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The Unacknowledged Socrates in the Works of Luce Irigaray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Shaun O'Dwyer
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Abstract

In Luce Irigaray's thought, Socrates is a marginal figure compared to Plato or Hegel. However, she does identify the Socratic dialectical position as that of a ‘phallocrat’ and she does conflate Socratic and Platonic philosophy in her psychoanalytic reading of Plato in Speculum of the Other Woman. In this essay, I critically interpret both Irigaray's own texts and the Platonic dialogues in order to argue that: (1) the Socratic dialectical position is not ‘phallocratic’ by Irigaray's own understanding of the term; (2) that Socratic (early Platonic) philosophy should not be conflated with the mature Platonic metaphysics Irigaray criticizes; and (3) that Socratic dialectical method is similar in some respects with the dialectical method of Diotima, Socrates’ instructress in love and the subject of Irigaray's “Sorcerer Love” essay in An Ethics of Sexual Difference.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Spring 2006 , pp. 28 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

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