Jose asked:

I recently got in an argument with a professor about the subject of homosexuality. She told me at the
end of the discussion that Socrates, Aristotle were gay. I told her that I've studied about them and that
was something I did not believe. This is on the teachings I've studied. I asked her if she had any proof
and she said she did. Can we really determine their lifestyle on their teachings or is there some truth
to what this professor told me?

============

You are asking, from the point of view of modern culture and ideas about sexuality, about a culture
3000 years in the past and their ideas about sexuality, and you want their ideas translated into
modern ideas. Oboy. "Gay" is a word we use nowto describe certain types of male homosexuality,
right? Well, what ismale homosexuality? Is it the case that if a male person has onesexual
experience, sometime in his life, with another male, he is homosexual? Well, what if he has two...
three... what would you take as a dividing line? What if a male desiresother males, but not usually as
muchas he desires females, and neverhas a sexual encounter with another male; is he
homosexual? What if he desires other males morethan females, but neverhas a sexual encounter
with another male? What if is desires other males lessthan females, but lives in a culture in which
male-male sex is preferred, and has that kind of sex; is he homosexual? You can create a few more
combinations here and puzzle over them if you want.

The latter case was, as far as we know, more-or-less the case in ancient Athens. Male/male sex was
considered preferable to male/female sex as being an encounter between equals (you see the
viewpoint on women there), and sex between an older man and a younger man was the most
preferred, for a variety of reasons. Were the ancient Greeks homosexuals? From what we see in the
Dialogues, Socrates actually seems, relatively, pretty "hetero", in that in at least one or two cases he
refused offers of sex with other men. But there's no indication that he always refused it. He was
married and had children, but that was the obligation they all had, otherwise the state would
disappear.

As far as Aristotle goes, he and Plato probably had a lot of sex with men... were they "gay"?
"Homosexual"? By their standards, our terms would have made no sense. Their culture preferred the
oppositeof what our culture prefers; how do you compare them, then? If you're evaluating it in terms
of personal preferences, we have no idea at all of those; but we do know that one's preferences are
due to some degree on one's culture and upbringing... but not entirely... so we're back to ground zero
in terms of saying what, sexually, Plato and Aristotle, for example, "were" by modernstandards. They
were almost certainly men who had sex primarily with other men and probably preferred it that way,
for some reasons quite dissimilar to, and probably other reasons quite similar to, the reasons men
today have sex with other men.

Steven Ravett Brown

I have never heard of this before and would be very pleased if you could let me know what proof your
teacher has. To an extent, and although I don't know for sure, I think that ancient Greeks were
inclined to bisexuality — at least they didn't find homosexuality wrong or unnatural as it is thought to
be today. But Aristotle! I wouldn't have thought he was gay in any sense of the word!

However, your teacher may be right. I do think that you can infer a lot about a person from his
teachings. In Aristotle's case I would be more inclined to believe that he was a repressed gay than
actually so! This is so interesting. It is thought that Kant's deontological ethics is caused by the fact
that his mother was very strict and moral and instilled a sense of duty in him. I have read that his
mother was very much against lying, and surely only this could cause him to claim something so
absurd as that a person should not lie to a murderer who wants to kill your friend and asks his
whereabouts! Reason or ethical sense couldn't lead you to such a conclusion. Then there is
Kierkegaard who couldn't cope with relationships and so turned to God in real life, and his philosophy
reflects his inability to deal with daily life. There is Nietzsche who was not a fully developed
personality, hence his childish "will to power". The fact that his personality was not fully developed
and that he could not cope with reality is evidenced by the fact that he went mad when he saw a
horse being flogged.

A further question is whether it is just content, and not style, which is indicative of what a writer is like.
Kant was a well-liked, sociable person, but rigid in his habits. The content of Kant's works easily bring
us to believe that he was rigid in his habits: He wouldn't otherwise be able to make time to give us the
deep analyses of thought which he has. We might suppose from the style of his writing, also, that he
was the sort to stick to a schedule, but we cannot determine from his style that he was sociable and
likeable. Intuitively, we suppose the contrary: Someone who is so intellectual, we suppose, cannot be
very sociable. What we see here is that writings can show us what a person's lifestyle is like, or his
work schedule, but his actual persona as happy, sociable or gay is not necessarily apparent.

However, with Nietzsche, the case is different. We can tell from the content of his writings that he was
not happy and sociable and we can also tell that he was not a very mature sort of person. His writings
are very often very wise, but as often as not he sounds like a rebellious and troubled teenager — this
is apparent in his style, not just content. I have always supposed that Nietzsche was gay, and now
wonder if Kant was? Please let me know how we determine this. Perhaps, as a mature character,
Kant was able to keep from expressing his personality in his writing since personality is irrelevant to
philosophy, but Nietzsche didn't have that maturity. But, then, if Kant hadn't been able to develop a
different morality than that imposed by his mother, was he a mature personality either?

Freud has written a paper called "Jensen's Gradiva" in his volume on art in which he shows how
Jensen's unconscious produces the type of story which can be the subject of psychoanalysis. Jensen,
we presume, doesn't know that what he is writing issues from unconscious symbolism and imagery,
but Freud's understanding of such symbolism and imagery allows him give a deep analysis of
Jensen's story. Since I first heard of Aristotle, only this paper has had such a profound affect on me!
And, as never before, it now seems that you can find out a lot about a person from what he writes.

Rachel Browne

Well, we have to believe that what they wrote is the truth (or close to it), but if you read Plato's
Symposium,there isn't a great deal of doubt about Socrates, at least. I don't know about the evidence
concerning Aristotle, but homosexuality was widely accepted in ancient Greece.

I don't see that it matters much, in any case. Lots of good thinkers were gay, lots were straight. What
matters is if they are good thinkers.

Tim Sprod