Christine de Pizan in her ambiguous relationship with Aristotle: an analysis of The City of Ladies and The Book of Peace

• Grant number: 21/14122-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2022
• End date: November 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Mel Ciqueira Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/13728-4 - Christine de Pizan and the different strategies of government for the prince and the princess: an analysis of The Book of Peace and The Treasury of The City of Ladies, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

This research project intends to investigate the presence of the practical philosophy of Aristotle in the thought of Christine de Pizan. Therefore, due to the limited scope of the research, the investigation will focus on two works of the philosopher: The City of Ladies and (1405) and The Book of Peace (1414). With the first, the investigation seeks to understand how Pizan faces the thesis, of Aristotelian source, about the defectibility of woman's rationality and, consequently, of her inaptitude for virtue. With The Book of Peace, the purpose of the investigation is to understand how Christine de Pizan uses Aristotelian thought to constitute his own political thought. The choice of investigate these two works is due to the fact that the clear assimilation of Aristotelian theses in The book of Peace allows us to see that the fact that Pizan disagrees with Aristotle in The City of Ladies does not leads her to forsake definitively the Greek philosopher, with whom she seems to maintain, in her work, an ambiguous relationship. This research intends to explore precisely this ambiguity, treating,in these two works, both the aspects of practical Aristotelian philosophy that Pizan rejects and aspects of which it appropriates.