Arthur Evans (1942 - )

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Critique of Patriarchal Reason by Arthur Evans

An explosive indictment of analytic philosophy and science. Arthur Evans exposes the patriarchal biases underlying modern "rationality." Evans shows how these biases have infected formal logic, higher mathematics, and the scientific method. He demonstrates the harmful impact they have had on women, gay people, artists, indigenous societies, and the natural environment. In place of these biases, he offers a new, liberating view of the role of reason in human life. Among the many thinkers discussed in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein. A surprising connection is uncovered between Wittgenstein's theories of logic and language on one hand, and his conflicted attitude toward his homosexuality on the other.

San Francisco—Veteran gay activist and writer Arthur Evans has just published a new, gay-positive book on philosophy, entitled Critique of Patriarchal Reason. Publication of the book was aided by an award of $6,941 from the S.F. Art Commission, as part of its program of grants to individual artists and writers. The book includes original artwork by San Francisco artist Frank Pietronigro.

"I worked on this book for nine years," said Evans. "It takes the spirit of the Stonewall era of gay liberation, as I personally experienced it, and applies it to the great philosophical questions. Among other things, the book provides an eye-opening account of the gay philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein."

Evans has been a San Franciscan for more than twenty years, and a gay activist for nearly thirty. He did graduate work in philosophy at Columbia University in New York and has published two previous books on gay history and culture.

Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture:  a Radical View of Western Civilization and Some of the People it has Tried to Destroy by Arthur Evans

This controversial work, published in 1978 by Fag Rag Press, investigates the historical relationship between homosexuality and paganism with a focus on old Europe and the persecution of pagans by Christians during the early formation of the Christian religion.  It compares this history with present-day LGBT culture with an intent to show how the current persecution and marginalization of queer people is an extension of a history of religious intolerance.

The God of Ecstasy : Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysus by Arthur Evans

This ground-breaking work, published in 1987 by St Martin's Press, investigates the relationship between the mythology surrounding the ancient Greek god, Dionysus, and homosexuality.

Arthur Evans Biography

Excerpt:

In 1963 Evans discovered gay life in Greenwich Village, and in 1964 became lovers with Arthur Bell (later to become a columnist for the Village Voice). In 1966 Evans was admitted to City College of New York, which accepted all his credits from Brown University. He changed his major from political science to philosophy and became active in the anti-war movement. He participated in his first sit-in on May 13, 1966, when a group of students occupied the administration building of City College in protest against the college's involvement in the Selective Service System. (A group picture of the students, including Evans, appeared the next day on the front page of The New York Times.)

In 1967, after graduating with a B.A. degree from City College, Evans was admitted into the doctoral program in philosophy at Columbia University, where he specialized in ancient Greek philosophy. He participated in many anti-war protests during these years, including the celebrated upheaval at Columbia in the spring of 1968. In the same year he also participated in the protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. During this time, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg had a powerful influence on the formation of his values...

Arthur Evans

From The Knitting Circle

Excerpt:

Although he had known that he was gay from about the age of ten he remained closeted until he read an article in Life magazine that many homosexuals lived in Greenwich Village, New York. He dropped out of Brown University and moved to Greenwich Village in 1963 and became the lover of Arthur Bell who was to become a columnist for Village Voice. Arthur Evans resumed his studies at City College of New York but switched his major from political science to philosophy.

He graduated in 1967 and began a doctoral programme in philosophy in Columbia University where he specialised in Greek philosophy.

He became involved in many anti-war protests during this time. He also felt a powerful effect of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. He also joined the Student Homophile League founded by Nino Romano. Some weeks after the Stonewall riots in 1969 he and Arthur Bell joined the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Arthur Evans and some friends formed the Radical Study Group to investigate the historical roots of sexism and homophobia (although the word 'homophobia' itself was not coined until 1972 when used by George Weinberg)...

Arthur Evans & the 'Critique of Patriarchal Reason'

Interview by Jack Nichols

Excerpt:

I'm sure in other ways it took longer than that--as your expanded perceptions multiplied--and that there have probably been many inklings of what you're now saying evidenced in your earlier books, right?

It would seem, based on your new title, that you favor a re-definition of what it means to be a man, or to be human, perhaps?

Arthur Evans: Right, Jack, the book grew out of my personal experiences in the movement. In GAA we learned how to redefine ourselves as gays and lesbians on our own terms. We rejected the hurtful, pre-packaged definitions that the establishment wanted us to wear.

I took that model of gay self-definition that I learned from GAA and started applying it to other questions: What does it mean to be a man? A human being? To be rational? To live a worthy human life? Critique of Patriarchal Reason takes the quest for self-definition that bloomed after Stonewall and applies it to the big philosophical questions...

Still Haunting After All These Years

By Mark Mardon

Excerpt:

"My goal in writing Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture was to create a better society," says activist, historian, and philosopher Arthur Evans of the radical gay history published 20 years ago by Fag Rag Books and still in print today. "Every sentence in the book has a political edge to it. Some people view that as a weakness; I view it as a great strength."

Evans' tone on this recent afternoon in his tidy Upper Haight Street apartment, where he has lived since the mid-'70s, is one of both aggressive pride and bold defiance. No doubt he has his critics in mind when he touts his own work's determined bias and intentional lack of neutral "objectivity."

Though the first and undoubtedly most famous and influential of Evans' three books to date (the others being The God of Ecstasy in 1988 and Critique of Patriarchal Reason in 1997), Witchcraft, which painstakingly documents centuries of persecution of gay and lesbian pagans by Christians and others, has never been regarded seriously by mainstream scholars, not even by those who are gay or lesbian... 

Contrary Views on Radical Faerie Thought

By Mitch Walker

Excerpt:

Over the years two strands of thought have developed about what the Faerie Movement was and should be -- and some significant animosity between them. These strands can be identified by two charismatic characters in recent gay cultural history: Arthur Evans and Harry Hay.

Arthur Evans was a homosexual graduate student in philosophy at Columbia University who was politicized by the student uprisings that rocked Columbia during the spring of 1968. After the Stonewall Riots the next year he became involved with Manhattan's fledgling Gay Liberation Front, and he helped establish the Gay Activist Alliance to supercede GLF. Then in the early 70s, Evans moved to San Francisco and, still the scholar, in 1973 began publishing articles on his own researched, philosophized and radicalized vision of gay history. In 1975 he and some friends formed a small pagan-inspired ritual group called "the Faery Circle" to act out the ecstatic pansexual revels he believed he had uncovered in the hidden past of Western Europe. In 1976 Evans gave a series of public lectures on his research, and in 1978 published his influential book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.

According to Evans, a pagan-influenced counterculture had long survived in Europe after the triumph of Christianity, featuring ecstatic sexual worship of nature, the Great Mother and a horned consort god typified by figures like Dionysus, Pan and Cernunnos, and a salient feature of this pagan counterculture was that its leaders were often women and gay men. It was this non-conforming counterculture that the Christian Church persecuted as "witches." Famous from this argument is the notion that the epithet "faggot" derives from the use of homosexuals as tinder for the bonfires that burned witches and heretics...

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