E. E. Constance Jones (1848–1922)

“Bad philosophy” and “derivative philosophy”: Labels that keep women out of the canon

“…Modesty is often attributed to early analytic female philosophers, including by their defenders, both contemporary and recent; it generally seems to be considered a virtue. For example, Mary Ellen Waithe and Samantha Cicero describe Jones as “modest” multiple times (1995, 26, 27), and the author of the preface to Jones's memoirs writes, “The treatise on Logic, of which she speaks so modestly , is considered by experts an important contribution to a science on which the outsider might suppose that there was not much new to be said” (Inge 1922, v; our emphasis). Of Margaret MacDonald it was said that she was “loved and esteemed [for her philosophical work] far more widely than, in her modesty , she would allow herself to recognise” (Wooton 1956, 11; our emphasis).…”