Edward J. Watts (translated by Kyoko Nakanishi), 'Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher'

☆mediopos2605 2022.1.3

I cannot recall exactly
when it was
that I first learned about Hypatia.

It was in 2005 that she unexpectedly appeared
as the past life of Abe no Seimei
in Reiko Okano's 'Onmyoji', Volume 12, Chapter 6, 'The Star Catcher'.

Since I was already interested in her by then,
it must have been even earlier,
but I tried to look for detailed materials on Hypatia at that time
and it remained unfinished.

Even for the translator, Kyoko Nakanishi, it was surprisingly
the case that this book sold well and went into reprints,
and this is likely due to the influence of
the film 'Agora' which featured Hypatia as the protagonist,
among other factors,
which was also discussed by
Kyoko Nakanishi herself
on the 'BH Channel' video channel released for the publication of this book.

The fact that she was a female mathematician and philosopher,
which was particularly rare in the ancient world,
is related to issues of misogyny and equal opportunity for female intellectuals,
and it seems that this has a lot to do with
why she is easily attracting attention in the modern day.

Hypatia was born around 355 AD,
and was active in Alexandria in the Roman Empire
from the late 4th to the early 5th century.
She was a female mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer,
born as the daughter of the mathematician Theon, and as a woman, she led an academy
and was a Neoplatonist who took on the role of a 'public intellectual,'
but she became embroiled in the political conflicts of Christians
and met a tragic end in 415 AD.

Alexandria in the late ancient Roman Empire
was a time when Hypatia, who embodied the ideals of ancient philosophers,
could be active as a teacher and role model for citizens,
but Hypatia's senseless and shocking murder
seems to have been a turning point
toward an era in which Christianity attacked and destroyed
the ancient culture and wisdom that had been inherited and still remained from antiquity.

Among the books by the translator, Kyoko Nakanishi,
is 'The Religious World of Julian',
and Julian was a Roman Emperor in the 4th century
who tried to revise the preferential treatment of Christianity that was rising at the time,
which led to him being called 'the Apostate' by later generations.

It can be said that both Hypatia and Julian
symbolize the era of the late ancient Roman Empire,
a time when ancient culture was effectively being destroyed by Christianity.

Nevertheless, the core appeal of this book is
that it does not romanticize Hypatia as a tragic heroine or a saint,
but portrays her attractively as a female intellectual
who lived through the constraints of her time.

It seems that the primary sources on Hypatia are limited,
but even so, this book is a valuable resource
that allows us to view from various perspectives
what I had once wanted to know about Hypatia.

■ Edward J. Watts (translated by Kyoko Nakanishi)
'Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher'
(Hakusuisha, 2021/11)

'Hypatia’s death was so shocking and so terrible that she immediately became a symbol of an older, better-functioning society that seemed to be disappearing in the early fifth century. Over the next sixteen hundred years, a wide range of people—prose writers, poets, painters, filmmakers, and scholars—have at times celebrated and at times condemned Hypatia and the era she represented. She has been stripped of her honor as a witch, but has also been seen as a feminist icon and praised as a martyr. Her death has been used as a symbol of the corruption of the church in Alexandria, the end of Greek reason, and religious fundamentalism. Hypatia’s case may be more resonant now than ever before. According to Google searches, she is the most famous Neoplatonist philosopher in the world, and after Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, she is in the top five most popular Greek philosophers.'

