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Quote by Allan Bloom

“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.”

Quote by Allan Bloom

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Work

Closing of the American Mind

A seminal work analyzing the impact of modern intellectual movements on American society and culture. more

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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“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

“Nietzsche said the newspaper had replaced the prayer in the life of the modern bourgeois , meaning that the busy, the cheap, the ephemeral, had usurped all that remained of the eternal in his daily life.”

Said Prayer Modern Eternal Busy Newspapers Daily Life Replaced Bourgeois Ephemeral All That Remains

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“In America we have only the bourgeoisie, and the love of the heroic is one of the few counterpoises available to us. In us the contempt for the heroic is only an extension of the perversion of the democratic principle that denies greatness and wants everyone to feel comfortable in his skin without having to suffer unpleasant comparisons. Students have not the slightest notion of what an achievement it is to free oneself from public guidance and find resources for guidance within oneself.”

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“[Rock and the intellectual Left] must both be interpreted as parts of the cultural fabric of late capitalism. Their success comes from the bourgeois' need to feel that he is not bourgeois.”

Needs Feels Left Rocks Late Intellectual Capitalism Fabric Bourgeois

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms.”

“Americans ... do not naturally apply the term "bourgeois" to themselves, or to anyone else for that matter. They do like to call themselves middle class, but that does not carry with it any determinate spiritual content. ... The term "middle class" does not have any of the many opposites that bourgeois has, such as aristocrat, saint, hero, or artist - all good.”

Doe Matter Spiritual Artist Term Class Middle Hero Opposites Saint Middle Class Bourgeois

Author:Allan Bloom

“Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off.”

Men Looks Doe Made Real Self Purpose Social Existence Needed Promise Perfection Paid Salvation Deny Contracts Procedures Bourgeois Selected Basements Real Self Social Contract

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“Social science and humanities ... have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. ... The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not.”

Men Want Facts Humanity Social Differences Former Latter Mutual Contempt Predictable Social Science Looking Down Philistines

Author:Allan Bloom

“Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.”

Self Interest Common Keys Enlightenment Enlightened Hostile Self Interest Common Good

Book:Closing of the American Mind

Source: Closing of the American Mind

“The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.”

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Book:Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected

Source: Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected