4 the Problem of Women Philosophers in Ancient Greece
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er.. - - 71 •. r 4 The. Problem of Women philosophised is remarkahly small. Furthermore. I shall draw attention to nutjor methodological diffrculliesRichard involved Hawley in the study of the literary sources for the lives of these women. A pattern will develop that informs these sources, a patlern of women philosophers as anomalies whose depal1ure fro'." recognised social behaviour requires special explanation. These expla Philosophers in Ancient nations oflcn resort to the forniliar conccplUal link bclwcen women and the �orld of the senses, the physical, rather than that of the rational, the Greece· mtellectual. I shall confine my discussion to between the sixth century BC Hawley and the first century AD, thus avoiding Hypatia. The sources for Hypatia Richard are ate and bound up with the complexities involved in the study of any ! _ Chmtian ltterature of the period. As such she deserves to be studied sepa rately. Nor shall I discuss the complex and already well-documented case of Oh! There I met those few congenial maids Aspasia. Instead, I shall turn my attention to 'forgotten' woinen.' . Whom love hath warm'd, in philosophic shades; There still Leontium, on her sage's breast, Found lore and love, was tutor' d and caress' d; VIEWS OF THE MALE PHILOSOPHERS And there the clasp of Pythia's gentle arms ·Repaid the zeal which deified her char!ns. It is possible lha1 lhc fir.s1 .school to have encouraged the study of philoso The Attic Master, in Aspasia's eyes, phy by womc was lhat of the Pythagoreans in the mid-sixth century BC. _ � _ Forgot the yoke of less endearing ties, The ph1losopl11cal bmgrapher Diogenes Laerlius (Jhird century ADJ tells us While fair Theano, innocently fair, that they believed Reason, which was the most impo11ant human character Wreath'd playfully her Samian's flowing hair, istic, was unaffected by gender.' Indeed the life by Iamblichus Whose soul now fix'd, its transmigrations past, (third lo fourth century AD) ac1ually records 17 women followers of Py Found in those arms a resting-place at last; thagoras, whom l)e describes as 'the most illustrious',of Pythagoras perhaps implying that And smiling own'd, whate'er his dreamy thought there were also others.' Croton, where Pythagoras founded his school, he In mystic numbers long had vainly sought, was said to have spoken lo the women specially. At . The One that's fonn'd of Two whom love hath bound, Pytlrngora.c; may also forni lhc st.irting-point for our examination of lhe Is the.bes_! number gods or men e'er found. recurrc111 commonplaces in classical discussions of women philosophers. For he i."i n:porlcd 1 ,_, have st1id I/Ii.JI vinu_c was a rci1lis1ic goal for girls as Thomas Moore, 711e _ well as boys, marned women as well as the elderly. His ,assimilation of Dream of the Blessed /s/a11ds . ·Moore;s romantic presentationGrecian of Greek Girl's women philosophers as 'those few children and married women with lhe elderly, a.s recognisably weak groups, congenial maids' encapsulates more vividly than perhaps he realised some can be panillcJcd el.,;,ewhcreamong male wr-iters: for example in ·Protagoras, r' of the most prevalent of the ancient Greek images of the woman philoso Clement of Alexandria or Minucius Felix.' Pythagoras may believe women pher that I shall examine in this chapter. Firstly these women are 'few', merit inclusion among the philosophers. bul the expr.-ssion of that belief exceptions to the rule of antiquity. Secondly, and typical of the influential implicitly reveal., his acceptance of the common Greek view of women as attitude of that time towards the women of Greek literature, Moore depicts a distinct, separable and weaker group of society. them as charming, gentle, sensual. Their appeal is physical rather than The ascetic lifestyle led by 1he Pythagoreans was the butt of at least two intelleetual; they areeffectively mere appendages to their male mentors. In ancient comedies, by comic writers of the fourth century BC, Cratinus rhe this chapter I wish to explore these images of intellectual women and to Younger and Alexis;' which bore 1hc title IV0111a11 11 place them in their literary and philosophical context. I shall demonstrate The tilles refer le> a woman Pythagorean, 'J,;Jt. this need 1101 imply lhal they depicled a wonwn ac1uallyThe teaching11·/w,Pw!m philosophy.orise.r She how the theories of the male philosophers accommodate the possibility of (Pytlwgori�o11.w). female philosophers, while the