Wow, you have opened a whole new world for me. Thank you so much for that list of female philosophers. I went on to see if there are books on the subject and there are plenty. I think I truly must get those books. Now I want to retreat to a monastery and focus on the study of female philosophers and how they may have affected the world around them.

I had read that Pythagoras gave women equality. Interestingly to me, is writing about music and math is not equal to writing about morality and social order, but I now see an opening for women who write of a subject that interests men and does not challenge their position and importance. Would you happen to know if any of these women wrote about the importance of family and childcare and community? :lol: I so want to go to the coast and focus on this subject and do workshops. Perhaps after having a hip replaced I will do that. I don't know, I have to think on it, but the possibilities give me so much reason to live. I did not expect this at this time in my life when life seemed behind me and not in front of me.

Wheatley, I look forward to having the time to watch your links. Perhaps I can devote this weekend to that when my choice of TV shows is very poor. I hate the idea of being a feminist and speaking against males, and I am torn between economic, environmental, and social concerns but I think men organize themselves differently from women. Not that one is necessarily better than the other, but it might be a challenge to create a balance and acknowledge the importance of both?

Why do we speak of male philosophers and not female philosophers? Who is concerned with educating the children? Why Nietzche's Superman and not the Superwoman? When we go to war, who keeps the children alive and tends to all the things a society needs to function, while the men are consumed with war? That was truly a Spartan question. How should the children be educated?

I had read that Pythagoras gave women equality. — Athena

I believe that it would have been difficult if not impossible to exclude Greek women from anything that was of importance in society.

If you read the story of Diotima as told by Plato in the Symposium, you will notice than no one is surprised to hear that Socrates received instruction into the highest mysteries of philosophy from a woman.

The job of Greek men, especially the upper classes, was to engage in military training and warfare. But they also had the duty to found a family.

To found a family they needed women. As they had little knowledge of women, it was women’s job to instruct young upper-class men in the art of love. And from there to being instructed in a highly evolved philosophy of love isn’t very far. I think it is entirely proper for Plato to have chosen a woman for his theory of love.

I would be more impressed if we had the name and writing of a woman philosopher who wrote of love and social concerns than I am by Plato referring to a woman and theory of love because what we have is the man's word, not the woman's. Athena's mother was about wisdom. The goddesses are about relationships. In mythology much is credited to the female goddesses so what is with the patriarchy that suppressed women? The reality is a young male reality when war was very much the way of life and this dominated the West.

I will go with Aristotle who stood in favor of the traditional family unit. The child is valued by the parent as proof of what the father and mother can achieve. If our children do well we get social status and if they do poorly, we do not get social status. Only those who care about that will invest in their sons and daughters. Institutions can not replace the good of a parent. There is an important difference in the quality of relationships, and therefore a difference in values.

In the animal world, of which I believe humans are a part, few animals adopt the young of another. There are exceptions to this but the point I want to make is humans are not just naturally good parents, and they tend to feel differently about their own children than they feel about someone else's child. For biological reasons, we are limited in the number of people we can have intimate relationships with. Those relationships require a lot of energy and our energy is limited. I am stressing the difference between parents raising children and children growing up in an institution. So if there is not a father and mother raising the children, but a nanny raising the children, the result is different.

The writer who I believe may be useful for you to read is Simon Weil. I understand that she wrote about social concerns, oppression, liberty, love, and incorporate ideas from both Marxism and theology. She was writing in the first half of the twentieth century and died very young. I have only read small excerpts of her writing, but will try to do so, and she is on my long, reading list; there are just so many important authors and not enough days and hours to give each the attention which they truly deserve.

Thank you, and as I contemplate buying another book, I am thinking of all the books I started to read and did not complete. I really do not need another book, except focusing on female philosophers could be very interesting and I need the books to refer to them, as some refer to the Bible. Problem with democracy is there not one holy book such as religions have. :roll:

I like the idea of Simon Weil writing of both Marx and theology points of view. I have always thought communism is Christian values. Sort of a put your money where your mouth is thing. And I should say, I think capitalism is a good thing but like a board game, it needs to be regulated. Economic decisions need a much larger point of view than any one corporation can have. For example, we love plastics but they are damaging our planet and this problem should not be ignored. On the other hand, I can not think why that problem should be the focus of the industry? So the greater decisions must be made by a body that benefits from both the plastic and the care of the planet. In nature, an animal that comes up with a better survival stratagy will succeed and could outcompete others but if its relationship with others is not kept in balance, the result can be damaging and ultimately lead to extinction.

