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Taking Xanthippe's Side SHORT CIRCUIT DOI: 10.24425/academiaPAS.2020.135934 Taking Xanthippe’s Side Katarzyna Kasia Chair of Culture Theory, Faculty of Management of Visual Culture, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw t is pointless to go looking in textbooks of West- men.”1 Given this, it is little wonder that learning was Katarzyna Kasia, ern philosophy for any portraits of women. Espe- meant to entail remembering – or reverently conserv- PhD is a philosopher, I cially in the early centuries, back when abstract ing, unearthing with archeological care – the much a graduate of the thought, far detached from day-to-day, banal con- more ancient wisdom. Perhaps that is why, from the Faculty of Philosophy cerns, emerged unexpectedly (or perhaps necessarily) outset, there was more regret in all this, than sensi- and Sociology, in Greece. Although its birth was patronized by the tivity? University of Warsaw, Pythia of Delphi, a woman who spoke in riddles, the But what about Socrates? The father of ethics, who a recipient of grants voice of philosophy nevertheless remained unam- spent the whole of his tragically-ended life promot- from the Italian biguously male. This obviously stemmed from po- ing virtue – his own and that of others? After all, he Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the litical and societal factors, from established roles en- was a man of endless patience, sacrifice, and care. He Kościuszko Foundation, trenched in longstanding customs, from the law, from would spend all his days, and sometimes even eve- a visiting scholar at written and unwritten rules of exclusion and priv- nings and nights, in the Athenian Agora, tirelessly Princeton University. ilege. Womanhood was seen as inherently imbued helping his fellow Greeks to discover the truth, strive Deputy Dean of the with the Dionysian wildness of the Bacchae, which for virtue, and become better people. The accusation Faculty of Management could never be tamed, never squeezed into the con- I raise against him will not be Nietzschean – I do not of Visual Culture, fines of cool intellect. Perhaps, though we know next know how things really were with Greek tragedy or Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. A regular to nothing about it, the situation may have looked if “putting life on the stage” should really be treated contributor to the different in those parts of society where philosophy as an unforgivable sin. My accusation has the face of weekly Kultura was closely entwined with religion, reason interwo- a woman, and her name is Xanthippe. Socrates’s wife Liberalna, and ven with faith, and physicality with spirituality – like went down in history as an awful and quarrelsome a frequent political among the Pythagoreans, or much later the Epicu- woman, a shrew who would rail against her husband commentator in the reans, who professed completely different views but in public, yelling at him, cursing him, urging him to Polish media. also lived in multigenerational communities. Howev- show elementary care for his family, forcing him to [email protected] er, there too, or perhaps especially there, the master, come home, tearing him away from young people a man whose views were considered the only rightful hungry for his teachings to make him provide for his ones, was supremely important, pointing out the cor- own children. rect path for his followers, male and female. Perhaps that is why the notion of tender sensitiv- When Alcibiades said to him, “The abusive ity is so rarely encountered in this oldest philoso- temper of Xanthippe is intolerable;” “But I,” phy. The concepts of reason, beauty, good, truth, jus- he rejoined, “am used to it, just as I should be tice, virtue are all there, but they are all striving for if I were always hearing the noise of a pulley; a certain bronzy certainty. Even if the ancient wise- and you yourself endure to hear geese cackling.” men begin with a question, or like Aristotle with an To which Alcibiades answered, “Yes, but they apotheosis of wonderment, they very quickly join bring me eggs and goslings.” “Well,” rejoined in the stream of mutually incompatible assertions, Socrates, “and Xanthippe brings me children.”2 in debate, in a kind of rivalry with very high stakes indeed: the title of the wisest Greek. On the other Xanthippe brought him children. Pause here for hand, inherent in this struggle is an a priori sense of a moment and try to interpret this sentence. Regard- defeat, because “the wisest” in the classical era is no less of how we look at it, there is no recognition, no longer sophos, but at most phileo – sophos, he is not sense of tenderness there – instead, what we find in a wiseman but only a lover of wisdom. As Giorgio this sentence is a vast expanse of contempt. And this Colli wrote: “It was Plato who first used the name may be the biggest grudge I hold against Socrates: it philosophy for his meditations, for his literary delib- erations inseparably linked to writing as a means of 1 expression, the literary form of dialog. But at the same Giorgio Colli, La nascita della filosofia, Milan, 1975, trans. this fragment Daniel J. Sax. time Plato harbored admiration for the past times, the 2Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent old world where in which there still lived true wise- Philosophers, trans. C. D. Yonge 1915. THE MAGAZINE OF THE PAS 78 1/65/2020 Luca Penni, Socrates and Xanthippe, around 1550, Royal Castle in Warsaw, Wikimedia COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG Commons, public domain was his fault that disregard would be confused with ning. Two thousand years of the dominance of Chris- tenderness for centuries, or even millennia. Barely tian thought, especially in the Catholic Church’s ver- anyone, though there were fortunately such cases, sion, have helped to perpetuate these trends. The only took Xanthippe so seriously as to think for a moment eruption of tenderness in the darkness of patriarchy about her, her life, her daily struggle, her humiliation, came with the letters written to Abelard by Heloise, and her loneliness. In the final act of this story, the who showed in a dramatic way the price that must be wise and good admirer of virtue (which is truth) and paid for tenderness in the ultimate nihil sibi reservavit truth (which is virtue) was sentenced to death, and (Latin for “keeping nothing to oneself”). Of course, although he could easily avoid it, he decided to die for there were other such swallows in history, but none principles as decided by the court. Did anyone think of them made a summer, so to speak. The nineteenth, about Xanthippe while sobbing over The Apology of twentieth, and twenty-first centuries were a period Socrates and Phaedo? About her being left alone with of grand transformations, bringing a vindication of everything: a home, children, the controversial legacy weakness, tenderness, doubt, multifaceted thought. of her husband and his legend? We may think of this That said, all these things are easier to find in essays gesture as the ultimate perpetuation of priorities and than in major treatises. stereotypes, the complete shattering of any hope for Despite the great work done to make the voice of tender, interpersonal sensitivity. women in philosophy heard loud and clear, the un- Limited space here prevents me from elaborating derlying sin remains that of disregard. Unless and un- further on the thesis that male Western philosophy til we understand Xanthippe, appreciate her, and cry very often lacks a sense of tenderness. Perhaps it has over her fate, a time of wisewomen, of tender female been too unilateral, too machist from its very begin- narrators, will never have any chance to arrive. ■ THE MAGAZINE 79 OF THE PAS 1/65/2020.
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