quarta-feira, 10 de dezembro de 2014

The Sleep of Reason. Eros and Ethical Norms. Philosophers Respond to a Cultural Dilemma. Martha C. Nussbaum. «On the other hand, eros is a source of madness and distraction, a force that disrupts reasoning and threatens virtue, but if it threatens virtue, it also seems to threaten, inevitably…»

jdact

Hands Up and Down. Eros and Normative Scrutiny
«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. The young man sometimes repels the groping hand, but often, too, contentedly allows it. In this highly conventional and popular ancient Greek image of sexual courtship, named by John Beazley the up and down position and found on dozens of vases from the classical period, we see a tension in the Greek concept of eros. To investigate that tension, and the Stoic philosophers’ response to it, is my purpose. On the one hand, eros is beneficent, showing a tender regard for the young man’s personality and his education; on the other hand, it is, characterized by strong genital desire, which has the potential for ferocity and blind indifference to the wellbeing of the beloved. Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? Or the right the left? The vase images, like some literary text that I shall later examine, frequently intimate that the two aspects of eros work harmoniously together: the hand that strokes the genitals is just as precise and reverent, just as cautious, as the hand that delicately cups the face. But the Greeks know well that things are not always so. A statue from 470 B.C., the first plate in Dover's Greek Homosexuality, shows a Zeus of massive physique carrying off young Ganymede in one squeezing arm, without even a glance at the face; while Zeus strides victoriously ahead, the young man looks down in what seems to be helpless confusion. As the chorus in sophocles’ Antigone observes, addressing Eros, You take the minds of the just and turn them aside to injustice. Even the gods are not exempt from this madness. Greek popular morality contained in this way two ideas about eros that proved notoriously difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, eros is seen as a divine gift, connected with illumination and delight for the lover and with generous educative intentions toward the beloved. On the other hand, eros is a source of madness and distraction, a force that disrupts reasoning and threatens virtue, but if it threatens virtue, it also seems to threaten, inevitably, the good conduct of the lover toward his partner. Nor can we even cleanly separate these two tendencies in eros, for it would appear (according, again, to deeply entrenched popular ideas) that the very madness and distraction in the lover that put virtue at risk are among the sources of his generosity to the beloved. The very passion that threatens virtue may also motivate virtuous actions». In Martha C. Nussbaum e Juha Sihvola, The Sleep of Reason, Eros and Ethical Norms. Philosophers Respond to a Cultural Dilemma, Martha C. Nussbaum, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, USA, 2002, ISBN 0-226-60915-4.

Cortesia de UChicago/JDACT