Our first teacher is nature. :grin:

Apparently, in India they were (are?) drowned in milk. — Apollodorus

Awfully expensive way to drown someone. What's wrong with water?

Awfully expensive way to drown someone. What's wrong with water? — bert1

If I'm not mistaken, they only submerge the head in a bowl of milk so it doesn't take a huge quantity for a new-born to drown.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact explanation as I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. But I think it had to do with milk resembling the food of the gods or something to do with the afterlife and heaven.

There was a movie about it, Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, named one of the best movies of 2003 by Time magazine.

Apparently, there is huge gap in the gender ratio caused by the killing of thousands of girls which has given rise to a system of bride-buying and trafficking, etc.

India's missing girls: fears grow over rising levels of foeticide - The Guardian

Edit. It looks like buckets of milk also are used for the purpose, but there are some other methods:

India femicide: Where girl infants face ‘pre-meditated’ murder - WNN

In mythology much is credited to the female goddesses so what is with the patriarchy that suppressed women? The reality is a young male reality when war was very much the way of life and this dominated the West. — Athena

Well, Athena, the goddess of the Athenian city-state, was certainly the goddess of wisdom, but she was also the goddess of heroes.

Men are physically stronger than women, so when armed conflict is a fact of life, men would have more authority and power in public life, whilst women would focus on child-bearing and raising a family.

But I'm sure women had ways of exerting some influence on the men. In any case, the family was important in ancient Greek culture, and I fully agree that the family unit is important. I don't believe in social engineering and in trying to "improve" too much what nature has given us.

oh, oh, I am not sure nature programmed us for monogamy. I think the family unit most civilizations have resulted from social pressure more than nature. To an important degree, Plato is right but he and I differ on what is important for the child in a civilization. That is a very large group of people living in cities. Small, nomadic groups may need family units? You are making me think. :grin: I don't think legal marriages and divorces would be necessary before individual property rights and large populations demanded laws and a system of enforcing them. Child care may be shared than in large groups, and male/female relationships may be more temporary than an "until do we part" agreement. In small groups the rules are informal. Not until large groups and cities do the rules become formal. To clarfiy, we become strangers to each other in large cities and that means less motivation to help a single mother and children, so laws are needed to assure the care of the vulnerable. In the city not everyone is interacting with each other and the children, and institutional care a city might provide is less personal, than the clan or the legal family ties, where there is a religious culture that forms the laws.

I am not sure nature programmed us for monogamy. — Athena

Monogamy certainly exists in nature, apparently among turtle doves, swans, etc.

Even when not long term, it does occur at least for one or several mating seasons.

Monogamy in animals - Wikipedia

Alternatives include situations where a single alpha male dominates a group of females, such as among gorillas, cattle or horses. Would you prefer that?

Anyway, some theories insist that monogamy is better suited for the human species:

Are humans naturally monogamous or polygamous? - The Irish Times

My personal impression is that human populations where monogamy is prevalent tend to be more successful than others. Otherwise, the world would be dominated by polygamous cultures which does not seem to be the case.

So, perhaps, the ideal society is one where monogamy prevails but some exceptions are allowed. For example, religious, political, and military leaders could be allowed more than one partner.

But, whatever system we choose, I believe it would need to be beneficial to a population and it should be chosen democratically.

I agree with what you said and want to bring this back to what Plato said.

In addition, Plato believed that the interests of the state are best preserved if children are raised and educated by the society as a whole, rather than by their biological parents. So he proposed a simple (if startlingly unfamiliar) scheme for the breeding, nurturing, and training of children in the guardian class. (Note that the same children who are not permitted to watch and listen to "dangerous" art are encouraged to witness first-hand the violence of war.) The presumed pleasures of family life, Plato held, are among the benefits that the higher classes of a society must be prepared to forego. — Garth Kemerling

We are adamant that the parents are responsible for preparing children to be civil creatures and this should not be the responsibility of teachers. Personally, I think that is a terrible belief and that Plato is right about the state taking the responsibility for preparing the young for citizenship and that was the priority of education in the US until 1958. I have the old textbooks that show how this was done.
Why should the state be responsible for preparing the young for good citizenship? The dominating people of the US came from Europe and did not have experience with democracy. They did not understand our institutions and the Bible does not explain democratic institutions and our relationship to them and we should not take our culture for granted. What is happening today is proof of that.
The poor have a completely different experience of life than the middle class and education for technology is not enough to prepare them for a middle-class life. If we ignore the reality of children growing up in poverty and focus education on technology, we condemn them to existing on the margins of mainstream society. So I agree with Plato.
However, we are emotional beings and for emotional reasons, we need good families. That is something institutions can not nourish in a child. A teacher might be very caring and do an excellent job of helping a child feel good about him/herself, but that is a temporary relationship. The other children are friends but not as sisters and brothers who are bonded. My old textbooks are very much about family. Unfortunately not every child has good role models or families with good life skills. As I said above they can be condemned to misfortune but, there is a chance families can be very supportive in a way institutions can not. So here I will disagree with Plato. I will argue family life is very important to being human beings and I stress this because while some women have always done well within the male standard, it is the voice of the woman who is domestic, a stay at home and care for everyone else human, that needs to be heard, and was not heard and is not heard in our technological society where equality means being as a man.

