H. LEWANDOWSKI/RMN-GRAND PALAIS
DEPRIVED
OF A VOICE
WOMEN PHILOSOPHERS
Despite the informal
nature of education for
girls, there are references in
classical sources to women
philosophers. One of the
most famous is mentioned in
Plato’s Symposium: Diotima,
who was lauded by Socrates.
She teaches them the
philosophical underpinnings
of love, in which the wise
seek to exchange physical
love for more spiritual forms
of desire, culminating in the
divine. This concept of love
greatly influenced medieval
and Renaissance thought.
Diotima’s words,
however, are known only
through the reports of male
philosophers. Another
female philosopher was
Axiothea, who, according to
the third-century A.D. author
Diogenes Laërtius, was so
inspired by Plato’s Republic
that she went to study under
him at the Academy, where
she had to dress as a man.
However, as with other
female philosophers in the
classical period, no firsthand
view of her philosophical
ideas has survived.
THE READER
Although only a tiny elite
became philosophers, some
Greek women were literate. The
fifth-century vase (left) shows a
woman reading a papyrus that
she has taken from a chest.