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Quote by Allan Bloom

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.”

Quote by Allan Bloom

Author

Allan Bloom was an influential American philosopher, born on September 14, 1930, and died on October 7, 1992. He is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, known for his profound understanding and unique insights into Western philosophy. more

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“The first discipline modernity's originators imposed upon themselves was that of self-restraint, learning to live with vulgarity. Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be.”

Firsts Made Self Discipline Lows Expectations Restraint Effectiveness Modernity Vulgarity Self Restraint High Expectations Low Expectations

Author:Allan Bloom

“Plato says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempting to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.”

Philosophy Results Influence Multitudes Plato Attempting Seriousness Prostitution

Author:Allan Bloom

“Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing in addition to caring for man's well-being they were providing rights for themselves.”

Men Giving Wells Rights Caring Well Being Providing Vulgarity Hume

Author:Allan Bloom

“The old view was that delicacy of language was part of the nature, the sacred nature, of eros and that to speak about it in any other way would be to misunderstand it. What has disappeared is the risk and the hope of human connectedness embedded in eros. Ours is a language that reduces the longing for an other to the need for individual, private satisfaction and safety.”

Way Needs Humans Would Be Individual Speak Language Views Risk Safety Sacred Longing Satisfaction Embedded Delicacy Connectedness Eros

Author:Allan Bloom

“Did Romeo and Juliet have a ... "relationship"? The term "relationship" ... betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.”

Different Term Degrees Attachment Juliet Chaste Egalitarianism

Book:Love and Friendship

Source: Love and Friendship

“We witness a strange inversion: on the one hand, the endeavor to turn the social contract into a less calculating and more feeling connection among its members; on the other hand, the endeavor to turn the erotic relationship into a contractual one.”

Feelings Hands Turns Social Strange Members Connections Witness Endeavor Contracts Erotic Calculating Social Contract Inversions

Book:Love and Friendship

Source: Love and Friendship

“The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment ... seems to result from a combination of causes our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by "the death of God" and of the subordinate god, Eros.”

World Self Seems Sex Causes Results Democratic Protection Tendencies Combination Atmosphere Companion Regimes Subordinates Eros Self Protection Disenchantment

Book:Love and Friendship

Source: Love and Friendship

“A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality. ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism.”

Source: Love and Friendship

“The self must be a tense bow. It must struggle with opposites rather than harmonize them, rather than turn the tension over to the great instruments of last manhood the skilled bow unbenders and Jesuits of our days, the psychiatrists, who, in the same spirit and as part of the same conspiracy of modernity as the peace virtuosos, reduce conflict.”

Self Lasts Spirit Turns Struggle Conflict Opposites Instruments Tension Conspiracy Bows Manhood Tense Modernity Psychiatrist Jesuit

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether men are really equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice.”

Men Mean Opinion Example Equal Prejudice Asking Democratic Testing Relativism Cultural Relativism

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind