"Can a woman be a thinker?

Yes, today I can say that a woman

can be a thinker!"

A. F. Losev

Introduction

The epigraph marks the beginning of a novel by one of the most profound researchers of the Antiquity, written in the 1930s, which became known to the general public, giving rise to many rumors and speculations (Kibalnik, 2014: 24–30; Samsonova, 2018: 106–115). In this context, the recognition of the professional domestic philosopher Losev, put into the mouth of his alter ego – the central character of the novel The Woman-Thinker, on whose behalf the narration is conducted, is worth a lot, since such a confession from a man is a rare thing. Evidence of this is the entire world's artistic culture, in which a woman most often appears as a mother, a lover, even a warrior, but not a thinker.

For the sake of fairness, it is noted that the appeal to the image of a male thinker by representatives of creative professions also does not happen often. The most famous works here are the portrait Senecio by Paul Klee (Volkova, Kochubey, 2019: 8–20), the spiritual opera Christ by Anton Rubinstein (Sirichenko, 2007: 77–87), the art canvas What is Truth? by Nikolay Ge[1], the opera and symphony The Harmony of the World by Paul Hindemith, the title of which corresponds to the title of Kepler's central work as a scientist and thinker, the triptych Three Pictures of Paul Klee by Edison Denisov (meaning the play Senecio) (Nevskaya, 2013: 199–206 ), the rock opera Jesus Christ – Superstar by Lloyd Webber (Zhukova, Fedorenkova, 2018: 37–48), the feature film by Sergei Parajanov The Color of Pomegranates, revealing the spiritual world of Sayat-Nova, the Medieval poet, the opera Giordano Bruno written at different times by composers Sergei Cortez and Francesco Filidei, the opera Qu Yuan by the composer Shi Guangnan, dedicated to the dramatic moments of the life of a Chinese philosopher and poet, the dance drama Confucius (directed by Kong Desin, scriptwriter Liu Chun, composer Zhang Qu). A special place in this row is occupied by Eric Satie's opera Socrates. It is significant that the order for this work was received from a woman – Princess Winaretta de Polignac, who intended to perform Socratic dialogues in her own salon. Therefore, in fact, the parts of the dialogues are performed by female voices, including two sopranos and two mezzo-sopranos. As for the orchestra, it included exactly as many instruments as the princess's home orchestra had – wood and brass, percussion and strings in the amount of twenty-five (Tashlykova, 2016: 64–66).

From this point of view, the above-mentioned novel The Woman-Thinker is of particular interest in the context of the cinematic works of modern directors who turned their attention to the woman-philosopher (Table 1 shows a selection of fictional cinematic biographies of famous women-philosophers). Realizing that philosophy is a highly individualized knowledge, one cannot but admit that, in pursuit of the goal of arousing interest in history, in the center of which is the fate of a woman-thinker, authors are often forced to focus not so much on philosophy as on the cultural context, in which the formation of a woman-thinker takes place, as well as on the people included in her inner circle. At the same time, the interest in the artistic biography of the woman-thinker is due to the fact that, referring to this topic, the author broadcasts at least two concepts – the thinker portrayed by him or her and the culture depicting him or her.

The authors examine several cinematic images of women-thinkers, trying to reveal the cultural universals of their reception by the modern viewer.

Table 1

Biopics about women-philosophers

Problem statement and research questions

As if anticipating the problematic field of this article, the hero of the novel by Losev reflects on the fact that people are accustomed (and art contributed a lot to this) to associate "instability and fluidity, capriciousness and faint-hearted flexibility" with femininity (Losev, 2002: 4-5). Asserting that femininity is not necessarily helpless, empty, and weak in anticipation of something unknown, Losev recalls women such as Aphrodite, Cybele and Astarte, Wagner's Brunhild, and finally Gaia. Therefore, being, as it were, the very masculinity, the heroine of the novel – the pianist Radina – remains a woman, being "a living, fearless flesh of truth where truth itself seems to be ready to move and hesitate" (Losev, 2002: 5). It is not accidental that the philosopher, through the lips of his character, confesses that he fell in love with Radina just as it is with Hegel and Schelling, exclaiming in the end: "learn not from Hegel, but from Radina!" (Losev, 2002: 3).

