Guest Blogger Andrew Shaffer Talks About Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

"A Note on Dead White Guys"

by Andrew Shaffer

Western philosophy has been dominated by Caucasian men for over two millennia. "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love," unfortunately, follows in the footsteps of this grand tradition of bigotry and misogyny (only two of the 37 philosophers featured in the book are women, and all are Caucasian).

This wasn't my initial aim. It was, however, prompted somewhat out of necessity: English-language historians have not devoted significant space in their books to female and non-white philosophers. Where such records do exist, there's a dearth of biographical detail, making inquiries into their love lives exceptionally difficult.

Take, for instance, Hipparchia the Cynic. She was born in Athens in the fourth century, although no one thought to record the date of her death. Like several other female philosophers (Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt come to mind), she is romantically linked to a famous male philosopher -- in her case, Crates. For centuries, writers have told and re-told the story of Hipparchia and her husband having sex in public. While it's an amusing anecdote to illustrate the Cynic (aka "dog-like") lifestyle in ancient Greece, no firsthand accounts remain to verify such tall tales.

While there is an entire world of philosophy outside the hallowed halls of white males, perhaps it's for the best that their "failures at love" haven't been recorded. Who would want to share space with Louis Althusser (strangled his wife to death), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (compared women to plants), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (flashed women in alleyways)?

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Andrew Shaffer is a frequent Huffington Post contributor and creative director of Order of St. Nick, the greeting card company whose irreverent cards have been featured on the Colbert Report, NPR, and Fox News.

Andrew Shaffer's book Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love was released this week in trade paperback by Harper Perennial.

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