The Sleep of Reason

by Nussbaum, Martha C.; Sihvola, Juha

• ISBN13: 9780226609157
• ISBN10: 0226609154
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Sex is beyond reason, and yet we constantly reason about it. So, too, did the peoples of ancient Greece and Rome. But until recently there has been little discussion of their views on erotic experience and sexual ethics. The Sleep of Reason brings together an international group of philosophers, philologists, literary critics, and historians to consider two questions normally kept separate: how is erotic experience understood in classical texts of various kinds, and what ethical judgments and philosophical arguments are made about sex? From same-sex desire to conjugal love, and from Plato and Aristotle to the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus, the contributors demonstrate the complexity and diversity of classical sexuality. They also show that the ethics of eros, in both Greece and Rome, shared a number of commonalities: a focus not only on self-mastery, but also on reciprocity; a concern among men not just for penetration and display of their power, but also for being gentle and kind, and for being loved for themselves; and that women and even younger men felt not only gratitude and acceptance, but also joy and sexual desire. Contributors: * Eva Cantarella * Kenneth Dover * Chris Faraone * Simon Goldhill * Stephen Halliwell * David M. Halperin * J. Samuel Houser * Maarit Kaimio * David Konstan * David Leitao * Martha C. Nussbaum * A. W. Price * Juha Sihvola

Author Biography

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She is the author of numerous works, including Women and Human Development, Cultivating Humanity, and Upheavals of Thought.

Juha Sihvola is a professor of history at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the author of Decay, Progress, and the Good Life? and Hesiod and Protagoras on the Development of Culture, and the editor of Ancient Scepticism and the Scepticist Tradition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(20)
Martha C. Nussbaum
Juha Sihvola
Forgetting Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality	21	(34)
David M. Halperin
Eros and Ethical Norms: Philosophers Respond to a Cultural Dilemma	55	(40)
Martha C. Nussbaum
Erotic Experience in the Conjugal Bed: Good Wives in Greek Tragedy	95	(25)
Maarit Kaimio
Aristophanic Sex: The Erotics of Shamelessness	120	(23)
Stephen Halliwell
The Legend of the Sacred Band	143	(27)
David Leitao
Plato, Zeno, and the Object of Love	170	(30)
A. W. Price
Aristotle on Sex and Love	200	(22)
Juha Sihvola
Two Women of Samos	222	(7)
Kenneth Dover
The First Homosexuality?	229	(40)
David M. Halperin
Marriage and Sexuality in Republican Rome: A Roman Conjugal Love Story	269	(14)
Eva Cantarella
The Incomplete Feminism of Musonius Rufus, Platonist, Stoic, and Roman	283	(44)
Martha C. Nussbaum
Eros and Aphrodisia in the Works of Dio Chrysostom	327	(27)
J. Samuel Houser
Enacting Eros	354	(20)
David Konstan
The Erotic Experience of Looking: Cultural Conflict and the Gaze in Empire Culture	374	(26)
Simon Goldhill
Agents and Victims: Constructions of Gender and Desire in Ancient Greek Love Magic	400	(27)
Christopher A. Faraone
Appendix. Major Historical Figures Discussed	427	(4)
Contributors	431	(4)
Indexes	435