Socratic Women III: Socrates and Hypatia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Can Socrates be a woman? In this stream of panels, we consider why Russian-language philosophical traditions have produced dozens of representations of Socrates, but not a single Diotima of Mantinea, from whom Socrates claimed to have learned the art of eros (in the Symposium), or an Aspasia of Miletus, from whom Socrates said he learned the art of rhetoric (in the Menexenus). Contributors will explore the image of Socrates in women’s writing and philosophical reflection, as well as figures of female Socrateses, both literally and figuratively, in Russian, Soviet, and East European intellectual history.

This panel, the final of three in the “Socratic Women” stream, includes contributions on the family novel as the generic heir to a literary lineage stretching back to Socratic “wisdom literature”; the reception of the Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia (c. 350/70-415) in the work of Lev Tolstoy, Maria Konopnicka, and Lev Zhdanov (Lev Gel'man); and the contributions of Anastasiya Tsvetaeva’s "Royal Reflections" and "Smoke, Smoke, and Smoke" to the Russian philosophical tradition.

Sub Unit

• Religion, Philosophy

Chair

• Alyssa DeBlasio, Dickinson College

Papers

• Sofias in the Russian Family Novel: Reframing the Genre as Liberal Wisdom Literature - Christy Monet, Brown U

• Subtle as a Serpent: Ambiguous Reception of Three Hypatias in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Russia - Sveta Yefimenko, U of Exeter (UK)

• Anastasia Tsvetaeva: Philosophical Contemplations - Vadim Besprozvany, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Discussant

• Victoria Juharyan, Johns Hopkins U