Philosophie (1874)

“Philosophie,” signed “M.” and attributed to Carl Menger, is an 1874 review of Susanna Rubinstein’s Die sensoriellen und sensitiven Sinne. It connects a defense of women’s access to scholarship with an assessment of research at the boundary of psychology and physiology. Its extended discussion of academic exclusion establishes the significance of Rubinstein’s achievement before turning to her method.

The opening contrasts women’s acknowledged literary accomplishments with their contested standing in science:

Auf dem Gebiete der Wissenschaft dagegen ist die Stellung der Frauen noch lange nicht anerkannt und die Zahl derjenigen noch immer nicht gering, welche die Frauen aus dem Tempel der Wissenschaft mit der ganzen Strenge des Gesetzes vertrieben wissen wollen.

English translation: In the field of science, by contrast, the position of women is still far from being recognized, and the number of those is still not small who wish to see women driven out of the temple of science with the full rigour of the law.

Against this exclusion, the reviewer invokes historical examples of women teaching at Italian universities. Such precedents demonstrate intellectual capacity without securing lasting recognition. The argument distinguishes evidence of achievement from the willingness to accept it: prejudice persists despite counterexamples.

The review then shifts to contemporary educational mobility. American women seeking medical training in Austria and Germany, together with Russian women attending Swiss universities, reveal renewed demand for higher education. The Russian students’ precarious access also exposes the fragility of these opportunities. Recalling two American women doctors in Vienna, the reviewer writes:

Die jungen Damen waren von nicht gewöhnlicher Bildung, höchst einfachem, männlichen Wesen und in ihrem geistigen Habitus anderen jungen Aerzten durchaus ähnlich.

English translation: The young ladies were of no ordinary education, of a most unaffected, manly nature, and in their intellectual habitus thoroughly similar to other young physicians.

This favorable testimony rests partly on a gendered measure of professional legitimacy. The women become recognizable as competent colleagues through their resemblance to male physicians. The defense of inclusion thus coexists with assumptions that make masculinity a standard of scholarly bearing.

Austria provides the immediate context for Rubinstein’s importance. The reviewer distinguishes women’s increasing employment in postal and telegraph services from their attainment of scholarly credentials. Rubinstein’s reported Leipzig doctorate offers evidence of Austrian women’s academic capabilities. Her essay, identified as apparently her inaugural dissertation, receives praise as serious scientific work rather than genteel entertainment.

The methodological appraisal emphasizes empirical discipline. In the reviewer’s account, Rubinstein follows sensory stimulation through nervous excitation but refrains from speculative explanation of the transition from nerve stimulus to mental image. She turns instead to psychological processes accessible through inward observation. The unresolved relation between physiological and mental events marks a boundary of explanation, while experience remains the basis of inquiry on either side.

The review joins academic inclusion to epistemic restraint. Rubinstein’s work warrants recognition through its scientific seriousness, engagement with research on the senses, and refusal to substitute speculation for demonstrable knowledge. The concluding judgment that the essay would honor any young philosophy doctorate brings the social and methodological arguments together: women’s scholarly capacity should be assessed through the intellectual standards applied to their male peers.