  The following entry contains 4 major sections. Section 1 (“Feminist Criticisms of the Canon as Misogynist”) describes feminist readings of the philosophical canon that challenge its derogatory characterizations of women. These are of three kinds: (a) readings that record the explicit misogyny of great philosophers (like Aristotle's description of a female as a deformed male); (b) readings that argue for gendered interpretations of theoretical concepts (like matter and form in Aristotle); (c) synoptic interpretations of the canon (like the view that, historically, reason and objectivity are gendered male). The third category of feminist criticisms of the canon diagnoses where philosophy as a whole went most deeply wrong, and, in doing so, it constructs a negative canon of philosophy. The negative canon exposes the ways in which the views of canonical philosophers throughout the history of philosophy are explicitly or implicitly misogynist or sexist. Section 2 (“Feminist Revisions of the History of Philosophy”) discusses the response of feminist philosophy to the myths that there are no women philosophers and, in any case, no important ones. One response has been the retrieval of women philosophers for the historical record. A related development is the elevation to the canon of women philosophers like Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir. Finally, feminist revisions to the history of  philosophy and the canon raise important and pressing questions  concerning how to weave women philosophers securely into the story  of philosophy so that they begin to appear in the philosophical  curriculum.  Section 3 (“Feminist Appropriation of Canonical Philosophers”) examines the way that feminist philosophers have been engaged in rereading the canon looking for antecedents to feminist philosophy in the work of those philosophers (e.g. Hume) and those theories (e.g. Arisotle's virtue ethics) that are most congenial to current trends in feminism or which provide most fuel for feminist thought. This is to use the canon as other movements have done—as a resource, and as confirmation that a feminist perspective or problem is securely rooted in our philosophical culture. Section 4 (Feminist  Methodological Reflections on the History of Philosophy) discusses  the methodological issues raised by feminist work on the history of  philosophy.  Feminists who are critical of traditional methods of  reading the history of philosophy have proposed several alternative  reading strategies that they argue are better suited to feminist  purposes than traditional methods.  These writers are particularly  skeptical of the appropriation project outlined in section 3 and  their skepticism provokes interesting questions about what it is  we do when we do the history of philosophy.