The Philosopher’s Love
The Philosopher’s Love
What healthy vegetables and rich meatstuffs are to Persius’ metaphorical division of poetry into good and bad, friendship and sexuality are to his discussion of pedagogy as itself morally charged for better or worse. In Satire 4, Persius takes on and reformulates Plato’s Alcibiades I, in which Socrates’ seductive ways are shown as reforming Alcibiades and making him ready to study philosophy. This satire challenges that happy picture by bringing in the Symposium to show up Alcibiades as a pedagogic failure, and both sexuality and dialectic are criticized as ineffective elements in the Platonic depiction of teaching philosophy. Instead, Persius praises the inwardly turned gaze of the Stoic student and, in Satire 5, demonstrates through the figure of Cornutus the kind of teacher that should replace Socrates as an ideal.
Keywords: Alcibiades, Cornutus, homosexuality, erastes, Symposium, Satire 4, Pericles, self-knowledge, pedagogy, pederasty
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
