Plato's Bedroom: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love

Plato's Bedroom: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love, David K. O'ConnorPivoting from Plato's Symposium, O'Connor employs scenes from Shakespeare's plays, plots from contemporary novels and movies, and insightful quotes from a variety of sources, which reveal how people nowadays cannot think clearly about love, sex, and marriage because of the limitations of contemporary English. We now use medical and bureaucratic words to talk about sublime matters. Far more appropriate words are found in the works of ancient Greeks and Western authors, mostly of centuries past..Moreover, of what are sometimes referred to as the four metaphysical entities, only beauty can be viewed directly. I now realize why Dostoevsky could say that “Beauty will save the world.” That is, for those not yet totally jaded, and unable to think intelligently about truth, justice, and goodness; beauty, the one entity that can be viewed, functions as the most powerful entity to bring contemporary man to think as an authentic human, capable of appreciating those elements of their lives that are in some mysterious ways analogies of what we may call the Other Side of Reality.Excellent book, a joy to read. Well written, with subtle references that educated readers will appreciate.

Hear great things about this author as a professor. Daughter loves the book.

briliant book based on an undergraduate course. I found it worthy of close, careful study.

Superficial and cliched

Plato’s Bedroom is a superb book, sensitive and thought-provoking, often vigorous, and always captivating. I recommend it very highly.O’Connor concentrates on one particular topic, Plato’s investigation of eros (rendered by O’Connor both as “erotic” and “romantic love”) in the Symposium, and intertwines a close reading of the Symposium with an investigation of several other works, primarily literary and cinematic ones, that enter into a dialogue with issues raised by Plato’s work: the Phaedrus (which is Plato’s other great work on eros), Shakespeare’s Othello and Midsummer Night’s Dream, the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the Gospel of Mathew, Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, the short stories of Andre Dubus, and several movies from the last thirty years by directors such as Atom Egoyan, Woody Allen, Patrice Leconte, and others. O’Connor shows his reader that issues first raised by Plato in the Symposium reverberate throughout the centuries and are picked up in a host of very different subsequent works. Through this approach, O’Connor enables his reader to experience the vital claim that antiquity, through its dialogue with the subsequent tradition, still has on us today. For example, O’Connor highlights the recurring theme of people’s attempts to deflate love, a force that the Greeks considered to be divine, into something controllable and manageable. By taming eros in this way, people evade the extraordinary claim that love makes on them. Another central theme is the antithesis, explored in Plato and picked up in several later works, between two conceptions of love, namely love understood as the fascination with a specific, concrete individual versus love as the striving after a higher ideal. Exploring the tension between these two conceptions of love, O’Connor finds instances both of sharp discrepancy and of successful mitigation.Apart from enabling the reader to experience the vitality of the issues raised by Plato’s philosophy, a further great, but rare, achievement of O’Connor’s book is its astonishingly seamless combination of the scholarly and the popular. If I were to teach a class at the university level on Plato’s Symposium, I would be sure to assign several sections from this book to my students. To the scholarly reader, one of O’Connor’s most fascinating claims is the thesis that the Symposium strives towards what O’Connor calls an “androgynous” account of eros: an understanding of erotic love that combines both male and female aspects and that challenges the predominantly male, O’Connor calls it “macho,” atmosphere prevailing in the early speeches of the dialogue. O’Connor’s scholarly contributions notwithstanding, Plato’s Bedroom will speak equally well to interested general readers. For one thing, the book, without ever being facile or cheap, presupposes no prior knowledge of ancient philosophy. Yet the main reason for the book’s accessibility lies elsewhere, namely in O’Connor’s exhilarating and riveting style: it is both sinewy and elegant and combines a punchy directness with a stance that is both thoughtful and nuanced.All of these virtues derive, I think, from O’Connor’s wholehearted dedication to the pursuit of philosophical questions that are not academic in a narrow sense but rooted in fundamental and profound experiences, which confront every human being. His book shows us what the humanities can achieve when they are practiced at their finest.

For many years Professor O’Connor taught a popular philosophy course at Notre Dame called “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love.” After the university recorded his lectures and uploaded them to the web, they went viral in China, of all places. Plato’s Bedroom is the English version of a book already published in Asia, a book based on the transcriptions of O’Connor’s lectures.Why is "Love is Barefoot Philosophy," as it is titled in Asia, so worth reading?The esteemed philosophers who reviewed the book called it a ‘potion against disenchantment,’ a masterpiece informed by religious faith as well as ‘faith in the value of philosophy,’ a ‘joy to read.’ “Plato’s dialogues have found their interpreter for our times,” said one reviewer.In my opinion, the book is so worth reading because Professor David O’Connor is so worth knowing.I had the wonderful opportunity of creating the book’s index, so I know it well. O’Connor’s voice manages to resonate from every page. He is a top-rate scholar, an engaging teacher, a wise soul, and a good man.He’s also provocative. What he says about sexuality in particular will likely disturb or unsettle you, whether or not you share his Catholic Weltanschauung. But students from all corners of the university and the world continue to seek O’Connor’s mentorship and insight for a reason. I highly recommend this book!!