Eros and the Wise: The Stoic Response to a Cultural Dilemma

Abstract

An older man stands close to a younger man, who looks up (or as the case may be down) at him, often with fond affection. The older man beams beneficently at the young man’s beardless face, and with one hand he cups the younger man’s chin, in a gesture expressive of tender personal affection. His other hand, however, has other ideas: it fondles the young man’s genitals, which are usually exposed. The older man’s penis is often erect, the younger man’s almost never.¹ The young man sometimes repels the groping hand, but often, too, contentedly allows it.²

This paper is closely connected to my account of the Stoic passions in The Therapy of Desire, 1994b, chs. 10–12, and to ‘Platonic Love and Colorado Law’, 1994a, (appendix 4 being a statement coauthored by me and Kenneth Dover). But the paper also turns to the topic of chs. 6 and 7 of the Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986, in the belief that the analysis given there was insufficiently grounded in the historical and cultural context of Plato’s thought. On Stoicism, I have learnt much from Brad Inwood’s unpublished manuscript ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’, and, of course, from Malcolm Schofield’s The Stoic Idea of the City, 1991. The paper was first presented at a conference on ‘Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind’ at the University of Helsinki, Finland. I am grateful to the participants for their comments, and especially to Victor Caston, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Christopher Gill, and Richard Sorabji. I am also extremely grateful to Kenneth Dover, Brad Inwood, and Malcolm Schofield for their detailed written comments; I am sure I have not answered all of their questions.