Women and the Female in Neoplatonism

Jana Schultz, Ph.D. (2016), Ruhr-University Bochum, held a position as a researcher at the Ruhr-University in Bochum from 2016 until 2018, and at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 2018 until 2021. She published Formung und Umwendung der Seele. Eine Rechtfertigung ambivalenter Darstellungen in der Literatur im Rahmen von Platons Politeia (Lang 2017), and articles on Platonism and Neoplatonism. James Wilberding, Ph.D. (2003), University of Chicago, is Professor of Ancient and Contemporary Philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is author of Plotinus’ Cosmology: A Study of Ennead 2.1 (2006) and Forms, Souls and Embryos: Neoplatonists on Human Reproduction (2017), and editor of World Soul: A History of the Concept (2021).

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

 Jana Schultz and James Wilberding



Part 1 The Historical Presence of Women in Neoplatonic Schools



1 Diotima, Sosipatra and Hypatia: Methodological Reflections on the Study of Female Philosophers in the Platonic Tradition

 Crystal Addey



Part 2 The Status of Women in Neoplatonic Socio-political Theory



2 Women in Plotinus

 James Wilberding



3 Marcella and Porphyry

 Luc Brisson



4 On the Equality of Women and Men in Late Antique Platonism: Proclus, Julian and Philip the Philosopher

 Dominic O’Meara



5 Theodorus of Asine on the Equality of the Sexes: Traces of a Rhetorical Trope in the Fourth Century CE

 John Dillon



6 The Myth of Er and Female Guardians in Proclus’ Republic Commentary

 Dirk Baltzly



7 Damascius on the Virtue of Women and Their Relation to Men

 Jana Schultz



Part 3 Female Principles in Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Science



8 Femininity in Porphyry’s On Abstinence

 Miira Tuominen



9 A Match Made in Heaven: The Metaphysics of Aphrodite in Neoplatonic Thinkers

 Marije Martijn



10 Neoplatonic Motives in Emperor Julian’s Hymn to the Mother of the Gods

 Christoph Helmig



11 Otherwise Than the Father: Night and the Maternal Causes in Proclus’ Theological Metaphysics

 Danielle Layne



Part 4 A Concluding Look at Two Christian Neoplatonists



12 Macrina’s Method: Reason and Reasoning in Gregory of Nyssa’s On Soul and Resurrection

 Peter Adamson



13 What Did Michael Psellos Say about Women in the 11th Century AD?

 Denis Walter



Index Locorum

Index of Names and Subjects