Chronicles of a Liquid Society

by Umberto Eco

  The chronicles of Bologna University mention women professors like Bettisia Gozzadini and Novella d’Andrea, who were so beautiful that they had to give their lectures behind a veil so as not to distract the students, but they didn’t teach philosophy. In the textbooks on philosophy we don’t come across women who teach dialectics or theology. Eloise, Abelard’s brilliant and unhappy student, had to make do with becoming an abbess.

  But the position of abbess is not to be underrated, and a woman philosopher of our own time, Maria Teresa Fumagalli, has written extensively about them. An abbess was a spiritual, administrative, and political authority and carried out important intellectual functions in medieval society. A good textbook on philosophy must include among the leading figures of the history of thought such great mystics as Catherine of Siena, not to mention Hildegard of Bingen, who, in terms of metaphysical visions and perspectives on infinity, give us plenty to chew over to this day.

  The argument that mysticism isn’t philosophy doesn’t hold. After all, histories of philosophy reserve space for great mystics like Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler, and Meister Eckhart. And to suggest that much of female mysticism placed more emphasis on the body than on abstract ideas would be like saying that someone like Maurice Merleau-Ponty should disappear from philosophy textbooks.

  For some time, the chosen heroine of some feminists has been Hypatia, who taught Platonic philosophy and early mathematics in fifth-century Alexandria. Hypatia became a symbol, but unfortunately all that remains of her is the legend, since her works were lost, and so was she, literally hacked to pieces by a frenzied mob of Christians at the instigation, according to some historians, of Cyril of Alexandria, who was later canonized, though not on this account. But was Hypatia the only one?

  A small book has recently been published in France called Histoire des femmes philosophes. Anyone curious about its author, Gilles Ménage, will discover that he lived in the seventeenth century, was Latin tutor to Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Lafayette, and that his book had been published in 1690 under the title Historia mulierum philosopharum. Hypatia was not alone: Ménage’s book, though devoted chiefly to the classical period, presents a series of fascinating figures, including Diotima the Socratic, Arete of Cyrene, Nicarete of Megara, Hipparchia the Cynic, Theodora the Peripatetic (in the philosophical sense of the word), Leontia the Epicurean, and Themistoclea the Pythagorean. Leafing through ancient texts and works by the fathers of the Church, Ménage found sixty-five references to women philosophers, though he interpreted the concept of philosophy fairly widely. Given that in Greek society the woman was kept at home, that male philosophers preferred to entertain themselves with young boys rather than girls, and that a woman had to become a courtesan if she wanted to enjoy public celebrity, we can see to what lengths these women thinkers had to go to make a name for themselves. Aspasia, on the other hand, is still remembered as a courtesan, but a high-class one; what is forgotten is that she was skilled in rhetoric and philosophy, and that, according to Plutarch, Socrates followed her with interest.

  I checked at least three modern philosophy encyclopedias and, apart from Hypatia, found no trace of these names. It’s not that women philosophers didn’t exist. The fact is that male philosophers have chosen to ignore them, after first borrowing their ideas.

  2003

  Where do you find anti-Semitism?

  A series of recent events, not just terrorist attacks but also disturbing opinion polls, have brought anti-Semitism back into the headlines. It’s not easy to distinguish opposition to Ariel Sharon’s policies—an opposition shared by many Jewish people—from anti-Israeli sentiment, and in turn from anti-Semitism, but there is a tendency for public opinion and the mass media to bundle them together. Moreover, it seems that Western public opinion rests on two consoling thoughts: that anti-Semitism is largely an Arab question, and that it’s limited in Europe to a small number of neo-Nazi skinheads.

  Europe has never managed to distinguish between religious, popular, and “scientific” anti-Semitism. Religious anti-Semitism was certainly responsible for popular anti-Semitism: the claim that the Jews were a God-killing people has justified many pogroms, and a further justification was the difficulty in assimilating exiled Jews determined to keep their own traditions. As followers of a cult of the Book, therefore of reading in an illiterate world, they seemed like dangerous intellectuals speaking an unknown language. But by “scientific” anti-Semitism I mean the historic and anthropological ideas that purported to uphold the superiority of the Aryan race over the Jewish race, and the political doctrine of the Jewish conspiracy for the conquest of the Christian world, most clearly expressed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, also a product of the European secular intelligentsia.

  Theological anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in the Arab world, since the Koran recognizes the great patriarchs of the Bible, from Abraham to Jesus. During the period of their expansion, Muslims were fairly tolerant toward Jews and Christians: though regarded as second-class citizens, they could follow their religion and develop their business activities as long as they paid their taxes. Islamic anti-Semitism, not being religious, is today exclusively ethnopolitical—religious motivations give it support rather than being a foundation. If nineteenth-century Zionists had established the new state of Israel in Utah, the Arabs wouldn’t be anti-Semitic. I don’t want to be misunderstood: for historic and religious reasons the Jews had every right to head for Palestine—they settled peacefully over the course of a century—and have every right to remain there. But Arab anti-Semitism is territorial, not theological.

