Allan Bloom Zitate

Allan David Bloom war ein US-amerikanischer Philosoph und Professor.

Bloom wurde bekannt durch seine politisch-philosophische Kulturkritik The Closing of the American Mind . Bloom zählt zu den bedeutendsten Schülern des deutschamerikanischen Philosophen Leo Strauss. Zwar wurde The Closing of the American Mind in den Vereinigten Staaten ein Bestseller, aber in Deutschland sind Blooms Werke weitgehend unbekannt. Einzig sein Schüler Francis Fukuyama entfachte in den deutschen Feuilletons eine polemische und wenig ernsthafte Debatte über das „Ende der Geschichte“ .

Bloom wurde maßgeblich beeinflusst von Platon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche und Leo Strauss. Sein Werk übte starken Einfluss auf die neokonservative Bewegung in den USA aus. Wikipedia  

✵ 14. September 1930 – 7. Oktober 1992
Allan Bloom: 29   Zitate 0   Gefällt mir

Allan Bloom: Zitate auf Englisch

“Only the search back to the origins of one’s ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us.”

“Western Civ,” p. 20.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Kontext: Only the search back to the origins of one’s ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us. Our study of history has taught us to laugh at the follies of the whole past, the monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, and aristocracies with the fanaticism for empire or salvation, once taken so seriously. But we have very few tools for seeing ourselves in the same way, as others will see us. Each age always conspires to make its own way of thinking appear to be the only possible or just way, and our age has the least resistance to the triumph of its own way. There is less real presence of respectable alternatives and less knowledge of the titanic intellectual figures who founded our way.

“The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times”

“Western Civ,” p. 19.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Kontext: I am now even more persuaded of the urgent need to study why Socrates was accused. The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times, not in the bosoms of pleasure-seekers, who don’t give a damn, but in those of high-minded and idealistic persons who do not want to submit their aspirations to examination.

“The new vision of man and politics was never taken by its founders to be splendid. Naked man, gripped by fear or industriously laboring to provide the wherewithal for survival, is not an apt subject for poetry. They self-consciously chose low but solid ground. Civil societies dedicated to the end of self-preservation cannot be expected to provide fertile soil for the heroic and inspired. They do not require or encourage the noble. What rules and sets the standards of respectability and emulation is not virtue or wisdom. The recognition of the humdrum and prosaic character of life was intended to play a central role in the success of real politics. And the understanding of human nature which makes this whole project feasible, if believed in, clearly forms a world in which the higher motives have no place. One who holds the “economic” view of man cannot consistently believe in the dignity of man or in the special status of art and science. The success of the enterprise depends precisely on this simplification of man. And if there is a solution to the human problems, there is no tragedy. There was no expectation that, after the bodily needs are taken care of, man would have a spiritual renaissance—and this for two reasons: (1) men will always be mortal, which means that there can be no end to the desire for immortality and to the quest for means to achieve it; and (2) the premise of the whole undertaking is that man’s natural primary concern is preservation and prosperity; the regimes founded on nature take man as he is naturally and will make him ever more natural. If his motives were to change, the machinery that makes modern government work would collapse.”

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

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