Philosophical role model: Hypatia of Alexandria
She was intellectual, engaged, and idealistic in a chaotic, violent world.
Welcome back to The Stoic Mom! Pardon the interruption as I recovered from a virus and worked on my upcoming book, Beyond Stoicism, co-authored with Massimo Pigliucci and Gregory Lopez, which will cover a range of ancient Greek and Roman philosophical schools—delving into each philosophy’s history, core ideas, and ways to put them into practice in the modern world. Watch for more on the book, coming in early 2025!
Today, I’ll share the last installment of my three-part series on philosophical and historical role models.
Hypatia, a Roman philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician from ancient Alexandria, Egypt, has been an important philosophical role model for centuries. There are at least two academic journals named for her, and a big-budget movie focused on her (Agora, starring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia). She’s been featured in novels and stories, documentaries and podcasts, poems and TV shows (she was played by Lisa Kudrow in the TV series The Good Place—the only philosopher who made it to “the good place,” the show’s version of heaven).
The good and the not so good
Why are we so fascinated with her? Well, for reasons both good, and not so good.
The good ones have to do with her impressive role and prominence in her own era. She was a rare female philosopher in a world of men, a woman who was taken seriously for her ideas and her mathematical, astronomical, and philosophical research and teaching. She was known among her contemporaries for her wisdom and taught math, astronomy, and Neoplatonist philosophy, which she viewed as the pinnacle of all academic pursuits. Hypatia also gave public lectures in Alexandria and held influence and moral authority in a highly diverse Roman city in the late Empire.
The not so good ones focus on her death. She was killed in March 415 CE in a particularly gruesome way by a mob of Christians, followers of Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria. The mob blamed the pagan Hypatia for political divisions between Cyril and the Roman governor Orestes. They pulled her from her carriage and cut her to shreds with sharp shards of either roof tiles or oyster shells (the ancient texts’ translation is unclear). Her remains were burned, which was usually reserved for the worst criminals. This death has been the subject of many depictions in versions of Hypatia’s story.
The irony of her killing is that all of Hypatia’s known students were Christians, many of whom became church leaders, and her brand of Neoplatonism didn’t go against contemporary interpretations of Christianity. In addition, she tried to use her own political influence to create harmony in her city. Hypatia met with leaders including Orestes to build a multi-faith diplomacy in Alexandria, and she worked to help average citizens solve their disputes as well. It seems that some Christians spread rumors, however, that she was a “witch” using magic to poison Orestes against Cyril. In the end, Hypatia was a scapegoat in the political tussle between the church and Roman leaders. Cyril was a part of it, even it is unknown whether he ordered her murder or not. (He was also known for expelling Jews from Alexandria. Cyril was later made a saint by the church).
A recent book on Hypatia by Edward J. Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Women in Antiquity), offers an excellent window into Hypatia’s life and death. Watts tries to reconstruct the extraordinary nature of what she accomplished rather than dwell largely on her murder, as so many writers and depictions of Hypatia have done.
A bit more on Hypatia’s life and Neoplatonism
Born in 355 CE into an empire that was largely pagan, Hypatia grew up in a wealthy home with her father as a well-known mathematician and teacher. Her city was home to Jews and Christians as well as pagans, and it became majority Christian during her lifetime. In 361, the Emperor Julian re-instated pagan devotion; many people felt they could worship both Christ and Serapis, a pagan divinity.
By 385, Hypatia was the foremost intellectual in Alexandria, and she grew into a public role for the second half of her career, wearing the traditional philosopher’s cloak. She chose never to marry for philosophical reasons, believing in the value of celibacy. Hypatia rejected male romantic attention (sometimes very vividly, if you believe the stories of her tossing menstrual supplies at a suitor) and became head of her own school of Neoplatonism. She hoped that students would “use their training to reform the world around them,” as Watts puts it.
Intellectually descending from Plato (and through him, Socrates), Hypatia believed philosophy must be practiced in a public fashion, and she saw her role as making everyone “more philosophical,” advising people and helping her students understand how to behave virtuously in a complex city. She sometimes cast herself as her students’ “mother”—and her students as “brothers” (they were all male, according to the records we have).
