaluna recounts personal anecdotes while intermingling with the women philosophers she had unearthed in her quest for representation. The voice given to these women was heartening and fascinating, with ideologies I had thought to be modern having been developed, pondered, and reverberated hundreds of years in the past.

As a contemporary philosopher in a male-dominated field, it is easy to adopt the imposter syndrome of not belonging, of feeling like an 'other' in an area that is supposed to encompass the world and all its wonders around you, intersectional, open, and accessible.

Penaluna has a way with words, crafting her journey in a novel-esque way that keeps you interested. For anyone not privy to this topic, it is written relaxedly, making it easy for most audiences to dissect.
My only grievances lie within the length of the unraveling biographies, which are often long and winding. Often times I felt myself drifting, not because they were not interesting but because I found the recounts of the author’s personal experiences more exciting and wished that was the main focus.

Overall, a fantastic book. One that I need to get for myself on my shelves, it’s a must-have. Thank you, NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, for the review copy.

I had a hard time getting through this one. I wanted to like it because I love reading about historical figures that are women, but this was not what I expected. I enjoyed listening to the author's story and how philosophy shaped basically her entire life. However, the way that the philosophers' stories were built into the story was a bit awkward. It went from memoir to historical lecture, which was jarring every time and felt like classwork. I wish the author stuck to one or the other or incorporated the philosophers' stories a bit differently, maybe weaving the stories into her own narrative. I would still recommend it to academics or those interested in philosophy, but not for people looking for a casual read.

4.5 stars!!!

This was a very well written and interesting look into the women of philosophy. The author did a very good job sprinkling in her own experiences throughout telling the life stories of these four woman, who I have regretfully never heard of before. It was very interesting to learn about these women and how they viewed the world through a philosophical lens. Sometimes over a hundred years before what most women consider the Women's Rights Movement, these women throughout Europe were speaking up about what a "woman's place" should be and how women were being treated as stupid and good for nothing but motherhood/being a wife. One woman in particular, who was very "traditional" was very upfront with her idea that a woman should only become a mother and/or a wife if that's what she wants for herself, and that men have no place to force that on them. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and wish it was longer! I'm definitely going to be on the look out for anything Regan writes in the future because I'm sure it will be this incredible mix of history and her personal journey of love, motherhood, and philosophy.

How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind by Regan Penaluna is part memoir, part philosophy manual.

Penaluna walks readers through her own evolution as she discovered the women philosophers who have been marginalized and overlooked and how she altered her scholarly focus to learn more about the contributions of key female philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. The book begins with going into detail on how certain male philosophers discussed women's abilities to engage in the life of the mind (alas, some of her examples were of her own professors, a discouraging take, albeit not surprising by any accounts).

Then Penaluna delves into four notable women that shaped philosophy and challenged the thinking and work of men around them: Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Catharine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Through this lens of scholarship, we are also given insights into Penaluna's life, particularly the start and end of her marriage to another philosopher. It is natural to make some conclusions about the misperceptions faced by women yet today, while finding some progress and hope.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

This non-fiction book details the author's own experiences with sexism and the patriarchy in philosophy academia, as well as exploring the lives and works of four female philosophers who influenced both her work and personal life.

Being a philosophy graduate, and due to the lack of discussion surrounding female philosophers and the absence of female philosophers on university syllabuses, this book totally grabbed my attention. I loved the balance of the personal alongside the philosophical history in here - learning about the four female philosophers was interesting and informative, and experiencing this alongside the author's personal story, and learning about how her philosophy studies impacted her personal life, was fascinating.

This was entertaining and educational with empowering feminine vibes, which is exactly what I wanted. I'd highly recommend this to anyone wanted to learn more about female philosophers.