Dear All,

Much has been written concerning Keith Russell’s posts. Susan Hagan asks many of the questions I would have asked. Susan raises reasonable points. I have nothing to add. 

Keith is mistaken in his complaint about “feminisation.” There are problems with universities. Keith has not really discussed the problems — he merely asserts that they exist and that feminisation is the cause. Mats Alvesson, Lindsay Waters, and Peter Murphy offer careful and articulate discussions of the problems, together with suggestions as to the cause. (I provided information and links in a post on Sunday.)

There are also problems in doctoral education in design, and in design research. Nigel Cross discusses some of these problems in his article. It would be helpful to discuss the problems. It is neither helpful nor correct to blame these problems on “feminisation.”

Because Keith describes this in terms of Socrates and the Socratic Method, it will help to point out crucial differences between what Socrates himself says about women and what Keith says about Socrates.      

In a fine article about Socrates in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Debra Nails writes:  

“Socrates seemed to have a higher opinion of women than most of his companions had, speaking of ‘men and women,’ ‘priests and priestesses,’ and naming foreign women as his teachers: Socrates claimed to have learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletus, the de facto spouse of Pericles (Plato, Menexenus); and to have learned erotics from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea (Plato, Symposium).”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/ <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/>

Nails is professor emerita of philosophy and classics at Michigan State University. Those who wish to learn more about Socrates and the circle around him will find two of her books especially informative. One is The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics. The other is: Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy.

Socrates famously describes his own work in terms of a female role. He takes a nurturing, life-giving perspective in the Theaetetus, where Socrates compares himself to a midwife.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/ <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/>

Because this argument doesn’t really rest on Socrates or the history of philosophy, I’ll stop here. To the degree that we invoke Socrates, however, it’s useful to see what Socrates has to say for himself — or to read what Socrates specialists have to say about him.

Yours, 

Ken

Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 







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Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 







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