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Title: Love and Friendship by Allan David Bloom, Allan Bloom ISBN: 0-671-67336-X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: The author was born 400 years too late.
Comment: A brilliant writer and social critic, and known as one of the best Greek scholars of the twentieth century, the author gives in this book his insights and concerns regarding the status of love and friendship as humanity moved closer to the 21st century. As in his earlier writings, the author sometimes is right on target, and at other times dead wrong. Indeed, in the latter case, the author's claims are surprising considering his sometimes considerable insight into American culture.
The author expresses deep regret at the current status of "eros". Science, he says, has reduced love to sex, and the word "love" has been applied to most everything except for the overwhelming attraction of one individual to another. People are too open about sex, he complains, and have lost their "puritanical shame" when discussing it in public. But, he does not substantiate his assertions with any amount of statistics. If he did this, it would make this book a scientific study, and the author believes clearly has a negative attitude about science. It is responsible for getting us into this trouble, e.g. the Kinsey report.
All the talk about "relationships" is not any good either, according to the author. Egalitarianism and individualism have reduced romantic relationships to contractual matters. In addition, the last one hundred years has not seen any great "novelists of love". The current romantic novel is "cheap" and suitable only for housewives. To be a romantic today, he says, is like being a "virgin in a whorehouse", and does not conform to the times. Again though, no statistical support is given. The author shouts loud, and carries a small stick of evidence.
The many unsubstantiated claims in the book are balanced by some of its virtues. The author's use of Rousseau is clever, and his analysis of Julien Sorel, the individualistic rogue of Stendahl's "Red and the Black" is brilliant. In fact, all who love (love?) this novel would benefit greatly from reading the author's opinions of it. He sees correctly that there is a fight between the ancients and the moderns. But what he does not see is that the moderns are clearly winning, but only because of what they have inherited from the ancients.
Far from science demeaning the value of love and sex, it has enhanced it. It has taught us that the imagination is not some uncaused force that comes from outside us, but instead is part of who we are. We in large measure, via our ideas and thoughts, determine its contents. But our brains can shuffle these ideas and thoughts and create ones more interesting, fun, and erotic than what perhaps we intended. The more sophisticated our understanding of our brains, the more we appreciate their workings, and the more intoxicated we become in the free play of our imagination.
Contrary to what the author claims, romance has not been reduced to a contract. Certainly views of marriage have changed as compared to what they were centuries ago. Marriage at that time was typically arranged or thought of as an economic contract, and, most importantly, those kinds of marital arrangements were not frowned upon by those who participated in them. But now love is thought of as more precious, as something not to be tainted by economic considerations. If one is "marrying for money" that is something to be kept hidden, and brings shame to those who admit to it. Indeed, how very different are the views now on marriage! We are now marrying for love, and when compared with the marriages of the 16th century, this is a radical notion.
Rating: 4
Summary: Reclaiming "Eros"
Comment: "Eros" is commonly misinterpreted today as the physical and psychological longing associated the sexual act. Bloom argues that this post-Freudian notion of eros is a dilapidated and impoverished one. "Eros" was not killed merely by Freud, but by his lineage of social scientists, who attempted to de-eroticize "eros" by placing it in the context of meaningless statistics and power-conflict. "Eros" was no longer a romantic notion; it rather became the victim of flakey postmodern and feminist theory that attempted to deconstruct and politicize it. What could be more unromantic than that?
Since it is impoverished from its original Greek meaning, how is it possible to capture the the historical breadth, the romantic essence and the philosophical depth of "eros"? This question represents Bloom's project in 'Love and Friendship.'
'Love and Friendship' analyzes pre-freudian authors of literature who can shed light on the nature of "eros:" Rousseau, Plato, Stendahl, Austen, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Bloom eschews questionable postmodern hermeneutics (queer theory, feminism, etc.) of these works. Instead, he employs textualist (or literalist) hermeneutics in unfolding the true meaning of these works. To be sure, just as no one photograph can tell us what a table truly looks like, no one author reveals the true essence of "eros." However, many different photographs shed light on the various dimensions of a table, just as a textual analysis of great literature gives us a truer philosophical understanding of romantic love.
This book is a gem. Bloom, who lashes out at the animalism of postmodernity in his seminal 'Closing', extends his project by engaging politicized literary theory on their own turf. However, unlike 'Closing,' this book is not aimed at the ill-read. It would be more prudent for one to read first some of the works analyzed in this book. (e.g. Red and Black, Anna Karenina, Emile, Symposium, Pride and Prejudice, Antony and Cleopatra, etc.) Such background reading is requisite to appreciate and criticize Bloom's analysis.
Rating: 5
Summary: The longing for completion--and how we pursue it
Comment: Bloom uses the term eros broadly, to cover all forms of the longing for completion--from the love of a beautiful beloved to the love of wisdom. Ranging broadly over the history of Western literature and philosophy, he also goes deep. For each book he covers, he provides a detailed summary that effectively introduces the book to the new reader, along with commentary that illuminates the book's contribution to our ideas of love, friendship, and what they and we can be at our best. I have reservations about Bloom's treatment of Nietzsche, whom he discusses briefly here and there. But having read almost all of the books he covers in full-length chapters, I find those chapters faithful to their spirit. The section on Shakespeare has been published separately, but the others are equally good. The concluding chapters on Montaigne and Plato are especially striking in the clarity and force with which they present these authors' challenge to conventional notions about living well.
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Title: Giants and Dwarfs: Essays, 1960-1990 by Allan Bloom ISBN: 0671707779 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND by Alan Bloom ISBN: 0671657151 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare on Love and Friendship by Allan David Bloom, Allan Bloom ISBN: 0226060454 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Plato's Symposium by Plato, Seth Benardete ISBN: 0226042758 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare's Politics by Allan Bloom, Harry V. Jaffa ISBN: 0226060411 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
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