The idea that justice and reason are worthy virtues? Yeah, let’s just go ahead and ban that |
The Globe and Mail
Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto whose latest book is Question Authority.
In the relentless stream of outrages that we call the news cycle, you might have missed a small item about Plato. Martin Peterson, a professor at Texas A&M University, was told by administrators that he was no longer permitted to teach Plato’s dialogue Symposium in his ethics class. According to state authorities, following federal direction, the ancient Greek material violates rules against teaching “race and gender ideology” and must be canned.
The offending passage is well-known. While discoursing on love, Aristophanes cites a myth that humans were once doubled-up roly-poly people, with four arms, four legs, two heads, and two sets of genitals. They are so happy in this state, bowling along through life, that the jealous gods split them in two, condemning us mortals to an endless search for our lost other halves. The dialogue is silent on whether trans athletes should be able to play women’s basketball, but it does suggest that homosexuality and gender fluidity might be part of the natural order. Yikes!
The school was quick to point out that Plato was not banned everywhere, just in this context. That’s cold comfort to those alarmed by the ban’s violation of academic freedom and free speech. And this selective ban – like any such encroachment – only invites further depredations in the classroom. After all, one could use the same justifications to expunge almost all the celebrated dialogues attributed to him, especially his........