Porn - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink (7 page)

The
Ragionamenti
are in part a satire on the more earnest dialogues of Aretino’s contemporary Renaissance humanists. They in turn were inspired by the resurgence of interest in Plato, whose principal works were translated into Latin in the fifteenth century, having being unknown in Western Europe for centuries.
¹⁶
Of particular influence was Plato’s
Symposium
, a dialogue debating the nature of love. The preferred theory involves an ascent from mere physical lust to more rarefied forms of love, culminating in an abstract intellectual ideal. The Renaissance reading of this passage is the source for the concept of “platonic love” – although our use of that idea overlooks its roots in physical intimacy. An even closer connection between sex and philosophy may be found elsewhere in Plato’s work. In his
Republic
Plato has Socrates characterize philosophy as at “the mercy of others who aren’t good enough for her, and who defile her and gain her the kind of tarnished reputation you say her detractors ascribe to her – for going about with people who are either worthless or obnoxious.”
¹⁷
This sexual metaphor for philosophy may mark the inception of its relationship with pornography.

Plato is the best-known author of Socratic dialogues, in which philosophical ideas are developed in conversation between Socrates and supportive or hostile interlocutors. Socratic dialogues were written both by former pupils such as Plato and Xenophon, and by later writers with no direct acquaintance with Socrates. Since Socrates left behind no writings of his own, such works are our only access to his thought, but it is clear that the Socratic dialogue developed a life of its own as a leading genre of ancient philosophy. Correspondingly, the courtesan dialogue was a leading genre of ancient pornography. The best-known surviving example is that of Lucian, the second-century AD humorist, whose work is likely to have influenced Aretino.
¹⁸

Crossovers – dialogues between philosophers and courtesans – are surprisingly common.
¹⁹
This juxtaposition seems to have served a variety of purposes for ancient authors. It could be satirical: Epicurus and his school were often linked to courtesans in this way, since he admitted women and taught that pleasure was the highest good. (The innuendo was misleading, since the Epicurean ideal was closer to the avoidance of pain than unbridled hedonism.) But one of the most frequent purposes of these comparisons is to reflect on persuasion, something both professions have in common, whether by deduction or seduction. This could serve to unite or separate philosophers and courtesans, as demonstrated by two younger contemporaries of Lucian. Alciphron finds a lowest common denominator: “the means by which they persuade are different; but one end – gain – is the goal for both”; whereas Aelian has Socrates distinguish himself from a courtesan in terms of his comparative lack of success: “you lead all of your followers on the downward path while I force them to move toward virtue.The ascent is steep and unfamiliar for most people.”
²⁰
I shall return to these two modes of persuasion in the final section.

The Lay of Aristotle

Although Plato’s works were scarcely known in the Middle Ages,Aristotle was so strongly associated with philosophy that he could be referred to just as “The Philosopher.”Yet many medieval and early modern depictions of Aristotle show him naked, on all fours, and being whipped by a woman riding on his back, as in
figure 2.1.
²¹
An analysis of this unexpected predilection for female domination may clarify the relationship between physicality and philosophy. The narrative behind these images describes Aristotle’s humbling by the mistress of his pupil, Alexander the Great.The earliest known version is Henri d’Andeli’s thirteenth-century
Lay of Aristotle
, which was frequently retold. Whether or not Andeli invented the story, no modern commentator supposes it to have any connection to the historical Aristotle.
²²
In the story Alexander, campaigning in India, is distracted from his duties by an affair with a local girl. (Andeli does not name the girl. Later sources generally call her Phyllis, or occasionally Campaspe, seemingly by confusion with a different legendary mistress of Alexander.) Aristotle advises him to break it off, counseling that “Your heart has so far strayed as to forget / the rule of moderation: hero’s goal.”
²³
Phyllis finds out, and devises a plan to get her revenge. As she tells Alexander:

FIGURE 2.1
Aristotle and Phyllis
by Hans Baldung, 1513.

 

Against me then, as you shall see tomorrow,
your master’s subtle skill in dialectic,
his intellect, his vaunted golden mean
will not prevail. Rise early and you’ll see
how Nature takes the measure of your master.
²⁴

The “golden mean” is the same “rule of moderation” which Aristotle pressed on Alexander. In Aristotle’s ethics virtue is a middle way which practical reason should navigate between opposed extremities of vice. Phyllis identifies herself with a Nature powerful enough to sweep aside such subtle ethical calculus. The following morning she disports herself outside Aristotle’s study so seductively that he attempts to ravish her. She affects to consent, but on one condition:

I find a great desire has overcome me
to make of you my steed and ride you now
across the greensward underneath the trees.
And you must be (no villain rider I!)
saddled to carry me in elegance.
²⁵

The plan is enacted, to the amusement of Alexander in his concealed viewpoint. After absorbing the absurd spectacle, he reveals the trick to Aristotle. But it is the philosopher who has the last word:

In one short hour, Love omnipotent
has toppled all my wisdom’s wide empire.
Now learn from this: if I, both old and wise,
have yet been driven to commit a deed
mad even to dream of, shocking to perform,
you, lusty youth, will surely not go free.
²⁶

The story, and especially its comic denouement, was a frequent subject for medieval and Renaissance art.
Figure 2.1,
the second of two versions by Hans Baldung, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer, is characteristic.There is no saddle, but like most artists, Baldung has added a bridle and riding crop to this scene of pioneering pony-play.

