Ode to Josina Carolina van Lynden | A published philosopher from 1717

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Dear Josina Carolina van Lynden,

Congratulations!!! You were the first Dutch woman to write a book on logic, in Amsterdam. 
But how can it be, that while I have been involved with philosophy and the contribution of women to it for years, I only heard about you for the first time 250 years after your publication?

And that while you not only published books, but also wrote a letter to the States General, because your family felt you should not marry your great love, the preacher Adriaan Buurt. 
You had to wait until you were of age (at 25), then you married him anyway. Together you studied philosophy, he stimulated your writing, you published several books, including an abridged version of your husband's work, in question and answer form. You taught young girls. 

Your Logic or Redenkunde, as far as we know the first work on logic written by a Dutch woman, you wrote in 1770, at a time when girls were not even allowed to go to school. 
Your book was edited in 2023, published as Handboek Logica. Roek Vermeulen writes in the Introduction that while we may surmise that you were the first woman anywhere to do such a thing, we may also surmise that you were not particularly widely followed. You are not cited in Dutch publications on the history of logic (there is only one other woman who also wrote about logic, Christine Ladd-Franklin from the 19th century) and if you were discussed at all it was under your husband's name. One foreign guest did call you “a rarity.
Still, your book sold well; it was written for everyone who could read Dutch, it got a new edition after about 10 years. 

You had moved to Amsterdam in 1748, where you continued to live. You had no children, but your marriage was characterized by fruitful cooperation. You published several titles and were referred to as a learned woman in your own time. Your Logic showed women to be “amenable” to “more or less deducted [: abstract] intellectual reflections,” according to a reviewer in the Vaderlandsche Letter-oefeningen (1770).

You died on October 6, 1791 in Amsterdam, where you were interred 6 days later in your husband's grave in the Nieuwe Kerk.

I am writing you this now because I want to let you know that I would like to add your name to the “Women of Amsterdam” exhibition, hoping to give you a little more exposure. As soon as I have time to read your book properly I will write to you again, then with more substantive comments, but here for now: thanks! A female philosopher in the city, who published 254 years ago, we are proud of that!

Kind regards,

Karin Fontein
philosophy teacher at Joke Smit College 
and Volksuniversiteit in Amsterdam