Emilio Mazza
“Something else too abominable to be nam’d”. David Hume and Greek love
‘Greek love’ today is a Wiki entry: ‘“Greek love” refers to various (mostly homoerotic) practices as part of the Hellenic heritage […] quotation marks are often placed on either or both words […] to indicate that usage of the phrase is determined by context. It often serves as a “coded phrase” for pederasty, or to “sanitize” homosexual desire in historical contexts where it was considered unacceptable’. In 1873 the poet and critic John Addington Symonds wrote A Problem in Greek Ethics. An inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, and called it a ‘treatise on Greek Love’. In 1990 appeared the volume One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and other Essays on Greek Love, and five years later, the classical scholar Craig A. Williams peremptorily declared: ‘“Greek Love” is a modern invention’. The surviving ancient sources do not preserve any phrase like ‘Greek Love’. Williams did not say what he meant by ‘modern invention’. Actually, the only eighteenth-century occurrence of the phrase, as far as I know (by Eighteenth Century Collections Online), is a footnote appended to Aristotle’s Politics by the Scottish man of letters John Gillies. Yet, David Hume can claim the title of inventor. In his 1751 Dialogue on the standard of morals he used the phrase to account for the relationship between a university beautiful boy and a wise man of merit: pederasty was a traditional sceptical topic to undermine the philosophical belief in a universal standard for morals. Almost twenty years later Hume was to renounce to his invention and replaced “the Greek Love” by “the amours of the Greeks”. How did Hume come to his first definition? What did he think of the practice (its origin and causes) of pederasty in particular and homosexuality in general? What do the scholars think and what should we think about Hume’s view? When Hume is using some negative epithets concerning homosexuality, is he seriously condemning the practice or “only” and prudentially following the common language? I’ll try to answer these question by examining the texts, enquiring their possible ancient sources (Plato, Plutarch, Cornelius Nepos and Cicero), comparing them to those of the modern authors (Hobbes, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Charlemont, Smollet and Voltaire), and identifying some possible contemporary targets (Montesquieu). I’ll also try to argue that, like the ancient stoics and cynics (according to Sextus Empricus), and possibly like Smith, Hume would have declared that the practice is “indifferent”.Italian Sodomites – Greek love (and gallantry) – The “Dialogue”: too abominable to be named – Charlemont and Montesquieu: a French Knight and the Turks – 1748: an “exquisite pleasure” – Back to the “Dialogue”: pederasty between law and utility – Conclusion. “A thing in itself indifferent”