Alcibiades is one of the most explicitly sexualized figures in fifth-century Athens, a "lover of the people" whom the demos "love and hate and long to possess" (Ar. Frogs 1425). But his eros fits ill with the normative sexuality of the democratic citizen as we usually imagine it. Simultaneously lover and beloved, effeminate and womanizer, Alcibiades is essentially paranomos, lawless or perverse. This paper explores the relation between Alcibiades' paranomia and the norms of Athenian sexuality, and argues that his eros (...) reveals an intrinsic instability within the sexual economy of the democracy: the desire he embodied blurred the categories that defined Athenian masculinity; the desire he inspired rendered the demos passive and "soft." This same instability can be seen in Thucydides' juxtaposition of the mutilation of the Herms and the legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. These two episodes (obscurely linked by Thucydides) together tell of an idealized citizen body under threat. The tyrannicide story figures the democratic citizen as an elite lover, whose sexual dominance is vital to his political autonomy. The Herms, with their prominent phalloi, symbolized this citizen-lover, and thus their mutilation was an assault on the masculinity, as well as political power, of the demos. The tyrannicide legend seems to promise a defense against this threat of civic castration; but instead of shoring up the sexually-dominant citizen, Thucydides' version of the legend merely reveals his frailty and fictionality: even in Athens' heroic past there is no inviolable democratic eros to cure the impotence of mutilation and tyranny. Reading these two episodes against the backdrop of Alcibiades' paranomia (as described by Plutarch and Plato), this paper examines the nature of democratic masculinity, the (eroticized) relation between demagogue and demos, and the place of perverse desire within the protocols of sex. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions HEDONISM IN THE PROTAGORAS SOME INSOLUBLEPROBLEMSOf historical scholarship are posed by the fact that the hero of Plato's dialogues was also an historical figure. Commentators are prone to identify the Socrates of the dialogues with the man who drank the hemlock and walked the streets of Athens. This is perhaps unexceptionable 9 But beyond this they are often tempted (even when they know better) to speak (...) of the dialogues as if they were reports or descriptions of actual events in the life of the historical Socrates. Even so astute a scholar as Gregory Vlastos, in his recent lucid Introduction to the Protagoras, falls into this pit. The dramatic date of the Protagoras is no later than 433, five years before the birth of Plato. It would require clear and strong evidence (of which there is none) to convince us that a verbatim report of this encounter was preserved for thirty years or more, to be handed on to Plato at the appropriate moment. Vlastos, of course, would laugh at this suggestion, but hear him talking about the logic of Socrates' argument: I trust I have made it clear that Socrates' performance in this argument is much better than would appear from the fact, which it would be folly to hush up, that he has made a definite error. For the error he does make is one that he could easily have detected when he got the chance to think out his moves in a more leisurely moment. He would then have seen that he could have produced a valid deductive argument for his immediate objective, and did not have to revoke a single inference he had made.... This is not to deny that he occasionally makes grave errors. 9 It is only to insist that as a practitioner of logical inference, and one who practices on his feet, in the stress of live debate, and with no calculus or any formal patterns of valid inference to guide him, Socrates is not a bungler, but a master? This is all very well, except that the argument Vlastos is discussing was not constructed in the stress of live debate but rather, as it were, in the cool of Plato's study. Plato was not practicing on his feet, and, we may presume, had ample time to think through and revise the arguments in question. Are we to interpret Vlastos as claiming that in later, real encounters witnessed by Plato, Socrates did argue in this way? And that Plato here has Socrates commit logical errors (which he, Plato, knows are errors; for he has Protagoras object to them) in order to portray Socrates as a man who makes frequent mistakes but thinks pretty well on his feet? 1Plato's Protagoras, edited, with an Introduction, by Gregory Vlastos (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1956), pp. xxxv-xxxvi. [7s] 74 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In fact, we tend to think of the dialogues as having two authors, Plato and Socrates, and we frequently cannot choose between them. In the Protagoras it is even worse; for many scholars have assumed the existence of a third author, Protagoras, who is credited with having written at least part of his role in the dialogue. I offer here the radical thesis that the Protagoras has but one author, Plato, and that everything in the dialogue is to be laid to him.2 My assumptions are that from beginning to end the Protagoras is a product of Plato's imagination, and that Plato is primarily a philosopher and only secondarily a biographer--or perhaps we might say he is a biographer of ideas, not of persons. The philosophical stances assumed by the disputants may or may not resemble those of the historical figures, but we have no reason to attribute the words spoken or the turns taken in the argument to anyone but Plato. The question, why does Socrates say this at this point, must, if it is to be sensible, mean why does Plato have Socrates say this at this point. The answers, if there are answers, will be found within the dialogues and not in speculative history. In the final argument in the Protagoras (351b... (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Beauty and Goodness Patterns of Beautiful Poetry Human Excellence and the Standard of Poetic Beauty Moral Psychology Love of Beauty and Being Just Conclusion.