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

Author:   Andrea Nye
Publisher:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   1st ed. 2015
ISBN:  

9781137516015


Pages:   243
Publication Date:   06 August 2015
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Our Price $226.95 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

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


Add your own review!

Overview

Few women's voices have survived from the antiquity period, but evidence shows that, especially in the area of religion, women were influential in Greek culture. Drawing on Socrates' Symposium , Nye advances this notion by not only exploring the original religious meaning of Diotima's teaching but also how that meaning has been lost throughout time.

Full Product Details

Author:   Andrea Nye
Publisher:   Palgrave Macmillan
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   1st ed. 2015
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   4.238kg
ISBN:  

9781137516015


ISBN 10:   1137516011
Pages:   243
Publication Date:   06 August 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

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

Reviews

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


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


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


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


Author Information

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

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

Aorrng

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List