Women Philosophers and their Teachers. The Untold Story

Abstract

This essay proposes a possible way of understanding the student-teacher relationship. I argue that a relationship of authority is not, and should not be, linked with uniformity, with a single model that must be maintained indiscriminately. Authority should be such that it is open to the freedom of the other to construct her own autonomy. The true teacher is capable of forgetting the effort and hard work that he or she has put into the freedom of the student, whom they should not place in a position of eternal debt, destined to be a disciple echoing her teacher's ideas. Through an analysis of the thought of Charles Péguy, the shared reflexions of the Scuola estiva della Differenza and their similarities with the ideas of Françoise Collin, I argue that the relationship between women philosophers and their teachers is not best realised through unconditional freedom nor through a binding dependence subject to conditions, rather it finds its vitality in a point of reality that is the job well done.