'In history, there are countless forms of unjust deaths that resonate with one another. The assassination of a leader like Martin Luther King Jr. serves as a final sign of sacrifice for the great and noble cause to which he dedicated his life. Their lives and deaths are part of the same story, and their murders simultaneously shed light on their continued struggle against deep-seated injustice and reveal the burdens they had to fight against. For these sixteen hundred years, Hypatia has been seen as a martyr for a lost, righteous cause. In antiquity, she died as a defender of traditional religion and philosophy, a victim of the opposing Christian establishment. Under the Enlightenment, she was understood as a figure who became a defender of the customs of the ancient world at the very moment when the reason of classical antiquity was being overwhelmed by superstition. In the twentieth century, at the dawn of a new era, she also became a defender of women's independence against a patriarchy that limited women's social roles and career choices.'
'Nevertheless, Hypatia is a human being before she is a symbol. She was brave, but her suffering was private. She was a fighter, but the purpose of her struggle was personal. She died mainly because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that does not make her death insignificant. Few people have lived as vivid a life and met as dramatic an end as Martin Luther King, but that does not make other people's lives unimportant. Because a heroic spirit can be found in the story of every life, even if not in the way we expect.'
'In her death, Hypatia has become a powerful symbol for many righteous causes. However, during her lifetime, she fought for only a few of them. Rather, she was a talented philosopher who frequented places usually dominated by men, taught ideas usually advocated by men, and exercised authority usually monopolized by men. None of this is without precedent, but no woman of Hypatia's time attempted all of this. Hypatia did it. And she did it brilliantly. As a budding philosopher, her work redefined the dynamics of knowledge in the city where she lived. In her later years, after she had achieved success, she exerted an influence that brought peace and dignity to a city struggling to maintain trust and cooperation between the traditional polytheistic and Christian communities. Hypatia did not fight on a large scale for social change, but she fought countless small battles to carve out a space where she could live as she wished. She lived her life with a clear purpose and, despite tremendous obstacles, was able to achieve her personal goals, supported by wonderful courage. Hypatia as a symbol obscures most of what we know about Hypatia as a human being. Even so, this figure has not been completely lost.'
'Hypatia’s courageous act was not that she encountered barbarism at the end of her life, but that she overcame small barriers every day throughout her life.'

'Hypatia was born in Alexandria around 355, the daughter of the philosopher Theon and his wife.'
'Looking at the educational customs of the late Roman world (...), we can see that the education Hypatia might have received was broad. (...) According to our sources, she was 'well-trained in mathematical sciences' by her father, from which she expanded her interest to the study of 'other forms of philosophy,' and eventually surpassed her father 'in many ways.' This suggests that she undoubtedly mastered language, grammar, and philosophy (in the broadest sense), but it says nothing about whether she ever studied under teachers other than her father.'

'By the time she reached her thirtieth birthday, Hypatia had established an awe-inspiring intellectual authority in Alexandria.'
'To dedicate herself to philosophy, Hypatia had to teach her students by combining the rigorous characteristics of mathematics seen in the teachings of 4th-century Alexandrian mathematicians like Pappus and Theon with the philosophical systems of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry.'
'We do not know Theon's exact age when Hypatia took over her father's school in the 380s, but he does not seem to have been much older than fifty-five at the time.'
'Under Hypatia's guidance, the school began to provide a more comprehensive education regarding the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers.'

'As the 380s turned into the 390s, Hypatia faced professional and personal challenges similar to those encountered by many modern professionals in the course of their careers. By her thirty-fifth birthday, she had created an outstanding brand of philosophical teaching that combined the rigor of Alexandria's leading mathematicians with the sophistication of the Platonism of Plotinus and Porphyry. Hypatia's impeccable training and tremendous technique in handling mathematics made it possible to shift the balance of mathematics and philosophy in a center of mathematics and science that stood out in the Mediterranean world.'
'By the mid-390s, Hypatia's school had become prominently known, emphasizing strong bonds among its members and the roles they played in society rather than individual religious identities.'

'The thoughtfulness and moderation that characterized Hypatia's teaching increased the school's popularity and brought further benefits. In antiquity, philosophers gained a certain special social status by providing frank and public advice to rulers and dignitaries. Philosophers were granted freedom of speech that few others enjoyed. This was because, in theory, the pursuit of philosophy imposed on the philosopher the duty to tell the truth to those in power, regardless of the consequences.'

