Aistė Čelkytė

Leiden University

Aistė Čelkytė is a researcher at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and an Associate Professor at Vilnius University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Galen project, Utrecht University. She has published The Stoic Theory of Beauty (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Galen on Human Physiology (CUP, 2025), as well as many articles on Stoic philosophy and ancient medicine in Phronesis, Apeiron, Classical Quarterly and elsewhere.

Abstract

Cosmological Arguments in the School of Hypatia

This paper is dedicated to examining the evidence of the biological model of emanation in the sources originating from Hypatia’s school. In the first part of the talk, I explain the methodology I use to collect extracts (primarily from the works of Hypatia’s pupils). In the second part, I present the reconstruction of the account of cosmic emanation grounded in the biological model of growth. In the third part, I discuss possible sources of inspiration for this model in Plato and later sources, as well as polemical motivations for developing it.