Hypatia’s growth into a philosopher did not come out of thin air. Her father was one of the most prominent mathematicians of Alexandria, and one of the last members of the Alexandrian Mouseium. Math was important to philosophy in the Neoplatonic perspective; it was a tool to model higher philosophical concepts stemming from Plato. Hypatia edited at least one volume of ancient mathematics and wrote commentary on another. Astronomy was central to Hypatia too, and she helped popularize the astrolabe, a device that measured angles between the horizon and stars or other planets.
Things get a little complicated when it comes to Neoplatonism, but here’s a quick sketch. Hypatia’s Neoplatonic philosophy was based on Plotinus, who thought that there is a divine force at heart of universe, called The One. If you lived a life of contemplation, you could work to get closer to The One. According to Hypatia’s Neoplatonism, people should pursue a scale of virtues, from physical to political, that could “purify” your soul. Platonic virtues guide people towards more wise, just, brave, and temperate behavior. The goal: Bring your soul up the hierarchy of learning and virtues in order to commune with the divine, rising up the chain of being from the material world to a spiritual plane, to reach the One.
Hypatia as a role model
Now that you’ve gotten a sense for who Hypatia was, I’ll share why she’s a role model to me: she was intellectual, engaged, and idealistic in a chaotic world. Let’s break that down further:
Intellectual: Her driven pursuit of mathematics and philosophy, combined with Neoplatonic ideals, made her a role model for a life of the mind in a time when it was typically not open to women.
Engaged: Hypatia worked with the Roman government and was a trusted advisor, while also advising regular citizens on their problems and conflicts. She cared about using her ideas and teaching to make the world better.
Idealistic: Open to working with all kinds of people (pagans, Christians, etc.), she sought harmony and contemplation of intellectual ideas and virtues.
The way she lived offers lessons I’d like to continue to work towards.
Here’s what you could consider doing to be more like Hypatia:
Inform and educate yourself, even if the material is tough and you’re not a typical student (or teacher)… which was true of Hypatia’s mathematical and philosophical work.
Teach, speak, write, and consult on big issues. Even if the value of your effort is not recognized by others, keep doing it; it could have an influence later (or much, much later, in Hypatia’s case).
Work across boundaries, factions, and groups where possible, though beware of those working against you or to divide people further. In the partisan and often absurd world of today, this may seem foolhardy. But if no one can interact with each other, we are all doomed.
Encourage contemplation in yourself and those around you.
If there is one key practice that I take from Hypatia, it’s to collaborate with and consult with people from all walks of life and all kinds of backgrounds, much like she did across religious and cultural groups… in order to work towards becoming better together. She invited those different from herself to learn from her and share in her work, and she reached out in her public lectures and sessions where she offered guidance to the people of Alexandria.
Today, the world feels fraught and unsettled, as in Hypatia’s time in the late Roman empire, with huge divides among people. Unscrupulous people are willing to take advantage of those differences to “divide and conquer.” It’s important to work towards spread understanding and curiosity rather than rumors and hate. Whether we do that for philosophical reasons stemming from Neoplatonism’s scale of virtues, or for the sake of common humanity and the circles of concern valued by the Stoics, it hardly matters: What’s valuable is how we behave towards each other as we work together in a complex and often violent planet.
This is also the lesson I’ll keep teaching my kids, as they worry about the future. Build a community around yourselves filled with folks who care about each other and care about honoring each other’s point of view, with an emphasis on compassion, self-awareness, and the primary virtues from our ancient philosopher role models (wisdom, justice, courage, temperance). We can all be “more philosophical,” in Hypatia’s formulation, that way. Maybe that attitude will spread out beyond your small group… maybe it won’t… but it’s something we can do to improve our world, no matter what.
Thanks for this. It's a tragedy that we don't have any of Hypatia's philosophical works surviving to study!
Thanks for a thoughtful appreciation of Hypatia that goes beyond the normal "pagan martyr" narrative.