The romantic sexology of John Addington Symonds

S. Binkley

Examines a radical text by the English classicist and homosexual, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893). Through a close study of an unpublished and long concealed manuscript, "A problem in modern ethics" (1891), Symond's political vision and the odd form of writing it takes is revealed as romantic in character. Symonds polemicizes against the pathologization of homosexuals in the legal-medical discourses of the time and advocates on behalf of a latent homosexual ethics, shunned from modern Westen society, but continuing to hold forth a promise for the civic and moral renewal of Western countries. Against the positions of Krafft-Ebing and others, Symonds argues for the acceptance of "manly love", in the spirit of the ancients, as a source of moral inspiration for a declining Europe.