Women and the Female in Neoplatonism

亚历山大的Hypatia(公元前4世纪)有理由声称自己是前现代世界最受尊敬的女哲学家。事实上，对许多人来说，Hypatia这个名字被用作领先的国际女权主义哲学杂志的标题，几乎成了女权主义和哲学中的妇女和性别问题的同义词。然而，令人惊讶的是，到目前为止，在希帕提亚自己的思想流派：新柏拉图主义中，还没有对女性和女性的全面考察。这个项目旨在通过首次对新柏拉图主义中女性的观念和观念进行全面研究来纠正这种可悲的忽视。该项目将通过调查三个主要领域进行。它将从新柏拉图形而上学中对女性的全面考察开始。不可否认的证据是，新柏拉图形而上学在某种重要意义上是性别的：现实由男性和女性形而上学原则的相互作用组成和结果。这无疑引发了新柏拉图式形而上学与更广泛的新柏拉图式女性概念之间的联系的紧迫问题，但这些问题都没有得到应有的关注。这里的目标是找出女性形而上学原则的性质、范围、起源和含义，这些原则是由新柏拉图学派的不同成员构思的。这一形而上学研究的结果将被用来阐明另外两个领域：女性在新柏拉图伦理和政治理论中的地位，以及活跃在新柏拉图学派和/或与新柏拉图学派相关的历史女性的地位。每个领域的目标都将涉及对这两个问题的详细回答，以及试图找出形而上学的先入之见可能对这些其他领域产生影响的可能方式。通过单独研究这些领域并寻找它们之间的接触点，该项目旨在唤起人们对哲学史和性别史中这一引人入胜的篇章的关注，并使更多的学术受众能够接触到背后的理论。

Hypatia of Alexandria (4th century C.E.) has a legitimate claim to being the most highly esteemed female philosopher of the pre-modern world. Indeed, to many ears the name Hypatia, having been appropriated as the title of the leading international journal of feminist philosophy, has become nearly synonymous with the issues of feminism and women and gender in philosophy. Surprisingly, however, there has been to date no comprehensive examination of women and femaleness in Hypatias own school of thought: Neoplatonism. This project aims to rectify this woeful neglect by producing the first-ever comprehensive study of the perceptions and conceptions of the female in Neoplatonism. The project will proceed by investigating three main areas. It will begin with a full examination of the female in Neoplatonic metaphysics. There is undeniable evidence that Neoplatonic metaphysics is in some important sense gendered: reality consists of and results from the interplay of male and female metaphysical principles. This certainly raises pressing questions about the connections between Neoplatonic metaphysics and the broader Neoplatonic conception of women, but none of these issues have yet received the attention they deserve. The goal here will be to work out the nature, scope, origins and implications of female metaphysical principles as conceived by the diverse members of the Neoplatonic school of thought. The results of this metaphysical study will then be utilized to shed new light on two other areas: the status of women in Neoplatonic ethical and political theory, and the status of the historical women who were active in and/or associated with Neoplatonic schools. The objective in each area will involve working out detailed responses to both queries as well as attempting to flush out the possible ways in which metaphysical preconceptions might exerting an influence in these other domains. By studying each of these domains individually and looking for points of contact between them, this project aims to call attention to this fascinating chapter in the history of philosophy and the history of gender and to make the theory behind it accessible to a larger scholarly audience.