Proof it isn’t a man’s world!
QUESTION
Are there any famous female philosophers? The history of philosophy — the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline — is predominantly white and predominantly male, and topics deemed important by the discipline tend to ignore race, ethnicity, and gender.
It has been claimed by some that women are less comfortable than men in inhabiting the cold, analytical space, in which philosophy exists.
Others claim that in contemporary philosophy there is too much focus on the history of Western philosophy — e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, hume, Kant, hegel, Russell, Wittgenstein and others, and not enough on Asian, African, or Native American ideas about the nature of mind.
But there is a history of women philosophers running through the ages. Female philosophers of the Vedic period in India include Ghosha, Lopamudra, Maitreyi and Gargi.
Gargi, a Vedic prophetess, famously bamboozled male Vedic philosophers at a philosophic congress with the question ‘The layer that is above the sky and below the earth, which is described as being situated between the earth and the sky and which is indicated as the symbol of the past, present and future, where is that situated?’
hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, was a famous teacher, mathematician and astronomer who developed neo-Platonism at Alexandria from about AD 400 to her death in 415. She was so well-known that correspondence addressed only to ‘The Philosopher’ is said to have reached her.
hypatia is thought to have taught ideas relating to different levels of reality and humanity’s ability to understand them.
German abbess hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), one of the great female figures of the medieval era, founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and eibingen in 1165.
She was also a fine composer, a visionary, a prophet — known as The Sibyl Of The Rhine — and a pioneer who wrote practical books on biology, botany, medicine, theology, philosophy and the arts.
her Ordo Virtutum is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an english feminist and egalitarian, associated with Thomas Paine and William Godwin (her husband). In A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men (1790) she argued against the slave trade.
A Vindication of the Rights Of Women (1792) was an early feminist tract, and she was opposed to monarchy, church, the military and marriage, which she described as ‘legal prostitution’. She died after giving birth to the future Mary Shelley.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a Russianborn novelist and philosopher who emigrated to America in 1924. Beloved of the conservative right, she developed a philosophy of individualism she called objectivism (‘a philosophy for living on earth’), and she is known for her philosophical novels The Fountainhead (1935) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. Beauvoir developed an education in traditional philosophy (she wrote a thesis on Leibniz) into more radical explorations of feminism and existentialism.
her seminal work was The Second Sex in which she argued that women have been held back throughout history by the perception that they are a ‘deviation’ from the male norm. She insisted this was an assumption that must be broken if feminism were to succeed.
Emma Layne, Nottingham.
QUESTION
The Liverpool Law Courts used to have a Court of Passage. What was this for? hISTORICALLY, there were many minor courts open to a person wishing to collect a debt or seek damages for loss or injury.
Many received their charter in the reign of edward III, but the jurisdiction of the Liverpool Court of Passage originated from Charters granted by Charles I and William III. It would appear the name was chosen as an indication that the court would deal with cases arising from the imports and exports passing through the city. Given the flow of goods, justice had to be swift. It was effectively a small claims court presided over by a judge, who had to be a barrister of seven years’ call, a registrar and a Sergeant-of-the-Mace charged with enforcing the fines.
The Court of Passage could be used only in cases where the disputed sum was less than £20 before being passed up to a higher authority. The court was abolished by the Courts Act 1971 along with several other minor courts, including The Court of Chancery of the County Palatine of Lancaster, The Court of Chancery of the County Palatine of Durham and Sadberge, The Mayor’s and City of London Court (a new county court was established with the same name), The Tolzey and Pie Poudre Courts of the City and County of Bristol, The Norwich Guildhall Court and The Court of Record for the hundred of Salford.
Graham Beith, Formby, Lancs.
QUESTION
Which country has the largest gold reserves? The price of gold has had a remarkable run since it started its rise at the beginning of the millennium, climbing more than 650 per cent between April 2001 and September 2011. This puts into perspective Gordon Brown’s sale of 395 tonnes of our gold between July 1999 and March 2002.
The average price achieved in those disposals was $275.6 a troy ounce. eventually gold peaked at $1,910.78 in August 2011 and now stands at $1,341.40.
The, $3.5bn of revenue raised in the Brown sales was invested in interestbearing assets, but it’s estimated he lost the country somewhere around $9 billion.
Other central banks started to increase their reserves in 2008 as the financial crisis rolled across the globe, to protect their nation’s wealth against volatility.
The U.S. has the largest stockpile, holding 8,133.5 tonnes. Most is held at Fort Knox in Kentucky. The U.S. is followed by Germany (3,381 tonnes); Italy (2,451 tonnes); France (2,435.8 tonnes); China (1,823.3 tonnes); Russia (1,498.7 tonnes); Switzerland (1,040 tonnes — the highest per capita figure); Japan (765.2 tonnes) Netherlands (612.5 tonnes); and India 557.8 tonnes.
The IMF holds 2,814 tonnes and the eCB 504.8 tonnes. The UK reserves are a comparatively modest 310.3 tonnes.
G. M. Short, Canterbury, Kent.
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