number of actual cases of women who 70 Richard Ha wley 73 i : niay well hare simply Wofollomenwed in the Ancient curious Socie d etartiey slaws of the sect wh ich Socrates ' own wife, Xanthippe, was not recorded as a ph ilosopher. Her seem to have been a more common focus of com ic attention. But a woman purpose in later ph i losophic _ writings was to highlight the ideal is still chosen for her comic potential: she is therefore a doub le an omal y. Stoic pa tience of her husband . If Socrates cou ld tolerate Xanthippe as the most The biogr aphical tradition records that Pythagoras hi mself studied phi difficult of wom (chalepotate) en that ha ve been, are or ever will be, he priestess Themistoclea.• Here we enco unter can losophy un der the Delphic , · toler ate anything . Xanthip pe therefore becomes an idealised ex tr eme. another biographical commonplace: the image of the priestess as teacher. But ii is lo the te xts by Pl at o (fou rt h century BC) that we must h s 'teacher ' in Pla10 s Sympo turn for We natur ally recall Socr ates and Diotima, i : more direct thought (whether genuinely Socratic or Platon ic) on the ques sium 208c (four th century BC) . Diotima herself may be a lite rar y mventmn . tion of women . Bluestone (1987) ha s shown how in past scholarship these · The story about Pythagoras can be easily under stood . As poets could speak te xts ha ve been misunderstood or jus t ignored. But Plato's message has at with the divine authority of the Muses , so the priestess of Del ph i could act least clear ou tlines. Essentially, the soul is immaterial, eternal hav ing her as his teacher (whe ther in and non as the mouthpiece for Apollo. By sexual; on ly our bodies ar e different. The souls of men and women could partake of her authori ty . Ancie nt can reality or in legend), Pythagoras eq ually study philosophy Th . e wise man or woman should try to tive activ ity: one had to woo dhe rents to separate philosophy was often a competi � body an d so ul, so removing se xual difference. For Plato, education one' s s i de and away from other s. Themistodea 's importance m the story , is essential for the acquisition of _ virtue and ought to be the same for boys and therefore , lies in her role as the authoritati ve De lphic priestess , not m her r girls." 8111 even Pl ato cannot escap e f om the deeply-rooted Greek view of gender . Apolline connections may also· be fell in the tradition (perh up � the natural inferiority of women. This ph ysical weakness requires them . local, perhaps Samian) which actually made Pythagoras the son of Apoll o. to wor k lon ger to ac hieve lhe same level as me n: a woman . Pythagoras ' advocation of monogamy may well explain why trad•U n cannot. for � example, ass ume any civic office until she is 40, while a man may do so recorded that he had a wife who also studied philosophy , for fnendsh 1p at 30. 12 theories oft�n advocated common interests withi n a p art ne rship. Once agai n, . Nonethe less, we do hear of i women connected with Plato's Academy. as with so much of this type of mater al , the philosophy dictates the form of Fi rstly, there was a tradition that Pl ato's mother, Perictione, the biography . was a philoso pher. '' But we may ex . plain this as Plato's lfterary connation The marriage between Theano and Pythagoras is in many ways an ideal of Diotima with the metaphors of midwifery used by his Socrates, whose Pythagorean marriage , for althou gh the wi fe has her ow n importance, th is is own mother, Phaenarete, was sa id to be a midwife." Pericti one's subordinated to the union as a whole in due accord ance with Py tha gorean name is given as that of the author of a later Neopythagorean work, but this on teaching on marriage. But I shall discuss Th ean o in more de tail in my next ly I.e lls us that the tr dition was alre ady � established by the ti me of that la section. _ ter work. Secondly, Diogenes Laert,us records two women, Ax iothea and Lasthenia, who were Among the Sophists of the fifth century BC , only Aspas ia is recorded as pu pils of Plato and of his successors. The (sophist riu),' notoriety of the discussion of the a 'woman sophist' but she is altoge ther an exce ptiona l charac eq uality of the sexes in Plato's R,·1mblic may accou ter and I shall not discuss her here. for ther e are co mplex l terary reasons nt 'ro r. the story that i Axiolhe a was inspired by that work to dress as a man to study · at the that dictate her image in the anecdotal traditio n, which make accu rate Academy." assessment of her historical role imposs ible.