I am very worried for society as mothers leave the home to be equal to males.

I am very worried for society as mothers leave the home to be equal to males. — Athena

Yes, this seems to be the trend in modern society. "Equality" is a very appealing concept, but as the experience of communist societies has shown, it is not a goal that is easily achievable. Not only that, but the attempt to artificially impose equality can result in new forms of inequality and other problems.

I suppose the original idea was to get women out of the house in order to join the army of factory workers that supported first capitalist and later communist production. But this led to fewer children being born and raised, and to population stagnation and decline.

The next problem that emerged was people's loss of interest in marriage. But without commitment to marriage and long-term relationships, this has resulted in a rising number of single mothers, and this in turn has given rise to new problems.

One aspect of the current cultural situation is that our heroes and role models are "celebrities" from pop to movie to social media stars who often live chaotic, dysfunctional lives, and whose own relationships are often dysfunctional and/or temporary. The majority presumably still see some form of longer-lasting relationship as the ideal, but whether this is actually achieved, or achievable, is another question.

So it looks like, ultimately, no changes to this trend are realistic unless and until the culture we live in changes. And for this to happen, we need substantial changes to the education system.

Is religion a commodity?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intensional/

https://www.britannica.com/science/delusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

https://www.etymonline.com/word/exist
https://www.britannica.com/science/set-theory/Axiomatic-set-theory

Peter Millikan on abortion

I am interested in to understand metaphysics more specifically. So, my question in simple, which is the properly definition of metaphysics? How many academies worked on it along the centuries ?

Would you happen to know if any of these women wrote about the importance of family and childcare and community? — Athena

Well, the family unit was regarded as absolutely central to Ancient Greek society, and women philosophers were no exception.

“The central images in Diotima’s teachings on love are pregnancy and birth. She tells us, according to Socrates, that love is a longing for immortality and that this longing is expressed through a desire to pro create. Those whose desire to procreate is of the body take a woman as the object of their love and raise a family to gain immortality.”

Among women engaged in philosophy, it appears that most were married.

“That women actually participated in philosophic activity comes as a surprise to many. But Gilles Menage (1984, 3) in the eighteenth century names sixty-five women philosophers in the Hellenistic age alone.”

In “Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle,” Kathleen Wider “examines women philosophers in the Greek world primarily from the sixth through the third centuries B.C., with a focus on women philosophers during the late pre-Classical period of Greek history (sixth century), the Classical period (fifth-fourth centuries), and during the early stages of the Hellenistic world (late fourth-third centuries).”

“Although precise dates for the women Pythagoreans are unknown, we do know that some of them flourished in the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. These include Theano, believed to be the wife of Pythagoras and the most famous of these women, as well as Myia, Damo, and Arignote who were probably daughters of Theano and Pythagoras.

Arete was the head of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy after her father Aristippus died in 350. Hipparchia flourished around 328 and is known for the fact that she abandoned a life of wealth and ease to marry Crates and live the simple life of a Cynic. Little is known about Pamphile except that she was a disciple of Theophrastus who headed the Lyceum after Aristotle.”

“The Pythagoreans saw the family as well as the city as a microcosm of the universe and the order and harmony of the universe was to be reflected in the city and family. Women were given an important place in Pythagorean thought and society because they were an important part of the family and were a necessary component in achieving order and harmony within it. Each person within the family was to perform her/his role well and keep her/his place assign ed by nature. The place of woman turns out to be the traditional one of wife and mother, subordinate to and submissive to her husband, but a woman can perform this role well only if her intelligence is developed.”

“Plato had women disciples and Socrates refers to his women teachers … The Stoic Diodorus Cronus who was active about 315-284 had five daughters who were logicians: Menexene, Argeia, Theognis, Artemisia, and Pantacleia.”

Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle - JSTOR

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad an idea to start a thread on the subject?