Socrates and Diotima: Sexuality, Religion, and the Nature of Divinity

ISBN-13: 9781137516015 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 243 str.

Andrea Nye

Opis

Since the beginnings of monotheism, religion has seemed to be at war with sexuality and with women. From the crusades of Hebrew prophets against the fertility deities of Canaan, to contemporary Catholic campaigns against contraception and homosexuality, to the suppression of women in Islam, Western religions have demonized both Eros and femininity. In Socrates and Diotima, Andrea Nye draws on the teaching of Socrates's priestly mentor in "matters of love" in the Symposium to recover the sacred Eros that constitutes in many pre-monotheist religious traditions a transcendent spark of immortality at the heart of mortal life. Stripping away centuries of Neo-Platonist and Christian commentary, she shows how that spiritual knowledge was lost and how it might be regained to re-vitalize ethical commitment, provide access to divinity, and offer non-credulous consolation in the face of death.

Recenzje

"This book is ambitious in scope. Nye first argues for a historically grounded reading of Plato's character, Diotima. Nye articulates a view of love and the divine that belonged to the historical Diotima. Nye engages in a thorough reading of the Symposium and other texts of the ancient Greek poetic, tragic, and philosophic tradition to support her reading of the authenticity of Diotima. Nye then traces how Diotima's view of love and the divine was suppressed and forgotten by the later western Christian tradition. She explores the cultural implications of that loss. This book stands to significantly alter the scholarly conversation about Diotima particularly and the role of the feminine in culture more generally." - Anne-Marie Schultz, Professor of Philosophy, Baylor University, USA

"Andrea Nye has done something wonderful in rescuing Eros from the priestly theologies that would have us banish and condemn it. Seekers will find in Socrates and Diotima a philosophy deeply consoling as well as erotic in itself. Like Cynthia Bourgeault's tantric Jesus, Nye's Diotima will draw you upward and outward into realms of reconciliation where the human dances with the divine and it may be possible to fall in love all over again with goodness, truth, and beauty." - Jean Feraca, Wisconsin Public Radio, USA and author of Crossing the Great Divide

"Nye gets into the mind of Diotima to deconstruct philosophers' view of sexuality, reproduction, and divinity in such a clear and compelling way that it dissolves those milennia-thick veils that shroud the histories of philosophy and religion. Nye shows that Diotima's conception of divinity and its relation to reproduction is not only a distinctively feminist one, but also one that undermines those surviving traditional conceptions of a heterosexual masculist deity that have historically diminished, discriminated against, and disrespected women as spiritual, moral beings." - Mary Ellen Waithe, Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Comparative Religion, Cleveland State University, USA

Spis treści

Introduction

PART I: LESSONS IN LOVE
1. Daemonic Eros
2. The Work of Love
3. Beauty Itself
4. The Spirit at the Center of the World

PART II: LESSONS LOST
5. The Highest One
6. Demonizing the Daemonic
7. Saint Augustine and Concupiscence of the Flesh
8. The Eclipse of Beauty
PART III: LESSONS REGAINED
9. Religion Without God
10. Social Virtue
11. The Problem of Evil
12. Surviving Death

O autorze

Andrea Nye is Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA.