Socrates and the erotic gaze

Peter J. Leithart, July 14, 2005

Catherine Pickstock argues that Socrates does not articulate a "metaphysical" view of self-presence or interiority. She focuses on the erotic character of knowledge in the Phaedrus, which she points out, radically undermines the interior/exterior boundary. Knowledge on this view always involves ecstasy, an attraction to an object outside, and the subject is constituted by this ecstasy. The subject is thus not a sealed-off interiority but is always opening out to what is exterior to it. The gaze that Socrates defends is not the totalizing gaze of modernity; Socrates believes that the particulars cannot be encompassed, since they are by participation in the Good. The Socratic gaze is not mastering, but reverential.

Whether this is true to Socrates I do not presume to decide. But it certainly appears to be true.