Sexy Philosophical Pictures


Philosophers don't like sex. It is, after all, highly irrational. Plato even had Socrates ask his friend Glaucon, in his usual rhetorical manner, whether 'true love can have any contact with frenzy or excess of any kind?'. The answer Glaucon gives obligingly, is most certainly not, but Socrates, unusually, goes on to spell it out. 

 SOCRATES: True love can have no contact with this sexual pleasure, and lovers whose love is true must neither of them indulge in it. 
 GLAUCON: They certainly must not, Socrates. 
 SOCRATES: And so, I suppose you will lay down laws in the state we are founding [discussing] that will allow a lover to associate with his boy-friend and kiss him and touch him, if he permits it, as a father does his son, if his motives are good; but require that his association with anyone he's fond of must never give rise to the least suspicion of anything beyond this, otherwise he will be thought a man of no taste or education. 
 GLAUCON: That is how I should legislate. 
 (The Republic Book III, 403) 

But Schopenhauer  is surely right, the reproductive urge, be it simply the sexual one or be it the more respectable procreative one, is so strong, it is somehow fundamental, and really philosophers are being a bit evasive if they continue to discuss the nature of human life without any reference at all to it. 

At least Plato did value a sort of filial love, the kind ever since called 'Platonic'. Unfortunately, the Christian Church taught a rather extreme version of the doctrine for most of the millennia between Socrates and Schopenhauer, which culminated in the most bizarre and hypocritical attitudes towards sex. (A point made by the contemporary French philosopher Michel Foucault.) 

It could be said that Schopenhauer was simply reflecting two unfortunate experiences. One was giving his first lecture in Philosophy at the same time as his celebrated contemporary, Professor Hegel and the other was... being sent to boarding school in Wimbledon... and we all know about those!

Now see here!
 

  • Human aesthetics calculator
  • Bertrand Russell on Pornography
  • 'Philosophical Perspectives on Sexy Love'
  • Sexy Pictures for Logicians
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    Sexy pictures 
    from Greek Pottery 
    fragments ...


     


     

    To see pictures in more detail, 
    please send £100 (in used fivers) to:
    The Hon Treasurer (Greek Fragments Section) Philosophical Society of England.
    ..


     
     
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