Empowerment and Interconnectivity: Toward a Feminist History of Utilitarian Philosophy

Chapter 2: Catharine Beecher and Writing Philosophy for Women

2 catharine beecher and writing philosophy for women .................................................................................................. The next philosopher I wish to examine, Catharine Beecher, is an interesting case. Despite the fact that she was one of the most productive female philosophers of the nineteenth century, and it could be reasonably claimed that she was the first female American philosopher with a fully worked out philosophical system, Beecher is best known as domestic economist. Claiming Beecher as a utilitarian feminist philosopher may at first seem a stretch to those who know her only as a domestic economist. Beecher is certainly a utilitarian, but not in the strict classical mode. Her commitment to women has also been questioned; she has been seen—at best—as a relational feminist, while she has also been critiqued for her stance against suffrage and women’s rights.1 However, I think that this critique misinterprets what Beecher had to say about women. We need to recognize her as a philosopher with a complete moral system that leads to a robust form of empowerment for women. Relational feminism may offer moral empowerment—indeed, it may even offer social influence—but neither moral empowerment nor social influence is what most feminists mean by real power. I am going to argue that Beecher offers a level of mental, moral, and economic independence that constitutes a real form of empowerment for nineteenth-century women, albeit white middle-class American women, relative to their historical and cultural context. In so doing, I will also continue the discussion initiated in the previous chapter on Wheeler and Thompson about the use of the notion of empowerment as a guiding concept for analyses of feminist or potentially feminist historical texts and philosophies. 76 empowerment and interconnectivity Beecher’s arguments for the empowerment of women are part of an identi- fiable philosophical system, yet, as I have said, Beecher has been ignored as a philosopher. Beecher was one of the few historical women philosophers who were ‘‘professional’’ philosophers, meaning that she had formal training and both spoke publicly and published her ideas. Yet she is not part of the ‘‘trajectory ’’ of the history of the discipline, not even in specialized American, nineteenth-century, or utilitarian histories. In Catharine Beecher’s case, her neglect as a philosopher can be attributed to both the content and the apparently ‘‘nonphilosophical’’ forms of some of her work, in particular, her domestic advice manuals and collections of advice letters. I specifically argue, however, that to separate these works from her more traditionally philosophical works would be a mistake; Beecher chose these particular genres because they fit the goals of her philosophical system: educating and empowering women. Moreover, as we shall see, women—more specifically, empowered women—are a central component of Beecher’s philosophical system, which is exceedingly rare in historical philosophies. By extension, I will also indicate that traditional philosophical genres were aimed at men. Moreover, I will show how traditional genres reinforce a picture of philosophy that is ‘‘masculinist’’ and has historically excluded women. Thus I will also argue that a feminist reading of historical texts will need to allow for nontraditional genres like those employed by Beecher. In this way, then, the meta-questions I examine in this chapter focus on the concepts of philosophical authorship and philosophical texts that are wrapped up with the two mainstream approaches to this history of philosophy; and as with my analysis of the work of Wheeler and Thompson, I shall again show that these two approaches are not well suited for the examination of feminist philosophical texts. Catharine Beecher’s Biography Born in East Hampton in 1800, Catharine Ward Beecher was the daughter of the Calvinist theologian and evangelist Lyman Beecher and an older sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the novelist. Beecher was well educated; she studied literature, mathematics, and science as well as the more traditionally ‘‘feminine ’’ subjects of religion and what we nowadays call domestic science (Waithe 1991, 235). In 1823 Beecher opened what became a highly successful catharine beecher 77 school, the Hartford Female Seminary. According to Beecher’s main biographer , Kathryn Kish Sklar (1973, 59), Beecher’s ‘‘contemporaries believed and historians have since held that Catharine Beecher’s school constituted one of the most significant advances made in early nineteenth-century education for women.’’ Beecher remained with the school for eight years. She began to teach moral philosophy to the students and in her final year...