Despite his keen philosophical interest in their sexual ethics and techniques of the self, Foucault always maintained that the ancient Greeks do not in fact offer an attractive or plausible model for us today. No people, he says, can ever find the answer to their own social problems in the solutions found by another people at another time.
However, without wishing to necessarily advocate pederasty as a vital moral and educational institution, I can't help feeling a degree of sympathy with the following speech by Phaedrus:
"I would maintain that there can be no greater blessing for a boy than to have a worthy lover from his earliest youth; nor for a lover than to have an object worthy of his affection. Life's guiding principle for those who intend to live virtuously cannot be instilled either by family or by class or by wealth or by anything else so effectively as by love. 'What principle is that?' you ask. I mean the principle which inspires shame at what is contemptible and desire for what is noble; without these feelings neither a state nor an individual can accomplish greatness or anything fine.
- Plato, The Symposium, trans. Maria Thanassa, 2013.
So, whilst it's not for me to argue that it might be advantageous for adolescent youths to have mature male lovers overseeing their physical and intellectual development in the gymnasium, surely this is preferable to teenage gangs roaming the streets stabbing and shooting one another, or mugging their fellow citizens ...?
Of course, even to suggest this is controversial in an age that lacks social and sexual etiquette and the confidence to act with authority; not to mention a time which is as terrified by the thought of paedophilia as the ancient Greek world was of immoderate behaviour. Ultimately, there's no point fantasising the recreation of Classical culture, for we are, as Nietzsche says, no longer made of the right material.
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