  More serious, however, is Europe’s responsibility. Popular anti-Semitism supported by religious anti-Semitism led to massacres, though localized and unprogrammed. Real “scientific” anti-Semitism began in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and not in Germany but in Legitimist France and to some extent in Italy. It is in France that racist theories, namely of the ethnic roots of civilization, were developed, and it is between France and Italy that the theory of the Jewish conspiracy evolved, a conspiracy that was responsible first for the horrors of the French Revolution and then for a plot to subjugate Christian civilization. History has shown that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was put together by Jesuit Legitimists and the French and Russian secret services, and only later was it accepted wholesale by tsarist reactionaries and by the Nazis. On the Internet, most anti-Semitic Arab websites are also based on European “scientific” anti-Semitism.

  In Italy, the right-wing leader Gianfranco Fini is doing his best to detach his party from its anti-Semitic past, something he should be recognized for. But go to any specialty bookshop and, along with occult books on the Holy Grail, you’ll find the speeches of Mussolini and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a strange blend that needed a homegrown right-wing ideologue like Julius Evola, whose works can also be found in such bookshops.

  There are also terrorist organizations that ignore mainstream politics and declare themselves “Communists.” But the Italian left, through the deaths of its own members, has earned the right to distance itself from these extremist fringes, supporting the state against the drift toward terrorism. The one person who doesn’t worry too much about such matters is Berlusconi, though he is hardly a reliable authority, however politically effective he might be. Has the Italian right done the same thing? Is it prepared to say that Evola, when he wasn’t being a genial nutcase, scientifically suspect but pleasantly readable, was a wild anti-Semite, and continued to be after World War II? Who is going to take responsibility, in the schools and in adult education, for dismantling the follies of “scientific” anti-Semitism with which certain members of the Italian right were associated in the frenzied rhetoric of magazines such as La Difesa della Razza (The Defense of the Race)?

  It is our duty to defend ourselves against Arab terrorism. At the same time, however, we must use education as a weapon to fight the enemies at home who are fomenting Arab anti-Semitism.

  2003

/>   Who told women to veil themselves?

  There has been much debate over the question of the veil. I think the position expressed by our prime minister, Romano Prodi, is sensible: if by veil we mean a headscarf that leaves the face uncovered, then anyone can wear one if they wish. If my own unbiased aesthetic judgment doesn’t sound irreverent, it adds a refinement to the woman’s face and makes her look like all those Virgin Marys painted by Antonello da Messina. Any other form of veil that prevents identification is another matter: Italian law doesn’t allow it. This prohibition could of course lead to other arguments, since even carnival masks would be banned, and if you remember A Clockwork Orange, a comic mask can be used to commit appalling crimes. But let us say these are marginal problems.

  If we can identify a sign in all those cases where something represents something else in some respect or capacity, then the Muslim veil is a semiotic phenomenon. The same is true of uniforms, whose primary function is not to protect the body in bad weather, and of a nun’s wimple, which is elegant. This is why the veil stirs so much argument—and yet we never argued about those large headscarves that farm women once wore, which had no symbolic value.

  The veil is criticized because it is worn as a declaration of identity. But there’s nothing wrong with displaying an identity or affiliation, and people do so when they wear the badge of a party, the cowl of a monk, or an orange robe and shave their heads. One interesting question is whether Muslim girls must wear a veil because the Koran requires it. Now comes the publication of Islam, by Gabriele Mandel Khan, Italian leader of the Sufi Jerrahi Halveti order, which seems to me an excellent introduction to the history, theology, practices, and customs of the Muslim world. He says that the use of the veil to cover the face and hair is a pre-Islamic custom related to climate. But it is not prescribed by sura 24 of the Koran, the passage always quoted on this question, which advises covering only the breasts.

  Fearing that Mandel’s interpretation was perhaps too modernist or moderate, I looked up on the Net the Italian translation of the Koran by Hamza Piccardo, carried out under the doctrinal control of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy. There I found the whole passage: “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and be chaste and that they should not show their ornaments, except that which appears; that they should draw their veil over their bosoms and not display their beauty to others except to their husbands, to their fathers, to their husband’s fathers, to their sons, to their husband’s sons, to their brothers, to their brothers’ sons, to their sisters’ sons, to their women, to the slaves they own, to the male servants that have no desire, to children below the age of puberty who have no interest in the hidden parts of women.” Finally, out of scruple I consulted the Koran in the classic translation of the great Iranian scholar Alessandro Bausani, and there I found, with few lexicographical variations, the requirement that “they cover their breasts with a veil.”

  For someone like me who doesn’t know Arabic, three witnesses of such different provenance are enough. The Koran is simply encouraging modesty, and if it were written today in the West, it would also be encouraging the covering of the navel, since nowadays in the West the belly dance is practiced in the streets.