'By the time Hypatia's most famous student, Synesius, left her school in the mid-390s, Hypatia was actively playing a political role in this land, which was taught in one of the largest and most complex cities on earth. Because of her gender, she was unable to hold most of the city's public offices, and the exercise of public authority in Alexandria was also blocked, but the public role she played was instead defined by the intangible expectations of how an educated elite woman should behave. At the root of Hypatia's achievements was the reality that she was a woman working in an environment where men remained the overwhelming majority by having a place to teach publicly and practice philosophy. '
'Hypatia's contemporaries include four outstanding women who were educated as philosophers, taught philosophy or mathematics, or played public roles that Hypatia is seen to have fulfilled.'

“The murder of Hypatia horrified people throughout the empire. Outside the narrow circle of those involved in the killing, few understood the murder of Hypatia as anything like the execution of a dangerous criminal or the destruction of the Serapeum. In the wider world, Hypatia was neither a criminal nor a religious symbol. She was a prestigious philosopher who made meaningful contributions to the intellectual life of the empire through her research and performed public duties that shaped the political life of her city. For decades, Hypatia had embodied the ideal of the ancient philosopher as a teacher, role model, and advisor to her fellow citizens. The attack on Hypatia was also an attack on the cultural foundations that remained in the society of late antiquity.”

“Until she was senselessly murdered and became a marker of the end of an era, Hypatia was a person who lived in the complex and changing world of late Rome.”
“For her contemporaries, Hypatia’s death marked the beginning of a half-century of terror, in which the Bishop of Alexandria could reliably use a fearsome mob to intimidate (and in some cases, deploy) whenever he felt his interests were threatened. In this way, the murder of Hypatia... became a precursor to scenes of naked displays of power. In a sense, Hypatia’s death was the moment when the calamitous fifth century began to be understood in the Church of Alexandria. It plunged bystanders who had been using Christian power in different, more moderate ways into the depths of terror.”
“Hypatia’s death does not signify an era of misogyny or the end of equal opportunity for female intellectuals. It is true that no other female intellectual followed the same path as Hypatia, but that is not because Hypatia lived in a more enlightened age. It is because a figure like Hypatia never appeared in the ancient world again.”

[Table of Contents]
Murder during Lent
Chapter 1: Alexandria
Chapter 2: Childhood and Education
Chapter 3: Hypatia’s School
Chapter 4: Middle Age
Chapter 5: The Mother of Philosophy and Her Children
Chapter 6: Public Intellectual
Chapter 7: Hypatia’s Sisters
Chapter 8: Murder on the Street
Chapter 9: The Memory of Hypatia
Chapter 10: A Modern Symbol
Epilogue: Rethinking the Legend
Acknowledgments / Translator’s Afterword / List of Illustrations / Bibliography / Notes / Index

☆ You can listen to Kyoko Nakanishi, the translator of 'Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher', on the 'BH Channel', a video channel born from the academic website 'Bibliotheca Hermetica' (abbreviated as BH).

[Dialogue] The Ancient Roman Female Intellectual Hypatia! Featuring Kyoko Nakanishi!
We welcomed religious scholar Kyoko Nakanishi, who just published the highly acclaimed translation 'Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher', as a special guest. We had a rich discussion about the background and highlights of her doctoral thesis-based book 'The Faith World of Julian: The Philosopher Emperor in a Kaleidoscope' and this new translation, 'Hypatia' (2021.12.24).

[Topics] Public reaction, from undergraduate thesis to Julian research, doctoral thesis, encounter with Neoplatonism, 'The Faith World of Julian', Christianity and paganism, strategy meetings, publisher’s proposal, triggered by SNS, author’s stance and perspective, highlights of 'Hypatia', contemporary female intellectuals, Hypatia’s fame in Japan, Julian and Hypatia, Kunio Tsuji’s novel 'The Apostate Julian', thirst for women’s studies and gender studies.

■ Movie 'Agora' (2009) Trailer