This story can be read two ways. For Andeli and his contemporaries, Aristotle is right: Nature must be subordinated to reason (and by extension, woman to man).The narrative illustrates the perilous consequences of ignoring this injunction. But, on the view defended by Diderot or Argens, Phyllis is right: Nature cannot be subordinated to reason. If even Aristotle cannot abide by his own injunctions, what chance would Alexander or the rest of us have? The difference between these two perspectives may determine how the hybridization of pornography with philosophy is received. On Aristotle’s account, it is a bizarre anomaly; on Phyllis’s, an intelligible continuity. Conversely, philosophical arguments for the censorship of pornography would be incongruous to Phyllis, but welcomed by Aristotle.

Tying Up Loose Ends

We have seen that Phyllis’s perspective has had a hand in many different theses.The most philosophically central of these is the analysis of persuasion. I will conclude with a novel application of this analysis, which may help defend Phyllis’s diversity against “Aristotelian” censorship. But first I should address the outstanding problem of classification.The categories which we apply to the world, and especially the categories which we apply to human activity, may appear to be natural and unalterable, but they have histories, and may be transformed in a few generations. We have already seen that “pornography” is one such category. “Philosophy” is another. The term is not a new one – it can be traced back two and a half millennia. But its use has altered throughout that period. For example, much of what we now call science was called philosophy by its discoverers. The use of “philosophy” in the eighteenth-century French book trade was extraordinary, but it was part of a complex history of changing meaning.

The nineteenth century saw increasing academic specialization and professionalization. Philosophy and science drew apart, but the universities came to monopolize them both. New venues for publication opened up, and the general market became less important. Moreover, university professors became concerned with respectability in ways that had not troubled the amateurs of past generations. In the later nineteenth century the study of sexuality came within the scope of academic science.Although some of this work repeated that of the previous century, it did so on very different terms, professing to substitute the dispassionate objectivity of a narrow elite for particularity and mass audience appeal. Concepts of free speech also evolved in the nineteenth century. New liberal democracies expected a freedom of political speech, both on the hustings and in print, alien to absolutist monarchies such as pre-revolutionary France. But such freedom did not extend to all varieties of banned speech. Hence pornography emerged as a separate category of material that could be safely banned by societies otherwise congratulating themselves on their freedoms. These processes may explain the rarity of philosophical pornography in the last two centuries.

Yet there have been occasional revivals. New York philosophy professor John Lange is much better known as John Norman, author of the Gor series, a sequence of more than two dozen fantasy novels increasingly concerned with depicting and justifying the sexual subordination of women to men. As he states in a typical passage, “In the Gorean view, female slavery is a societal institution which enables the female, as most Earth societies would not, to exhibit, in a reinforcing environment, her biological nature. It provides a rich soil in which the flower of her beauty and nature, and its submission to a man, may thrive.”
²⁷
The Gor books were bestsellers in the 1970s, but dwindled in popularity in the 1980s, and struggled to find a publisher in the 1990s – something Lange attributes to feminist conspiracy.
²⁸
However, in recent years his work has found a new audience, and inspired a vast, mostly Internet-based sexual subculture.
²⁹
(Not a boast many philosophers can make!) Curiously, significant proportions of both audiences appear to be female.
³⁰
In his one philosophical monograph, Lange stated “it cannot be denied that there is a certain schizophrenic charm in embracing an immoral theory at a suitably abstract level while in practice devoting oneself earnestly to worthy endeavors, redoubling as though in compensation one’s efforts to bring about a more just state of affairs in the world.”
³¹
It is tempting to read this autobiographically, as suggesting that the attitude to gender relations in his novels is satirical. But other statements would suggest that he is sincere – indeed, it would be consistent for him to view his novels as the “worthy endeavors” and gender equality as the “immoral theory.”

In recent decades, philosophical engagement with pornography has mostly comprised arguments for its censorship. Paradoxically, Lange’s novels may undercut one of the most sophisticated of these, that pornography tacitly subordinates women.
³²
Lange intermingles his pornography with explicit philosophical advocacy of such subordination. This poses a dilemma. Prospective censors must choose between banning the whole thing or just the pornography. If they endorse the former, they concede that their project is not just aimed at disposable entertainment, but strikes directly at freedom of thought (if freedom includes the freedom to be wrong). But what grounds could they have for sparing the philosophy? It endorses conclusions just as obnoxious as the pornography. The only practical basis for tolerating philosophical arguments for conclusions forbidden to pornography would seem to be that the philosophy is less harmful, that is, less persuasive than the pornography. Lange’s philosophy may well be less persuasive than his pornography, but if his arguments are so weak, then the feminist counterarguments must be exceptionally strong. Hence censorship would be unnecessary, unless even these exceptionally strong arguments are weaker than pornography, that is, unless philosophy is
in general
less persuasive than pornography. But if this depressing observation is true, how could anyone be persuaded by the philosophical arguments for censorship, since they are to be weighed against pornography which, even the censors must admit, indeed insist, is more persuasive? Of course, this does not mean that what they say is not true, only that if it is then it will not be persuasive. Which suggests that if their argument is persuasive, then their conclusion must be false.