Ever since Socrates' wife was painted as a jealous shrew (1) by one of his pupils, women have had it tough (2) in philosophy.
Thinkers from Aristotle to Kant questioned whether women were fully capable of reason. Today, many in the field say, gender bias (3) and sexual harassment (4) are endemic in philosophy, where women make up less than 20 percent of university faculty members, lower than in any other humanities field, and account for a tiny fraction of citations in top scholarly journals.
While the status of women in the sciences has received broad national attention, debate about sexism in philosophy has remained mostly within the confines of academia. But the revelation this summer that Colin McGinn, a star philosopher at the University of Miami, had agreed to leave his tenured post after allegations of sexual harassment brought by a graduate student, has put an unusually famous name to the problem, exposing the field to what some see as a healthy dose of sunlight.
"People are thinking, 'Wow, he had to resign, and we know about it,'" said Jennifer Saul, the chairwoman of the philosophy department at the University of Sheffield in England and the editor of the blog "What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?"
"I think that's unprecedented," she added.
The case, which was first reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, has set off voluminous chatter (5) among philosophers on blogs and social media. The discussion has been fueled (6) partly by McGinn's own blog, where his use of the cryptic language of analytic philosophy in attempts to defend himself seems to have backfired (7) .
Two open letters, posted online in mid-July and signed by more than 100 philosophers, including a majority of McGinn's colleagues at Miami, criticized some of the posts on his blog as "retaliation" against the student.
Meanwhile, some of McGinn's posts - including one meditating on the difference between "suggesting" an action and "entertaining" it, and another (since removed) on alternate meanings of a crude term for masturbation - seem even to some of McGinn's onetime supporters as less philosophical than self-incriminating.
"There's no doubt he behaved badly," said Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who in June wrote a letter in support of McGinn but said he has since revised his opinion of the case. "The outcome (8) was too severe, but there definitely should have been consequences."
The McGinn case is short on undisputed facts, beyond that McGinn agreed in December to resign, before the matter was to be put to further inquiry by Miami's faculty senate. (The university declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality in personnel matters.)
But it does have an unusually colorful protagonist in McGinn, an Oxford-trained philosopher of mind known for his eviscerating book reviews and blunderbuss (9) personal style.
McGinn, 63, came to public prominence in the early 1990s as one of the so-called New Mysterians, a group of philosophers who challenged (10) the notion that human consciousness could ever be fully explained. In recent years, he has employed a more popular style, writing books on movies, sports and Shakespeare, along with cheekier (11) projects like a short 2008 volume subtitled "A Critique of Mental Manipulation" (the title is unpublishable here).
In McGinn's version of events, his relationship with the student, a first-year doctoral candidate who worked as his research assistant during the 2012 spring semester, was an unconventional mentorship gone sour (12) .
It was "a warm, consensual, collaborative relationship," an "intellectual romance" that never became sexual but was full of " bantering (13) ," McGinn said in a telephone interview. The terms of his agreement with the university, he said, prevented him from saying much more. But "banter referring to sexual matters," he added, isn't always "sexual banter."
The student, through intermediaries, declined to be interviewed for this article, citing concern that it might damage her academic career.
But Benjamin Yelle, the student's boyfriend and a fifth-year graduate student in philosophy at Miami, said she had been subject to months of unwanted innuendo and propositions from McGinn, documented in numerous emails and text messages of an explicit and escalating sexual nature she had shown him. In one from May 2012, Yelle said, McGinn suggested he and the student have sex three times over the summer "when no one is around."
Both McGinn and the student declined to provide any emails or other documents related to the case.
Many philosophers say that the accusations of misbehavior against McGinn are the edge (14) of a much bigger problem, one that women have long been unwilling to discuss publicly, in case it harm (15) their careers.
Many credit the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?, which in 2010 began posting anonymous stories of harassment, with helping to highlight (16) the issue.
"Nearly every woman you talk to in philosophy has experienced first- or secondhand some form of sexual harassment that is egregious," said Gideon Rosen, a philosopher at Princeton. "It's not just one or two striking (17) anecdotes."There are signs that the publicity surrounding the McGinn case may be encouraging more women to step forward. Both Saul and Peggy DesAutels, a philosopher at the University of Dayton and a member of the American Philosophical Association's newly formed Committee on the Status of Women, said that in recent weeks they had each heard from several graduate students who were considering presenting complaints.
But changing the broader culture of philosophy to make it more woman-friendly, many say, is a daunting (18) task - particularly since no one can agree on the root cause of that unfriendliness.
Is it direct sexual discrimination? The lack of female mentors? The highly technical nature of much contemporary Anglo-American philosophy? The field's notoriously aggressive style of argument?
Scholars in all disciplines have disagreements. But philosophy is unusual, many say, in its tradition of developing ideas through face-to-face and sometimes brutal debate.
"People in other disciplines think we're just thugs (19) ," said Louise Antony, a philosopher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
That reliance on debate can pose a particular dilemma for women, she added. Argue aggressively, and they're branded (20) shrews (to put it nicely). Hold back (21) , and they're not good philosophers.
"Many people have called philosophy the combat sport of academia," Antony said. "But if you can't have those conversations, you're at a disadvantage."
Some gatherings (22) , like the Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, to be held next week in Washington state, have instituted an informal "be nice" rule. At the same time, other efforts to make sure women in the field aren't made invisible are gaining impetus.
In 2011, the blog "Feminist Philosophers" began the Gendered Conference Campaign, a project that tracks all-male conference lineups. (One recent example: "Being a Human Being, Being a Person," held last month at the University of Oxford.)
In July, after sociologist Kieran Healy published a study showing that women made up less than 4 percent of top citations in leading philosophy journals since 1992, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy sent out an email asking contributors to make sure that entries do not cite work by white men on a given topic while ignoring prior contributions by women and other underrepresented groups.
Such "citation blindness," scholars say, may be less a result of overt discrimination than of implicit bias, a phenomenon that has generated a rich literature in psychology, but that philosophers are only beginning to study.
In an essay on implicit bias in the forthcoming (23) book "What Needs to Change: Women in Philosophy," Saul recalled the terror of overhearing (24) faculty members at Princeton, where she earned her Ph.D., casually sort graduate students into "smart" versus merely hard-working - or worse, "stupid."
Women, she said, are more likely to be categorized as "stupid," to the detriment of the field as a whole.
Fear of being labeled not smart "is bad for philosophy," Saul said. "It makes you not want to take risks."