Platonic eros and pederasty

Abstract

In this paper I try to analyze, on the one hand, the intricate institutional, political and intellectual Greek pederasty framework; on the other hand, the Platonic response to it. Perhaps originally pederasty was a strongly regulated rite of passage; subsequently became a theme for poets and an element of the aristocratic self-awareness. Plato know that the tradition of Sparta and Crete, as well as poets, legitimize pederastic practices. Maybe he was not alien to them and, in any case, he was moving in intellectual circles which sought a synthesis of Socratic teaching and tradition and poets. These intellectual circles inserted the pederasty in a broader educational framework and removed all sexual connotations. Plato also knows that Socratic teachings are difficult to fulfill, that there is something important in them and that their fulfillment demands renunciations. That the harmony of the soul with itself demands renunciations, not imply the radical abandon of any erotic elements. Therefore the question of pederasty is central to Plato’s philosophy, because this question show clearly the difficulties outlined above: the pederasty becomes a miniature model which poses the political problem that really matters to Plato, the problem discussed in the dialogs examined in this paper and that reaches its highest expression in the Laws: the control of desires (as far as possible and by all available means) as a fundamental element in the construction of this regime “that, if it should come into being, everything would be good for the city in which it came into being” (Rep. 471 c).