back to ideas for this text


Single Idea 7498

[from 'On the Genealogy of Ethics' by Michel Foucault, in 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 3. Pleasure / b. Types of pleasure ]

Full Idea

It is interesting to see the very slow move from the privileging of food, which was overwhelming in Greece, to interest in sex. Early Christians (and rules for monks) were more concerned with food. Sex only dominates from the seventeenth century.

Gist of Idea

Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex

Source

Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.253)

Book Reference

Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 I: Ethics', ed/tr. Rabinow,Paul [Penguin 1994], p.253


A Reaction

Certainly the Greeks were obsessed with food, and the Sicilian Greeks were notorious for their love of it. Is it simply that food becomes more plentiful, or does female freedom lead to more sex? Puritanism hates the greatest pleasures the most.