In addition to the mentioned female names, the author of the novel compares Radina with the resurrected ancient Pythia, calls her a friend of Moiram, sees in her the signs of ancient Parka or even Erinia, as well as Wagner's Erda, guesses in her the features of Furia, Artemis, likening her to the embodied wisdom of Prometheus, "but only without protest, but only with his titanism" (Losev, 2002: 2). At the same time, the novel character sees in Radina sometimes a sorceress, sometimes a witch, sometimes a very young woman, tall and slender, sometimes a dry and crooked hundred-year-old woman, in a word, a werewolf (in the concept, she has proteism as an essential feature).

Trying to understand his love for Radina, knowing nothing about her personal life, the narrator comes to the conclusion that there is "a secret connection between the revelations of thought and inner rejection of oneself, asceticism" (Losev, 2002: 4). As if addressing the readers of the novel, he writes: "You, married, and you who know women through legal and illegal relationships, cannot comprehend the secrets of gender, you do not know the clever secret of love, you are not involved in the marriage mystery of the spirit... Only a monk has access to the beauty of a mind..." (Losev 2002: 4). At the same time, the hero reminds us that "… there are times when, it is said, those who are married will be like those who are not married…" (Losev, 2002: 4).

Reflecting on what wisdom is, the hero states that it "is not innocence ..." (Losev, 2002: 4). According to the narrator, the woman-thinker "knows great falls, she knows all the secret temptations of life, she is also attracted by sins, attracted by the sweetness of crime, the captivating delight of fiery-gloomy passions. But she may not fall. It is not necessary to fall to know the secret of falling. A monk knows the secret of gender better than married people and better than cheating people" (Losev, 2002: 4).

It is significant that anticipating the hero's personal acquaintance with his deity – he calls Radina the best of the European Olympians (Losev, 2002: 1) – the narrator's words lose their pathos in the situation of direct communication with the pianist. Shaking the listener's imagination with the depth of thought that is born in the process of performing the music of Bach and Beethoven[2], Radina eventually appears, in the hero's eyes, to be a tearful petty bourgeoise who shares her life with her three former husbands, demonstrating slovenliness, stupidity, and pettiness. In other words, everything that was allowed in relation to a woman-thinker at the level of an idea in real life became an unbearable burden for her admirer. Why are the traits of a woman-thinker, which led the hero of the novel to disappointment, are guessed in the tendency characteristic of the modern socio-cultural situation to depict women's life in cinema in a melodramatic way: to focus on a love story, suffering, vulnerability of a woman by society, a man, etc.? The search for an answer to this question is the main intrigue of this article.

Purpose of the study

The analysis of the cinematic image of women-philosophers of different eras pursues the goal of understanding the proteistic nature of the coming (or is it already present?) postmodern culture and describing the type of a postmodern person, since the synthesis of the feminine principle and reflexive essence, shown by artistic means, in the authors' opinion, is a model of a person living "after morality", "after beauty", "after the death of art", "after the death of religion", and finally, "after the death of a human". This research goal was formed within the boundaries of the concept of cinema as an effective ideological resource (Shcheglova, & Saenko, 2019; Shcheglova, & Saenko, 2016).

Methods

The authors rely on the ideas of Dilthey that in the "sciences of the spirit" experiences are important as the basis of individual experience, biography. The biography of a physicist is interesting, but it will not have such a significant impact on the content of his or her discoveries that the biography of a philosopher will have on his or her concept, his or her construction of a picture of the world. According to Dilthey, social models must be reconstructed from the individual, but, on the other hand, historicity is important – it is necessary to embed each concept into the historical stream. "This is how a separate area of experience arises, acquiring its independent source and its material in inner experience and therefore, naturally, is the subject of some special experimental science. And until no one claims that he or she is able to deduce the entire set of passions, poetic images, creative invention, which we call the life of Goethe, from the structure of his or her brain and from the properties of his or her body, thus making it more accessible to understanding, the independent status of such a science will not be contested" (Dilthey, 2000: 21).

