Socrates and Diotima

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

• IntroductionPART I: LESSONS IN LOVE1. Daemonic Eros2. The Work of Love3. Beauty Itself4. The Spirit at the Center of the WorldPART II: LESSONS LOST5. The Highest One6. Demonizing the Daemonic7. Saint Augustine and Concupiscence of the Flesh8. The Eclipse of BeautyPART III: LESSONS REGAINED9. Religion Without God10. Social Virtue11. The Problem of Evil12. Surviving Death