The Feminine Paradigm of Culture in Alice Voinescu’s Conception

Abstract

"The Feminine Paradigm of Culture in Alice Voinescu’s Conception. Alice Voinescu, the first Romanian woman to obtain a PhD in Philosophy, proposed a female cultural paradigm in the conferences she held between 1933-1943, in the context of the women’s emancipation movement of the interwar period. In her view, the male model of knowledge, based on abstract thinking, must be permanently conjoined with the female one, based on intuition and affect, in a totalizing, modern perspective. The salvation of the “eternal human” through the “eternal feminine”, characterized by respect for tradition and continuity both in culture and in society, represents an alternative for materialistic civilization, which is the outcome of the male cognitive pattern. Keywords: Alice Voinescu, femininity, feminism, spirituality, masculine, culture, generation, new man "