Women and Pythagorean Philosophy. Review of D.M. Dutsch, Pythagorean Women Philosophers. Between Belief and Suspicion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Abstract

In the last few decades, Pythagorean women and their intellectual status have aroused the interest of several scholars (C. Montepaone, S. Pomeroy and others). Against this background, the present book is a most welcome instrument for scholars interested in Pythagoreanism and in women in antiquity, for it deals with Pythagorean women philosophers between ‘critique and compliance’, that is, as the subtitle says, with both belief and suspicion, the two foundations of hermeneutics highlighted by P. Ricœur. Such a critical positioning induces D. to analyse anecdotes and pseudepigrapha in search for a possible identity of Pythagorean women philosophers at the margins of official discourses and texts.