  Who then was asking women to veil themselves? Mandel takes a certain satisfaction in revealing that it was Saint Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, though Paul limited this duty to women who preach and prophesy. Yet here, once again before the Koran, is Tertullian—who, though a heterodox Montanist, was nevertheless a Christian—in his text On the Ornaments of Women: “You must please only your husbands. And the more you please them, the less you will worry about pleasing others. Do not worry, O blessed ones, no woman is ugly to her husband . . . Every husband demands the duty of chastity, but does not desire beauty, if he is Christian . . . I do not tell you this to suggest to you a totally coarse and wild outer appearance, nor do I want to persuade you that it is permissible to be untidy and dirty, but (I advise you) the measure and the proper limit in caring for the body . . . Indeed they sin against Him those women who torment the skin with spiced embellishments, who mark their cheeks with red and lengthen their eyes with soot . . . God commands you to veil yourselves, so that, I think, the heads of each of you are not seen.” And this is why, throughout the history of art, the Virgin Mary and pious women appear veiled, like so many charming Muslim women.

  2006

  Husbands of unknown wives

  An Italian encyclopedia of women (www.enciclopediadelledonne.it) records a great number of women, from Catherine of Siena to Tina Pica, including many who have been unjustly forgotten. Yet back in 1690, Gilles Ménage wrote, in his history of women philosophers, about Diotima the Socratic, Arete of Cyrene, Nicarete of Megara, Hipparchia the Cynic, Theodora the Peripatetic (in the philosophical sense of the word), Leontia the Epicurean, and Themistoclea the Pythagorean, about whom we know very little. It is right that many of these have now been rescued from oblivion.

  What’s lacking is an encyclopedia of wives. It is said that behind every great man is a great woman, starting from Justinian and Theodora and arriving, if you wish, at Obama and Michelle. It’s curious that it isn’t true the other way around—witness the two Elizabeths of England—but wives are generally not mentioned. From antiquity onward, mistresses counted more than wives. Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler became known for their extra- or postmarital activities. In the end, the only woman always referred to as a wife is Xanthippe, wife of Socrates, and then only to be maligned.

  I happened to come across a piece by the journalist and novelist who wrote under the pseudonym Pitigrilli. He crammed his stories with erudite quotes, often getting the names wrong, writing “Yung” instead of “Jung,” and using anecdotes he had picked up from who knows what periodicals. Here he recalls the advice of Saint Paul: Melius nubere quam uri, “Get married if you can’t hold out any longer”—which is my advice to pedophile priests—though he observes that most great men, such as Plato, Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, were bachelors. This isn’t true, however, or at least not entirely true.

  As far as Plato is concerned, we know from Diogenes Laërtius that he wrote epigrams only for pretty boys, though his disciples included two women, Lasthenia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius, and though he also declared that the virtuous man should take a wife. We can see that Socrates’s unsuccessful marriage had an effect on Plato. Aristotle had first married Pythias, and after her death became attached to Herpyllis, whether as wife or concubine is not clear, and he lived with her more uxorio, and remembered her affectionately in his will. She also bore him a son, Nicomachus, who later lent his name to one of the Ethics.

  Horace had neither wife nor children, but I suspect, considering what he wrote, that he allowed himself the occasional fling, and it seems Virgil was so timid that he didn’t dare propose, though it was rumored he had a relationship with the wife of Lucius Varius Rufus. Ovid, however, married three times. As for Lucretius, the ancient sources tell us almost nothing; a remark by Saint Jerome suggests that he had committed suicide because a love potion had driven him mad (though Jerome had every motive for declaring a dangerous atheist mad). Later on, medieval and humanist tradition embroidered the story of a mysterious Lucilia, a wife or a mistress, enchantress or woman in love, who had asked a sorceress for the potion. It is also said that Lucretius had procured the potion himself, but in any event Lucilia doesn’t make a favorable impression. That is, unless Pomponio Leto was right, according to whom Lucretius had killed himself because of his unrequited love for a boy called Astericon.

  Moving ahead through the centuries, Dante continued to dream about Beatrice, but was married to Gemma Donati, though he never wrote about her. Everyone thinks Descartes was a bachelor, having lived a busy life and dying too young, but in fact he had a daughter, Francine, who died when she was just five. Her mother was a servant, Helena Jans van der Strom, whom Descartes had known in Holland and kept as a companion for several
years, acknowledging her only as a domestic. Contrary to certain false accusations, however, he had recognized the daughter, and it seems also had other affairs.

  In short, assuming that members of the clergy were celibate, along with those who more or less admitted their homosexuality, such as Cyrano de Bergerac and Wittgenstein, the only great bachelor we can be sure about was Kant. One might not think it, but even Hegel was married—indeed was something of a womanizer—and had a natural daughter as well as a passion for food. Marx was married too, and devoted to his wife, Jenny von Westphalen.

  One problem remains: what was the influence of Gemma on Dante, of Helena on Descartes, not to mention the many other wives about whom history remains silent? And might Aristotle’s works have been by Herpyllis? We will never know. History, written by husbands, condemns wives to anonymity.

  2010

  Proust and the Boche

  These are harsh times for anyone who believes in the European Union: with Cameron, who is asking his compatriots to decide whether they still want it, or ever wanted it; with Berlusconi, who one day declares himself pro-European but the next day, when he’s not making some visceral appeal to the old Fascists, appeals to those who think it better to return to the lira; to the Northern League and its hypo-European provincialism. In short, the bones of the founding fathers of Europe must be rattling in their graves.