Back in the late sixties, I taught a seminar on ancient Greek philosophy at an elite West Coast university. It was a time of academic and sexual experimentation and I wanted to integrate an experiential dimension into the philosophical questions we would be addressing. We met twice a week; I would lecture first, and my students would take the second session to present a hand-on exploration of the issues raised. Much of the seminar has faded into fuzzy memory, but there was one session that I will never forget.
It occurred late in the quarter after we had become well acquainted with each other. The general topic was the politics of the polis, and the issue we were discussing was why the ancient Greeks thought that what separated them from the barbarians was their practice of engaging in politics in the nude. Aristotle even argued that, in the perfect city, both men and women would conduct civil business naked although this level of perfection was never achieved. Needless to say, I intended the topic to be provocative because I wanted to see how they would deal with a custom that was so strange to our cultural sensibilities.
A few of the articles I assigned suggested that public nudity had started in the gymnasium (gymnos meant naked). They argued that the ancient Greeks thought that standing naked before their fellow citizens was an act of what we might call today full disclosure, that is, the full presentation of one's character. In the act of displaying the intimate details of one's body, one also disclosed the personal aspects of one's character. They thought that to cloth one's body was to engage in a form of deception. At least, that was the main point I wanted to make in my lecture.
On the day of hand-on session, I had an important lunch meeting that had run long, and so I was running late. I rushed into the room in a rather disheveled fashion and took my regular seat at the disk in the front of the classroom. After placing my books down, I looked up to discover that there were five naked men and three clothed women standing in front of me. The five naked men toward me and then asked me to stand with the clothed female students. They then took leadership of the seminar and debated a controversial item that was on the student government's docket that night.
I was taken back to say the least partially because I could decide how I was suppose to related to the five naked males. No matter how I tried to focus on the issue being discussed, I could get over the fact that they were on full physical display. One guy in particular, I will call him Steve, had a very quick mind, but his physical appearance was a bit geek-like -- small framed and skinny. What was surprising was that he had a penis like a horse. The rest were more or less fit and trim and had average attributes. I am not saying that I had an easy time keeping my eyes off their dangling members while I tried to engage their political arguments, but with Steve it was impossible to pay any attention at all to what he was saying.