The second methodological aspect of the authors' research is the concept of proteism by Epstein (in all meanings and senses, the author names five, including methodological one). "Proteism as a humanitarian methodology studies emerging, not yet formed phenomena in the embryonic, fluid stage of their development, when they portend and signify more than they are in the proper sense" (Epstein, 2003: 331).

Results and discussion

It is not the history of philosophy that is studied in biographical feature films, but the characteristics of the culture that produced those feature films. First, not all significant philosophers were filmed, the choice of personalities is symptomatic for an era that generates a fictional biography, reflecting itself in it. A feature film is a child of its cultural era, it is created reflecting the aspirations of its time, and not the culture into which the portrayed thinker was immersed. Second, a feature film primarily has a recreational function, which means that it is aimed at entertainment, intrigue, arousing feelings, therefore the screenwriter and director, and most importantly, the viewer will be interested not so much in the philosophical concept as in life circumstances, conflicts, dramas, and scandals that filled the life of a philosopher.

Nevertheless, resorting to the biopic genre (choosing the biography of a philosopher), modern culture gets acquainted with philosophical teachings. Philosophy is a type of worldview that cannot be separated from the actions, manners, political views, and the fate of the author of the concepts. Therefore, a biographical film about a philosopher is not just an idle interest in his or her personal life, his or her fears, successes and mistakes, the peculiarities of his or her character, but also an appeal to the active, applied side of his or her teaching, to his or her practical reason. In addition, it is very important for the subject of the on-screen visual culture of the modern time to see a portrait (literally) of the legendary philosopher.

Art cinematography, which synthesized almost all types of art, concentrated their "Cassandra origin" in itself. Cinema is ahead of culture, predicts its development, in part provoking or programming it[3]. Cinema, being a form of sensuality, in many ways intuitively determines ("gropes") the future of the world, which is associated with permanent transformation, the so-called "proteism". Defining proteism as a type of worldview that had developed by the beginning of the 21st century, Epstein writes: "… this is a humble realization that we live at the very beginning of an unknown civilization; that we have touched some unknown sources of strength, energy, knowledge that can ultimately destroy us; that all our glorious achievements are only weak prototypes, timid beginnings of what is fraught with both info- and biotechnologies of the future" (Epstein, 2003: 330-331). Art cinema has been broadcasting this humble awareness or premonition for several decades, which, in the authors' opinion, is connected with the emergence of biopics about women-philosophers. Art senses the exhaustion of the masculine type of culture, manifested in politics, economics, science, and philosophy. It is not exclusively about the emergence of women in the sphere of male activity, a deep transformation seems more significant to the authors – the spread in the 20th century of the female type of worldview, and in the 21st century – androgynous one, characterized exactly by proteism.

Therefore, art cinematography initially depicts a woman-philosopher as a woman, but gradually this image becomes a sign of future ethics, not male and not female, but protean.

The third wave of feminism, which paradoxically included criticism of the first two, gave rise to the complex concept of a free woman who possesses all the characteristics of a suffragist of the late 19th century and a feminist of the 1960s. Since modern feminism has dissolved in the values ​​generally accepted today and is not a vivid protest movement, its sound can be heard in popular culture, including in art cinematography. Therefore, the heroines of biographical films about women-philosophers are bright freedom-loving personalities, seemingly obliged to be self-sufficient, but in the portrayal of the 20th century cinema, they suffer from loneliness, jealousy, parting, underestimation, and other troubles – components of women's drama.

