With the limited information we have about her, Watts reconstructs her life using the scaffolds of her pupils' texts. The Egyptian philosopher has often been the subject of myth, because she was a woman, because she was the victim of religious fanaticism. A movie has been made about her life, "Agora", by the great Alejandro Amenábar, but I can only recommend not to watch it, it's that bad.
Watts tries to take away the myth first, before trying to capture what she actually was: a highly educated woman whose primary work was to update Ptolemy's "Almagest", his treatise on the movement of the planets.
Despite all the numerous sources Watts mentions, it appears to be really hard to understand what her own teachings weren. The scaffolding used by Watts get more attention than the subject of his story. But maybe that's as far as he or anyone can go to reconstruct the life of someone who lived so long ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment