Xenophon tells us that Socrates never neglected the body and did not praise those who did. We can imagine that it was because the physical body–volatile, unseen, and implicated in an automatized natural world–could seem so daemonic that entrusting life, both biological life and ethical life, to its dynamics could seem like ceding control of the human. Brooke Holmes
About This Quote

We can imagine that it was because the physical body—volatile, unseen, and implicated in an automatized natural world—could seem so daemonic that entrusting life, both biological life and ethical life, to its dynamics could seem like ceding control of the human. This quote is a great example of how language affects how we see the world and how we view the world. Socrates was a wise man who lived during the time of Homer and Xenophon. There has been debate as to whether Socrates was homosexual or not.

All we know is that he wasn't married and had no children. He died at age 70. The debate as to whether he was homosexual or not will continue for generations, but his words show us that he didn't think about sex all that much.

He thought more about ethics and how society should be structured.

Source: The Symptom And The Subject: The Emergence Of The Physical Body In Ancient Greece

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who... - Mother Teresa
  2. After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting. - Chuck Palahniuk
  3. It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more then half of the people in the position H's family... - Mary Roach
  4. The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope... - Lance Armstrong
  5. Frostpine made a face. Lifting the cup, he dumped its contents down his throat. “Auugghh! ” he yelled, his voice stronger than it had been since his return from the harbor. "Are you trying to kill me, woman?"" If I mean to kill someone, I... - Tamora Pierce
More Quotes By Brooke Holmes
  1. Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Parmenides all state or suggest that thinking the right kinds of thoughts positively transforms our relationship to our environment. If thoughts are the right kind, it is presumably because they build on the particular receptivity of human nature to true knowledge about...
  2. By the late fifth century, the identities of those excluded from full personhood–women, slaves, barbarians–are being increasingly understood in terms of the difficulty or impossibility of mastering the daemonic tendencies in their bodies, while the identities of free men grow more dependent on their capacity...
  3. Having a body, we have seen, does not entail knowing a body. Whereas a cow automatically eats whatever grasses supply needed nutrients, people must determine for themselves what to put into their bodies, with the result that there is room to make mistakes. Mistakes arise,...
  4. Xenophon tells us that Socrates never neglected the body and did not praise those who did. We can imagine that it was because the physical body–volatile, unseen, and implicated in an automatized natural world–could seem so daemonic that entrusting life, both biological life and ethical...
Related Topics