For example, in the film Les Amants du Flore, the focus is on Simone de Beauvoir, although the title claims two philosophers[4]. The biographical plot is built precisely on the basis of the female drama. It is surprising that in the scenario of the film, the growth trajectory of a new wave of feminism (the formation of the idea of ​​a woman's self-sufficiency) and the intensification of feelings inherent in the traditional female destiny (love, jealousy, the desire to be loved, the desire to create a family) coincide. The authors have to agree with the researcher Koretskaya, who believes that cinematography refers to historical (and it is added – biographical) material primarily with the aim of "convincingly synthesizing modern mythologies in response to a pressing question" (Koretskaya, 2016: 15). In addition, this is due to the specificity of the biopic cinematic genre, in which the female biography is a special subgenre. The researcher of biographical cinema Morozova writes about the fundamental difference between the film biographies of a man and a woman: "... the traditions and conventions of the female biopic turned out to be much more unshakable than those existing within the male biopic, which is explained by the presence of stable patriarchal stereotypes in the mass consciousness, as well as the specificity and ambiguity of the cultural perception of the very theme of active female presence in the public sphere. Traditionally, women's biographies have been more focused on describing and analyzing events in private rather than public life. This stereotype, typical for literature, was fully inherited by the cinematography. Within the framework of this stereotype, social life and success were interpreted as a coincidence in the life of a woman, and ambition and enterprise were regarded as qualities that were not appropriate for her" (Morozova, 2016: 111).

This tradition is also noticeable in studies of the place of the female person in the history of philosophy: "From the majestic Hypatia of Alexandria to the aristocratic Simone de Beauvoir – what determines the fate of women in the history of philosophy: the role, character, direction or touches to the portrait of personal and historical tragedies?" (Stein, 2015: 252).

Features of a cinematic portrait of a woman-philosopher in the cinema of the 20th century. The authors analyze several films, which are very different from each other. First, the heroines of the plots are philosophers (or philosophines[5]) of different eras. Second, the examined films were made in the last forty years. Third, these are the works of directors dissimilar to each other. However, it is impossible not to reveal the universals of female film biography.

Sexuality. This characteristic is paradoxical and difficult to construct a portrait of a woman-philosopher. The viewer should be interested in the intellect of the philosopher, his or her concepts, and this has little to do with the external attractiveness of the authors, whose ideas have changed the culture. Nevertheless, the female image on the screen continues to be an object of desire, even if it is a real biography. Therefore, external attractiveness is certainly included in the screen portrait of a woman-philosopher. Historical evidence, memoirs, and biographical descriptions, or simply photographs, often reveal to us the absence of the brilliant beauty of real women-philosophers. In some cases, on the contrary, exceptional external attractiveness, combined with intelligence and efficiency, turned these women into a legend or mythologeme. However, both the former and the latter are portrayed in films as possessing beautiful features. Actresses who play the roles of philosophines, at least in the youth of their heroines, shine with beautiful eyes, brush their thick hair, and have thin wrists. An explanation for this paradox is found in the concept of simulation of sex by Baudrillard, who writes: "The shift of the center of gravity of sexual mythology to the feminine coincides with the transition from determination to general indetermination. The feminine replaces the masculine, but this does not mean that one gender takes the place of the other according to the logic of structural inversion. The substitution of the feminine signifies the end of the definable representation of gender, the translation into a balanced state of the law of sexual distinction. The exaltation of the feminine corresponds with the climax of sexual pleasure and the catastrophe of the principle of the reality of gender. And femininity burns in this deadly whirlwind of hyperreality of gender, as it once did, but in a completely different way, it burned in irony and temptation" (Baudrillard, 2000: 32).

In the film Agora, Hypatia is played by the English actress Rachel Hannah Weiss, who has a very attractive appearance, her heroine with portrait characteristics resembles the women portrayed by the Pre-Raphaelite John William Waterhouse or the neoclassicist John William Godward. The heroine of the film is the object of love of several men who want her and suffer because of it. The plot of the film includes a large share of the description of the political and religious conflict, which again forces the authors to turn to the ideas by Baudrillard. The French philosopher is surprised that feminism denies the sexuality and seductiveness of the feminine as something that humiliates women. However, the meaning of the feminist movement is the equality of women and men, including in power. "Seduction represents dominance over the symbolic universe, while power is just dominance over the real one" (Baudrillard, 2000: 36).

He discovers the feminine, the nature of temptation in modern civilization, thereby affirming the repression of the masculine type of culture by the feminine one. In addition, temptation as a state of overflowing forms is akin to proteism. Thus, approaching seduction as a special mode of behavior that most clearly manifests itself in the form of a feminine way of existence, Baudrillard finds a new way of seeing the human world. The latter appears as a world of signs, masks, caused not by the sublimation of libido, but by the desire to provoke the Other to a response, by the desire to transform reality, to give it a meaning that, in turn, will require an answer.

However, even if Baudrillard did not succeed in replacing Freud's libido universe by the universe of seduction, he was able to open a cosmos in which the charm of women reigns.

If one agrees with Baudrillard, it appears that the directors of the biopic, endowing the image of a woman-philosopher with a seductive appearance, guess the essence of feminist ideas. Another researcher, considering another phenomenon (neo-paganism), also called such a synthesis "proteism" – internal ambiguity, "easy turnover". "In different sociocultural contexts, it can be turned to us by one or the other of its side. Its ability to join the most diverse and even polar counterparties is striking" (Krutous, 2000: 83). It is believed that it is not possible to explain the obsessive sexuality of the heroines of biopics solely by the inertia of cinema aesthetics and the concept of simulation, therefore the authors turn to the concept of proteism to interpret the strange sexuality of cinema images of women-philosophers. For example, Murdoch (Iris) and Rand (The Passion of Ayn Rand) are shown in the films in adulthood, at the end of their lives. However, in the first case, young Iris is seen in her memories of her sexual experiments, scandalous (for England in the early 20th century) behavior, betrayal of her husband. Ayn Rand appears in the film as the heroine of an ambiguous love story, in which a married couple is involved, 24 years younger than the heroine. Even the political scandal provoked by the concept of Hannah Arendt (Hannah Arendt[6]), which became the basis of the script for the feature film, included several hints of the heroine's connection with Heidegger, whose feelings in the past supposedly forced the heroine to make just such a choice in the present.

The article by Koretskaya describes the historical details of the eroticization of philosophical activity and the concept of "logos". In this context, "... when the role of the bearer of the logos is played not by Socrates or Plato, but by necessity by a scrupulous virgin of Balzac's age, a failure in the program was almost inevitable" (Koretskaya, 2016: 28). The philosophical logos has a force and power, originally akin to the erotic. Philosophical discourse, by its very nature, is intended to fertilize, sow. Surely, it is understandable from this perspective why people find themselves at a loss during two millennia of the development of philosophy, when a woman acts as a thinker[7]. To get out of frustration, a woman-thinker is endowed with masculine qualities (assertiveness, power, strength) or sexual influence is searched for in her behavior and actions. To show that her ideas permeate someone else's consciousness, an erotic effect on others is attributed to her. This is the law of the screen; this is an easy (false or correct?) way of visuality.

Eccentricity is another indispensable feature of the image of a woman-philosopher on the screen. The heroines bathe in the river naked, sing songs at an official reception, in every possible way violate the established framework of decency with their own behavior, or shock readers or listeners of their speeches, lectures, provoking a private or public scandal.

A fragment of the plot, in which Hypatia publicly hands a handkerchief with her own menstrual blood to her admirer and requestor of her hand, has a very controversial idea. On the one hand, the heroine with this shocking act wants to show that she is not a woman, but a philosopher. On the other hand, the opposite is true, the act is very feminine.

The eccentricity of behavior, consciously or unconsciously, is compared by directors with holiness or with foolishness, unworldliness, transcendence. In many biopics about women-philosophers, certain features of hagiographies are manifested:

• they teach, selflessly, disinterestedly carry the truth to the masses;
• "passions", suffering, torment during life are depicted;
• emphasis is placed on violent death (Hypatia, Luxembourg, Stein).

The image of a saint in medieval culture seems to be the foundation for creating the character of a hero in modern culture. "… It is possible to compare a feminine feat in science with asceticism. Many of these women resemble holy fools. They accepted offences, direct insults and indirect sidelong glances, condemnations and accusations – of abnormality. They really were not the norm, as they moved away from immediate natural and social purpose, giving maternal instincts and feminine love to science" (Stein, 2015: 254).

One should not exclude a simple reason for the directors' appeal to the eccentricity of heroines-philosophers, associated with the fact that modern cinema has made the recreational function its main one.

This is one of the reasons for the choice for the plot and script of special scandalous, intimate facts of the biography of a great person, which flatter the modern mass audience. Thus, exploring the nature of film perception, Metz connects cinema with fetishism and voyeurism, reveals the identity of "film work" and "dream work" (Metz, 2010). Indeed, the mutual aspiration of the contemporary recipient and the artistic screen has a kinship with peeping. Cinema provides the viewer with a keyhole that secretly reveals both the private world of the family, love relationships, and the inner world of the character. For example, the "Valkyrie of the Revolution" Rosa Luxemburg in the film has a subtle sense of nature, listens to the singing of tits, dreams of a family, home, children and constantly asks the question: "Why do I always live not the way I want and dream?!" Researchers of the image of a scientist in American cinema offer expectations of a mass consumer society as an explanation for the mythological features of film portraits (Losev et al., 2019: 222). The authors do not fully agree with this formulation of the question, since it is believed that the process is of a dialogical nature. Cinema images provoke the viewer's expectations and then correspond to them.

Childlessness, sacrifice. The rejection of a woman's maternal destiny, trying on masks and roles – a special emphasis on this form of sacrifice of famous women-philosophers is made by the researcher Stein. In her article, it is argued that the pursuit of philosophy for a woman is always associated with sacrifice: "Usually we do not raise this issue in relation to men, but women's fate is different. To what extent do you need to sacrifice or elect, displace or beg, close or defend, mourn or protest, go against the public in order to embody your own beliefs?" (Stein, 2015: 263).

Koretskaya writes: "... the brave and sharp-tongued Hipparchia, who shared with her chosen one all the delights of cynical praxis, looked more like a talking trophy than a subject of philosophizing" (Koretskaya, 2016: 19–20). In the film Les Amants du Flore, Simone de Beauvoir is depicted as an autonomous subject of philosophizing, and Sartre is portrayed as an ambitious, albeit talented, thinker who wants to see de Beauvoir ("Beaver") as his trophy, as evidenced by numerous remarks of the hero, but especially the ending a film in which Sartre practically takes de Beauvoir away from her love for the sake of photography "for eternity."

The feeling (hers or for her) becomes the source or catalyst of philosophical thought for a woman-thinker in a feature film.

A woman-philosopher is portrayed without fail in connection with a man, his love. Even the revolutionary, thinker Rosa Luxemburg in the film of the same name (in the seventh minute, lyric music sounds, and in the ninth minute – the kiss of the heroine and her lover). Rosa is directly put by a loved one before a choice:

— Rosa, you have to choose who to be: a mother or a revolutionary.

— Both.

— It's impossible. A child will make you vulnerable. You have to bring ideas to the world. They are your children.

Stories about love affairs and personal dramas of Rosa Luxemburg are confidently woven into the plot of the film. In the authors' opinion, the concept of the film contains a justification for these inclusions. The heroine should really act as a "Valkyrie of the revolution", that is, emotional, passionate, active, and this is impossible if she is cold in love (Freudianism has dissolved in universal ideas). The leitmotif of the whole picture is the heroine's activity: she is the locomotive of revolutionary activity in Germany; she needs to "push", "stir up", "inspire" party comrades.

For example, the film Hypatia directed by Amenabar depicts the Alexandrian philosopher as a thinker who devoted her life to science and philosophy. However, the researcher Koretskaya quite rightly notes: "... the main philosophical achievement of Hypatia is not even a certain teaching, but her own life and death..." (Koretskaya, 2016: 23).

The protean image of a woman-philosopher deprives her of the stereotypical features of a woman's biography (the central role of love, suffering from loneliness, suffering from unrealized motherhood, etc.), but it highlights in this image the deep feminine, metaphysical feminine, which was not connected with a woman-human, but with the feminine principle of the Universe.

Thus, Hypatia remains, as it were, unharmed, inviolable for the love of men, surrounding her. The researcher notes the paradox of Amenabar's film, associated with a kind of gender opposition: "... while men share power in the most dubious ways, the only parresiast capable of "the courage of truth" is a woman who has remained faithful to herself, her own (somehow very progressive-humanistic) principles" (Koretskaya, 2016: 15).

After the death of the English writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), her husband, critic and writer, Professor John Bailey, wrote a memoir Elegy for Iris. Many people criticized Professor Bailey for the fact that in his memoirs he spoke about the details of their marriage, which are not accepted to be voiced, and about her illness, and in a rather naturalistic way. Based on Bailey's book, in 2001 Richard Eyre directed the film Iris. The peculiarity of the creation of the film portrait of the philosopher and writer Murdoch in the film Iris, first, is that she is seen through the eyes of a man, a loving husband, a literary critic, a teacher. Second, the film is dedicated to the last, very difficult, years of Murdoch's life, when she was struggling with Alzheimer's disease. All stages of the development of the heroine's illness are accompanied by fragmentary memories of her youth and the flowering of her work. There are very few presentations that reveal the content of her philosophical concepts. Twice there is a speech about love, several remarks about language, consciousness, madness, literature and writing. In the authors' opinion, the key fragment of the picture is a bike ride, during which Iris shouts to her husband who is catching up: "Don't catch up with me. I am Proteus."

Murdoch is not a man or a woman, she is Proteus[8]. To the question about the origins and driving forces of philosophical evolution of Murdoch, asked in June 1999 at Oxford to John Bailey, a completely "metaphysical" answer was given (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) – the last, the most voluminous work of Murdoch, summarizing the enormous artistic, theoretical and life experience of the writer), which lies in the ideological line of the entire work of the writer, developing according to the strict laws of the existence of the philosophical and artistic consciousness: "Once Iris told me that her philosophical views can be compared with the dynamics of the myth of Proteus. It was a commentary on my desperate attempts to understand the unpredictability of her work. "Remember Proteus," she said. "You need to hold on to me tightly, and everything will be quite clear. Proteus could turn into anyone: a lion, a snake, a monster, a fish. But when Hercules grabbed him tightly during these transformations, Proteus finally surrendered, and was forced to take his real guise – human one" (Tolkachev, 1999: 6).

It seems to the authors that the image of Proteus is universal for describing the woman-philosopher: not a man – not a woman; vicious – a holy martyr; carried away by science – dreaming of family happiness; the Zionist – an anti-Semite.

The article by Gurevich and Spirova successfully attempts to depict the conceptual dialogue between Sartre and Beauvoir about love, in which there is a place for a discussion of the phenomena of pain, power, masochism, sadism, etc. (Gurevich, Spirova, 2016). The authors of the article convincingly state that the theories of the two existentialists did not remain only theories, their famous pact is a long-term implementation of the concepts of love by Sartre and Beauvoir. In fictional films dedicated to the biographies of these philosophers, it is shown that such attempts were not entirely successful, since in both films there is sympathy for Simone de Beauvoir, who appears in this pact either deceived, or used, or deprived.

Conclusion

A characteristic feature of the modern biopic genre of cinematography is the blurring of lines between the aesthetics of film art, feminist politics, and popular romantic storytelling.

As a result of the interpretations of feature films, the products of the process of aestheticization of the images of science and philosophy, the aestheticization of the ethical principle, a process characteristic of postmodernity, were revealed.

Proteism and androgyny of individuals and concepts is a manifestation of subconscious longing for the integrity of the worldview (which has been irretrievably lost by modernity); this is a holistic philosophical position – not to divide the world into masculine and feminine, but to perceive (consume) it as a whole, rather – to feel. Unconsciously, filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century and modern times broadcast the idea that the feminine is not half of human culture. The feminine is an all-encompassing form, the generative function of which is transferred from nature to culture (therefore, biographical cinema depicts the metamorphosis of childbirth into intellectual art).

In the film images of women-philosophers, interpreted by the authors, postmodern eclecticism, semantic one, conceptual one (this is another facet of proteism) is clearly manifested, at the same time it is asserted:

• a philosopher as a woman,

• a philosopher as an ascetic,

• a philosopher as a rebel.