engleski

Renaissance women philosophers on the periphery

In my lecture I will use the example of a woman intellectual from the periphery to show/argue what it takes to “prove” that a Renaissance woman can be considered a philosopher in her own right. My example will be Maruša Gundulić (cca 1557 – ?). In secondary literature she is known as wife of a philosopher and statesman from Dubrovnik, Nikola Gučetić. I will show that if two hiw dialogues, the Dialogue on Beauty (Dialogo della bellezza) and the Dialogue on Love (Dialogo d’amore) from 1581 are read exactly as the writer intended, that is, “in Platonic spirit”, then these texts can be understood as a display of the philosophical thoughts and arguments of the interlocutors, that is Maruša Gundulić (Maria Gondola) and Cvijeta Zuzorić (Fiore Zuzzori). Such an understanding of the text is supported by a feminist approach to the history of philosophy. This hermeneutic key allows us a deeper understanding of the letter- epistle written by Maruša Gundulić in defense of Cvijeta Zuzorić, and in extenso all women, in 1582, and published in 1584 and, in a revised version, in 1585. Finally, using the same hermeneutic key and carefully reading the traces scattered in the text of the Dialogue on Beauty and the Dialogue on Love, we conclude that the role of Maruša Gučetić in these dialogues can be understood as the one of a “female Socrates”. Postulating the distinction between “writer” and “author” based on the standard interpretation of Plato’s early, so-called Socratic dialogues, we see no reason not to suppose that the thoughts and arguments, which Nikola Gučetić wrote in these dialogues as proclaimed by the dialogue character Maruša Gundulić are indeed authored by Maruša Gundulić, the historical person and a woman philosopher.

women philosophers ; Maruša Gundulić ; South-East Europe ; periphery

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