Lilli Alanen

Lilli Alanen (née Gullichsen, born 1941) is a Finnish philosopher and Professor of History of Philosophy at Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. She specialises in the history of philosophy — with particular interest in René Descartes and David Hume but she has also contributed to feminist philosophy.

In her critically received book on Descartes (2003), Alanen goes beyond mere history, drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes' thinking about the mind, showing how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account associated with his thinking suggests.

Lilli Alanen is a member of the Ahlström family. Her mother was Finnish art collector and patron of the arts Maire Gullichsen and her father the industrialist Harry Gullichsen. In 1964 she married the Finnish artist Sakari Alasen (b. 1940), and they have three children. They were divorced in 1989. In 1992 Alanen married the American philosopher Frederick Stoutland (1933–2011).

Selection of writings by Alanen

• Lilli Alanen, Descartes's Concept of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2003.
• Lilli Alanen and Charlotte Witt (eds.), Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy (The New Synthese Historical Library), Springer, New York, 2004.
• Lilli Alanen and Sara Heinämaa (eds.), Commonality and Particularity in Ethics, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1997.
• Lilli Alanen, Studies in Cartesian epistemology and philosophy of mind, Acta philosophica Fennica, Helsinki, 1982.

External links

• Alanen biography