Where are all the women in ancient philosophy?

an article by Peter Adamson published in the New Statesman

It’s complicated.

Here’s something about the history of philosophy that you’re more likely to learn by going to the movies than by studying philosophy at university: in antiquity, there were female philosophers.

The 2009 feature film Agora stars Rachel Weisz as astronomer and Platonist philosopher Hypatia, a pagan aristocrat who was murdered by a Christian mob in ancient Alexandria. Though the movie is occasionally specious, particularly in its depiction of Hypatia anticipating the astronomical discoveries of Johannes Kepler, it exposes an important truth: science and philosophy were not exclusively male enterprises, contrary to what university curricula might suggest.

Few philosophy students are given the chance to think or read about female philosophers in antiquity. Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, Émilie du Châtelet and other early modern women philosophers are slowly finding their way onto the syllabus. So why not Hypatia? Well, there’s a good reason – we don’t have any of her philosophical works.

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